From top to bottom, the Miami Heat are a pretty captivating team.

Dwyane Wade needs no introduction; he’s all-world, and if injuries hadn’t temporarily halted his career’s momentum, he would have single-handedly propelled the Earth into the sun. But as it stands, he’s a hyper-charismatic telepathical knight who knows the secrets to all space and time. I guess that’s good enough.

But down from Wade, the Heat are a rag-tag group of promising young players, cast-offs, and stopgaps. Michael Beasley is a terrific talent, but his off-court (and online) troubles of various kinds have eclipsed his promising improvements. Mario Chalmers is a good player with plenty of skill, but he’s still the NCAA standout that somehow couldn’t merit a first round pick. Jermaine O’Neal wore out his welcome in both Indiana and Toronto, only to find new life this season behind a cleaner bill of health and some team stability. Quentin Richardson was traded to 29 of the league’s 30 teams in the off-season, and his expensive price tag and limited skill set make him both an expensive luxury and a provider of a much-needed service in Miami. Carlos Arroyo once had the buzz at his back coming off Puerto Rico’s upset of Team USA in the 2004 Olympics, but since was bounced off of teams and out of the NBA before making a grand return to bolster the Heat at point guard. Jamaal Magloire is the worst All-Star to ever live. James Jones and Daequan Cook are each other’s worst enemies, as they end up splitting time when all Jones wants to do is play defense and Bowen it up from the corner, and all Cook wants to do is launch up threes every time he touches the ball. Joel Anthony manages to look like a pretty decent shot-blocker in the 2008 Olympics, and then immediately manages to revert to his former self the second he steps on a NBA floor. And Shavlik Randolph? Yakhouba Diawara? You get the point.

Every team and every player has their story. Maybe they bounced around the D-League, or recovered from an injury, or overcame some real life, non-basketball issues. But when you look to the Miami roster aside from Wade and Udonis Haslem, it’s just tale after tale of ‘disappointment.’ Each of Miami’s role players has found a fairly unique way to fail, and while that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the quality of this bunch, I don’t mean to tear them down. Although this particular group of players may not be the most talented supporting cast, they’re certainly able, and beyond that, they may be the most interesting such group in the NBA. If you ever had the luxury to invite an entire team to a dinner party, there are a few no-brainers. The Spurs, for one, who are much more interesting people than they let on. The Cavaliers, maybe, because their camaraderie and genuine like for one another is downright infectious. But right with those squads has to be Miami. On the floor, they’ll fool you into thinking they’re a cohesive unit at times. But in terms of personality types and personal narratives, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Somehow, Wade’s transcendent talent and Erik Spoelstra’s underrated abilities as a coach manage to hold everything together. It works. Not at the level of the Magic, Celtics, or Cavs, but certainly at a respectable level given this team’s unique context. I wouldn’t say it’s uncommon for players of diff’rent strokes to play together under a banner, but the Heat simply take that possibility to a ridiculous extreme. They’re a complex bunch with diverse histories and backgrounds, even if we want to see them in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions: a “pothead,” a draft bust, a maligned star, a consummate workman, a gunner, an outcast, a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Just add basketball everything else disappears.

Happy Friday Parox-Readers. As a reminder, Christmas is right around the corner! So be sure to be thinking of ways you can ditch your family so you can watch the seven hundred games the NBA schedules on the holiest of days.

Let’s see what’s on tap, shall we?

REASONS TO WATCH THE GAMES OF THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION TONIGHT:

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I wanted to see what Matt Damon had in common with each other so I typed their names into Google. I got these results:

Then I remembered they were in this scene together. Hit it, boys!

