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.

I have become the new Sam

Hipster Sam, in a file photo


I'm sorry to all our loyal subscribers. I have become the new Sam, not posting in over a month and letting him reclaim this as some sort of basketball blog. Slow down there, kid. Here are three thoughts from the NHL free agent frenzy, before we enter another 2 months of hot, summer weather and soul-crushing loneliness from hockey:

1. Drink lots of milk. Want to play in the NHL? Don't pick up the stick: drop the gloves, and give Glen Sather a call. On July 1, the Rangers signed Derek Boogaard to a 4-year, $6.6 million contract, which averages to $1.65 million a season. Yes, he's a big boy and yes, he can win fights. But he only fought 9 times last year (7-1-1). He tallied 4 assists, and was a -12. And he's not even a guy who can eat up minutes in a checking role: he only tallied 350:36 in TOI last year, which averages to 6:09 a game. For comparisons sake, if Duncan Keith were compensated in the same minutes to salary ratio, he'd make $10.3 million a season. And Keith is probably more effective during his shifts. You know, with the Norris and all.

2. The best NHL teams are proactive, not reactive. Analysts continue to be mystified why Nabokov scampered off to Russia, Dan Hamhuis got $4.5 million, and Kovalchuk isn't in a Kings jersey yet. They shouldn't be. The dead puck era after the first lockout in 1995 was a direct result of the Devils winning the cup. Roberto Luongo and Chris Pronger's long contracts were modeled after Zetterberg's in Detroit. The league is a copycat league, and whatever wins becomes the prevailing model. Thanks to Leighton and Niemi, teams are overpaying for defense and relying on average goaltending. Pierre Gauthier of the Habs risked his personal safety on the Montreal streets and traded away Halak because teams don't want to spend $4 million on goaltending: they'd rather get another $3 million defenseman and pay an entry-level deal in net. Of course, when Luongo lifts the Cup next year, you can bet Vokoun, Giguere, and Bryzgalov will get paaaaid, son.

3. The Blackhawks are three years away again. Remember when the Florida Marlins won the World Series in 1997? And then remember the next year, when they won 54 games and finished last in their division? Probably not because baseball is slow, boring, and relies entirely on nostalgia to keep its sport viable, but the Blackhawks are dangerously close to setting another precedent. Yes, they have kept their frighteningly young and talented core together, and yes, the trades they have made so far have all been great despite being in a terrible bargaining position (thanks, Rick Dudley.) However, the best point that has been made so far is that it limits the Blackhawks to match their lineup against their opponents. For example, take Game 1 of the Western Conference Semis against the Canucks, or as its known around here, the last time anyone in Vancouver was planning parade routes. The Blackhawks got dominated by the 'Nucks in their own building 5-1, but the very next game came out and overcame a two-goal deficit to win 4-2. What happened in that 48 hour span? The 'Hawks came out with a bigger and nastier lineup. They scratched Bickell and Hendry, added Burish and Eager, and remodeled their lines, giving Byfuglien 5 more minutes of ice time and Brouwer 7 less. The result? More bodies in front of Luongo, more trouble for the beat up Canucks defense, and a momentum changing win. Unless the Blackhawks work some more cap-saving magic, they are doomed to a very one-dimensional lineup, a real threat of season-changing injuries, and a record that will barely get them into the playoffs.

LeBro

Brono's decision to head to Miami has inspired a lot of vitriol on the 'nets but it has also inspired a lot of funny. Here are the funniest/most interesting things that have come out of "The Decision" (apart from Dan Gilbert's open letter).

1) This wicked cool t-shirt:

BDL does a good job covering the shirt's intricate layers of hilariousness, but comprehension isn't a pre-requisite for appreciating this product. It's a straight-up beauty.

2) This comic. I don't have a lot to say about it other than that it encapsulates my feelings about this whole debacle better than any of the dozens of long-winded columns I've read.

3) The photo and caption that accompany this entry by DGB. Trust a hockey blog to come up with the funniest take on basketball news.

Hype Kills

I was checking out this sick t-shirt at the freshnes, and the catchphrase got me thinking a bit.

