So we lost a GM now a coach what's next!?—
Kenneth Faried (@KennethFaried35) June 06, 2013

If you’re like me and Kenneth Faried, in recent weeks you’ve been wondering “WTF is going on with the Denver Nuggets?”

It’s not just you, me and Kenneth Faried. Here’s what George Karl had to say in an interview with the Denver Post: “I think it’s very stupid.”

By golly, George, you’re right. You just won Coach of the Year, guiding the Nuggets to 57 wins, a 38-3 record at home and the third seed in the loaded Western Conference. And if it hadn’t been for an ill-timed injury to Danilo Gallinari and Steph Curry going certifiably Beast Mode in the first round, you might still be coaching the Nuggets against the Miami Heat.

Josh Kroenke, George Karl and Masai Ujiri pose for Karl’s Coach of the Year award. That was short-lived.

Yet now George finds himself on the unemployment line, and has apparently met with the Grizzlies and the Clippers about their vacant positions. The ironic thing about those two teams is that they also made the playoffs, yet chose not to retain Lionel Hollins (he was interim) and Vinny Del Negro (because Chris Paul didn’t like him). Karl would be assuming the helm of a team where he would have similar potential to be let go even after having a great season.

I think that’s very stupid. When we talk George Karl, we talk about one of the best coaches in NBA history. In 25 seasons, he’s had three losing seasons. He hasn’t had a losing season since 1987. His career winning percentage is .599. He has consistently taken teams that were underachievers before he arrived (Denver, Seattle, Milwaukee) and transformed them into contenders.

The main gripe about him is that he’s never won a championship. He came close a few times. He took the Sonics to the Finals in 1996 with the team that featured the great NBA Jam combo of Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, but let’s face it, that team was never going to beat you know who. The team he had in Denver with Carmelo and Chauncey gave the Lakers a serious run in the 2009 Western Finals, but that was when Kobe and Pau were in their primes. In the end, Karl has always unfortunately run into a freight train.

That’s not his fault, in my opinion. He has extracted the most of the talent that has been given him, and this season was no different. A Nuggets team that had no bona fide superstar featured six players with double digit scoring averages and led the league in awesome fast break dunks, utilizing their youth and athleticism to give other teams fits. In the end, without Galinari, they just didn’t have enough shooting to match Golden State.

Karl got fired for a few reasons. One, he wanted a contract extension that Nuggets president Josh Kroenke didn’t want to give him. I can understand that, because Karl is 62 and while he looks like he’s in pretty good shape, anyone still has the right to wonder about the fatigue factor at that age. Second, the Nuggets probably wanted him to play Javale McGee more. Karl only played him 18 mins a game last year, certainly not the minutes you’d expect a player making $11 million a year to get. I don’t blame him, though. McGee is dumb. Not in the slang sense, in the literal sense. I met a girl in grad school who said she went out on a date with him and he was the dumbest person she had ever met. There’s even a YouTube video to prove it:

How do you expect Karl to play him big minutes when you can’t trust him to not pull the kind of stuff he is in that video? Karl also made the point that McGee and Faried have such similar games that it doesn’t make much sense to play them together.

But what the firing also might come down to is the departure of Masai Ujiri. I ranked Ujiri No. 9 on my list of best general managers in sports list a few months back, and he went out and did me a solid by winning the NBA executive of the year. That’s right, the Nuggets are losing both the coach AND executive of the year in the same offseason.

In this case, Ujiri decided to jump ship and head for greener pastures in Toronto. Actually, that’s not true at all. It’s even colder there and the team sucks. From what it sounds like, Masai simply wanted to get paid to the tune of 5 years and $15 million, which Denver most likely would not have come close to matching. He also has a strong relationship with Bryan Colangelo, and might be wanting a new challenge. Those are the only explanations that I can offer, since Toronto is awful and basically the outpost of the NBA.

Ujiri bolting could have prompted Kroenke to get rid of Karl too because then he wouldn’t have to worry about him meshing with a new GM. Or he could have realized that this Nuggets ship had run its course already, and wisely wanted to make a move now while he had the chance. Andre Igoudala is not likely to resign, and Gallinari is going to be out until midseason with his knee injury. In other words, winning 57 games again is unlikely barring a huge step forward from Ty Lawson, Faried and McGee. And as I mentioned before, this Nuggets team does not have a superstar to get it over the hump against Oklahoma City, now or in the next ten years while Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook are in their primes. Kroenke might be weighing that question in his mind – am I content with 50 win seasons and first round playoff exits or do I take what I have now and head a new direction in search of a title?

It’s the toughest question for good-but-not-great teams in the NBA and it’s a unique one in professional sports because franchise basketball players are so few and far between, NBA contracts are guaranteed and chumps like Joe Johnson get max deals from teams desperately seeking that missing piece. Sure, the Nuggets could have kept Karl, try to resign Igoudala and then try to keep Lawson, Gallinari and Faried down the road. Where does that get them? More 50 win seasons and first round exits, but now with added financial strain. With the flexibility they have now, maybe they make a run at one of the free agents in 2014 that actually deserves a max deal and continue to use the draft to find a potential stud.

So George, while it might seem stupid now, it might be good for both you and the Nuggets down the road. Can’t wait to see you in Los Angeles.

This shot is probably going in.

- “The cast of characters has changed, but the result has not. The Spurs have found the antidote to LeBron.” (CBS Sports)

- “The story is simple: Slowly, surely, San Antonio is gaining a grip on him (LeBron), reducing him to something out of his most vulnerable playoff past. Unsure, unaggressive and ultimately unacceptable.” (Yahoo)

Obviously, Game 4 happened. Now the comments are going to be along the lines of “The Spurs are getting old (especially Manu!),” “The Heat are too good,” blah, blah, blah.

Onto some more entertaining analysis of the NBA Finals:

1. Danny Green should open a 3-point shooting clinic during the offseason.

Can you imagine how much money he would make from basketball-loving moms in the San  Antonio area looking to get their boys involved in athletics? All he would have to say would be “I made 19-28 3-pointers in Games 1-4 – your son can, too” and he could charge at least $500 each for those suckers.

2. Tiago Splitter is getting packed by errbody.

It wasn’t enough that he was humiliated by LeBron in the block heard round the world from Game 2 (GIF below for your enjoyment). Then he got packed by Shane Battier and Dwyane Wade in Game 4. The dude’s going to be in therapy when the offseason is complete.

3. How old is Gary Neal?

I honestly thought to myself that man, Gary Neal looks really old for being in his early 20s. Neal’s only been in the league for a few years, right? Did some research and he played a few years overseas (including leading the Turkish league in scoring) before being signed by the Spurs, so he’s actually in his late 20s. That makes more sense. I do have a theory, though, that when you’re on the Spurs, you automatically age a few years in your face and grow a few gray hairs because of the environment you’re in.