Lion Face: Carmelo Anthony
40 points on 28 shots is not bad. It’s not bad at all. In fact, I’d be willing to concede that it’s really good. What I’m trying to say is Carmelo James Anthony (Is his middle name “James?”) is a good basketball player. He dropped 40 points on the Pistons in Detroit with 16 of them coming in the fourth quarter. He scored from all over the court tonight as he had the mid-range jumper working to complement his outside jumper and his ability to get the ball to the basket inside. The confusing thing is that he didn’t get more points and shots. When he gets into an offensive groove like that, he really should be force fed on a possession-by-possession basis. There’s no need to go anywhere else. And when push comes to shove, he should definitely be getting the ball during the last possession of the game…

Lemon Face: Nuggets Last Possession
Speaking of, I do NOT like the fact that Chauncey Billups got the last shot in that game. It’s not like he’s a bad option. He used to be a really clutch player. Now? I’d say he’s about average, which gives you a 50-50 shot in theory of him getting that key basket. Whereas with Carmelo on the court, you have about a 300% chance at scoring that basket, especially on a night in which he drops 40 and his league-leading 14^th game of 30 or more points. I like Jonas Jerebko and can appreciate how stereotypically Swedish he looks/is but he’s not stopping Carmelo from, at worst, getting to the free throw line on that final possession. Poor decision by the Nuggets.

Lion Face: Tony Allen? Wait, Ray Allen? Did I mean Ray Allen? No, Tony Allen! The same Tony Allen that blew out his knee after the whistle? Ya, THAT Tony Allen. You’re drunk…
Maybe I am drunk, self. And maybe I shouldn’t put so much into the infamous +/- statistic. But it just seemed like when Tony Allen was on the court, good things happened for the Celtics and I feel like his +14 off the bench backs that up. Not to mention he scored eight points and had a couple of steals.

Lemon Face: Randy Foye
As a Wolves fan, I’ll admit there was an irrational couple of years in which I tried to talk myself into Randy Foye over Brandon Roy. As soon as I saw the trade on draft night, I knew Roy would be the better player. I mean, after all, Kevin McHale picked him and then exiled him in one fell swoop so he had to be the better player by default. For years, I tried to see the good in Foye and yet, when he was traded with Mike Miller for the fifth pick in the draft that I figured would end up being Steph Curry or DeMar DeRozan, I was completely fine with it. Why? Because Randy Foye isn’t really that good. He’s probably better off in a reserve role for the Wizards. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s best to give up hope that he’ll ever be a difference-maker. He took 10 shots in 14 minutes against the Celtics and it got him six points. That sums him up.

Lion Face: Rajon Rondo
Over the last three games, Rajon Bow Wow has 30 assists to his three turnovers. That’s absurd. That’s absurdly absurd. He had 21 points and 11 assists against Gilbert Arenas on Thursday night. I think it’s about time we start clearing a perennial spot on the All-Star team for this Like Mike star. Plus, he does stuff like this:

Lemon Face: Jason Williams
It’s not fair to him really since he was going against Deron Williams but his two points, five assists and three turnovers in 31 minutes didn’t exactly jump start this Orlando attack against Utah.

Lion Face: Ben Wallace
Did you realize that Ben Wallace is still getting it done? He had 16 rebounds against the Nuggets on Thursday and it got me to look up his stats for the season. He’s averaging a block/steal combo of about 2.6 per game. He’s just under 10 rebounds per game (9.8). He’s giving the Pistons some much needed presence on the board since they’re trying to convince people that Charlie Villanueva is a “power” forward and that Jason Maxiell is over 5’10”. Keep it up, Ben!

Lemon Face: Caron Butler
Caron Butler used to be good, right? Like, really good? So what happened to him? Paul Pierce was only 2/8 from the field and finished with just 12 points and yet he STILL out performed Butler. Caron tried to make up for his 10-point performance with five assists and eight rebounds but I’m on to his ruse. Did you know he’s only averaging 1.7 assists per game this season? He hasn’t scored this low or ineffectively in his entire Washington tenure. He’s also never accounted for so few points on a basketball court since he was with the Lakers.

Lion Face: This Shot by Antawn Jamison
I’ve always contended Jamison has had the best touch around the basket of anybody since he came into the league.

He’s also the best Jamison in the NBA during this time. Sorry, Harold Jamison. You too, Jamison Brewer.

Lemon Face: Mickael Pietrus
I know we all have certain issues with +/- to some degree but a zero-point, -17 effort in just 12 minutes on the court from Mickael has to mean something, right?

