I'M here to tell you Mike Conley sucks

A couple days ago, two thirds of what was formerly the Half Court Press got together to watch the Grizzlies-Spurs game with our friend Haruki, editor-in-chief of Agora Sports blog. Haruki’s a good guy, but he has an intense affinity for a certain inexplicable group of players. And by that, I mean he has a raging hard-on for a few scrubs—one of whom is Memphis Grizzlies’ PG Mike Conley. After a half hour of him orally verbally fellating Conley in the lead-up to the game, I’d had enough.

“Conley fucking sucks,” I said. Loudly, because Haruki had just seen a graphic comparing the head-to-head points, rebounds, and assists statistics of Conley and the Spurs’ All-Star point guard Tony Parker, and I needed to interrupt what looked like his vinegar strokes before the image of that twisted face was permanently burned into my brain.
“You suck,” rebutted Haruki.

Our dialogue whipped back and forth, like Max Pacioretty’s head when Chara hammered it into that stanchion a tetherball.

We cut it off after 20 minutes, when Steve’s eyes acquired the kind of glazed expression usually reserved for zombies or every single student in my Canadian public policy lecture. But not before two things were firmly established: 1) we had completely divergent views on the worth of Conley and 2) we were (however momentarily) ready to beat the living crap out of each other over the issue of whether Conley was a) the 10^th or b) the 20^th best point in the league.

Yesterday, I woke up to see Haruki had posted a new blog entry on his facebook page entitled, “I’m Here to Tell You that Mike Conley Sucks” (his capitalization). Expecting to read an article brimming with contrition, and maybe some glowing praise directed at me for being awesome and right, I was shocked to find that it was all a ruse. The post was ostensibly aimed at anybody who couldn’t appreciate Conley’s baketball genius, but was clearly a direct and pointed personal attack. Though his article had some substance, after wading through the snark there were only a couple of points I would consider really germane to this discussion. These were:

• “Yes, you (Conley)run the Grizzlies offense beautifully, spreading the ball around to all your weapons, finding the hot-hand and rarely making a bad decision or taking a bad shot.”
  
• “Your handle is good, not great. You can shoot ok, but you’re no Ray Allen. Your assists are rarely of the spectacular variety.”
  

Ignoring the sarcasm, I agree with the majority of the two points, but I take some issue with each of them.

To the first, although I strongly disagree with the use of the word ‘beautiful’ in connection with Conley at any time, I agree that he, for the most part, does a good job of running the Grizzlies’ offense. He makes the easy pass and the simple play, and usually gets out of the way so that his more talented teammates can do their thing. These attributes aren’t always seen as so positive though, since you can say the same thing about someone like Jose Calderon (who’s one of the few starting point guards, along with Derek Fisher, who is unequivocally and empirically worse than Conley). Calderon, like Conley, has a low turnover rate and is a willing passer. But Calderon’s shortcoming is his lack of footspeed, which results in an inability to turn the corner on the pick and roll or beat his man off the dribble, which, in turn, leads to him not getting into the paint and breaking down the defense. These negatives, somewhat perversely, are part and parcel of his low turnovers—he doesn’t turn the ball over because he doesn’t get into the high traffic areas that force the defense to collapse on him. So yes, he doesn’t turn the ball over, but he doesn’t manufacture the kind of easy looks that Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, or a bunch of other point guards do.

Why does this matter? Because Conley’s the same type of player—he isn’t slow like Calderon, but because, as Haruki says, his “handle isn’t great” he doesn’t seem comfortable getting into the paint or breaking down the defense with any kind of regularity. His assists, like Calderon’s, are often of the “pass to the guy who’s man is sagging a foot off of him and force him to hit the semi-contested jumper” variety.

As for his shooting, I’m glad that Haruki brought up the Ray Allen comparison because their strokes are so similar sometimes even I get them confused. Honestly, I don’t expect him to be Allen because nobody is. The problem I have with Conley is that the Spurs were able to go under pretty much every Conley pick-and-roll because he wasn’t a threat to shoot off the dribble. This meant that TP was meeting him on the other side of the screen, obstructing his path to the basket and keeping him out of the lane. A couple times in the game he knocked down midrange open jumpers, but it wasn’t enough to make the Spurs want to change their defensive strategy.