4. Since when did Boris Diaw get so wide?

I remember when he was with the Suns and he looked like this.

Now he looks like this. Too many beers sitting by the pool in Miami, perhaps.

5. Norris Cole has a sweet haircut.

But you already knew that, right? So I don’t need to post a picture. But besides that, I think that he should be starting over Mario Chalmers.

6. People are searching for Tim Duncan facial expressions.

We’ve gotten more than a fair share of hits on our post The Many Faces of Tim Duncan each time a new Finals game airs. It’s a topic that’s obviously on everyone’s mind. That means we need to share the photo again:

We trust you’re laughing right now at this.

7. LeBron had a sweet Army sleeveless jacket on in his Game 4 press conference.

I couldn’t find a photo of it yet quite yet, but keep an eye out for it over the next few days. It was quite the outfit.

Looking forward to Game 5, and perhaps more important questions that will arise.

You’ve probably seen it by now. If not, watch it below. If you don’t want to watch the 7-minute video, watch the GIF over and over again because its awesome.

Basically, Kennedy nailed Puig in the bottom of the sixth, Dodgers starter Zack Greinke retaliated against D’backs catcher Miguel Montero in the top of seventh (causing the benches to clear) and then Kennedy came back and hit Greinke in the shoulder in the bottom of next inning (and the benches not only cleared – they started swinging at each other).

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The Dodgers were in a similar situation two months ago when Greinke hit Carlos Quentin of the San Diego Padres, causing Quentin to charge the mound and break Greinke’s collarbone. As a Dodgers fan I was aaaangry, Chris Farley-style, seeing our $150 million investment stranded on the DL, especially since it seemed as though Greinke wasn’t intentionally trying to hit Quentin. It was a full count in a 2-1 game, not a situation that calls for a plunking. Quentin also notoriously crowds the plate, and has lead the league in HBPs before.

But Quentin said after the game that he was set off because of his past history with Greinke, when he was with the White Sox and Zack was with the Royals. Greinke had hit him three times previously and apparently had said something to him before he threw that unfortunate pitch.

I find Quentin more believable after witnessing what I did on Tuesday. Greinke didn’t have to hit Montero to avenge Puig. Kennedy’s pitch was obviously an accident, since the bases were empty and there were two strikes when he did it. But for whatever reason (perhaps because Puig is the only decent offensive player the Dodgers have at the moment), Greinke decided that he needed to get his boy’s back.

I understand that in baseball, a pitcher has the right to throw at someone when the other pitcher hits one of his own guys. But if you’re Greinke, wouldn’t you want to be a tad careful considering what just happened to you two months ago? And with the Dodgers desperately needing a win, wouldn’t you not want to put anyone on base carelessly?

I would say yes and no, respectively, to the above questions. So it leaves me to believe that Greinke might actually be somewhat of a turd of a person. He doesn’t look like the cheeriest of people in his Dodgers profile picture, and he’s always been known as a recluse/malcontent due to his anxiety.

You mad, bro?

Mind you, this is just a hypothesis. I’ve never met the guy in person, so he might actually be the nicest human being you could stumble upon. If that’s the case, though, he’s still putting his team in danger with his antics. So Zack, for the love of all that is Dodger Blue, please keep it over the plate and just go out and win some damn ballgames.

Except, something funny happened on the way to the grit parade. Schmidt. Repeatedly, without mercy, Schmidt has happened this season. Not only has Paul Goldschmidt made D-back fans forget about the years when one guy was supposed to carry the offense, he has, well, singlehandedly carried Arizona’s offense this year. And it’s awesome.

Goldschmidt is a completely different kind of run-producing machine than Upton or Mark Reynolds, another franchise tentpole who couldn’t stand up against the wind of his own empty home-run swing. He fouls off pitches, works deep into counts, drives the ball the other way and does a lot of things that earn baseball “dirt workers” endless praise, except he also hits 420 foot grand slams. This shot into Sosa territory at Wrigley Field earlier this month was one of four go-head homers in the 8th inning or later, most in baseball. Say what you will about clutchness, but it’s helped Goldschmidt to the top of the WPA leaderboard, and by a bunch.

And it’s not a fluke either. Scouts and writers, most notably Keith Law, saw a big lumbering first baseman raking in the minor leagues and embraced the trope, pointing out his “long swing” and defensive ineptitude, two things that have been proven so false in the major leagues that they were probably made up. Goldschmidt was called up in 2011 after leading the minors in homers, then began terrorizing Tim Lincecum so badly that he de-mulleted him.

Goldschmidt is in the top-5 of almost every notable offensive category, new-school or otherwise, and his NL-leading 58 RBIs on June 10th just look really cool. He’s also behind Brandon Belt in All-Star voting for first basemen, so we can all have a laugh about that – yet another way that Goldschmidt makes us feel good inside.

Despite all the numbers, which are only improving as the season’s gone on (Upton here, Upton here), he inexplicably continues to be put in positions to wild out. He has three intentional walks even though Miguel Montero usually hits behind him, and I don’t think I can even count on one hand the number of times pitchers actively pitched around him. On Friday against the Giants, Goldschmidt accounted for all the D-backs’ offense with a go-ahead 3-run homer with 2 outs in the 8th off of Jeremy Affeldt, a lefty that Bruce Bochy kept in the game because reasons.

This is my absolute favorite Goldschmidt at-bat of the season though, and a perfect crash-course in why this guy is so great.

13 pitch at-bats like this are not the norm for guys who finish them with bombs into nightclubs. But they are the norm for Paul Goldschmidt, MVP front-runner in the National League so far this season. And if the Diamondbacks want to live the rest of the year by the tried-and-true baseball mantra of grit-em-on, scrap-em-over, Goldschmidt-em-in, that’s fine by me.

I turn my attention to a story that cropped up this past week and hit particularly close to home for two reasons: 1. I am a Raiders fan and 2. I work for a PR / digital firm. Raiders owner Mark Davis fired his PR director, Zak Gilbert, for how the team was portrayed in a recent article in Sports Illustrated by Jim Trotter. Trotter has been covering the Raiders for awhile now, so he knows the ins and outs of the franchise and has had a firsthand view of the absolute tragedy the team has been the past decade. And as with most great journalists, he is always completely fair in his judgment.

That’s Zak Gilbert on the right. SpreeGoogs wishes him the best.

He was again in this article, basically stating that new Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie inherited a mess when Al Davis passed away, but he is doing one hell of a job to fix it. The story even mentions how McKenzie is truly having to start from the ground up, hiring a regular groundskeeping crew at Raiders practice facilities, building a draft room from scratch and buying 21st century equipment for the video department, all because the Raiders didn’t have  these under Davis. Trotter was merely stating what everyone knew: Davis, once the king of the league, was out of touch once he reached a certain age, and his maniacal rule over the organization was a big reason for the recent dysfunction.