Lion Face: Dwight Howard oop

He just has to be a fun guy to play with. I mean, you just throw it anywhere near the basket and he goes and gets it. He’s a point guard’s dream.

Lion Face: Deron Williams
Speaking of dream point guards, I highly suggest you re-watch the performance Deron Williams put on against the Magic. He literally ran the team perfectly as they racked up 120 points. You know how quarterbacks can get that alleged perfect QB rating even though they throw incomplete passes? That was the equivalent of this game for Deron. He knew he had a player that he could dominate all night. When he matched up with Jason Williams, he destroyed him. When a bigger, slower player switched out on him, he blew by him. Throughout this entire process, he was dissecting the Orlando defense with pinpoint passing and superb court vision. 32 points, 15 assists to one turnover and eight rebounds don’t just happen on a basketball court.

Through his scoring and his passing, he accounted from 45 of the Jazz 68 second half points. He ran and managed his team to textbookedly (made it up) in the third quarter when the Jazz erased an eight-point deficit and took control of this game. He had an answer for every Orlando score and then some. That is how you play point guard in the NBA. Like a damn surgeon.

In this episode Matt from Blogabull.com stops by to talk about Bulls’ fans overall skepticism and exactly how hopeless this franchise is. So basically, it’s the hap-hap-happiest podcast you’ve ever seen in your life! This was recorded right after the Nets’ loss so you can really feel the anger and disappointment fester. Such beautiful moments.

Oh, and check us on iTunes, sweetheart. You’ll never love anyone like you love us.

The Springfield Armor today announced that both Morris

Almond and T.J. Cummings will be joining the roster.

Originally selected in the first round (25th overall) of the 2007 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz,

Almond returns to the NBA D-League following assignments with the Utah Flash in both the

2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons. There, the former Rice University player set the NBA D-League

record for most points in a single regular season game with 53 (Utah at Bakersfield 1-30-08).

While with the Flash, Almond started in 32 games and had an average of 25.6 ppg.

via Armor Press Release

Morris Almond should have made camp with a team that needs him. Then he should have been signed. Instead, he made camp with the Magic. Who of course didn’t need him. The Knicks took a look at him, then turned him down, because Chris Duhon is a better option. No, really.

…

Almond can shoot. He can’t do much else. But if Jannero Pargo is still worth a run (I know, I know Bulls fans, he’s not), Almond is worth a flyer. Young, athletic, and can score like few can. He’s going to make the Armor infinitely better, and he’s instantly going to be a top five call-up candidate. He was in the Flash system and Utah couldn’t find room because they’re loaded. Will a team that sucks please take a look at this kid?

The team is on pace to attempt almost exactly the same number of overall three-pointers (about 1,550) as it launched in 2008, but, at its current rate, only 340 of those will be corner threes—about one fewer corner three per game than in ‘08.

This is a big reason why the team’s overall three-point shooting percentage has dropped from 40 percent to 35.5 percent—from the top of the league to league average.

The C’s hit 45 percent of their corner threes last season, the best mark in the league among teams that jacked at least 400 Corner Shorties, according to this analysis at Nets Are Scorching.

So what’s going on?

Two things primarily explain the declining number of corner three attempts:

1) Ray Allen is taking about two fewer three-pointers per game this season as compared with last season;

2) Rasheed Wallace shoots a lot of threes, and very few of them come from the corners.

via The Decline of the Corner Three » Boston Celtics Basketball – Celtics news, rumors and analysis – CelticsHub.com.

CelticsHub comes with a great analysis on where and how the C’s are shooting from the corner. It talks about how Allen is shooting more three pointers from the corner, continuing his ascent to “craftiest player in the league.” Seriously, is there anyone better at using non-physical skills to create accurate shots? I started remarking last off-season about how he has to run off seven screens to get loose, and he does, but he runs through those screens so sharp that there’s no way to get to him if the pass is on target. And now we find that as he gets older, he’s moved his game to the easiest range to take even more of an advantage on the shots he takes. His decreased attempts is also interesting, though, and part of me wonders if it’s not somehow tied to Rondo’s emergence. Rondo’s best moves I’ve seen are in transition, or off a screen, whipping the ball around to a big or back out to Garnett for an open 18 footer. He’s also partial to the short drive-and kick, pulling Pierce’s man off and then popping back out to Pierce who has a quick three-shot motion. I’d love to see how many of those corner threes are assisted from Rondo. I might be completely off here, though, since Rondo is fifth in Assists leading to threes per game and seventh per 40 for players with at least 25 minutes.