Finally, the numbers back me up. Conley’s PER is 15.9, and he has 0.111 Win Shares per 48 minutes. For PER the league average is 15, and for Win Shares the average is 0.100. By both metrics Conley is barely above average, making him subpar for a starting point guard. I could buy the argument that stats don’t tell the whole story for a guy like Conley, but they’re not completely misleading either. He’s no scrub, but he has a long way to go before he’s an above-average starter in this league.

But, even though you now know how wrong he is, let’s not all shit on Haruki at once (an Akron [Only place I can think of that’s shittier than Cleveland] steamer?). His blind love for “Money” Mike has put him in a bad spot. The poor son of a bitch, by defending Conley’s contract, has placed himself squarely in the corner of another Mike … Mike “soulless as a ginger” Heisley. So, regardless of whether or not Haruki is right about Conley (he’s not) he’s damned for all eternity.

Goodbye Gil

I haven't been a basketball (or even a sports) fan as long as I'd like, or as long as I sometimes pretend. Growing up, my parents didn't really watch sports on t.v. (except for the Olympics, once every four years). My dad tells me that he enjoyed running when he was younger, but in the years that I've known him his favourite sports were squash, billiards, and yoga, in that order. My mom studied modern dance at SFU but, again, by the time I was old enough to pay attention she wasn't really all that active. And really, enjoying sports is quite a different thing than being a fan.

So while most of my now-sports-blogging-peers spent Saturday nights with their families tuned into Hockey Night In Canada, I read Tolkien and Tolstoy, and was one of the more awkward kids I can think of.

At the age of six I had a friend who could rattle off stats and personal anecdotes about every member of the Toronto Blue Jays roster. I was impressed, but at the same time I thought he was fucking nuts. Numbers and stats and watching baseball on t.v. seemed so boring as a kid... I preferred tag, or making house-spanning epic Playmobile war scenes, or better yet, spending hours clenching my jaw so hard that my face shook while glaring at pencils, as I tried to exercise the latent psychic/jedi abilities I was sure I possessed.

In case you couldn't tell from the preceding paragraph, I wasn't much of a sports fan myself, and I was a huge dork. Still, I went to see the Vancouver Canadians fairly often back when they were a AAA team and I always loved that, but to this day I'm not sure if I preferred the games or the McDonald's meals that always accompanied them. I saw the Globetrotters once, and that was pretty cool, but nothing compared to seeing the Grizz live. Them leaving was one of the most brutal blows to my chances at being a sports fan when I was young. Back then, I was a giant and I couldn't skate, so I think in terms of teams to empathize with, it was always going to be the Grizz over the 'Nucks. I only began to follow the Canucks fairly late in highschool, when most of my friends were hockey players and/or fans.


But just because it wasn't until my mid-teens that I started to follow sports, doesn't mean I was a complete butterball. As it stands, I was semi-freakishly tall from grades five through eight or nine, and my gangly limbs were ideal for cross country, track, volleyball, and even, to a certain extent, basketball (I shot with two hands, it looked like I was trying to 'set' a volleyball, and I missed 90% of the time, but I was so much bigger than a lot of kids that I would just get my own rebound again, and again, and again). When I was 11 I found a sport that I was passionate about in fencing, and my natural size advantage over other kids my age gave me some initial success, which I interpreted as 'talent'. Before long, I'd decided to get serious about fencing and quit soccer, track, and all the other sports I used to do to focus on it. I enjoyed some success in U-17 and U-20 competitions and because of the amount of time that I spent training I actually became a better athlete in most other sports.

My newfound ability to jump (a bit) and coordinate my limbs got me back into basketball, which I've played recreationally ever since.

That was a pretty long preamble to explain how I got into playing basketball casually in my late teens, which I'm pretty confident no one cares about, but I wanted to make sure that I had the background properly set for the discussion of how Gilbert Arenas changed my life.

Agent Zero is the single figure that is most responsible for me being a sports fan. And I'm a pretty serious sports fan, despite the paucity of updates over here at the HCP (Steve and I are both sorry). No hyperbole, I'd watched a tiny bit of basketball before discovering him, doing research in hopes of improving my meager skills for our highschool intramural league (the Mini Basketball League), but it wasn't until I started watching Gil, and then reading his blog, that I was completely sucked in.

