Better late than never? You be the judge

Well, hello everyone.

Back from the computer black hole I’ve been living in since about 6 a.m.; replete with a new external keyboard, a new mouse and things seem to be going well.

(Of course, a new keyboard and mouse take some time to get used to so pardon the inevitable typos, okay?)

So, where were we?

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Joakim Noah gets dinged for $50,000 after Kobe got $100,000 for pretty much the same thing and the reasoning from the league is that Bryant abused an official so that’s why his transgression was deemed more serious.

I’m about ready to call shenanigans on that.

I guess you can see the logic in the explanation about the difference but I think the mitigation in the Noah case would be the fact he apologized abjectly at the first chance he got and there may have been some provocation.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You know where I stand on the use of that word and the impact it can have. It’s a terrible thing to say, a slur that should never be used and there can be no justification for it. Ever.

But with the way some fans behave, the only thing that surprises me is that there aren’t more incidents of at least verbal jousting between players and possibly over-served spectators.

I am all for fans cheering and urging on their team and that kind of stuff but the sense of entitlement some of these people feel – to make remarks personal and cutting and hurtful and about things outside the game – shocks me.

Talking to a handful of Bulls yesterday, it was obvious that the guy that Noah yelled at was being non-stop abusive from just about the opening tip.

What also surprises me, though, is that if the guy was that bad, how the Chicago security official who sits near the bench – and every team has one at every game – didn’t get involved and have the guy thrown out or at least moved.

Until that happens and the message gets delivered loud and clear that some behaviour won’t be tolerated, I fear we’ll have more incidents.

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If you put a guy and a gal from Chicago, one from Newark and one from Toronto in the same cab you get all kinds of fun conversation. Ours started with a lament for late Harmon Killebrew (the dude from Chicago is an old Twin Cities) guy, morphed in a great baseball trivia question that was solved quickly (Name the two northernmost cities to host a World Series game?) and then we got the hard one. Really hard.

And if you promise not to peak, I’ll give you the answer down below:

Only three players in the history of the game have hit home runs both before their 20th birthday and after their 40th birthday. Who are they?

Have fun.

And NO PEAKING!

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So, who’s the MVP of the playoffs so far?

Has to be Dirk, right?

Two 40-point games in one series, his team’s probably the best one playing and he’s virtually unstoppable.

Trouble is, unlike say, the pucks, there is no playoff MVP in the NBA. The only thing they give out is a Finals MVP so when it comes to post-season awards, Dirk’s really done nothing.

Well, not “nothing” but you know what I mean.

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Let’s get this one out of the mail and we’ll start the weekly process of asking for questions now. Click, write, send.

Q: I tell my wife, no real rules for food. Cake anytime. But if it is good cake then it is no more healthy than bacon, so why not have more bacon?

When do you think the Raps will have a real sense of who they want and create a one to five list?

An all NBA question, are teams told to keep their picks quiet (ala Survivor voting off the island) so it makes better TV? You have to feel that #1 choice has no reason to be a secret, plus we hear of 'promises' being made all the time.

 

Bruce M, Winnipeg

A: Your wife buys that? Good for you!

Anyway … I’d say, because there’s a bit of indecision surrounding some of the teams ahead of them (Will Minnesota deal the pick? What will Utah do?) and there are still so many interviews to hold and workouts to conduct, I don’t imagine they’ll narrow anything down until at least the second week of June and even then it’ll still be quite fluid.

And teams aren’t told to keep their picks quiet but they do to make sure those teams drafting around them are kept in the dark. The draft, and the runup to it, is a time of great disinformation campaigns.

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Oh yeah, since I’ve got this fancy schmancy new keyboard, we may as well gather here tonight around 8:30 p.m. for an IGBT, right?

See you then.

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I’m sticking with Kirstie Alley tonight, by the way. Although don’t sleep on Hines Ward.

(Obligatory DWTS note, even if I’ve missed most of the season).

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What of the Oklahoma City Thunder?

A meltdown of biblical proportions last night probably killed their season, there’s all kinds of stuff swirling around on whether or not Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant can co-exist, there was the fourth-quarter benching of Westbrook the other night and you can get a sense there’s an uneasiness around a franchise thought to be a model one.

Now, I’m not saying blow it up and if they were to at least acquit themselves well in however many games remain it’ll ease the pain of losing. But doesn’t it show how fragile things can be? A week ago everyone was lauding the Thunder; today they are questions.

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Okay, ready?

Gary Sheffield, Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub.

You’re welcome.