The other issue is Rasheed, which you will not be getting much analysis on. It’s Sheed. He shoots a lot of threes, hasn’t been making very many before the Bucks game, and doesn’t shoot corner threes because he’s a power forward. If you wanted more corner threes, you shouldn’t have signed him, but it’s working out for the Celtics anyway. The end.

The teams losing money in the last 12 months are the Dallas Mavericks, Portland Trail Blazers, Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, Charlotte Bobcats, New Jersey Nets, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks.

Teams’ average operating income was $7.8 million, with the Lakers at the top with $51.1 million, just ahead of the Bulls at $51 million. Portland’s value has increased the most, by 10 percent, while the Kings and Grizzlies each have dropped the most, by 13 percent.

via Lakers most valuable NBA franchise, Forbes says – NBA – SI.com.

The headline of course talks about the Lakers, and how rich they are and how popular. At the bottom it talks about how they have over $44 million (think about that number for a sec) more in operating income than the average. Meanwhile, buried within the story is how the small market teams (I would term PDX, ORL, SAC, IND, CHA, MIN, NOH, MEM, and MIL as small market) are in the red. The league, quite simply, has to do something about this. And Nate Jones (a Lakers fan and someone with close ties to NBA business)  has strong feelings about what that something should be.  He emailed this on Thursday.

Honestly, revenue sharing amongst the teams is the only way to solve this damn thing. Read the section on the Grizzlies. The economics of the small market are going to force the NBA’s hand. You can’t make money simply relying on your small market with no chip in from the big markets. It’s insane that the Lakers get to keep all of their gate revenue. I mean, it takes two teams to play a game. They should be taking 30% of gate receipts off the top. Same with local television and radio deals. An organization like the Grizzlies can’t focus on making winning decisions when they know that they are going to lose no matter if they put a winning team on the floor or not. Short of a name superstar arriving there, that market will continue to fail them.

Now, Memphis is kind of a special deal, outlined in a decade of misery and failure, based primarily (according to the article below) on the failures of Heisley as an owner, a premise which Heisley of course vehemently disagrees with:

So the owners are left to grouse about what might have been. Cates says Memphis can support an NBA championship team just as well as San Antonio does. The cities are similar in size and income, and both have only one major league sports team. “They just do things right, and we don’t,” he says. The Spurs, however, were lucky to get two superstars in the draft lottery, David Robinson and Tim Duncan, setting the foundation for four NBA titles. Spurs owner Peter Holt has also kept his executive and coaching staffs stable.

via Memphis Blues – Forbes.com.

The NFL has an economic and competitive environment that exists for every fanbase to cheer passionately and financially support their team with the assumption that they have as good a chance of winning a title as anyone else. The NBA more or less treats teams outside of its major markets as fodder to feed to the big markets on a Sunday afternoon. The Lakers just happen to be the fattest cat. Why else do you see LA playing at home on a Sunday time after time, often on national television later in the year? Why do they keep getting smaller Western Conference contenders on a TNT late game with an opponent coming off a back-to-back? Did you see similar advantages during the Spurs’ run? This trickles down over to Orlando, and why SVG is probably not completely off-track in how the media perceives his team as second-rate, despite being the defending Eastern Conference champions. Hedo nailed a fall away three two years ago to beat the Celtics on the road, and the announcers seemed stunned. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy which affects play. But I am saying that there is a business model for each player, a business model for each team, and a business model for the league. And the league’s model is best served by one dominant franchise.