Not only did he possess the technical skills which, to me at least, make basketball the most aesthetically-pleasing sport out there, but his personality, his swag, and the me-against-the-world personal narrative he brought to every game and every situation inspired me. Despite the fact that other athletes have, to a greater or lesser degree, also tried to impose that same narrative, it's never rung quite as true as it did with Gil. Michael Jordan? Please, he's the greatest and he knows it. The fact that he imagined slights and challenges where none existed is more contemptible than compelling. Kobe's the same, but to a lesser extent. LeBron tried to deliver the us-against-the-world line in Miami, but he's the single athlete who is least able to pull that mindset off, since I'm fairly confident he thinks he's on the Truman Show, and that everyone else on the planet was put there to either serve him or watch him.

Gil, a second-round draft pick, has the kind of human frailty that made it understandable when he held a grudge against Mike D'Antoni, Mike Krzyzweski, and Jerry Colangelo for excluding him from the US Basketball team. And I cheered when, in return, he torched their teams.

Really, this duality of frailness and superhuman ability made him as compelling a character as the NBA has seen. To fans, players, and particularly stars, are supermen, and in many ways we treat them as such. However, Gil was the first basketball star to show us both Superman and Clark Kent. I've never been able to cheer for LeBron because, at least visually, he's simply too dominant. He's Goliath, Godzilla and Venom (I didn't mean to make this list all villains, but my bias runs strong). Gil was short (for his position), pretty lightly muscled, and he wrote a blog—millions of non-athletes can identify with that.

As a fan of the man rather than his team, the news that Gil got traded to Orlando excited me at first. I initially thought it would provide him with the means to resurrect his career, but after stopping to reflect I've come to some harsh realizations:
1) physically, Gil isn't himself anymore
2) Gil will never again be able to be as uncensored and spontaneously funny as he was before the gun incident
3) Gil in a specific "role", which he'll have on the Magic, isn't Gil anymore

So, even though none of these points are the direct result of his trade to Orlando (his role on the Wiz was more rigidly defined this year with Wall around than it was in years past) the trade forced me to think hard about a guy who'd flitted on the edges of my conscious for years now. Gil, as the unique and special player a lot of people from my background and age group learned to love, is no more.

And, to be completely honest, I think that we're going to see a second MJ before we see Agent 2.0.


Check out http://www.bulletsforever.com/ for Gilbert Arenas Tribute Day. There are both extraordinarily cool and surprisingly moving stories among the entries.

The Shimmy

"Can ESPN start a dedicated page, much like the Heat Index, that just tracks the triumphant return of Antoine Walker?" - Commenter "Mike" in the DDL chat on ESPN.



Challenge accepted Mike.

HCP's First Ever Podcast! Recorded on the 1st!

Holy shit, it's a podcast.

That's right. The Half Court Press has dropped its first ever podcast. You also might notice that the date is October 1st, and that the subject is on the upcoming hockey season. It's taken us lazy/less than technically savvy guys here at the HCP a month to post the discussion we had before the start of the season about the NHL betting odds. Laugh awkwardly along with us as Sam and I run through our first podcast, featuring a special, completely unplanned guest.

For those of you more interested in non-completely irrelevant news, we plan on recording another next weekend. Stay tuned.

And yes, that's Lloyd Banks. We make no apologies.

The HCP Emulates FJM, Without Any of the Commercial Success

Holy shit, it's been awhile.

I should explain: I found gainful employment shortly after my last post and have had a tough time finding free time to eat and sleep, much less post on a blog. I hope I haven't lost any of our faithful supporters along the way, because, quite frankly, we can't really lose many more before you'll actually be able to hear these words echo on this lonely, lonely blog.

Sam and I, with a special guest, actually recorded a podcast last weekend on this year's best gambling bets that we'll post as soon as we figure out this crazy internet thing. For now, I'm posting an article that's been influenced heavily by the now-retired guys at Fire Joe Morgan. FJM had its own theme day at Deadspin, and I've been pouring over their archives ever since. What follows isn't quite the 80,000-word masterpiece you'd typically find over there, but I couldn't sit back and let this trash heap of an article go without a little commentary.