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Comments

[D-Mac Ottawa]

@Kent, the point has next to nothing to do with 'opportunity' and pretty much everything to do with 'differentiating' on the basis of nothing that matters. Of course the doors are open to non-U.S. players: precisely because the NBA is open enough (and smart enough) to recognize they're talented enough to participate! Failing to see the correlation between "Euro" and "woman" and "African American" and "expletive deleted" goes a long way to support the need for making exactly the point I was making. Thanks. And good call on the Heat well ahead of the playoffs. Cheers.

[J]

LOL.

I really wonder if the people typing some of their posts truly believe in what they're saying.

These "facts" are nothing more than selective information used to back a point. For every "fact", another "fact" can be used in counter (e.g. the % of players from each continent to attain a certain milestone, or the % of draftees from each continent to not amount to anything). Unfortunately, all of these "facts" only take away from one actual fact: if a prospect is truly the BPA, who cares what any stat says about players from the same country.

Stats, lest we forget, are a representation of something that has already happened and, in that, are useful in predicting future trends. They are by no means useful in determining the ability of any one individual prospect, except, apparently, when certain "experts" have no actual evidence upon which to base their opinion.

[J]

@Kent:

"well,18 of 20 starters on the 4 teams are Americans. Don't take this the wrong way; just want to counter a fact with another fact."

I just noticed something amusing. This "fact" is more fiction than fact.

- Of the Thunder's starters, Sefolosha is Swiss and Ibaka is Congolese.

- Of the Mavericks' starters, Nowitzki is German. (So that puts us at three non-Americans already?)

- Of the Bulls' starters, Deng is Sudanese/British. Or are we not counting him because he attended an American high school and one year of an American college?

- For the Heat, it doesn't even matter who you deem the starter. Is it Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who started the first eight playoff games, as well as 51 regular season games? Because he's Lithuanian. Or did you mean Joel Anthony, who started the five most recent playoff games, but only 11 regular season games? Because he's Canadian, unless we once again provide an exception for attending an American college.

By my count, that's five non-Americans out of the 20 playoff starters. I'd be interested in knowing what your definition of "American" is. If Kleiza was starting on one of those four teams, would he be part of your American or non-American count? How about Nikola Vucevic and Kosta Koufos?

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"All 5 players on the all-NBA 1st team are Americans; 12 out 15 players on the All-NBA teams are Americans; had there been a 4th team, based on the votes posted on nba.com, all five of them also would have been Americans. From a base-rate perspective, maybe it is better to draft an American."

I don't think this particular stat means anything, especially when you're trying to find a stat that backs your view (why a 4th All-NBA team and not a 5th or 6th, and why just this year but not the last seven, where three years in a row, 40% of the 1st All-NBA team was non-American?), but let's oblige you with this year's All-NBA teams for a moment.

Even with only the first three All-NBA teams in mind, your count and conclusion are both wrong. There are, in fact, four non-American All-NBA players: Gasol, Nowitzki, Ginobili and, yes, Al Horford, who is Dominican. Even if you somehow have cause to lump Horford in as an American, your conclusion is still wrong. Considering 87 of the 438 players (19.86%) listed on rosters at Yahoo.com were born outside of the U.S. and the Virgin Islands, 3 out of 15 (20%) is actually right on the mark. Then when I tell you that of the 87 foreign-born players, three of them are Anthony Randolph, Donte Greene and Xavier Henry, and many more attended American schools (so if you exclude Al Horford, Luol Deng and Joel Anthony, you'd have to exclude them too), that 20% is starting to look VERY good.

Perhaps you meant it is better to draft a non-American?

[Kent]

@J
- why 4th, and not 5th or 6th? um, ask that question to yourself out loud.
- why this year and not the previous three? um, ok, here are the all-NBA first teams from the 3 previous years. 2010: LBJ, KD, Dwight, Kobe, Wade. 2009: LBJ, Dirk, Dwight, Kobe, Wade. 2008: LBJ, KG, Dwight, Kobe, Paul. Yeah, look at all those Europeans. LOL, as you like to say. All I see here are what would have been Team USA's starting five in those years.
-Al Horford has lived in the US since he was a child and has expressed interest in playing for the USA national team. Nice try. Technicalities are only for the weak.
-ok, the argument about the ratios are ridiculous. There's no cap on the number of non-American players that can play in the NBA. The 3/15 (20%) number is not CAUSED by the fact that we only allowed 87 non-Americans in the league. In other words, it's not like the NBA is keeping a bunch of extremely talented Euros out of the league and that, if they played, they would have made the all-NBA teams.