Stories about early picks trying to live up to the hype and failing - being crushed by the weight of public expectation - are widely-known. But is this phenomenon for real?

The main problem I have with this idea is that high picks are given all the chances and opportunities in the world to prove themselves. Once a player has been made a #1, #2 or even #3 pick, minutes are basically guaranteed. For these star prospects to lose their place with the team that drafted them they must show an incredible level of incompetency, since anything short of that will be taken as potential for improvement and the player will be retained. Still, even if a top draft pick is released/not re-signed/traded by their original team, if they show ANYTHING at all that resembles a basketball skill, there are going to be teams that are ready to employ them.

The reasoning behind all the chances these players get is closely tied to the NBA's obsession with upside. Probably the main reason GM's keep employing Darko and Kwame is because they see these players as half-grown saplings of potential. They see the player/sapling standing in front of them but looming overhead, GM's can see the mile-high mountain of potential/a towering pine tree (this metaphor was always doomed for failure) that scouts and bloggers like us have painted for him.

So really, don't feel too bad for the pressure these top picks have to endure, since it means that they're guaranteed a place in the NBA for many years at the expense of other, more talented players who's skills weren't appraised as highly on draft day.

Next topic for discussion - why NBA players that were highly hyped in high school/college get touted as stars when they're still awful (rookie KD was a good example, but the one that really bugs the shit out of me is Derrick Rose and how people keep writing, "John Wall could be a Derrick Rose-like PG! WOW! AWESOME!" Not.)

Imagine...

Imagine if David Kahn was a man with a plan rather than the basketball equivalent of the kid who would always eat the play-doh at my elementary school.

If he had drafted Stephen Curry instead of Jonny Flynn with the #6 pick he would have improved the future prospects of the 'Wolves in two significant way:

1) He would have gotten himself a player capable of playing his coach's system (Kurt Rambis, triangle offense) since in the triangle you really want to have a PG that can shoot

2) Since Curry is such a great shooter, and also due to the (probably unfounded) concerns that some voiced over his ability to man the point adequately/full-time at the NBA level, it would have been much easier to sell Curry as a SG, at least for long enough to convince Rubio to come over to the NBA more quickly where he would, at the very least, have been a blue-chip trade prospect

If he had made the above move and then NOT TRADED THE WOLVES BEST PLAYER this summer for Kosta Koufos? That would have been good as well. Even though Al is not the same as he was in 2007 there's still a chance that he can regain some or even most of that pre-injury form. And even though he's not the type of excellent passing big that the triangle likes, he IS a low-post monster who can grind out baskets or pass to the open man when absolutely necessary.

If he had made the above two moves (one non-move) and then made the pick that he did in this year's draft? Great pick. Wesley Johnson, even though he's older than the other top prospects, can just flat out play good basketball. With those three guys in place the Wolves would have had a future to look forward to - now I'm not talking Finals or anything close to that, but they would have had a functional and entertaining basketball team which is 10,000 times better than the mess of a product they're putting out on the floor right now.

By the way, since the two initial moves did not/did happen (respectively) in reality, picking Wesley was completely inexcusable. If Kahn planned to trade Al (and that's a very, very big if, since I'm pretty sure he came up with that deal 15 minutes before it happened after smoking crack cocaine with his best friend John Ferguson Jr.) then how the FUCK do you not go out and get DeMarcus Cousins, who, judging by the Summer League footage I've seen, is going to be an absolute monster on the block.

Never fear though Minnesotans, Kahn has got you covered with four more years of Darko at five million per to put your minds at ease.

If being a bad blogger was worth as much as being a bad basketball player then I would be pretty happy too

A sticktap (or a firm pat on the ass or whatever they do in basketball) to Jay King for the inspiration.

Bryan Has To Make Me Look Like The Asshole Yet Again

Fuck you Bryan Colangelo, even when I praise your most recent trades you screw me. What happened with the Diaw -TC trade? How does the guy who signed off on picking Kwame and Adam Morrison say "no" to getting Jose Calderon, who at least knows how to play the game of basketball?

I was getting more and more excited about the prospect of having a legitimate defensive big man in Tyson and that shred of hope I started to feel just got ripped away and torn to smithereens. Just so MJ could turn around and get Erick Dampier.