Brendan Morrison Flames Out with Canucks but Makes Calgary Better

Let's go back to the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Let's. Nothing seems more relevant than a playoff series seven seasons ago, before a season-ending lockout that changed the makeup and playing style of the game entirely.

The playoffs where that large, not so talkative former Canuck, Big Bert, couldn't play because on March 8 he'd hit a player who didn't want to fight and then, never considering a glove shot knocked the guy out, dove on him. Those playoffs.

Pretty sure the whole "driving his face into the ice, while eight other players jumped on top of him" might have had something to do with that concussion thing. What's your point again? Oh, right, that you may not get the reference to the 2004 playoffs because they were 6 and a half years ago.

Remember the last win that year? Game six first round. Awesome game, 5-4, chances everywhere. Alex Auld did his best interpretation of a human sieve to allow the Calgary Flames back from 4-0 down but shut the door the rest of the way and the Canucks got a goal at 2:28 of the third overtime.

Here's the point in the article where most of you might point out (after noticing quirks like "awesome," "last win," and a general lack of comprehension about proper comma use) that this isn't a professional writer, and holds about as much credibility as one you'd find at Bleacher Report. I say, it's because we let shit like this slide that sites like Bleacher Report are allowed to exist and blatantly flaunt their consistent misunderstanding of "they're," "there," and "their."

No one on the ice at the time of the goal, not Auld, Cooke, Naslund, Brent Sopel or Bryan Allen is still with the Canucks but one is now with the Calgary Flames.

Yes, because those players are golfing/terrible. Naslund's retired, Cooke is a somewhat serviceable player when he plays on a line with Crosby, Sopel was a salary-dump this offseason, Auld is carrying Carey Price's tobacco-stained jockstrap as a backup, and Bryan Allen has been cast into purgatory, also known as the Florida Panthers. If any of these players were still on the team, a guy like, say, Brendan Morrison would be able to make this team.

Yup, the guy who danced out from the corner and tucked it by Kipper in overtime: Brendan Morrison.

Nobody has ever danced after three overtimes. It was more of a graceful collapse from complete exhaustion.

A day after being told he wasn't going to be a Vancouver Canuck, Morrison signed a one year $725, 000 one way deal with Calgary. Word had it that he was offered a two way contract with Vancouver but wanted security and the injury riddled Flames came calling and he jumped.

Fair enough. It didn't work financially for both sides, the Canucks couldn't offer him and his family the security they needed, he didn't fit the role the Canucks wanted, and so he signed instead with a team that's had some injuries down the middle. Great place to end the article.

Oh, there's more.

This last fact may be hard for Canuck fans to take. Why wouldn't Gillis offer him a one-way deal? If he's not performing send him down and pick up the relatively speaking small tab. Or if anyone needed a center ship him off for a seventh rounder and you lose nothing.

Do you know why this is a terrible idea, and that it represents everything Gillis stands against? Because if you treat players like shit, they'll stop coming to your city. Players and their agents notice things like Glen Sather shipping Redden to the minors to make way for 4 years of Derek Boogaard. Whether you agree with his moves or not, Gillis has worked hard to ensure that his players feel like they've been respected. Assuring a guy that he'll get some security for him and his family, then sending him to Manitoba or shipping him to Columbus for a 7th rounder in two months is an absolute stab in the back. There's a reason that Hamhuis and Torres took less money to come here, and Ballard had the Canucks on his 7-team limited no-trade list. Part of it is playing in a hockey market, part of it is joining a team that looks poised for success, but a huge part of it is the culture of respect for players.

He's versatile with a great attitude and he had a 42 point season last year that dried up early because his ice time was given to a younger player in Washington.

The injustice! This "younger player" apparently inspires so much contempt, that the author won't waste his precious time to research who it was. Well, I did. Guys who took Morrison's spot: Steckel, Fehr, Fleischmann, Gordon, and Laich. All are better or have more upside than a 35-year old Morrison. The reason he lost his job on the second line wasn't a personal vendetta. It's because he wasn't as good as the competition. Say, that reminds me of a similar scenario that's happening right now.

Most fans don't care how tenacious Rick Rypien or Alex Bolduc or Peter Schaefer are, or Guillaume Desbiens.

