Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cry Me a Pinche Rio

Via Blog-a-Bull, I got a kick out of this Nocioni lament:

Last year I lost all hope they would pass the ball to me (laughs). I just waited on the corner watching what happened. If the ball came, it came... It rarely did (laughs). It's the same thing in Sacramento. There's a lot of young people and a lot of individualistic play.


Love it. Dude took the most shots per minute of his entire career last year, and indeed, took the third most total shots on the team in 07-08, behind only Deng and Gordon. Meanwhile, his AST% (8.3) was third-lowest on the team among those playing meaningful minutes, (barely) ahead of only Ben Wallace (8.2) and Joe Smith (7.4).

Anyone know the Spanish word for chutzpah?

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Bulls Abide

It probably doesn't speak well of Vinny's overall coaching this year, but I would like to single out for praise and wholeheartedly endorse his reaction to a soul-crushing loss by essentially responding, "Fuck it, Dude; let's go bowling."

Monday, March 09, 2009

Foreboding

Given the Bulls' recent play on the road, I share Matt's pessimism w/r/t the upcoming 3-game swing. Ideally, you'd like to take one out of two from the Florida teams, and then get the big win in Philly, but at this point, I'd settle for 1-2, particularly since an O-fer seems a distinct possibility.

As for tonight's game, there appears to be something of a perfect storm conspiring against the Bulls. Hinrich is injured, and though he vows he'll play and usually does a nice job guarding D-Wade, I think the tables could be drastically turned tonight.

LeBron is probably going to win the MVP, and I think that's well and good, but D-Wade is currently in the midst of the most impressive sustained stretch of basketball by an individual player this year. Over his last 8 games, Wade is averaging:

* 36.4 points
* 10.8 assists
* 6.0 rebounds
* 2.6 steals
* shooting 56% from the field (and indeed, he hasn't shot under 50% in a game, since he last played Chicago, nearly a month ago.)
* 44% from three-point land
* getting to the line nearly 9 times a night, and shooting 88% while there
* (He's also blocking a shot a night, as well, apparently just for shits and giggles.)

This torrid stretch includes scoring nights of 50, 46, 41 and 42; on the nights where he hasn't broken the 40-mark, he's atoned by getting double-digit assists in every contest. The correct adjective for this, I believe, is "Jordanesque."

That said, the Heat are only 4-4 during this run (albeit 3-1 at home). As the Bard said, "It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none," so my advice would be to not worry about Wade so much--he's going to get his--and instead make sure the Beasleys and Cooks and Haslems and Chalmerses don't get theirs. (See Marion, Shawn.)

Oh, and Vinny, if it's a close game at the end, please make sure our best player is on the court, mkthxbai!

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Listening to Sports Radio...

...will drive you insane.

I heard Hanley this morning, raving about how well Sefolosha is playing for the Thunder, "averaging a double double," etc. Curious--and kinda shocked--I decided to look into it further. He's had a couple nice games, but as you can see, he's not exactly setting the world on fire, averaging 9.8 points, 6 boards, while shooting 42.2 percent in 32 minutes a game. In other words, very close to the 10.8 points, 6.3 boards, and 42.8 shooting that he's averaged per 36 minutes in his career.

I'm happy that Thabo's getting some burn, but come on: Only teams with .250 winning percentages are going to give him 36 minutes a game. This was not a big loss.