LeBron has been unlucky not to hit more than 37 triple doubles. To date he has 303 games with 7+ Ast, 7+ Reb, 162 with 8+Ast, 8+Reb and 71 with 9+ Ast, 9+ Reb; but only 37 triple-doubles. That’s weird.
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Aldridge wants to write a column as long as “In Search of Lost Time.”
David Aldridge of NBA.com broke down the current cap situation, since the NBA players union is rejecting the idea of smoothing.
Without smoothing, the cap will spike in 2016 — from its current $63 million to an estimated $90 million for the 2016-17 season. And the floor — the minimum amount that every team must spend on salaries — would increase from the current $56.579 million (90 percent of the total cap) to around $81 million per team in ’16-’17. A year from now, just about every team in the league will have significant cap room to spend on free agents.
He breaks down how this may affect free agency for different players. There is an interview with George Karl towards the end, and there’s even a section about how the Grizzlies have been playing poorly. He also mentions Kyrie’s awesome 57 point game, in addition to showing the best quotes from the NBA this past week. Finally, he explains string theory. Seriously though, Aldridge’s columns warrant calling him David Aldridge Wallace. Set aside a day or two for this read.
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Bradford Doolittle of ESPN Insider ruminated on the state of the modern big man in the NBA. The modern big man is just a big man in size. His skills involve things only point guards should do like dribbling. Statistically, young bigs dominate WARP.
Which brings me back to Davis and Antetokounmpo. They both show up on the three-year WARP leaderboard comprised of players who won’t yet be 23 by season’s end. Davis leads all such players, ranking in the 98.9 percentile of all league players regardless of age, while Antetokounmpo ranks eighth and is in the 58.1 percentile. The interesting thing is that there is nary a point guard in the under-23 top 10. In fact, you have to skip all the way down to No. 19 to find Atlanta’s Dennis Schroder, the top under-23 point guard.
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Kevin Love and Eric Decker played a game of H-O-R-S-E. The video doesn’t say who won. Why are they in jeans you ask? It was produced by some fashion guru named Buffalo David Bitton. All I know about fashion is that Russell Westbrook wears True Religion Denim and also makes better videos than this.
My verdict after watching this video is that Kevin needs to play in jeans, wear a hat, or sport a cotton t-shirt during regular NBA games. Then he will be allowed to use tennis rackets and footballs instead of a basketball to score. That might help him out on his off nights.
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WNBA super star Diana Taurasi is staying in Russia this season instead of coming back to play for the WNBA’s defending champions, the Phoenix Mercury. Russia is apparently pretty awesome for women players, even though it’s cold and still Russia. Charly Wilder of The New York Times has the story.
The owner of her current team — an Uzbek multibillionaire, Iskander Makhmudov — takes a more hands-off approach. He comes to some of the games and celebrations, but for the most part, he simply foots the bill from afar. If anything, though, U.M.M.C. maintains an even more lavish style than Spartak did. The team charters private jets and caters lunch between its two daily practices. Taurasi has her own translator, a round-the-clock driver and a sleekly renovated, rent-free two-bedroom apartment with panoramic views of the city.
In the W.N.B.A., by contrast, she flies coach on 6 a.m. Southwest flights with connections in Atlanta or Dallas. She is her own driver, and nobody caters lunch. The league uses a system of salary caps that limits the entirety of a team’s wage expenditure, which means that Taurasi, one of the W.N.B.A.’s few superstars, cannot earn more than the league maximum of $109,500, aside from modest bonuses. By contrast, U.M.M.C. pays her close to $1.5 million per season.
Some of the stories in the piece are insane. The guy who recruited her for the Moscow Spartak was pretty much assassinated. This same man gave her 15,000 euros to go shopping one time. She lost the money, and he gave her 15,000 euros again.
Earl’s Pearl of the Week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXxt8hJbelo
J.R. Smith loves shooting and getting points more than anything in life. Kyrie is Earl’s Pearl for his 57 point demonstration against the Spurs last Thursday. Irving hit 20 of his 32 shots. The Cavs won in overtime, 128-125. Irving sank all seven of his 3s.
Bottom Lines of the Week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RIQUaI1DQA
Kyrie wins the line of the week too, but I can’t give it to him for his 57 point performance. On Sunday against the Magic, Kyrie went into “advanced metrics will break because of me” mode. He put up 33 points on just 15 shots. He even dished out four assists and shot 5-6 from behind the arc.
The best quote of the week is from last night. Here’s coach Gregg Popovich on losing to the Knicks in overtime, 104-100:
It was a pathetic performance, and I hope that every player is embarrassed.
I received that as an alert on my phone and immediately busted out laughing for some odd reason. Follow this link for the Vine of it. It’s classic Pop.
Re: Bill Simmons
In my opinion, he’s an excellent illustration of the fickle nature of human beings.
Before someone/something hits mainstream, it’s trendy to be a fan. The longer someone/something has been mainstream, the less trendy it is to be a fan. Then, it becomes trendy to “be a hater” of the subject/object and the still existing fans.
Kind of annoying.