Don’t get me wrong, Los Angeles doesn’t luck into this. They have a supportive ownership group dedicated to winning that has made smart moves in hires. Any other GM would have panicked and traded Kobe for the best he could get when he demanded a trade, and most GMs would have given up on Bynum. But Kupchak didn’t, and it’s worked out. I bet their marketing group is one of the best in the league, and while that’s certainly facilitated by having one of the best bandwagon fanbase opportunities in all of sports, the most money of any team in the league, and a gigantic market to pull from, it’s still a chicken and the egg question. Compare that to the Clippers, who are not bankrupt only because they operate in LA.

People ask me why I care. After all, the biggest spenders should get the most reward. But at the same time, teams that have the same effort, with fans that want it just as much (and don’t chant for tacos after showing up in the late second before leaving with time left), and hard-working people in their offices suffer because they simply don’t operate on a level playing field. Every team’s fans root for their team and watch other teams only as an opponent. But as someone who loves the game, loves the fans, and loves the league, this situation creates a disservice to everyone except the biggest markets that are able to capitalize on the advantages given.

And in these economic times, shouldn’t we be focusing on stopping the bleed, rather than selling burial plot space and using the money to hold a party?

*******

An aside on Heisley:

Is it stunning to anyone else how a man can know he’s constantly ridiculed by league insiders and the media, to be aware that the decisions he’s been involved in have not worked out (Iverson, Thabeet), and yet to constantly maintain that he’s right, and that he’ll prove people wrong, all the while making comments which do nothing but hurt the value of his club and his team like “Sometimes I sit back and wonder why I did it”?

I mean, throw out cliches, defer to your GM, deflect responsibility, but at least seem like you’re aware of reality.

FH: The Flash have offered free tickets to another Flash game to those that have attended, is that correct? If so, are you concerned about how it may appear like this was one attempt to drum up a crowd that is being recompensed with another?

Brandt Andersen: We are offering people free tickets to another game or a refund. But we are not trying to build another crowd for another game because they can choose any game they want. Plus, one thing that has not been reported in the media is the fact we routinely distribute free tickets to local school kids, and opening night was no exception. In fact, we distributed thousands of free tickets the week leading up to the game.

When it all the numbers shake out, we had 7,500 people in attendance. 3,000 came from free tickets, 3,000 more came from season ticket holders and groups that had purchased tickets throughout the summer. So when it boils down to it there were not that many additional tickets sold based on the potential B Russ MJ match.

via Talking With Brandt Andersen, Owner of the D-League’s Utah Flash — NBA FanHouse.

I talked to Brandt Andersen, owner of the Flash for FanHouse. It’s really disappointing that this is a lot of people’s first run-in with Andersen. He’s put a lot of money into the team and the league, he’s fun, proactive, involved, and has done as much for his community through the Flash as anyone in the D-League. So to see him vilified as he has been for the “hoax” (which is a sensitive word to Mark Madsen, by the way) is not cool. It was a dumb move, there’s no question, but this shouldn’t define his public persona.

When I was watching the Spurs lose to the Celtics last Thursday night, someone in the announcing team of Marv Albert, Mike Fratello and Reggie Miller made the comment that “teams don’t have to double Tim Duncan anymore.” It was a startling analysis that for the first time in my life made me wonder if the Spurs just didn’t have it anymore. This was a Spurs team that hadn’t looked great to start out the new season but was still coming off of a five-game winning streak. They had taken advantage of a favorable stretch of games against the Wizards, Bucks, Warriors, Rockets (road), and 76ers.

It certainly hasn’t been the same Spurs team we’ve seen over the past decade. They look lost. Not only did they look lost but they also look different – bad different. The offense isn’t the main problem. It is the defense, which is causing the issues. It’s hard to think of a Spurs team playing such poor defense but with another long and grueling year under their belt in the Duncan/Popovich era, the crisp rotation and execution of basic defensive fundamentals seem to be fading out. They aren’t just fading out. The Spurs haven’t played defense this poorly (106 defensive rating) since the tanking extravaganza of 1996-97 when San Antonio held David Robinson out in order to secure Tim Duncan (112 defensive rating).