It was the piece any good journalist would have written. It was a piece I enjoyed reading as a Raiders fan. I love to see that my team is finally heading in the right direction.

Mark Davis, on the other hand, thought the article was a flaming bag of poo. You have to assume that he took issue with Trotter’s portrayal of his father. I get that. But Mark, can’t you have a little family awareness? Your father guided the Raiders to a 29-83 record between 2003-09. That’s got to be historically bad. Jim Trotter wasn’t the first person to notice that.

One of the issues is that I doubt Davis understands that Gilbert could not influence what Trotter was going to write very much. He could give him suggestions or the initial concept, but after that, any good PR person steps back and lets the writer do their thing. If you badger a journalist too much, they can get frustrated and not write the story or include a line in there about how the PR person was annoying the crap out of them and caused their story to take on a much more negative tone. Gilbert’s job was to get the story idea to Trotter, coordinate the interviews and provide him with the assets to go along with the article. It looks like he did that quite well.

Someone could surmise that Gilbert could have not worked with Trotter on the story so that there was no press at all. This would mean Gilbert either would not have pitched it to Trotter or, if Trotter approached him, politely declined based on McKenzie’s “busy schedule.” A few problems with this approach. One, it looks shady, because who doesn’t have time to talk to Sports Illustrated? Trotter could have then just written the story anyway and said “Raiders were unavailable for comment,” which never looks good. Two, the story about Oakland’s complete culture change would not have been broadcast to the masses as well as it was. You think NFL players read that article? They sure did. How many of them are likely more open to coming to Oakland in the future knowing that it now has a competent GM at the helm? Probably more than a few of them. Just look at Charles Woodson as Exhibit A.

My real problem with all of this is Mark Davis’ hypocrisy. In the article, he is quoted saying that he knew McKenzie “inherited a mess” and was going to give him lots of time to fix it. That’s in essence saying that “Yeah, I know my dad put us in this terrible situation.” And then he fires his PR director because the article doesn’t paint Al in the best light. Unbelievable.

I just hope and pray that he doesn’t have this knee-jerk type of reaction when it comes to McKenzie. He has promised McKenzie that he will be able to use the whole five years of his contract to transform the Raiders into a contender. But with this firing, I’m not sure that you can trust Davis to not put anyone on the chopping block in a moment’s notice, much like his father was famous for.

I leave you with two tweets that perfectly summed up this whole situation. Have an amazing weekend, everyone.

You know who would've warned #Raiders owner Mark Davis that canning his PR guy would do more damage than @SI_JimTrotter's story? His PR guy.—
Jason Wilde (@jasonjwilde) June 03, 2013

The legacy of Al Davis wasn't tainted by Zak Gilbert or Jim Trotter. It was tainted by the last 10 years Al Davis ran the Raiders.—
Jerry McDonald (@Jerrymcd) June 02, 2013

Why is that? Because this weekend, the Stones created a scheduling mess for the Kings-Blackhawks series. They were booked to play at the United Center in Chicago on Friday and Monday, so the NHL had to schedule the opening two games of the Western Conference finals for Saturday and Sunday.

That’s right, the Kings and Blackhawks had to play their two most critical games this year to-date on back-to-back nights. I didn’t know playing playing hockey two straight days was even physically possible, given the taxing, brutal nature of the sport. Anyone who saw the hit that LA’s Mike Richards took in Game 1 will be nodding their head.

I get that this is somewhat of a farewell tour for the Stones, celebrating that they’ve been in rock and roll for more than 50 years (the tour is called “50 and Counting”). And they have every right to play in Chicago, one of the biggest markets in the country.

But shouldn’t someone have had the foresight that there was a strong possibility the Blackhawks were still going to be playing last weekend? As Sports Illustrated pointed out, the team was 27-5-3 at the time the Stones tour was booked. I get that the NHL playoffs are very unpredictable, but still, even I with my limited NHL knowledge could have prognosticated that the Chicago would make it to the Western Conference finals.

Could the NHL have done anything about this? Not sure. I don’t know how much control they have over the United Center scheduling, but I have to imagine that there is a separate United Center team that handles all of the arena’s music bookings and they just factor in when the Bulls and Blackhawks games are into that schedule. So I’m sure the NHL bitched and moaned a little bit when they saw what had happened, since they probably have a TV contract with NBC Sports that they have to schedule their games every other day or so and they have to fit this series into a tight window given the Kings and Blackhawks both played the full seven games in the Western semis.

But I imagine the United Center just shrugged and said “Are you going to be able to charge ticket prices like the Stones? Didn’t think so.” And then an amendment to that: “Would you be able to bring Taylor Swift to our venue? Didn’t think so. OMG OMG OMG!”

The United Center had a tough choice. It was either NHL playoffs, or Mick Jagger putting moves on Taylor Swift.

Or maybe Chicago did this on purpose. Maybe they knew that the home team Blackhawks would have the advantage over any visiting team that had to play games on consecutive nights. Not sure how comfy Chicago hotels are, but I do know a night’s sleep in your own bed beats a night’s sleep in a hotel every time. And it showed for the Kings, who looked weary in Game 2, giving up more than three goals for the first time in their last two playoff runs. Magically, with a night off in between games, they got back to business last night in their 3-1 win to make the series 2-1 Blackhawks.

Bottom line? This might have been just an honest scheduling mistake, but it also shows the continued irrelevance of the NHL. I tried to help them with this post, but it hasn’t worked out. Would this type of scenario, where a team would have to adjust the day it played a game because of a concert, have ever happened in the NFL playoffs? Nope, nope, nope. All of America would have been crying foul. In this case, I’m not sure most of America knows that the NHL playoffs are happening right now.

Grant Hill came of age as a player when I was at the perfect moment in my life to deify professional athletes and there’s something about basketball in the ’90s that forced fans to develop personal and intimate one-way relationships with pros they liked. It was an age of over-decoration and there was an NBA personality for every accessory in my life. I borderline worshipped Reggie Miller and the Pacers, but I had Anfernee Hardaway (and Lil Penny) posters on my walls. I wore a Shawn Kemp jersey to school when it was warm and an Orlando Magic Starter jacket. My boy scout pinewood derby car was painted in Charlotte Hornets colors.

It’s not even embarrassing, this is how I want to cheer for NBA players.

I have drawers and bins full of all of my favorite NBA paraphernalia that I can’t make myself throw away because that’s who I was for a long time. And somewhere in that pile of my junior high persona is a stack of about 20 Grant Hill Sprite cans, unopened so they’d maintain their value. They were a treasure of mine because Grant was one of the first players I really connected with. I honestly didn’t care about him much for the last half of his career, but there’s still a part of my basketball fandom that is obsessed with 1996 Grant Hill and what he could be.