Most fans don't know or care about Keith Yandle on Phoenix either, but that mean he's not an incredible talent. Most fans, God bless them, don't having a fucking clue about what they're talking about. Have I mentioned Bleacher Report yet?

They know Morrison is tenacious in his own way and they know what he brings to the rink every day. The radio talk shows and the online sites are full of unhappy Canuck fans

Team 1040 is full of unhappy Canuck fans, no matter what happens. Some fans are dying to trade that washed-up punk Hodgson, despite the fact that he's only 20 years old, could still make the team even after spending 14-months recovering from a back injury, and might be the best Canucks prospect since Kesler. Some were outraged when the Canucks signed the Sedins to an extension last year. Those people are still probably outraged that Henrik didn't win the Norris as well.

and if they're right and Morrison is valuable it not only hurts Vancouver not to have him but it hurts that Calgary does.

No! *Hits author with rolled-up newspaper.* You CAN'T make a value judgment like that without backing it up. You haven't made a single argument in this entire article about why Morrison is a better pick than Bolduc, Rypien, or Desbiens. Your entire premise is based on the fact that the fans like Morrison. I love Morrison. He's a BC boy with a heart of gold, and I wanted to see him on this team. But he wasn't the right fit. We'd all love Gino Odjick and Pavel Bure back in the lineup too, but it's not happening. Morrison's not a gritty, hard-forechecking guy that would fit on the kind of fourth line that Gillis and AV want. You know how they came to those conclusions? By doing extensive research into why the Canucks didn't make it past the Blackhawks and beyond in last years playoffs. Not by listening to the bleeding hearts of those who reminisce about the good ol' days of West Coast Express-led teams being derailed by Cloutier. Just because they post poll questions on Canucks.com, doesn't mean that they listen to them.

The Canucks didn't win that 2004 series, a Calgary overtime goal in game seven did them in. Who scored it? A former Canuck veteran who maybe they gave up on too soon, Martin Gelinas. Sound familiar?

What sounds familiar? The name Gelinas? Because you mentioned he was a Canuck veteran nine words earlier? Or is this you reporting from the future, where future-Morrison has whisked the underdog future-Flames to a sweep of the future-Canucks from his role on the fourth line (where he'll be since Langkow, Jokinen, Conroy, Stajan and Backlund already play center). I'm sure he's the one they'll have playing the key minutes in overtime. Tell my future-self to shoot himself in his future-head if this situation plays out.

Also, the Canucks gave up on Gelinas in 1998, the year after he had 10 points in 24 games. He went on to score over 50 points twice more in his career. Too bad we didn't hang on to him for an extra mediocre six years so that we could prevent him scoring an overtime powerplay goal in a first-round series.

G.M. Mike Gillis may become a very unpopular man in Vancouver this Spring.

Or not. Considering that he's assembled, on paper, one of the best teams the Canucks have ever had. And in just two years, he's turned Nonis' crap heap of draft classes into a top-5 prospect pool. Morrison didn't fit, and that's that. Yes, he scored a big goal in 2004, but that was a long, long time ago. Morrison is a different (read: worse) player, and the Canucks are a different (read: better) team now. It would have made a nice story, just like Fleury making the Flames last year would have made a nice story. A wise executive once said that (paraphrasing) "the moment you start listening to the fans, you take one step closer to sitting with them." And that would be terrible for Gillis, since he'd have to put up with guys like this a lot more often.


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Why Kovalchuk's Deal Was Rejected

I know it's summer and the weather is nice and all that crap, but I can't over the frustration I have with the lack comprehension of why Kovalchuk's deal got rejected. Hockey analysts have apparently Wikipedia-ed "longest NHL contracts," and thrown in references to DiPietro, Luongo, Pronger, and Ovechkin and said (presumably in the voice of a four-year old in a toy store) "their contract didn't get rejected, so why did Kovalchuk's?". Here's a quick breakdown of why these comparisons are wrong, as well as why Kovalchuk's deal is different:

DiPietro: It can be said that the Kneeless One's 15-year deal is what started this madness, but that's actually not true. DiPietro's salary matches his cap number, which means there is NO cap circumvention, only a misguided belief that he was the franchise savior and could command more money if he ever needed to renegotiate a contract. Today, as long as Rick drags his carcass to training camp and onto the DL each year, the Isles are on the hook.