But this isn’t that tanking Spurs team. That team’s top five scorers were Dominique Wilkins (37 years old), Vernon Maxwell, Vinny Del Negro, Avery Johnson and something called a Carl Herrera. This Spurs team nearly eclipsed those points with just Duncan, Tony Parker, and Roger Mason’s son last season. This Spurs team is deeper than ever and coming into this season was sporting a newly healthy Manu (we’ve heard that before) and a version of Tony Parker that scared opposing point guards last season. Of course, this is assuming everyone can stay healthy.

Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili have already missed nine games between them. Parker has been battling an ankle injury that has taken away his quickness. Without his quickness, his playmaking ability suffers along with his already questionable defense. When his playmaking ability suffers, he can’t create as many shots for himself or his teammates. This is probably why you’ll notice his scoring is way down along with his assists but his turnovers are at a career worst.

When you couple this with the fact that Manu Ginobili’s groin isn’t helping him be Manu Ginobili, the Spurs are trying to figure out how to get the most out of five new rotation players and Tim Duncan not being double team worthy anymore, a 13^th straight season of a plus-60 winning percentage seems not only unlikely but quite laughable.

So should we consider them done?

*****************************************************************************************************

As some of you may remember, I’m a high school basketball coach. To be more specific, I’m a high school basketball junior varsity assistant coach. I have been since the summer. It’s one of the more fun things you could ever do as a hoops nerd like myself.

Back in the summer, our mission as a team was simple: become better basketball players. Maybe that seems too basic right off the bat but when you consider that many high school programs go into the summer in order to win tournaments, it’s a bit refreshing to know that we just taught them the fundamentals of basketball and our school’s program. We didn’t really have many plays. We didn’t have a press or a press break. We went in there to grow as basketball players. Considering these things, the fact that we went 17-4 during the summer shows you just how talented our junior varsity team was/is.

A local, affluent high school didn’t take that approach. They had every weapon and scheme that they’d use this season ready at their team’s disposal back in June. They went into the summer tournaments for free t-shirts and tournament titles. In one of our four summer losses, our team lost to this affluent high school. Let me rephrase that; our team was annihilated by this high school. We ended up losing by around 40 points because they pressed, zoned, and came up with every trick they had to blow us out and embarrass our guys.

Our head coach of the JV (and good friend/future groomsman of mine) told the team after that loss to not hang their heads. He said that the goal of the team that beat us was to win the tournament in the summer and that when we played them in a tournament during the season, we’d be better off for this experience.

We had our first tournament of the season this past weekend. Due to scheduling confusion, we forfeited our first game of the tournament, which took us immediately out of tournament championship contention. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding and unfair to our kids. But we had to live with it even if it wasn’t our fault. So we told the team to prove to the rest of the teams moving into the winners’ bracket in the tournament that they dodged a bullet by not having to face us.

Well, wouldn’t you know that in the last day of this tournament (because of the scheduling issues) we ended up playing this affluent high school that had previously blown us out in the summer. We jumped out to an early lead behind some hot shooting from a ridiculously talented freshman guard that we have and smacked them in the mouth early. We were up 17-6 after the first two minutes and looked like we were going to blow them out, like they had previously done to us. Everything we were running was working and our press breaker was making their press a cute afterthought as we flew up and down the floor. But as in every competitive basketball game, they made a run.

In fact, they made a couple of runs to put us down by about six points with five minutes to play in the game. When we jumped out to our early double-digit lead, the cockiness in their expression was completely wiped away. You could see that not only were they taking us seriously (which they hadn’t planned on doing) but also they were afraid they couldn’t keep up. Now, with them looking to close the game out, we were the team with the thoughts of not being able to keep up.

But then something happened to our team. I can’t describe it as a switch being flipped or a strategy of basketball being implemented to correct what was going wrong. It was more of a general understanding throughout our 12 guys that we were better than this team, had already proven it and we were going to prove it in the final five minutes. All of a sudden offensive rebounds fell our way, jumpers crawled over the rim and in, and our first step was a little quicker than their defensive slides.