Today’s Grant Hill is a prototypical player for the Association to turn into an announcer someday soon. He should replace Shaq on the commentary circuit as early as next season.

Yesterday, Jason Kidd followed suit and announced his own retirement.

Jason Kept stayed young forever. For both of us.

Sure, Kidd wasn’t offering much to the Knicks anymore, but he still played solid rotation minutes for a team that was the #2 seed in the East this year. More importantly, he was the last man getting regular minutes from the outstanding mid-’90s NBA cast that made me love basketball. He was the last line of defense against and an entirely new generation of players that I feel a lot less passionate about. Kidd was the one link to the golden days that ’90s kids have left. As he finishes a career that I’d put as the fourth-best ever for a point guard, Jason Kidd should be remembered as a fine basketball player and an even finer generational guardsman.

But there’s a bigger story here: The retirement of Grant Hill and Jason Kidd means we’re officially out of NBA JAM: Tournament Edition players on active NBA rosters. And it’s the most important moment of the 1994-1995 video game basketball season that happens in 2013.

This is a story we’ve been monitoring for a while, but it seems like a bit of harsh reality to lose both heralded NBA JAM: TE players retire in a span of only three days. At this point, the only thing I can say for sure about the NBA is that Jason Kidd definitely waited for Grant Hill to bow out so he could hold the Last Jammer Standing belt.

The NBA is in a new JAM-less era and I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.

I’d like to tip my hat to Grant Hill and Jason Kidd for whatever percentage of my junior high formative years they are owed. Thank you both for everything.

And who was watching from the sidelines in a dapper suit? Danny Granger, their franchise player as recently as the beginning of this season.

Remember Danny Granger? He’s the one at the end of the bench in the dapper suit.

Granger has become a forgotten man in recent months as the Pacers have morphed into one of the best teams in basketball behind Paul George and Roy Hibbert, two of the NBA’s most-talented at their respective positions, and the veteran leadership of David West. This happened while getting almost nothing from Granger this season – unless you call five games played, 27 points (total, not per game) and 28 percent shooting a meaningful contribution. His knee issues required another surgery and ended his season at the end of March.

It wasn’t always this way, though. Granger was the Pacers’ go-to scorer from 2007-12, averaging more than 18 PPG each of those seasons, including his banner 08-09 year of 25.1 PPG. He also had some good positional versatility, as the Pacers used his 6-foot-8, 228 lb. frame at the 2,3 and 4 spots depending on how big or small they wanted to go. And before they landed West, they often needed him to line up at the 4.

But he was a star that had his warts. He was never a great rebounder despite his height, only averaging more than six per game once. He always had a reputation as a sub-par defender, and he couldn’t really stay healthy, never playing a full 82 games in his career.

With those pluses and minuses in mind, it’s hard to decide how Granger would fit in next season should he return to the Pacers. One the one hand, he would inject a Pacers offense that can stagnate at times with some much needed scoring. He would give them some actual depth, as right now they basically have their starting five and a bunch of garbage on the bench in the form of D.J. Augustin, Sam Young and Tyler Hansbrough. And he would provide them with an insurance option (albeit not the best one) at power forward in case they weren’t able to resign West this offseason.

On the other, he just doesn’t seem to fit the make-up of the team anymore. The Pacers are built around Frank Vogel’s defensive system, and that’s simply not Granger’s forte. One can only look at how George has pestered LeBron James and the difference it has made compared to how Granger let him have his way in the team’s previous playoff series. Granger also is best at small forward, a position that clearly belongs to George, the player he recommended the Pacers take in the 2010 draft. If you play Granger at shooting guard, then you take a much-improved Lance Stephenson out of the lineup. Could Granger force Dwyane Wade into 3-for-10 shooting and 10 points in Game 6? Doubt it.

That sentiment is one that I did not hold just a few weeks ago when the series first started. I mentioned to SpreeGoogs that if only the Pacers had a better backcourt (i.e. if they had Granger instead of Stephenson or George Hill), they might be able to actually give the Heat a run for their money. He, being the knowledgeable Pacers fan that he is, replied that he loved Stephenson and Hill, that their length, defensive prowess and timely offense were perfect for the team. After having watched the past few games of this series, I could not agree more with him.

What this really boils down to, though, is the blossoming of George. He’s one of the NBA’s best players already. He was so good in Game 1, including his ridiculous game-tying 3-pointer to force overtime, that I almost ready to write a follow-up post to my “LeBron is the best player I’ve ever seen” to say that no, Paul George is really the best player I’ve ever seen. Of course, James promptly beat him for the game-winning layup and I didn’t have to eat my words. But bottom line, with George in the fold, Granger is expendable and tradeable.

If he does go, at least he’ll have his dapper suits to take with him.

Of course, since the Heat lost, ESPN loves to bring the officiating into question (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C), focusing on two specific plays: the 6^th foul against LeBron James and the traveling call against Dwyane Wade with about 27 seconds left. ESPN loves to point out that both of these calls went against the Heat and probably shouldn’t have.

Sure, I’m a Pacers fan, but I’m also generally a ref hater, so moments like this pull me in a couple of directions. Here’s what I have to say about those two calls.

The Sixth Foul on LeBron
To start, this wasn’t a foul. It has nothing to do with the time left, the player in question, the team in question, the tendency of the foulee to exaggerate contact, the rarity of that type of call, whether or not Dwyane Wade actually used the screen or any other useless qualifier. It just wasn’t a foul. Here’s what does matter: the Heat didn’t lose this game because LeBron fouled out. They were down by four with less than a minute left already. I don’t have the data on this, but teams down by four with less than a minute left probably win games somewhere along the lines of 10% of the time.

Here’s something else that no one is talking about: the same call went in favor of LeBron and against Lance Stephenson in the third quarter. In a loose ball situation, Lance was called for a trip with about the same level of incidental foot-only contact. Sure it was the third quarter and not the end of the game, but if you think the game should be officiated differently in different quarters, you don’t have any ground for argument in this conversation and you might as well just stop reading now.

For comparison’s sake, here are photos of both fouls. Sorry for the misleading play button, I had to pause a video to grab these and that’s what you get. The one of the left is the sixth foul on LeBron and the one on the right is the fourth on Stephenson. Both are plays where one player incidentally stepped on an ankle without looking at it and neither should have been called. In the interest of fairness to both players, these were both blown calls by referees in perfect position.

Personal fouls in basketball are some of the most subjective penalties in all of sports and it’s definitely a shame that we saw an NBA playoff game end without the reigning MVP. That said, this isn’t just a problem at the end of games, players are forced to miss time throughout most games because of arbitrary fouls.

