Please Trade Maggette
Maggette driving into a triple team instead of passing the rock.
My home town Golden State Warriors are a mess. After an offseason in which their star point guard bounced for LA, the team wisely re-upped the heart of the squad, Steven Jackson. They'd already locked up their young center and guard, Biedrins and Ellis, to be the team's foundation of the future, and had some money to spare.
So what next? They overpaid a bit for a Big with energy in Turiaf, (Turiaf returned from major heart surgery in less time than it takes other players to return from ankle sprains ), but a Big that plays with effort is generally worth the investment. All's well so far. But then the big misstep -- the Warriors locked in Corey Maggette for too much money($50 million), and for too long (5 years).
True Hoop + Bread City + Simmons + SLAM = Basketball
Danny Granger, all heart.
One of my least favorite aspects of the NBA is that it's nearly impossible to follow if you don't get cable.* Before Christmas, when the NBA on ABC kicks off, the only way to see a game is to tune in to Telemundo for the Saturday game. Even the local games are on Fox Sports, so it's the radio or nothing. Here in San Francisco, we have a great pair of commentators for the Warriors, but I'm sure that fans of other teams aren't so lucky. Thank goodness (or Al Gore?) for the Internet.
(1) SLAM Online. I've been reading SLAM for over a decade. Back when most writing on sports was in print, SLAM was a breath of fresh air and hoops reason amid noxious clouds of reporting aimed at the corporate, luxury box patrons filling the coffers of the NBA. Lang Whittaker kept up the great work with The Links, where he continues to publish daily articles on the NBA.
(2) True Hoop. Henry Abbot's True Hoop is the definitive source for insightful writing about the NBA. The stories you can find here will be better than anything you can find anywhere else.
(3) The Sports Guy. Bill Simmons is one of the last, great, true NBA fans left. Sure, he's heavily biased towards his home town Celtics, but he loves the game more than even his team. A gutsy owner would hire Simmons to be his GM, or at least to be involved in personnel decisions. He knows the game and would work cheap. I know his fans would be irate if he stopped writing, but I'm still going to say it: hire the man!
(4) Bread City. I only started reading this blog today (thank you Waxin' & Milkin'), but I already love what I've seen. For example, check this post: about the above photo:
It was a hell of a hustle play. He pressured Pierce, got a deflection and dove face first to get the ball. I went to congratulate him and he smiled at me and I saw what happened. It’s ironic that’s a play made by a guy who just signed a long term deal and wants to help us get back in the playoffs.
- Coach Jim O’Brien on Danny Granger shattering his two front teeth against the Celtics, 11/1/08.
[Update]
(5) NBA Off-Season 2009: Chronicling The Waiting Period Before The Next Season Begins. Another great recommendation from Waxin' & Milkin', this blog has the news you need plus the gossip and humor you want. Dominant.
[/Update]
All excellent. For more, see the following:
- Hoops Hype
- Rotoworld
- Need 4 Sheed
- Tim Kawakami (the best of the Bay)
*Yes, I know. I'm in the bottom 15% and live in the stone ages.
Promise For The Niners: Singletary Stays Put
"#1: We go out and hit people in the mouth. #2: We are not a charity. ... I'm from the old school -- solution oriented."
The Niners won again in dramatic fashion last Sunday, finishing the season in style and driving down the field in the last minute to kick the game winning field goal. The offense moved the ball smoothly, efficiently, calmly. The defense was disciplined and hit like a ton of bricks.
Talk about refreshing. The Niners are fun to watch again! The QB makes the right decisions. The young wideouts run great routes, have good hands and fight past opponents for the ball. Linemen on both sides of the ball are imposing their will. And it's all thanks to the leadership provided by the team's new coach, Mike Singletary.
A few weeks ago, the 49ers were one of the worst teams in football. Yesterday, Peter King ranked the Niners at #13 in his Fine Fifteen. He then went on to name Singletary his Coach of the Week.
Mike Singletary, San Francisco. Singletary won five of his last seven to cop a five-year contract Sunday night. And he won most of those games in the fourth quarter. The 49ers looked composed and played with a sense of urgency Sunday in the 27-24 win over Washington, and now they'll head into the future with Singletary and some new coaches -- likely one of them to take over for offensive coordinator Mike Martz.
Singletary made changes right out of the gate. He threw his tight end out of a game. He benched his starting QB, overruling his offensive coordinator in favor of Shaun Hill. He promoted a couple of rookie WR into the starting lineup. Most importantly, he let it be known that he expected hard work, smart decisions, and team first.
