NBA Blog

Thanks to a lovely gift from my mother during her visit this weekend, I now have access to the final 30 games of the season for each team.  I have the LeaguePass just in time for the stretch run.  I’m all jacked up about this.  Seriously, before this transaction, I did not even know what happened at the trade deadline. 

I had been drifting at sea, but now I have direction.  I’ve watched several games thus far, and I have noticed a couple of things:

1.  Eric Bana hasn’t been in a movie since Munich, because he is now the starting small forward for the Toronto Raptors.  He’s using another name though, I like to call him Greasy Garbajosa. 
2.  Randy Foye is showing some serious signs of life.  It’s just a shame the T’Wolves did absolutely nothing at the deadline to add some more to the roster (more on this in a second).
3.  Right now, there is only one GM with a pulse and that GM is Bryan Colangelo.  The rest of the GM’s in the league are completely in over their heads.  There are some caveats: the Spurs (loaded with age and Parker, Ginobili, and Duncan, but they still should have moved Udrih), the Suns (got everything they need at the top of their division, but should have moved Kurt Thomas to move Marcus Banks), and the Mavs (playing better than anybody right now)
4.  Dirk is the MVP and it sickens me.
5.  LeBron James really doesn’t care about this season, which is disappointing becuase Jordan, Bird, Magic, Barkley and Isiah NEVER acted like that.  And I guarantee D-Wade will never act like that.
6.  Iverson and ‘Melo have not quite meshed yet, but they will.  Trust me.  Iverson needs quick touches early in the game to get his rhythm going.  If that happens, all bets are off for the night, and he’ll still get 40+minutes with 7 assists.  ‘Melo, on the other hand, can score throughout the flow of the game, which is what makes his ability so impressive. On a fastbreak, he can attack the rim or knock down a 15-footer.  In the halfcourt set, he can break some ankles, post up, or knock down an open jumper.  His offensive game has no holes, other than his three-point shooting, which is unnecessary if you shoot as well as he does from everywhere else.
7.  Ray Allen still has the sweetest jumper I have ever seen.  WOW.  I will never get over that one.  I also enjoy watching him fight with Bruce Bowen.  Those two have some heated battles that rival Raja Bell/Kobe Bryant matchups.
8.  The Bucks uniforms are still ugly.
9.  Gerald Wallace will get some serious jack this summer.  I hope he does’t get hurt as much as Bobby Simmons after his signing.
10.  Isiah Thomas and Billy King are borderline retarded as GM’s.  Isiah bought out Jalen Rose to save $500k this season, instead of dealing his large expiring contract this month.  King bought out Webber so that he could sign with the Pistons for chump change.  The Pistons needed help, and were willing to move a big man.  The 76ers couldn’t have tried to set up a three-team deal to ship Webber to the Pistons and bring in someone like Nazr Muhammed?  The Bobcats could have gotten involved to make the money work.  That’s just dumb. 

After review, Bill Simmons was right.  This was just a dreadful trading deadline for the NBA.  So many teams wanted to make moves, and none of them did anything.  That really stinks, because of all the negative chatter after the All-Star weekend (which featured a letdown game).  Teams could have swung some major deals, drawn big time press coverage, and parlayed that into a postseason that would feature some seriously fun matchups.  Then, the league would roll right into the best offseason ever because of the NBA Draft hype.  Instead, we, the fans, got nada.  And Derek Fisher has to defend his peers in the press from all the negative comments being made out there.  Bummer.

That being said, my resume is still available for teams to review.  I think there should be plenty of jobs available this summer. 

Apparently, my brain is still functioning.  I am sure all of you are glad to hear that.  Then again, I’m sure that many of you are doubting that my brain ever was functioning. 

There is something that I have long contemplated, and I guess now is as good of a time as any to discuss it.  This is the potential greatness of Tracy McGrady.  I say ‘potential’ because I believed that he was on the verge of outshining Kobe as the best all-around player in the NBA.  Of course, I began to think that five years ago.  Now, he is still on the verge of passing Kobe, which means he has not done it yet.  With the injuries to his back, questions about his defense, and mounting disappointments with sub .500 teams over the past four years, T-Mac began to, in Tysononics, “fade to Bolivia.”  He even began to take a second-fiddle role to Yao, until the big prophet went down yet again this year.  (Sidebar: Yao and T-Mac have had some terrible injuries during their tenure together to the point that this three to four year span rivals that of the C-Webb/Bibby injury-riddled disappointing years in Sacramento.)

Then Yao went down, at a time when the Rockets were 16-11 with Yao.  T-Mac was also hurt with lingering back problems.  With a cast of the corpse of Dikembe Mutombo, the imitation of a jump shot by the former Skip-to-my-Lou Rafer Alston, Shane Battier’s freakish scalp, and the uber-crazy Bonzi Wells, this team looked D O O M E D.

Of course, T-Mac came back, and the Rockets are scorching hot.  T-Mac is playing better than anybody in the league right now, with the exception of Dirk and Nash (ouch, that hurts to say).  And, I think he’s playing better than Kobe, simply because both teams are thin across the board but T-Mac’s Rockets are playing better all the way around the court.  They lead the league in several important defensive categories, and I’d much rather be playing alongside Lamar Odom than Shane Battier.  (I admit, it’s partially because of the scalp thing.  Seriously, that’s freaky.)

Maybe this is the year that the two will meet up in the playoffs, and we will get to see a battle where T-Mac and Kobe go at one another in a scoring duel that would rival the Dominique-Larry Legend battle in the mid-1980’s (right down to the classic uniform Lakers/Celtics versus the red eyesore jersey Hawks/Rockets).  And with the way T-Mac is lighting it up, I think I’d put my money on him over good ol’ #8…I mean #24.  (That’s just dumb, but it does give me another reason to dislike Kobe.)

I promised big things for this site.  I promised more posts, and I have not forgotten.  The fact is I have an amazing excuse for not posting anything this past week.  I don’t want to get into too many details because of outstanding claims, but lets just break this down for your review.

1.  Me driving Jeep Wrangler.
2.  Lot of snow and ice
3.  Extremely cold morning
4.  Long drive to eastern Kentucky
5.  Slipping and sliding
6.  Jeep v. 18-wheeler
7.  18-wheeler ALWAYS wins
8.  E.R.
9.  Lots of headaches and drugs
10.  New car search

There you have it in a nutshell.  It is not easy typing from a backboard, this much I can promise you. 

Note:  I’m also looking at moving to a new location for my self-proclaimed NBA wisdom.

To read: ESPN 2’s Sports Guy Blog about the Oden-Durant explosion in college basketball.  Good stuff, but I think he whiffed on the lack of emotion showed by freshman uberstar Oden.  Tim Duncan showed LESS emotion during his frosh year at Wake Forest.  Then again, he was overshadowed by super-scorer, fan favorite, and veteran Randolph Childress.