The Travel by Wade
I’ve heard quite a bit of interpreting on this one, and so far, there’s plenty of evidence both ways. However, the only source I’ve read that actually quoted the NBA rulebook was Sports Illustrated, which concluded that he DID travel. The video from that post is here:

It’s pretty heavily into gray area, and I’m not even sure you’d be wrong for arguing that Wade traveled before he started dribbling too. Either way you look at it, he dribbled the ball once and took six steps. No matter how you break it down, it seems to me like there has to be a travel in there.

Again, by the book, I think this should get called. Also by the book, there was an in-bounds play that involved DJ Augustine taking four steps before dribbling. I’m sure there are dozens of other close traveling calls in this game, I just didn’t catch all of them. No matter what, there’s a way around this. The NBA just has to write rules that eliminate subjectivity rather than introduce it.

If you think blown calls are only affecting the Heat, you either didn’t watch the game or you work for ESPN. Here are two pretty objective calls that were blown in favor of the Heat:

The Shot Clock Debacle
This one is pretty horrendous. I don’t know who is responsible for deciding these things, it could be the clock operator or any of the three officials on the floor. Whoever it is, they messed up in Game 4 and it cost the Pacers a second-chance possession and very likely a couple of points.

It blows my mind that this play wasn’t reviewed. In a perfect world, this mistake doesn’t happen, but even after it did, the call could have been corrected and the refs could have given the Pacers the ball out of bounds with the shot clock reset.

The Ball out of Bounds
I couldn’t find a video of this play, and a photo doesn’t do any justice to it, but on the Pacers possession in between the LeBron foul  and the Dwyane Wade travel, Paul George drove the lane and kicked a pass out in the direction of David West with the shot clock winding down. The pass didn’t make it to West and bounced out of bounds. A video replay showed the ball clearly went off Ray Allen between leaving George’s hands and landing OOB. The refs even reviewed this call before blowing it, taking another shot attempt away from the Pacers and giving the Heat an extra five-ish seconds of game time.

What does it all mean? Let me say this in the simplest way possible: One play, called correctly or incorrectly, is never, ever, ever, ever the reason a team wins or loses a game. Officiating is an entirely imperfect art and officials routinely blow calls in every single basketball game at every level of competition. That’s the way it is and every person whose ever watched a basketball game knows that. It’s the hardest sport to officiate because the most common call is one that has no definite meaning. To try to retroactively recount all the ways the game would have changed if a 50/50 call went the other way is a waste of time.

On every play of every basketball game, all 10 players on a basketball court will touch someone. It’s a game full of legal contact. Setting screens, boxing out and backing down are fundamental, physical parts of the game. In 48 minutes, there are probably more than 1,000 instances of contact in an NBA game, and we’re supposed to believe that there are only 40 or so of those that are fundamentally different from the rest? It’s a rule that’s just not clearly enforceable.

Is there an easy solution to officiating error? No. Is there one simple rule change that would help limit a lot of the damage? I’m glad you asked.

Here’s all the NBA has to do to cover itself in the case of some referee blunders: Eliminate fouling out. It’s that easy. Don’t allow players to be eliminated from the game because of personal fouls. To avoid turning games bloody, just institute a penalty for individual players that collect more than six fouls in one game.

For each non-shooting personal foul after six: Award the fouled team one free throw to the on-court shooter of choice and then the ball out of bounds.

For each foul after six that is either a shooting foul or a bonus foul: Award the fouled team one free throw to the on-court shooter of choice and then continue with the usual free throws.

Seems easy to me.

There’s another solution somewhere in all of this. After every NBA game, the officials watch the tape of the game together and review what calls they got right and what calls they missed. It seems like the Association is going pretty far out of its way to separate this review from the actual game action. If someone is going to review it anyways, why not have that reviewer working in real time? Why not use dead balls and TV timeouts to instantly adjust?

If the NBA can review Dwyane Wade’s elbow and David West’s screen/punch AFTER the game, why can’t they review them DURING the game? There are only so many camera angles and it can’t take long to do the actual watching of the film. It wouldn’t add any time to the referee review process, it would just move it forward.

In the playoffs, the penalty for flopping is a $5,000 fine for the first flop. This morning the NBA fined David West, Lance Stephenson and LeBron James for flopping in Game 4. That might help the problem, but eve after those three, only seven players have been assessed this penalty. Watch any game, the rule isn’t discouraging flopping. Shane Battier and Dwyane Wade are called out by the announcers every game for effective flopping. What does the NBA review when they look at these games for flops? How was the Lance Stephenson flop in Game 4 (exaggerated contact after an elbow brush from Ray Allen) worse than the Wade dive out of bounds in Game 3? Does the NBA really think they can pick and choose a handful of flops to penalize and that will work? They love to be loud about new rules they’re making, but get horrendously gun-shy about actually calling them.

You know what might discourage flopping more? Someone reviewing the plays in real time and handing out technical fouls at dead balls. A free throw, a loss of possession and the public shame of receiving a technical for it in front of tens of thousands of people might make the penalty a little more real.

How do you feel about referees? What suggestions do you have? Let me know in the comments.

Cody Zeller, the white man that can jump.

My first question, as any NFL draft nut such as myself would ask, was if there were 40 yard dashes, bench presses and shuttle drills at the NBA combine. The answer: kind of. The main athletic drills are the three-quarter time (which is a spring across, you guessed it, three quarters of the court), a lane agility time (which is some sort of shuffle or running drill involving the paint) and then standing and max vertical jump. There’s also something called a modified time, and forgive me, but I have no idea what it is. Then there are all of the actual basketball skills assessments, with shooting, ball-handling, etc.

Who were some of the top performers at this year’s combine? Indiana center Cody Zeller had a really good standing vertical of 35.5, while pint-sized Miami guard Shane Larkin had an insane max vert of 44 and ran a blistering 3.08 three-quarter. Did their performances impact their draft spots all that much? Not that I can tell. Zeller was already pretty much a lock to go in the top 10 and Larkin was a solid mid-to-late first rounder.

In fact, if you take a look at the results from the last decade of the testing at the combine, you can see there are some pretty forgettable names on there (Cookie Belcher is an example, but not because his name itself isn’t awesome). Some like Iman Shumpert, Matt Barnes and Nate Robinson have turned into decent NBA players. Harrison Barnes, Derrick Williams and John Wall could have very good, long NBA careers. Blake Griffin is the only one with superstar potential.

My point? I think the reason that the NBA combine has flown under my radar for so long is that it’s pretty inconsequential. This is because most of the guys with the best stats are often irrelevant come June and the tops of most NBA mock drafts stay the same for months since it’s often more obvious who the slam dunk (hehe) prospects are.

Also, since there are fewer positions to fill in basketball, it’s easy to look at a team’s roster and say “Yep, they need a shooting guard.”  In the NFL, a team might need an offensive linemen but also desperately need a linebacker, creating multiple scenarios of how the pick will actually play out. In the MLB, you have signing bonuses, college options and U.S. citizenship factoring into whether a team takes a player.