Outside of just performance on the field, it's telling that it isn't just the QB and the star running back who are singing Coach's praises. Offensive linemen, the linebackers, guys who do the grunt work away from the spotlight have been lining up to talk to the press and say that they believe in their coach. That respect, in my opinion, is the sure sign that the Niners have made the right choice.
Let the Singletary Era begin!
[Image via ESPN.]
Two TD Celebrations, One Penalty
Show dominance with a yell and a flex? No problem. Snow angel? Penalty! 15 yards.
Yesterday's games in the NFL produced two excellent touchdown celebrations. One was penalized as Unsportsmanlike Conduct. The other wasn't.
First Johnnie Lee Higgins brings back a classic in this video, at around the 25 second mark. Gotta love The Carlton!
Second, Wes Welker has fun in the snow and makes an angel right before Christmas:
I understand that the NFL wants to keep celebrations from becoming taunting while keeping the focus on the game instead of an individual player's hijinx... but c'mon! How in the world was that a penalty on Welker?! I don't care if New England was winning in a rout. In fact, that's just more reason for Welker to celebrate. That's Welker's job -- to go out and dominate the other guys.
It's like Bill Walton once said when discussing whether it's bad for one team to run up the score on an opponent. To paraphrase:
Stop shooting?! This is a professional sport! When I was playing, I always felt it was my job to get the other coach fired.
Amen. Don't want to get blown out? Don't want to see the other team celebrate? Play. Better.
One of the best things about soccer (the game the rest of the world calls football) is the fantastic celebrating that goes on after each goal. Sure, the NFL lost its focus for a while. Yes, TO and Chad Ocho Cinco (among others) got carried away with their celebrations, but there is a big difference between taunting and being overjoyed.
- Mock the other team and stand over a beaten opponent? Penalty.
- Set your 330-pound linemen loose in a choreographed dance routine? Celebration.
Pretty simple, really. Throw a flag if it's a close call, but the NFL would be wise to remember that their sport charges absurd prices to watch a game. Rabid fans pay week after week, season after season, and they do so not just to see top athletes, but also to be entertained. Let the kids dance!
If The Shoe-Thrower Were A SF Giant Pitcher
- Had Barry Zito thrown the shoe, it would have floated lightly toward W. Our President could finally have declared victory over something, as he'd have swung and crushed the shoe, launching it over the entire press corps. Still, most Iraqis would have said that Zito was such a nice guy that they appreciated the effort, even if he wasn't worth the big contract. Besides, Zito's still a lefty whose columns take up a vast swath of column-inches.
- Noah Lowry would have hurt himself.
- NL Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum wouldn't have been allowed in. Security would have thought he was one of the reporters' kids.*
- Jonathan Sanchez would have missed badly, high and outside.
- Matt Cain would have been dead-on with the first shoe, but another journalist would have stood up and gotten in the way. Unlucky. If he had time to throw his second shoe, though, it would have hit W square in the smacker.
* Had Lincecum somehow been let in, the first shoe thrown would have bored a hole in W's chest. That shoe, thrown with such extreme velocity, would have instantly cauterized the fatal wound. The Phenom would have used the second shoe to disarm and disable all of the Secret Service agents in the room, allowing him to escape.
Still, the rest of the Press Corps would be unable to follow through after Lincecum's super-human performance. They'd fail to score and would give up the game winning homer to Cheney with a fat pitch down the pipe in the top of the 8th.
20th Anniversary Of The Billy Ripken Card
A naughty word infects America's pastime.
Billy Ripken, former Baltimore Oriole, is famous for three things. In reverse order, they are: (3) his pro baseball career; (2) being related to the Iron Man, Cal Ripken, Jr.; and (1) his 1988 Fleer baseball card.
It has, amazingly, been twenty years since that card debuted, and Billy is finally willing to talk about it. Says Billy:
I got a dozen bats in front of my locker during the 1988 season. I pulled the bats out, model R161, and noticed--because of the grain patterns--that they were too heavy. But I decided I'd use one of them, at the very least, for my batting practice bat.
Now I had to write something on the bat. At Memorial Stadium, the bat room was not too close to the clubhouse, so I wanted to write something that I could find immediately if I looked up and it was 4:44 and I had to get out there on the field a minute later and not be late. There were five big grocery carts full of bats in there and if I wrote my number 3, it could be too confusing. So I wrote F--k Face on it.
After the season was over, in early January, I got a call from our PR guy Rick Vaughn. He said, "Billy, we have a problem." And he told me what was written on the bat and I couldn't believe it. I went to a store and saw the card and it all came back to me. We were in Fenway Park and I had just taken my first round of BP. I threw my bat to the third base side and strolled around the bases. When I was coming back, right before I got up to hit again, I remember a guy tapping me on the shoulder asking if he could take my picture. Never once did I think about it. I posed for the shot and he took it.