Unlike Charlotte/MJ, I like the moves that Rod Thorn and the Nets are making. Stockpiling talented players who could really blossom in the next couple of years - Farmar, Outlaw, Morrow and Favors if you consider the draft. I'm surprised that they didn't land a marquee free agent because if I was an NBA player I would be pretty stoked at the prospect of being the face of whatever franchise is about to jump the bridge to Brooklyn, is represented by Jay-Z and is owned by Mikhail Prokhorov.

Bryan Colangelo

What do you call a general manager who possesses an Isiah-like level of foresight, but somehow manages to pull pretty amazing trades out of his ass every couple years to keep his team from going completely under?

Average-to-mediocre, and that's exactly the kind of GM Bryan Colangelo is.

Despite whatever wizardry he may have worked in the desert, the guy hasn't been on top of his game since coming to T-dot.

Nevertheless, some members of the media can't help but jump on his nuts every time he makes a trade. So let's examine the latest:
Trading away Hedo, Jose and a large part of the trade exception created by Chris Bosh's departure for Boris Diaw, Leandro Barbosa and Tyson Chandler.

Great, great decision. But still, all Colangelo's actually accomplished with this flashy trade is to cover up/correct a couple of the worst blunders he'd previously committed. I can't blame too harshly for the length and price of the Calderon contract, because at the time it was widely lauded as a great signing, but the Hedo contract was regarded as a mistake even before the ink dried. The reality of the situation is this: The 2010/2011 Raptors are still going to stink, the only difference is that the certainty of further stinkitude in the future is somewhat diminished.

As a fan I'm happy that I'll have a fairly sympathetic and entertaining team to root for as they lose at least 55 games, but the analytical part of my brain is terrified that this seeming-forward-progress will be levied into a contract extension and that I'll have to put up with 3 more seasons of mediocre-to-average.

Slow down, ESPN.

The following is a guest post by McGales, who will be giving us a look at sports from a casual fan's perspective. Not to be confused with the ravings of the HCP's regular contributors.

Everything is better in slow motion.

Take the world cup, how many of you enjoyed the 3 hour games, the myriad ties, the dramatic tears and injuries, and, even better, the countless scoreless games?

I can't speak for everyone, but surrounded by the soft lulling of vuvuzelas, my eyes wouldn't have stayed open were it not for amazing moments like this, or this. It may not be right, and it may seem like a slap in the face to the athleticism showcased during the World Cup, but the slow motion replays had me on my knees. Everybody says that football (soccer) players are overly dramatic, but maybe they are actually just really expressive...

This particular countenance surely reflects his response to the ball aggressively massaging his face.

I relished the moments of drawn out agony, contorted faces, and priceless expressions that popped up every time there was an epic play or goal, and I firmly believe that FIFA players could pose some serious competition at any gurning event in England.

There isn't much of a point to all of this except to say thank you to FIFA, for all the slow motion clips that kept me alive during the 2010 World Cup. Like everything else, football is DEFINITELY much better in slow motion.

Well, maybe not everything is better in slow motion.

-McGales

Also, thanks everyone for reading my awesome guest-post. I love you guys, and I'm not just saying that because I'm drunk.

Player Profile: Didier Ilunger-Mbenga aka DJ Mbenga aka Congo Cash

Some NBA players get an inordinate amount of press because they are ridiculously good at their job - Kobe and LeBron are prime examples. Other guys get written up because they're either the next big thing (John Wall, Derrick Rose) or the "best player nobody's talking about" (Kevin Durant, Brandon Roy). A subcategory of best player nobody's talking about is the defensive specialist (Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier) or the clutch role-player, like Robert Horry or Derek Fisher. At certain points these guys will all get coverage from the average NBA blogger. Also, there are the guys who just love the spotlight, like Shaq and Ron Artest, who will say whatever they can (or whatever the voices in their heads tell them to in the case of Ron or Starbury) to make sure they get that ink.

All of these different types of player will, in different doses and forms, take up the vast majority of media coverage available to basketball, and 99% of the time, I'm cool with that.