And that doesn’t even touch on the fact that NBA teams aren’t as constrained positionally as other sports, which allows them to take the best player available. Sure, there is the traditional 1-2-3-4-5 positions, but as we’ve discussed in recent days, those line-ups are adjustable depending on the make-up of each team.

Bottom line is that the NBA combine is lagging far behind the NFL’s in awareness and actual impact. Do I hope that changes someday? Eh. What I do know is that the NBA will have to come up with some sexier drill title names for them to actually stick.  40 and bench sound much cooler then lane agility drill.

There are plenty of stats to back up whatever you want to think. The Pacers have the league’s most efficient defense at 96.6 points given up per 100 possessions. How can any team score on them? The Heat have the league’s most efficient offense at 110.3 points per 100 possessions. How can any team stop them? The Pacers won the season series 2-1. They have the matchup edge. The home team won every game of that regular-season series. Advantage Miami. The 2013 Pacers are better than last year’s team that pushed Miami to 6 games. The 2013 Heat are better than last year’s team that won the whole thing. Blah. Blah. Blah inspired by All-State.

But at the end of the meaningless pre-series rambling, there’s one thing that consistently stands out as true: No one knows anything about the way the Pacers play basketball.

And why should they? The Pacers are never on prime-time TV. They played their first playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks almost exclusively on NBA TV. ESPN’s Zach Lowe and Bill Simmons have particularly loved to call the Pacers boring and unworthy of any serious attention. I don’t know where I saw it, but I swear I remember reading something somewhere a quote along the lines of “If a tree fell in the middle of the Pacers-Hawks series, would it make a sound?”

Against New York, the Pacers were great, but reporters wrote way more about how the Knicks’ season was a failure or how the Knicks lost more than the Pacers won. And that’s fine. Defense doesn’t move the needle. Indiana doesn’t draw ratings.  They don’t have superstars; in fact, they hardly have stars. Pacers games aren’t as much fun to watch, but none of that matters in a basketball game.

You don’t get a 10-point head start because the MVP is on your team. You don’t get points for advertisements or sneaker deals. You still start the game at 0-0 and play one group of five guys against another group of five guys for 48 minutes. The Pacers don’t have any one player who is going to beat you by himself. They don’t have a one-man matchup problem like LeBron James or Dwyane Wade.

Here’s what they do have: a starting lineup with no defined identity.

And yes, that’s a good thing.

In the Pacers-Knicks series, we saw exactly what happens when a team decides who they are too early. New York was going to ride Carmelo for 20-30 shots per game no matter what happened. It didn’t matter that he was matched up against Paul George, one of the best defensive wings in the game. Carmelo was going to work his matchup over and over again, for better or worse. In that case, it was clearly for the worst.

The Pacers’ defense (especially the starting five) took advantage of the adjustmentless Knicks offense and put their best players in the right positions. With New York going small to space out the floor for an Anthony iso, big men Roy Hibbert and David West could basically give up on their strong-side defensive matchups to stay near the rim and offer a second layer of protection, should George get beat off the dribble.

What happened? Carmelo still led the Knicks in scoring, but he did so despite a horrendous shooting percentage and plenty of foul trouble brought on my forcing himself to maneuver near the rim and picking up charges.

When it was Indiana’s possession, they did exactly the opposite. And this is the beauty of the Pacers’ style.

Against New York (and starting tonight against Miami), Indiana doesn’t have a player who is an offensive matchup problem. What they do have is a fifth-best offensive player with a definite advantage over his matchup. The Heat are going to let LeBron shoot 15-20 times a game even though Paul George is blanketing him. The Pacers are probably going to go after whoever is defended by the weakest defender. In the universe of the 10 players on the court, Indiana won’t have #1, but they’ll certainly make it rain against #10.

Indiana plays a versatile lineup with a range of in-game of matchup adjustments that lets them consistently take advantage of the worst player on the floor.

Most reporters or pseudo-analysts will say that the Pacers biggest flaw is that they don’t have a “go-to guy” or that they “don’t know who is taking the big shot.” But that’s exactly their strength. They’ll line up their five best players, look across at your five best players and abuse your weakness.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you should be expecting some data to back this up. Here it goes:

In the Pacers-Knicks series (six games) the Indiana had five different leading scorers. They responded to New York’s adjustments to keep the ball with the man whose matchup had foul trouble or a size disadvantage. And it worked beautifully. Here’s a breakdown of Indiana’s scoring leaders in that series:

• Game 1: David West – 20 points
• Game 2: Paul George – 20 points
• Game 3: Roy Hibbert – 24 points
• Game 4: George Hill – 26 points
• Game 5: Paul George – 23 points
• Game 6: Lance Stephenson – 25 points

Notice that the high number stays about the same each game, but the man scoring the points changes. It’s system scoring. In case you were wondering, Carmelo led the Knicks in scoring in all six games of the series.

What about other areas of the game? There’s more to basketball than just points scored. Great point, hypothetical reader. How about we take a look at another aspect of the offensive game – average field goal attempts per game that series:

• Paul George – 16.5 FGA
• George Hill – 13.6 FGA
• David West – 11.8 FGA
• Lance Stephenson – 10.3 FGA
• Roy Hibbert – 10.3 FGA

The Pacers statistical “go-to” guy only shoots around 60% more than the fifth-best starter. Compare that to the Knicks this postseason with Anthony in front at 25.5 FGA and the next four taking 14.8, 13.5, 8.3 and 4.3 shots per game. That’s right, the difference between the first option and the fifth option was more than 20 shots a night, an increase of 493%.

For reference, the Heat are a bit more balanced, with LeBron leading at 15.4 FGA, an increase of only 154% over fifth option Mario Chalmers.

Win together, press conference together.

The Pacers even rebound as a team. They know where their teammates are and move opponents out of the way to allow their teammates to get boards. That’s why they led the Association in rebounding during the regular season. In the same way that the offense funnels shots to the best matchup, the defense funnels rebounds to the man in the right spot. Here’s a look at the Pacers rebounding leaders in the Knicks series:

• Game 1: Lance Stephenson – 13 Reb
• Game 2: Roy Hibbert – 12 Reb
• Game 3: David West/Roy Hibbert – 12 Reb each
• Game 4: Paul George – 14 Reb
• Game 5: David West – 10 Reb
• Game 6: Roy Hibbert – 12 Reb

The point is that you might look at the Pacers and call them unreliable or inconsistent. They don’t have a player capable of leading the team in scoring or rebounding every night.  They don’t have one person that they can rely on put up great numbers. And you’d be right, they don’t. They have five.