That card was central to my eighth grade experience. My friends and I were all really into baseball card collecting -- we knew the value of all cards (thanks to Beckett), we got together to organize our cards and put them into binders, we swapped cards, we sold them... hell, we even went to card conventions whenever we could talk a parent into taking us.
Most of our conversations focused on one of four topics: sports, Nintendo (the original NES, thank you), baseball cards and, increasingly (the soon to be dominant topic) girls.
When the Billy Ripken card came out, all discussion revolved around it. Did someone at Fleer doctor the card? Did someone play a joke on Billy? Did Billy sneak the bat into the photo? (Thanks to this theory, we were all Billy Ripken fans that season.)
Fleer's cards were generally considered second-tier, but now everyone was buying packs of Fleer cards. The kids from wealthier families were buying whole boxes of Fleer cards, just to find this card. When one guy found a card, the whole school would know by second period. People who'd previously only each other by site now appeared to be fast friends, tied by the bond of the treasure hunt.
This hunt only lasted for a little while. The card, though tough for us to find at our one middle school, really wasn't all that rare, and the value of the card dropped as more copies were found. And then Fleer announced that they'd pulled the card -- only a corrected (and therefore worthless) version of the Billy Ripken card would be issued from then on. The treasure hunt ruined, we went back to our ordinary middle school lives.
For some reason, my interest in baseball cards died at the end of this period. I don't think I grew out of it... I mean, I still love video games, so why not baseball cards? Instead, I think that I'd been spoiled. I'd experienced comraderie, the thrill of the hunt. By contrast, the rest of the hobby felt shallow and lifeless.
And so ended my baseball collecting career. Still, Billy's card remains one of those rare pieces of shared history for people my age. Mention F--k Face, The Code, or Who Broke My Window?, and people my age will know exactly what you're talking about. Those ties are rare, and I cherish them. So thanks Billy, and thank you Fleer, for creating such a momentus childhood memory.
[Via kottke]
Make Sports Video Games Fun Again
RBI Baseball is rumored to make its return to the XBLA in 2009.
A friend picked up NBA Live '09 for the XBox 360 last weekend and had this to say:
It's complex, but you can win the NBA Championship using only the basic controls, which tells me all the advanced features are unnecessary. Hoops is all about running isos and hitting open jump shots -- I dont need to press 6 buttons to do that.
I couldn't agree more. Developers have, in their noble attempt to reach new heights in their quest for realism, made sports games too complex. They're becoming simulations that, realistic as they may be, aren't necessarily fun. Instead, developers should take a page from Mike Singletary and return to the fundamentals.
Developers should aim to make sports games with the following 10 Goals in mind:
- Consistent physics.
- Smart, fair AI.
- Updated graphics (cartoony or cel-shaded is fine... just make it look clean in HD).
- The latest licensed rosters.
- Seamless online play.
- Draft and Career modes that are quick to set up and easy to manage. (The original NES Baseball Stars is a great model).
- Minimal learning curve. I don't want to spend a month learning how to use every button on the control pad. I don't have time for that. Just because a game is simple doesn't mean it doesn't have depth. (For more, see Go, Chess, Bridge, Texas Hold'em.)
- The option to play short games that feel both fair and complete -- who wants to spend an hour on a single game?
- Polished interface design, including menus and statistics. Menus should look professional and be easy to figure out. No manual should be needed. Also, only useful stats should be kept. I don't need to know every detail, but I want to know the info that's shown in a standard ESPN boxscore. If obscure stats are used, let them flow naturally into the game -- maybe as pop-up stats or a ticker during the game. (See these links for more on elegant design and the importance of innovative details.)
- The game must, must, must be fun to play.
That's all I want. Is that so much to ask?
The recently-released update to Street Fighter II -- a 10 year old game -- is a perfect example of what I mean. Capcom didn't go overboard. Instead, they just took what worked, modified the engine to close a couple cheats and improve gameplay balance, added online play and updated the graphics. Simple. But the result is a beautiful game.
Produce updated versions of Tecmo Super Bowl, NBA Live '95 and RBI Baseball. I'll be a happy camper, and you'll have developed franchises that print money.
#50 Will Fix The 49ers
Eyes. Intensity. Focus. Singletary.
Mike Singletary is the best. I loved him when he was the best linebacker in the NFL and the heart of the Bears' defense. He's been a great mentor and coach to Patrick Willis, the Niners' middle linebacker and a beast of a player.