Ovechkin: Similar to DiPietro, Ovechkin's deal was simply to ensure that he's in a Caps uniform for life. His deal, as well as the new one linemate Backstrom signed, actually go UP later in the contract.

Pronger: Pronger's was a deal that actually could have drawn some investigation from the NHL, since the contract has two years tacked on at the end worth only $1.05 million combined. However, the extension ended up kicking in after Pronger was 35, meaning that when Pronger finally gets taken out of the game on a stretcher by the karma train, his $4.291 million cap hit is around for another 7 years.

Luongo: Besides lowering the average cap hit, there are other two reasons those extra years tacked on are so effective. First, it creates a disincentive for the already ridiculously wealthy player to keep playing (this wouldn't work under the NBA, known as the Antwan Walker exception), and second, it creates a more favorable buyout situation. Luongo's contract, I believe, is the latter. If Luongo is bought out after only 8 years, the contract is structured so that buyout will only count for $500,000 of cap space. If the cap keeps rising as the recession fades, 8 years of buyout payments of half a million is peanuts compared to 8 years of a Cup window. Even if he plays out his contract until he's 43, goalies have the potential to play longer than skaters - 392 year-old Chris Chelios is the exception - and especially forwards. Since the lockout, only one forward has made it to 44 - Claude Lemieux - and that was after a retirement in 2003, a five-year relaxation period, followed by 2008 comeback where he netted one assist in 18 games for the Sharks.

Kovalchuk: The key to why Kovalchuk's deal was rejected was his No Movement Clause, which expires after 2016-2017. Once the deal hits the 11-year mark, Kovy makes $750,000 followed by 5 years of $550,000. At that point, with an NMC, the Devils will no doubt stick him in the minors. There's no way in hell Kovy moves up the coast to play in Albany for the River Rats, and he'll only be 38 by then, leaving more than enough time to retire and book it to Russia for another few years and a few more million bucks as a returning Russian hero superstar. None of the other contracts above structure such a blatant no-movement clause like this, and that's the reason the NHL may have some grounds to reject it. I'm not a big city, fancy-talkin' lawyer or nothin', but that appears to be the only grounds the NHL has to stand on.

We're also Canucks fan, so we'd like to say the deal got nixed because it would be really great to get a superstar in the Southern California area. And hey, isn't that where Mike Murphy works? Yeah, that guy. We feel your pain Devils fans, and we have extra tinfoil hats for you.

Steve Blake: An Idiot

Mike Gillis has a philosophy: a smart person will make a smart hockey player. More than raw talent, he believes a player's intelligence will boost their work ethic and their ability to adapt and evolve their game. This is the reason he took Patrick McNally of Harvard with the Canucks first pick, 115th overall. McNally will finish his degree before pursuing professional hockey, a reason many teams shied away from picking a player whose talent level pegged him as a top-50 player in the draft.

Sam's beloved Los Angeles Lakers, however, have a different strategy. You may have read Sam's glowing article praising the signing of Steve Blake as the role-player pickup of the summer. Well, Blake is up for an another award over at Deadspin: America's Dumbest Student-Athlete, for an essay he wrote during his stint at Maryland. An excerpt:

"A young couple was walking down Main Street arguing with each other. The young lady got frustrated with her boyfriend and just walked away from him and went into a restaurant. He wanted to make up with her so he went in there after her. He met her inside and they waited for someone to help them find a seat. They where greeted by a young lady who was very kind and friendly. The hostess found them a comfortable booth and told them to have a good time. As they were sitting, they heard a song by Elvis being played throughout the whole restaurant. The couple looked at each other and smiled because they both really liked that song. The restaurant that this couple went to is in Florida and is called Johnny Rockets, a restaurant that brings people happiness."

You can enjoy the full article penned by a sixth grader writing about his summer vacation an apparent college student over at Deadspin.













UPDATE: I Write Like has performed its scientific analysis, and determined that Blake writes like famous author Stephen King. So I must issue my apologies. Here's the official badge of certification.

Steve Blake writes like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

FYI, both Sam and I write like David Foster Wallace. Yeah, that guy.