The Pacers don’t have the best player in the Eastern Conference Finals. They might not even have the second or third best player. But five men play at a time and the difference between the Heat’s best and the Pacers best isn’t as important to Indiana as the difference between their worst player and the Heat’s fifth starter.

My favorite quote about the Indiana style came from coach Frank Vogel, who answered a question about Indy’s lack of a true “go-to “ scorer, reported here by the New York Times:

“The open man is our go-to guy. Our starting lineup in particular has five guys out there that can make plays in a number of different ways. That’s the beauty of our team.”

Constantly attacking the worst matchup might be ugly basketball, but it’s gotten Indiana this far. Against the Heat, the Pacers starters will probably start game 1 matched up with Paul George on LeBron James, Lance Stephenson on Dwyane Wade, George Hill on Mario Chalmers, Roy Hibbert or David West on Chris Bosh and the other big man on Udonis Haslem or Shane Battier, whoever the starter is. Assuming Bosh is responsible for Hibbert, you can expect the Pacers to pound the ball with West in those lineups.

If the Heat go small with Norris Cole or Ray Allen off the bench and move LeBron to West, expect Paul George or Lance Stephenson to get possessions. That’s just the way it works. And trust me, it works.

If you’ve attended a pro or college game, you’ve certainly seen a fan noise meter.  This is my favorite version; it’s the Washington Wizards.

Chris Hansen. Will he ever be able to bring the NBA back to Seattle?

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I know, especially since the Pierre McGee trade, that the Wizards’ games are not INSANE!!! For me, these meters always work the opposite effect: I refuse to cheer. I look down on the people who cheer while the meter is “testing,” thinking that their cheering will matter to the meter.

When the NBA relocation committee voted to recommend the Kings remain in Sacramento, I was reminded of those meters. I kept asking myself was I drawing the right cause and effect from the previous 5-year history of the NBA in-and-not-so-in Seattle? Or was I just blindly clapping, oblivious to what is really going on and unable to see past emotion?

After reading most of the articles written from Seattle and a few from Sacramento, I know this much.

First, I know basketball does have cultural value.  In 2006, a Seattle City Councilmember, in comments he later regretted, said that the Sonics provide close to no cultural value. Wrong. After the recent vote, Prometheus Brown, aka Geo, a member of the Blue Scholars, tweeted it best:

real shit the sonics was one of the few things a kid from an immigrant family like me had in common w ppl who I otherwise couldn't relate to—
Prometheus Brown (@prometheusbrown) April 30, 2013

Five years before, Sherman Alexie wrote in Sonics Death Watch: Vol. IX (a series that extended to Vol. XXVI) this: “Once, in Key Arena, after a big Sonics win, I hugged a stranger and he hugged me back. We were men crying in each other’s arms.” And that’s the cultural value—the ability find common ground with strangers.

But we all know this. We’ve all talked to a stranger about our favorite sport—and maybe hugged him or her too. Second, I know the way you play the game counts. Tom Ziller of SBNation’s Sactown Royalty wrote that Chris Hansen did “things the proper way.” It’s one of the reasons I was rooting not just for the return of the Sonics, but also for Hansen to succeed. If the Kings had relocated, there simply wouldn’t have been the same asterisk as a franchise moved through bad faith negotiations with the city and secret emails. But we all know this too. We remember cheaters.

Lastly, I know that sports are a business. We all know this as well–you hear fans saying this to the losing city’s fans when their team moves. What you also hear, though, when the losing city’s politicians reject public subsidies, that the city simply didn’t support the team; something I frequently heard in 2008. That’s wrong, however, because that’s a fan’s perspective of a business decision. And most of these fans are the same ones who on an individual level laugh at buying courtside tickets to see their team when the Bobcats or Pelicans are in town in February, let alone consider buying season courtside tickets; and the same ones who would never mortgage their house, skip a doctor’s appointment, or demand cuts to their kid’s school to prioritize their team over these basic needs.

So just knowing that sports are a business isn’t enough; you need weigh that against your role as a citizen.

Backed by fans, politicians in Sacramento chose this: A 58% public subsidy for the arena, which is a subsidy worth approximately $258 million, and which is a subsidy that potentially places the general revenue of Sacramento at risk, according to Field of Schemes. And these politicians also chose to give up potentially another $76 million in free parking spaces and billboards.

That might work for Sacramento. Not here. There is no lottery pick for tanking city finances. This doesn’t mean I’m not a fan; it just means I understand that resources are limited; that’s the nature of business. On the other hand, Hansen’s proposal was praised by Field of Schemes, according to King5. It was the right plan for Seattle, even if it wasn’t for the NBA.

And remember this is what Sacramento agreed to pay for:

With the added possibility the team can win championships in the future, a possibility that has existed since the franchise won its first and only championship—the 1951 Rochester Royals.

This sports-as-business also means we can’t allow the business of the NBA through Stern, and soon Silver, to play kingmaker with local politicians. Their main concern isn’t the well-being of our cities. Elected officials are not towel boys for pro sports. The thought of the “NBA’s mayor” makes me as ill as the thought of cleaning Robert Swift’s foreclosed home or collecting Danny Fortson’s compression shorts.

Voters need to base their votes on the economy, housing, schools, infrastructure, the environment, and crime first.

Simply put: if professional sports operates as a for profit business, we need to take off the foam fingers before we sign contracts and vote.

And none of this is fun. We look to sports often as an escape from responsibility—not to understand the basic details of injunctions, subsidies, and environmental surveys.

But it is what is required if we’re going to be the fans that cheer for the great box out, Oooooh in unison at the crossover, rise and talk about defensive positioning. Those are smart fans.

Otherwise, we’re just dumbly cheering at a noise meter, as pro sports plays us.

So while as a Sonics fan, I am heartbroken that the Sonics won’t be returning for next season. As a citizen, though, I’ll continue to root for the Hansen method of transparency and private financing, and I’ll remain proud that we didn’t show feudal loyalty to the NBA, and that in many ways the NBA rejected Seattle because we’ve said to their terms, “No. Not in our House.”

Clayton Kershaw. Hopefully he is on your fantasy team.

There used to be a time in fantasy baseball when taking a pitcher in the first round was a huge risk. There were just too many variables from year to year that could prevent a pitcher from performing at a high level. Now that the Steroid Era is for the most part over, the shift towards pitching and defense is underway.

Defense is still widely ignored in fantasy baseball, but pitching isn’t. Gone are the days where you could find quality hitters on the waiver wire if you needed a fix. Now, the top hitters are more valuable than ever. Likewise, pitchers are becoming more and more valuable as true carriers of a fantasy squad.