But sometimes, when it's the middle of the season and I've heard all I can stand to hear about Kobe's finger-injury or Shaq's newest self-appointed nickname, my eyes wander towards the end of the bench. I wonder what's going on in the lives of the 11th and 12th men. I wonder how they got to occupy such exalted positions (an NBA bench is, after all, the most sought after bench position in sports) and how that even though I see them on TV 50 times a year I still know next-to-nothing about them.

It's a good bet that most of these end of the benchers took a much more interesting path to the NBA than Kobe and Bron-Bron did so I thought that the HCP could investigate a bit and unearth some really interesting stories.

So today, let's delve a little bit into the past (via Wikipedia and other people's research) of the Lakers' human victory cigar, D.J. Mbenga.

The wiki page starts off normally enough:

Didier Ilunga-Mbenga, commonly referred to as D.J. Mbenga (pronounced: Benga) (born December 30, 1980), is a Belgian professional basketball player who most recently played for the Los Angeles Lakers. He also plays for the Belgium national basketball team.

But in the next section things take a turn to the tragically atypical:

Mbenga was born in and raised in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where his father was a government employee. When a new regime took over power, it sought everyone who worked for the previous leader. As unrest in the country escalated, Mbenga's father was imprisoned. Although he was eventually unable to save himself, he did manage to negotiate on behalf of his sons, who were also imprisoned and waiting to be executed. Mbenga fled the country on a plane to Belgium, where he received asylum. While living in a refugee center, he was discovered by Belgian basketball legend Willy Steveniers (ed: a man I'd never heard of prior to this but who apparently belonged to a list of FIBA's 50 greatest players as of 1991), who eventually served as Mbenga's personal basketball mentor.

Hoopsworld has an excellent piece, here, on DJ and just how fucked up his life has been compared to the average NBA player's. Also, the article has a nice aside about Dikembe Mutombo, another Congolese citizen and HCP favourite.

DJ gives a great interview to Mike Trudell and a really poignant couple of lines are highlighted by Henry Abbott here.

DJ Mbenga seems like a hell of a man. If only we could have had a one hour special on his life this past thursday at 9 pm EST instead of whatever crap ESPN was running.

Cleveland, this could be your man.

Forget Summer 2010, I'm excited for 2020

So I wrote a post about hockey. I'm writing at least one post per day all summer so it was bound to happen sooner or later but I'm still going to try to leave hockey to Steve most of the time.

Let's get back to a sport that slightly fewer people don't care about.

This one is for all the Cleveland fans who are left (aka didn't hang themselves with their LeBron jerseys/we are all witnesses t-shirts (and those poor poor Knicks fans who bought this)). It's a list of future NBA stars that the HCP has obtained by way of Muzikrehberinettc. Though I personally don't know Muzikrehberinettc, I believe it's safe to say that we all owe him a debt of gratitude for traveling to the future, battling off futuristic robots bent on mankind's destruction/enslavement and selflessly sharing his discovery that, among other things, the NBA will convert to metric by 2020. Apparently, he watched Hoosiers and it lost some of the dramatic punch after the lines were retroactively converted:

Coach Dale: Ollie. Get on Scrap’s shoulders and measure from the rim to the floor. (They measure)……What’s it say?

Ollie: Three point zero four eight meters.

Coach Dale: I believe these are the exact same dimensions that you’ll find back at our gym in Hickory. (Players somewhat bewildered) C’mon. Let’s get ready for practice.

This pertains to Clevelanders because the 35-year-old LeBron is NOT included on the list, unfortunately for Oklahomans, neither is the then 31-year-old Kevin Durant. Despite appearances, rumours are that his arms do not stretch as far as MJ's and that he was taken to Moron Mountain after losing the second interstellar basketball game to the Nerdlucks.

Here are the Top 12 NBA players in 2020:

The list is hilarious but the first song is great. "Gorillas" by Army of the Pharaohs.

Olli Jokinen back to the Flames.

I know I'm way late on this and that most of the hockey bologosphere has already filed this tidbit away for future 'rippin on Darryl Sutter' columns, but still, every single time I think about this move, and then Sutter's defense of it, I just crack up.