This week, after Mike Nolan was fired as San Francisco's head coach, Nolan said the next coach needed to be Mike Singletary... and if Singletary said no, Nolan thought it was so important that he'd be willing to talk to the Hall of Famer.
After another mistake-ridden loss by for the once-great franchise, Coach Singletary spoke his mind at the post-game press conference. Honesty can be so refreshing.
And in case you missed it, yes, Singletary kicked his star second-year tight end, a top former top draft pick and a guy who was supposed to be a core member of the team for years to come, out of the game.
From Rotoworld:
Interim 49ers coach Mike Singletary confirmed in his post-game press conference Sunday that Vernon Davis was benched and sent to the locker room in Week 8 after committing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
"I will not tolerate players who think it is about them and not the team," the fired up coach said. "I'd rather play with 10 people...Rather than play with 11, when I know that right now, that person is not sold out to be part of the team. You can not play with them. You can not win with them. I want winners. I told him he'd do a better job for us right now taking a shower and coming back and watching the game." Singletary added that he'll "think about" whether Davis will keep his starting job during the Week 9 bye.
Sam McGuffie, UMich RB
Sam McGuffie
Kid's a freak. Read the SI article and then watch the highlights. A Michigan freshman, McGuffie became a sensation after The Hurdle and MCGUFFIE MIXTAPE! hit YouTube.
It's important to understand how he evolved into a 6-foot, 190-pound streak of lightning who can bench press 355 pounds, tightrope the sideline and flip over 6-7, blue-chip offensive linemen without dropping the football. His genes help. When coach John Basel met a young McGuffie in the late '90s, Basel knew just by watching McGuffie run that he'd stumbled upon a superior athlete. Basel also noticed something else.
"He could walk on his hands from day one," Basel said.
Basel isn't a football coach. He has owned Basel's All-Star Gymnastics and Cheer Academy in Spring, Texas, since 1992. McGuffie honed his handstands, flips and tumbling in Basel's beginning boys' gymnastics program for a short time before McGuffie's family moved to Cypress. Basel believes if McGuffie had stuck with gymnastics, he might have made a college team. That said, Basel isn't heartbroken McGuffie took the strength and agility he learned in gymnastics to the gridiron.
[Photo via USA Today.]
On The USA Men's Hoops Team
VC's monster dunk over Weis wasn't enough to bring home the gold in 2000.
All from http://truehoop.com/
Ryan Schwan of Hornets247 has been watching some international hoops, and has some deft observations: "When you watch the other teams, who are experienced with international ball, they initiate their offensive sets about six to eight feet back from the three point line. Their wing shooters hover a good three to four feet back from the line. The US, however, like good NBA players, initiate their offense at -- or a few feet behind -- the three point line. Their wings toe it. This is especially the case with slash-minded players like Anthony, Wade, James, and Bryant. In the NBA, this is fine -- the wider arc of the 3-point line adds another 6 feet to the space within it, giving penetrators more room to operate, and generating greater spacing. But the international arc is so much shorter, when a player penetrates, the help defense has three or four fewer feet to cover to collapse on them. Watching the games -- at times it does seem amazing how quickly the defenses will jam penetration and attack post players. When Redd is on the floor - he actually sits where the normal three-point line is -- and that does help the spacing and our half court offense. Deron Willams and Paul are also adept at making their moves well outside the three-point line -- probably because as point guards, they are a little more used to making moves further out, using as much floor as they can to create space on their defender. Hopefully, they'll figure that out. It would help [Dwight] Howard greatly. ... [On defense] this team ballhawks too damn much. All of 'em. A team can support one ballhawk. Maybe two. But when all of the guys are chasing the ball, there are too many open shots. I still don't think we're going to lose, but some disciplined team is going to make us pay and keep it close. ... That team will be Spain."
Yahoo's Kelly Dwyer on team USA's tune-ups: "Back-door screens still kill Team USA, and though the men still have the athleticism to recover and sometimes make up for it, Coach K's crew is still getting beat way too much by teams using Team USA's pressure against itself. That pressure seems to be a rallying point, both for Coach K, and legions of observers who still think the US can pressure non-stop and bully toward the gold medal. The team racks up oodles of steals, but once those turnovers dry up, this is still a limited defensive outfit. And it's a limited, three-point happy, offensive outfit in the half court. The team continues to make decisions that were depressing not as an American watching his country being represented overseas, but as a basketball fan in general. A long fadeaway jumper is the easiest shot in the world (and we mean that, "in the world," at this stage) to get, and there's a reason why you're usually open when you take it. Because guys like Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James can make one out of every three, though, they think the next one is going in. And that kills an offense."