According to Yahoo!, right now half of the top 10 overall players in fantasy are pitchers. This list includes Matt Harvey, Jordan Zimmermann, Felix Henandez, Yu Darvish and Hisashi Iwakuma. Besides possibly Hernandez, none of these pitchers were considered in any legitimate league as a top three pick. In fact, prior to the start of the season, only five pitchers total were considered locks for the first three rounds of a draft (most leagues consist of 8-12 teams).

All of a sudden, guys like Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Hernandez are just as important as all-around hitters like Ryan Braun, Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout and more. This really should be how fantasy baseball is in the first place. Before, pitchers almost had the same status as defenses and kickers in fantasy football. Since pitching is an integral part of baseball, it makes sense that they are now making up closer to half of the equation.

If you haven’t adjusted yet, you need to consider sooner rather than later. Getting a solid ace or even two on your fantasy baseball team can help a person dominate those categories. That would leave you only needing to win a few hitting categories to win the week. The Steroid Era is over, and pitchers are finally becoming as valuable in fantasy as they are in real life.

It’s no coincidence that James’ Heat and Anthony’s Knicks are two of the teams who have embraced the style in the playoffs this year. For both its somewhat of a necessity, as the Knicks have suffered through Amar’e Stoudemire’s injury and the Heat only have one quality big man in Chris Bosh.

So what are the pluses and minuses of going small? Let’s do this.

When you are small and quick, this can happen…

The Case For Small Ball

Playing some combination of four guards and small forwards obviously revolves around getting additional quickness out on the court, leading to additional fast break opportunities, more dribble penetration and, consequently, open 3-point looks.

But in today’s NBA, it also means more space for a traditional big man to operate in the post. A team that has two big men both stationed down low runs the risk of clogging the paint, so the one that receives an entry pass and turns inside towards the basket runs right into a help defender. The alternative is to pivot baseline where it is harder to help, but there’s a reason that teams funnel offenses baseline – it’s almost never the best shot attempt and passing angles are limited.

But if a team passes into the post and has the rest of its players beyond the 3-point arc, it creates ample room for the post player to operate. If the guards sag to help (as they often do), the big man can pass out of the double team to teammates who have a wide open look or a lane to dribble around the closeout and wreak more havoc.

Another advantage is having additional ball-handling out on the court. This (theoretically) should lead to less turnovers and open up the offensive playbook a bit since there are more players that can initiate the offense. Also, guards are usually better passers than traditional big men, so overall ball movement is generally better.

The Warriors are a perfect example of all of this. With the injury to David Lee, they have largely gone with lineups that feature Harrison Barnes at the 4 and a three-headed guard monster of Steph Curry, Jarrett Jack and Klay Thompson. The spacing they have for shooting 3-pointers (which they are very good at), dribbling into the lane (which they are also very good at) and for center Andrew Bogut (ANDREW BOGUT!) to work his occasional post magic all work to their advantage.

But there are reasons that not all NBA teams play small lineups, right? Of course there are…

But this can also happen.

The Case Against Small Ball

The main reason that NBA coaches, or coaches in general for that matter, like to play two big men is that big men usually are good at basketball. I have no statistical evidence to back this up. It’s all anecdotal and just general logic.

For one, size gives you an advantage on the glass. Rebounding is one of the most important stats in basketball, as the ability to limit the opposing team’s possessions and generate additional scoring chances cannot be overstated. I wasn’t surprised to see that the Indiana Pacers were top rebounding team this year, as they start 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert at center and 6-foot-9 bruiser David West at power forward.

More size on the court also gives a team additional options in the pick and roll, as having two big bodies to set screens for your point guard allows a team to use one post player to set the screen while the other sets up shop in post or set a double screen. And while you can make the argument that you can run a screen and roll with two guards, you can’t argue that if you’re a guard you would rather run into Roy Hibbert than George Hill any night.

A team’s help defense also greatly benefits from added size in the paint. When a guard gets beat off the dribble, having both Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph available to come over and contest the shot is just awesome. It also allows one of them to come over and help and then the other rotate onto the other’s man, unlike Tyson Chandler in New York who is the sole anchor of his team’s defense. Ultimately, the size and length of the opposing defense have as much to do with field goal percentage as shooting prowess.

Indiana and Memphis are at the other end of the spectrum from Golden State, as they rely on their size to beat opposing teams up, outrebound them to no end and post the crap out of everyone. And who can blame them? When you have the talent in the frontcourt that they do with Hibbert/West and Gasol/Randolph, it would be crazy not to.

The bottom line

Which approach is better? Ultimately, I believe it’s a team-by-team case. Teams should play their best semblance of a balanced lineup regardless if it skews a little bit big or small. Notice I was careful not to say a team should play its best five players. What if a team had five amazing centers? They couldn’t get the ball across halfcourt without having it stolen ever.

But I think that coaches would rather have at least two big men with  legit starting ability. Most of the teams that are playing small this offseason are doing it out of necessity. As mentioned before, the Knicks are going small because of the injury to Amar’e. The Warriors because of the injury to Lee. The Thunder are playing Kevin Durant at power forward for stretches because with the injury to Russell Westbrook, they need more scoring on the floor that they just don’t get from Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins. The Spurs, Grizzlies and Pacers are only playing small when they want to match up with those three teams from an Xs and Os perspective.

The wild card in all of this is James. I won’t dive too deep into this because I already devoted an entire post to him last week, but he’s the one small forward that is a legitimate power forward when he wants to be. It allows Miami to play him at 4, Bosh at 5, Wade at 1 or 2, and then two of the Shane Battier/Ray Allen/Norris Cole and Mario Chalmers quartet depending on who is hot and drive other teams bonkers.

Anyway, did anyone see the scores of last night’s Pacers/Knicks and Spurs/Warriors games?

And there’s no better interview in all of sports than Marshawn Lynch. The man was born to be on camera. His hilarious one-liners and unique worldview make him good for a laugh every time you listen to him, but at the same time, his philosophies are so deep that they help shape how you approach the world. It doesn’t stop there. Even his terminology becomes part of your everyday vocabulary.

Watch one or more of the below. Several times. Guaranteed to change your life.

NFL Rookie Camp Interview
Summary: Where the legend of Beast Mode began.
One of the many key quotes: ”Fast. Stupid fast.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-iel089cEE

PLAYTIME
Summary: Interview with some kids at Bills training camp.
One of the many key quotes: ”Stay in school. And don’t do drugs.”

Mayne Event Interview
Summary: Giving Kenny Mayne of ESPN a tour of Buffalo.
One of the many key quotes: ”Can’t decide which I like better: the ambiance, or the decor.”

Anatomy of Beast Mode
Summary: Breaking down his incredible run against the Saints with NFL Films.
One of the many key quotes: ”I was like uh oh, might be trouble.”

Going to Sizzler
Summary: Praising his O-line after a high school game.

Riding the cart
Summary: The title pretty much says it all.

Any other Marshawn videos that I need to see right now? Post a link in the comments.