I was on Yahoo! Sports earlier today (like I am every day) and I started reading an article by Sam McCaig from 10 days ago about the various needs that Canadian teams would attempt to address via free agency (the premise was that the Canadiens and the Canucks were the two teams that needed the least and would make the fewest moves. I was/am skeptical, since the needs of a contending team can be dealt with better via free agency than, for example, the gaping holes that Toronto and Edmonton have in their rosters.) Anyways, the article was pretty simple and kind of just basic common sense, but there was one team section that made my day.

Take it away Sam:

Calgary Flames This should come as no surprise: The Flames need a No. 1 center to set up power winger Jarome Iginla. Just like last season, the season before that and the season before that (and the season before that). Calgary’s current top centers, Matt Stajan and Daymond Langkow, simply don’t cut it; Stajan is a second-liner at best, while Langkow turns 34 in September and is slowing down.

Problem is, the Flames have less than $7 million to spend, and need to re-sign defenseman Ian White as well as at least three other depth forwards. Not to mention, Calgary is banking on Swedish rookie Henrik Karlsson to back up Miikka Kiprusoff. Karlsson, 26, is a 6-foot-6 specimen who starred in Sweden last year, but he hasn’t played a second in the NHL.

Another problem: Beyond ex-Flame Matthew Lombardi, there’s not a lot out of there in the way of UFA centers. It’s not like Calgary is going to bring back Olli Jokinen.

"...It's not like Calgary is going to bring back Olli Jokinen." The author of the article has got to have some kind of extremely potent blackmail on Darryl Sutter (I mean I think he must, but how do you blackmail a man who feels no shame?), because there's no way he wrote this column without already knowing exactly how this was all going to play out.

Read it again, and this time keep in mind what we know now, that Olli is, at this very moment, enjoying the "agriculture-related attractions and free, fun-packed activities and presentations" offered by Agrium Ag-tivity in the City at the Stampede. It's the greatest bit of comedy ever written right? The whole Flames section sets up that last punchline perfectly.

And speaking of great comedy, I want to take this opportunity to revive the 2nd most popular piece of artwork to ever adorn the pages of the HCP:

The Olli:

CB4 and a couple other guys are headed to Miami

So it's happened. LeBron, Wade and Bosh have all joined forces to make a bigger better three.

This isn't the most exciting possible result (see my previous post on the Brooklyn Nets for that) but it is going to be very, very interesting.

The team, as it stands right now is Mario Chalmers, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Michael Beasley. That's an instant power-team in the East but whether they're going to be able to get past Orlando, the Celtics or possibly the Lakers in the Finals is heavily dependent on who else is added and how this team is put together.

Who else needs to join this team in order for these guys to maximize their potential?

First off, you need shooters and defenders. LeBron and Wade are both streak-shooters from the outside and Wade had a particularly poor shooting slump this past season. Chalmers is a pretty terrible shooter in his own right so you can't expect him to pick up the slack there. And both Bosh and Beasley should be playing mostly near to the basket.

So the team needs a couple of guards/swingmen who can shoot and defend (Rafer would fit, Michael Finley, Keith Bogans, Q-Rich [all oldish who might take a min contract for a shot at a title]) and then another big or two. Bosh has played Center before so he can move over to the 5 if Beasley somehow gets something going over the summer and is ready to contribute in the starting five.

Coming out of all of this, the player who's game has the potential to improve the most is Chris Bosh. With LeBron knowing he has to prove himself desperately (by winning) and Wade's crazy competitiveness, Bosh is really going to have to learn to bring the intensity every night and on every possession. As a long-time Raptors semi-fan I can say from experience how frustrating Bosh can be. He has ridiculous talent but is mentally weak. I've seen nights when Bosh either got a basket or got to the line every single time he drove or made a move in the low post but still preferred to take fadeaway jumpers from the baseline and/or the high post. LeBron and Wade are either going to turn him into an absolute monster or crush his confidence forever.

Regardless, nobody can say how good this team is going to be until we watch the big three and the rest of the guys Pat Riley gets all play together as a team. I want to see these guys make the kind of beautiful basketball music we saw from team USA at the Beijing Olympics and hopefully get us a superstar-studded Finals match-up with the Lakers.

