1. My beloved Wolverines beat UConn today, and looked good doing it. The tournament dreams are still on life-support, but this certainly helps keep them alive. The next three games – all conference contests against good, ranked squads – will be crucial.
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1. Can someone please explain to me what the NFL offensive player of the year award means. I thought I knew – it seem self-evident – but this year’s voting leaves me totally mystified. Peyton Manning won the MVP award in a landslide because he was far more dominant and effective than any other player. It wasn’t really a debate. I’m pretty sure he’s an offensive player. If he’s the best player in the league then he should, I would think, be one of the best offensive players in the league. Apparently not. Chris Johnson won the award with 38.5 votes, while Manning was third with just 1.5 votes. Johnson won this award overwhelmingly, yet he didn’t get a single vote for MVP. Not one. There’s a logic problem here.
It’s too early to fully decide for now, but I think it’s safe to say that Richard Jefferson in San Antonio isn’t working as well it seemed like it would. He has seen the same basic amount of playing time that he has in the past, but his production has dropped by seven points from last year, and is his lowest since he was a rookie in 2001. Three of the last four years he has averaged about 20 points or more per game. This year he has only topped 20 points three times. The Spurs have limped out of the gate at just 10-9 after a win last night, and they have been mostly lousy on the road and against good competition. It doesn’t really matter how he does now as long as the team makes the playoffs, but clearly the chemistry isn’t working yet.
Andrew Bogut perplexes me. He has the look at times of what he is – a number one overall pick. Other times, though, he can look like the most common, uninspiring player on the planet. The reason I thought of this today was I caught part of Milwaukee’s game against the Celtics. Boston won fairly easily to drop Milwaukee for the eighth time in their last nine game.Bogut, though, was prett y special. He had 25 points and 14 boards, and he shot the lights out. In short, he played pretty much entirely up to his potential. He did that the othernight , too – on November 30the against the Bulls he had 22 and 15. The problem, though, is that sandwiched between those two all-star caliber performances were three absolutely stinky duds. He had a total of just 23 points and 20 rebounds combined in those three games, and he shot .323 from the field. I could understand this kind of maddening inconsistency if the guy was a rookie or even a sophomore, but given that he’s in his fifth year it’s frustrating, and it’s one of several reasons why the Bucks are a hard team to handicap these days.
Continue reading “Two NBA Notes, and One From College Football”
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at Florida State the last couple of days. Word is that Bobby Bowden is going to retire tomorrow. I have absolutely no doubt that he is doing the right thing – he has no business coaching anymore. That being said, I wasn’t expecting him to go easily. It will be very interesting to see what happens with this team next year. We have heard for a long time about how good Jimbo Fisher is, but now he has no safety net and no one to blame. I don’t like anything about the Seminoles, but the sport is unquestionably better when they are an elite squad.
So, when do the Cavs admit that they made a mistake and try to do something about it? And what can they do? Shaq has now missed six games in a row with injury, and he has been a mere shadow of himself when he has played – 11.3 points and 6.9 boards. TheCavs made a big splash getting him to fix their problems up the middle, and they messed up their salary cap this year in the process. If Shaq isn’t the answer then the team won’t likely be able to go all the way, and that means that LeBron is more likely to leave town. I could see management starting to panic soon if something doesn’t change, or if Shaq doesn’t showed both some health and some marked improvement. Panic is always fun to watch – unless the team panicking is one you are a fan of.
Wow, Cleveland is bad. So, so, so bad. Brady Quinn isn’t the answer. Is there an answer?
It was interesting watching the debut of John Wall in Kentucky tonight. It was pretty obvious why people are so excited about him – there is a lot of talent there. He turned it over too much, and he and fellow super-frosh Eric Bledsoe are going to have to learn to share the back court better, but he played well, and he scored the winning basket at the end of the game. He’s going to be a good one. That being said, that was one scary game from Kentucky. Miami of Ohio is a decent team with a very nice incoming freshman class, but they clearly aren’t of the caliber of Kentucky, and they were 17.5 point underdogs. Despite that, they were the better team for much of the game, and could very easily have pulled it out. Miami led for more of the game, and for much of the game they seemed to want it more. Kentucky simply needs to be much, much better to play with the big boys. They have a few easy game to work out the kinks, but a deadly four day stretch at the beginning of December in which they play UNC and UConn looms. They need to be much better than they were tonight if they want to survive that duo of potential disaster.
The Hornets have become the first team to fire a coach this year by booting Byron Scott just a year and a half after he was named NBA Coach of the Year. The team had limped out to a 3-6 start, and two of those win hardly count because they were against the Clippers and Kings. I’d sum up the way the franchise handled this with two words – inevitable and stupid. It was inevitable because Scott had to go because of the start and because of the way the season last year went – a disappointing regular season and humiliating playoffs. Chris Paul was frustrated and the team has no more important task than keeping Paul happy. They are already over the luxury tax threshold so they can’t overhaul the roster in a meaningful way, so Scott was the only real option. The move was stupid, though, because of their choice of a replacement. The new head coach is general manager Jeff Bower. He has been with the team since 1995 and he built the current team so he knows them well, but he has never been a head coach and a couple of assistant stints atMarist and Penn State a hundred years ago are his only real bits of (barely) relevant experience. They have also hired Tim Floyd as Bower’s top assistant. Not only if Floyd coming off a disgraceful exit from USC, but his last coaching experience in the NBA was with the Hornets – and they fired him in 2004 after one season because he didn’t do a good job. I have no problem with getting rid of Scott, but only if they replace with a coach with a good chance of being better than Scott was. I just don’t really see that here.
The Bulls lost a crushing game last night when their last second winning jumper was overturned after ten minutes of replay review. That has to hurt, but there were a couple of good Chicago notes to come out off the game. The first was that Derrick Rose continues to show how versatile and effective he can be. Just check out the line – 22 points, 5 assists, 2 blocks, a steal, a rebound, and no turnovers. The guy does a little bit of everything. He’s one heck of a player. Joakim Noah also had his second straight incredibly good game. He followed up a 16 rebound performance with 21 boards last night. This isn’t the first time Noah has strung together good games – he was brilliant in the playoffs last year. What he needs to do now is to find a way to keep his confidence high and his play strong like this over a more extended period. He has the capability to be an elite player if his normal output more closely approximated his best output.
We don’t talk about swimming here much for obvious reasons, but a story today caught my attention. Michael Phelps is currently swimming at a World Cup meet in Stockholm. He’s not at his peak fitness by his own admission, and he’s sporting a beard, so he clearly isn’t looking to set world records. He’s still Michael Phelps, though, so it is very significant that he failed to qualify for two of his first three finals at the meet. The most glaring explanation for this is the swim suit. Swimming is doing the right thing next year by banning the ridiculous high tech swimsuits that have so changed the sport over the last couple of years. In anticipation of that, Phelps is using a regular suit at this meet while his competition uses high tech ones. This is a clear example of just how much of an impact the suits have. It seems ridiculous that a sport would allow something that would change the sport so fundamentally. It would be like MLB suddenly deciding to allow aluminum bats, or using softballs instead of baseballs. Those changes would make a mockery of hitting records just like the new suits have destroyed the meaning of world records.
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