The rumor mill has been going full blast lately, with pundits around the country suggesting that Chris Paul will soon be headed out of New Orleans. And you know what? I don’t blame him. A few seasons ago this team seemed to have a lot of promise: a 56-win season in 2007-2008, followed by a Game 7 conference semifinal loss to the Spurs. The core of the team was CP3, West, and Chandler. All of them were young and seemed to have tons of upside: Chandler a dominant shot-blocker and alley-oop man; West a power forward with great range on his jump shot and the ability to score inside, and CP3 the best point guard in the game, a virtual lock for 20 points and 10 assists every night. And the supporting cast was solid: Peja Stojakovic a three-point assassin, Jannero Pargo a solid backup 1 who could also pair with Paul in the backcourt, Julian Wright a youngster with incredible (albeit unpolished) athleticism. Things were looking up. I don’t think anyone expected that the next two seasons would be completely downhill from there.
Now, some of the problems have been basketball-related. Peja’s huge contract started to surpass his productivity as age took its toll. A number of young players didn’t pan out, especially Hilton Armstrong and Julian Wright. This stuff happens. But what really sucked is seeing George Shinn be a total cheapskate, with salary dumping becoming the number one priority. In December 2008 they tried and failed to dump Tyson Chandler’s contract. After the 2008-09 season they did in fact deal Chandler, picking up Emeka Okafor, who was making slightly less but had a longer contract. In basketball terms it seemed like a reasonable move: a more polished offensive player instead of Chandler’s raw athleticism. Unfortunately, the trade didn’t seem to work out for either side: Chandler played in just 51 games for Charlotte and Okafor’s production dropped to 10 points and 9 boards a game—hardly dreadful, but not much for someone making $10.5 million a year.
Then the Hornets dumped Rasual Butler—one of the bright spots in the 08-09 season—for a 2016 second-round draft pick. What the fuck is that shit? I realize we had just gotten some young guards in the draft (Thornton and Collison), but this was a blatant salary dump, pure and simple. They did almost nothing to improve the roster. They tried to bolster their backup frontcourt—the biggest shortcoming in the 2008 playoffs—by picking up Darius Songaila and Ike Diogu. Songaila proved a useful addition, but Diogu missed the whole season with injuries. They dumped Hilton Armstrong—not that I blame them—for another 2016 draft pick. Then they dealt Bobby Brown for yet another draft pick. The number one concern was obviously with avoiding the luxury tax, with little regard for improving the basketball team. Continue reading ‘the cheapskate george shinn’
I know many of my readers may not be sports fans. And they probably won’t want to read this. But even they’ve surely heard about LeBron James, quite possibly the greatest athlete on the planet. He just left the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he’d been since entering the NBA at the ripe old age of 18. He left, heading to Miami to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in an attempt to win the NBA title that has thus far eluded him.
As you might expect, LeBron’s decision led to a great deal of turmoil in the cities he rejected, most of all Cleveland. And the apoplexy even came straight from the top: consider this incredible letter from the Cavs’ majority owner, Dan Gilbert.* Some choice excerpts: “cowardly betrayal”; “shameful display of selfishness and betrayal”; “shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown ‘chosen one’”; “heartless and callous action.” And my personal favorite: “Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.” What? Continue reading ‘people who are upset at lebron’
We’re just a few days away from my favorite sports days of the year—the first round of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, more commonly called March Madness. Or The Big Dance. Those are the days when we see the big upsets, Cinderella trying to knock off Goliath (if I may mix my sports metaphors). The tournament is entertaining after that, but nothing compares to the frenzy of the first round. (Sure, if your favorite team is fighting for a title, I’m sure the later rounds are better, but the neutral fan is hungry for the cinderella stories, not the title contenders).
Over the decades the tournament gradually expanded; at first, only conference champions were allowed into the tourney. In 1975 at-large teams were added, and the tournament grew to 32 teams, then 40, then 48, and eventually 64. Now it’s at 65 with a largely irrelevant play-in game. 64 was perfect. No byes, no play-in games, just a perfectly balanced bracket. A few years ago they added a 65th team. The rationale at the time was that the NCAA had just gotten another conference (and thus another automatic bid), so expanding the tournament by one would keep the same number of at-large teams. Which is okay, I suppose. All it does is put an extra at-large team somewhere around the 11-12 seeds and bump the champions of the tiny conferences down a spot, putting the worst of them into the play-in game.
Now some people are calling for an expansion of the field to 96 teams. There are a number of arguments in favor of this, some better than others. The number one reason it will likely happen sooner or later is money. The tournament is the NCAA’s cash cow. In 1999, CBS signed an 11-year, $6 billion contract extension with the NCAA. That’s a lot of cash. And with that contract ending soon (2013), and the NCAA having an opt-out clause after this season, they may very well feel that more games (i.e. more chances for networks to sell commercials) could increase their revenues. There’s the possibility of a bidding war between CBS and ESPN, so it’d make sense to expand now instead of in the middle of a contract. Continue reading ‘expanding march madness’
First of all, let me admit that I’m a casual, bandwagon Hornets fan. When I was a kid, my favorite team was the Orlando Magic (because of Shaq), and after he went from Orlando to Los Angeles most of my interest in the NBA faded. Sure, I’d watch a game here or there, but I mostly preferred the college game. So much of the NBA play was dominated by isolation plays for the stars, as opposed to the ball movement of the college game. The refs let stars get away with traveling and carrying. The 24-second play clock led to an uninteresting, back-and-forth style of play, and outlawing zones struck me as taking away a big part of the game. I remembered when I was little and we almost nabbed the Timberwolves; the Times-Picayune even ran a headline that said “Got ‘em!” above a Timberwolves jersey. This was pretty exciting, aside from the minor detail that we did not, in fact, get the Timberwolves.
When the Hornets came, I wasn’t all that excited at first. I’d watch the occasional game on TV, but didn’t pay too much attention. Then in 2003 I moved to a new house and got DirecTV, which didn’t have (and still doesn’t have) Cox Sports TV, so I couldn’t watch Hornets games aside from the occasional nationally televised game. But then the Hornets got Chris Paul and returned to New Orleans full-time after a Katrina-induced exile to Oklahoma City. And they started winning. I had to been to a Hornets game once before (2004, maybe?) when my dad got some tickets from a work colleague. But I didn’t go again until I decided to go in March 2008, when the red-hot Hornets were fighting for the #1 spot in the Western Conference. They were playing the Bulls and entered the 4th quarter down by nine, but came back to win by eleven. Chris Paul had 37 points and 13 assists. I didn’t start attending every home game or anything like that, but clearly the NBA and the Hornets had some appeal. Continue reading ‘that Hornets games are not on DirecTV’