Player Profile: Steve Blake

The Lakers' signing of Steve Blake for 4 years/ 16 million may go down as the most significant role-player signing of free-agency 2010.

Despite his limitations - average ball-handling for a PG, poor driving and finishing ability, poor athleticism - his strengths match up extremely well with the requirements for a PG in the Lakers' triangle offense. He is an excellent spot-up shooter who has proved his willingness to work alongside a ball-dominating 2 guard (Roy, soon to be Kobe) while still being effective with the touches he does get. What he doesn't have is the kind of crazy athleticism/potential of Shannon Brown and/or Jordan Farmar, but he could easily be the Lakers starting PG for the next 4 years.

My only concern is that the skills and contributions he brings to the table are almost identical to what Fish already provides for the Lakeshow. If Fish is re-signed (and I hope he is, if only because he's the 2nd clutchest man alive, after this guy), then the Lakers first and second-string PG's will play very, very similarly. And, while I realize that having a certain degree of redundancy is beneficial in some cases (spermicidal condoms, RAID drives) I've always liked the idea of having a change-of pace guard coming off the bench, like what Nate Robinson did for the Celtics in the Playoffs this year.

Regardless, this move does nothing to address the Laker's inability to guard top-tier point-guards (Blake is as bad as Fish) but they have added yet another layer to their already deadly offense and extended their championship window by a couple more years.

Let's build a super team

Alright, so first off I want to say, fuck LeBron and the media build-up to this summer. I didn't want to get sucked into this ego-trip but I just can't help myself.

Ever since EA introduced Career mode, later known as Franchise or Dynasty mode, to NHL '99 I've had a passion for building super-teams. I reached a new level in NHL 2003 when I got so good at the actual gameplay that it became ridiculously boring. All I wanted to do was fill my teams with 99 Potential guys like Steve Eminger and just have them run roughshod over the league for 10 straight years.

But you never get to do that in the real, which is what makes this summer so special.

So this is what's going to happen:

First, what's not going to happen. The two most important conditions for this summer to be a good one are that LeBron does NOT go back to Cleveland and that he does NOT go to The Knicks.

I've narrowed his options down to two Eastern franchises:

The Bulls

current depth chart:

PG - Derrick Rose

SG -

SF - Luol Deng

PF - Taj Gibson

C - Joakim Noah

Back up SF/PF - James Johnson

Looking to add: LeBron + Bosh

Now I can see why some people are excited about combining a much-hyped PG in Rose and a very good defensive center in Noah with the ridiculous offense that James and Bosh would bring to the table.

The two problems with this formula are that Rose just isn't very good yet and that I can't see the current group plus CB4/LBJ working as a TEAM. Maybe they could sign a couple good spot-up shooters and do something with Luol Deng's contract (maybe in exchange for Bosh?) but it's not an organic fit.

The organic fit is the New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets.

The Nets current depth chart:

PG - Devin Harris

SG - Courtney Lee

SF -

PF -

C - Brook Lopez

6th man - Terrence Williams

7th man/developing with tutoring from Bosh - Derrick Favors

Looking to add: LeBron, Bosh.

This team would be sick. Just off the wall fun. I don't know how good they'd be in their first year but they would be young, exciting and the success would be sustainable. This would be the opposite of the Chicago Blackhwawks team that just won the Cup and then imploded. This team would have the chance to establish a dynasty.

As much as I'm still a Lakers/Kobe fan, I want this to happen. I want to see Lakers-Nets finals for the next 4 straight years. I want to see veterans lining up to take minimum contracts with either team in the hopes of a ring. Most of all, I want to consider just how fucking cool the Nets could become, just a year removed from being a laughingstock.

Prokhorov is almost definitely the best thing to happen to the NBA since black people (and the only sports owner I've ever read about for a poli sci course), Jay-Z's getting more public in his minority-ownership role and the whole thing is moving from New Jersey to Brooklyn? After having had to play in New Jersey all these years, after having coming perilously close to being the worst team ever, after putting up with Vince Carter (I'm a Canadian, I can empathize), after not getting the #1 choice in the draft? Give these guys LBJ and Bosh, they deserve it.