We stormed back into the game by forcing turnovers, running our offense correctly, and playing big on the boards despite having our two best big men in foul trouble and their big men towering over our guys. Our system of basketball was being executed perfectly. We found ourselves up six with one minute to go with our improved basketball players outlasting their same basketball schemes. With about 56 seconds left on the clock, our formerly hot-shooting freshman guard stole the ball at half court on an errant pass, he took off up the court and began to gather himself as he went up for a sure fate-sealing transition bucket to sure-up the win for us.

As he gathered himself, both the head coach and I thought to ourselves that he shouldn’t try what he was about to do but at the same time, anticipation was rising within us. His steps slowed, his dribble became deliberate, and his body coiled, ready to explode. This allowed a kid on the other team to catch up with him, not knowing what was about to happen.

Within the blink of an eye, we saw a 14-year old kid launch himself towards the basket, cock back the ball in his hand and rip the ball through the rim with a ferocity I’ve never seen out of someone so young. He punctuated the win with a fast break, tomahawk dunk over an unsuspecting defender that was arguably the biggest Eff You moment I’ve ever experienced in a live game. The place erupted. I lost my mind and jumped off my seat in unison with our bench. The game was ours, the summer was forgotten, and the future of our team was one to be feared by opponents.

And in reflecting on this, I can’t help but look at the current state of the San Antonio Spurs. Ever since their last NBA title win in 2007 their players have become older and more injured, their team defense has become worse every season and their annual playoff longevity has become shorter each time. The Spurs aren’t exactly a team that starts historically slow like they are now (they’ve started out 9-9 once in the past 10 seasons) but they’re always a team that kicks it up after February begins. Over the past 10 seasons, Tim Duncan’s teams have increased their pre-February record from a collective 312-147 record (67.9%) to 264-99 mark (72.7%) after February 1st.

The Spurs have only dropped from their pre-February winning percentage to their final winning percentage three times in the past ten seasons. In the four seasons in which they’ve started close to this slow (11-7 in 2000, 11-7 in 2002, 9-9 in 2003, 10-8 in 2008), they’ve never finished below 54 wins. So why is there so much worry about these Spurs now?

It’s very possible that they’re working on making their team better and more playoff ready when the second season rolls around in April. It’s possible they don’t mind being blown out in November and December because they know when they face those same teams in March, April and May that they’ll have improved players peaking in a system that has been refined throughout the 82-game campaign. It’s irrational to write them off now just because other teams like Denver, Phoenix, and the Lakers are trying to thump teams now.

Don’t assume the sun has set on a Spurs team that should have a much better record than they do. They run about 10 guys deep, which is not something you’ve been able to say in the past. They’ve brought in good new veterans (like Antonio McDyess and Richard Jefferson) along with younger rotation players (like DeJuan Blair and an always maturing George Hill) who are acclimating themselves to the Spurs system. The plan is to use all 82 games to prepare themselves for the two months worth of playoffs they expect to endure. Trust that there is a program for growth that eventually leads into the program for winning.

For now, just wait for the Eff You moment that George Hill, Manu Ginobili or anybody else might surprise you with. You’ll see it coming when they begin to coil.

I’m a Business Analyst at a financial services company, and one thing you learn pretty quickly when you dwell in a cube and analyze things is that there are a thousand different theories on how people should try to communicate what they just analyzed – and every business goes through phases where they experiment with a whole slew of them. A while back, we had a manager who loved Venn Diagrams, so I was required to learn how to make them. I never used them, but boy, could I make them. I realized the other day, however, that I could actually use them for this blog. They are colorful, simple, and allow me to crunch numbers and come up with new stats en route to evaluating point guards in the NBA. I mean, what could be more fun than that?

via Fun With Numbers and Venn Diagrams – Hornets247.com.

Tons of interesting stuff from Schwan at Hornets 247. I’m just going to go ahead and say that Wall will be in the Pure Scoring/Defensive Plays section next year. This also makes me seriously reconsider Lou Williams. Not in terms of him being brilliant or anything, but about what he’s bringing which is reasonable amounts of good things. Meanwhile, it’s stunning to see where Calderon ends on some of these. As we continue to redefine how we view point guards, these are the types of inforgraphics that can help us to understand things better.