This is true. However, Simmons has really been wrong about the Cavs and LeBron and Love this year. I mean FFS the guy hated the Mozgov trade and the Waiters trade and both of those trades have been great for the Cavs.
Yeah, that’s the thing with strong takes, you look especially stupid when you’re wrong. However, Simmons didn’t gain popularity because of his uncanny ability to predict things. He gained popularity because he’s not afraid to have strong opinions and he delivers them humorously. To me, that’s his calling card and it hasn’t changed.
What’s interesting about Simmons and Lebron is that he was right on about him for a long time. His piece after the decision was one of the best out there. In fact, I think he’s still pretty right on with his criticisms of Lebron. Less so about the Cavs and Cleveland in general. He is mad a cleveland right now because he wanted Boston to win the lottery last year and he wanted Love to go to Boston. His homerism gets in the way too often. It was never cute and now its become downright stupid.
But that’s the way it goes with all things new and trendy once they hit the mainstream. They cease to be new and trendy, so the perpetrator (in this case Simmons) has to find other ways to be new and trendy. He actually succeeded in this by creating GrantLand. Unfortunately, it worked too well, since most of the other writers on it have out-paced him since it’s inception. I also think that Bill made the cardinal sin that sometimes befalls the new and trendy… he bought into his own press and saw himself as being just as important as the… Read more »
I still enjoy Simmons a ton. He’s full of it, but being 25 now, he was one of the first sports writers, outside of Pluto, where I was like dang, this is entertaining. (Pluto is a different form of entertainment). I think a lot of people found a love for basketball writing through the passion Simmons showed.
I’ll be at the game tonight. I’m 6 for 7! This should be an easy win if Love, Irving and LeBron all play. I went to the previous CAVS v NETS back in December, when I had to pour in some Miller Lite’s to watch MILLER TIME. Unfortunately, it’s been all downhill for Mike since then as he has fallen out of the rotation and relegated to GARBAGE TIME. From MILLER TIME to GARBAGE TIME!
#C:tBKarma in the house with Arch!
Obama is in town also. I wonder if he’ll go to the Cavs game?
Ha. Get his autograph if you can!!!
I don’t know. Tickets are hard to come by.
I’m sure LBJ will get some for him courtside… then pose with him after the game and wind up touching Michelle’s shoulder or something… which will then break Twitter…
Front page of Grantland:
I had totally forgotten about this game, which I was at. Some very nice interview moments with David Blatt.
That was good, however I disagree with the premise. The tourney would’ve been huge with or without that game.
I tend to agree. I think the actual wins of Cinderella teams over Indiana, Syracuse, etc. had a bigger long term impact.
The main thing is whether this game kept the Ivy League and other small conferences in the tournament. I’m sure it helped. And I think it makes college basketball more fun that those teams are in the tournament and bad teams from power conferences are out.
Great piece, and it was spot on in the importance of that game. The two big impacts together shaped the phenomenon that the tournament has become: –It led directly to CBS taking over the whole tournament the following year, as the CBS programming executive detailed. Until then, most of the games were on ESPN (or, before ESPN, syndicated to random stations in local markets). In the media landscape of the time, CBS drew far bigger audiences than ESPN, so the CBS takeover helped make the whole tournament a mainstream event, not just the Final Four or championship game. –It kept… Read more »
Drew Magary did a great piece on Simmons last week. Link below. The problem is that he has become so wrapped up in all of his own narratives of players, which means that all of his columns (and podcasts) devolve into self-referential tangents about how/why Player X’s current performance fits into Bill Simmons’ prior beliefs about how/why Player X would perform. A striking example of this is his recent podcast with Barkley. The point of the podcast was to discuss Kyrie’s 57 point game, which Barkley attended. Instead of marveling at what Kyrie did, and how special he is in… Read more »
That podcast started out OK, got great in the middle when Barkely talked about how awesome he was, then devolved into sheer madness when Barkley said that players today don’t know how to play as well as players from his era. Which is crazy. Basketball is being played at a much much higher level in the NBA today than it was back then. Players actually play defense now and the crazy movement offenses run by the Heat, Spurs, Warriors, etc, are all much more potent than the offenses of the early 1990s.
Simmons is an idiot when it comes to LeBron. Having 50,000 minutes doesn’t make you an old basketball player. Getting old makes you an old basketball player.
LeBron is so athletic and can also shoot and pass so freaking well that he’s going age quite gracefully. I imagine he plays a long long time and wins a couple of more MVPs before it’s all through.
Here, here on Simmons being an idiot. He has lost all perspective, and believes his own thoughts way too much.
LBJ is probably still #1, but AD is closing in on him.
I would add Kyrie to the Westbrook, Harden, Steph bucket at 3-4-5. He is definitely ahead of CP3, Blake, and Boogie due to age.
Simmons used to be much better than this, but something about LeBron brings out the crazy in him. He’s been wrong about pretty much everything Cavs related this season.
And no, Love is not leaving Cleveland. Most money, best chance to win is a combination that has never been turned down.
Minutes has a lot to do with it, as well as age, as well as genetics, as well as injuries. LeBron has freakish athleticism and training, which will allow him to play at a high level for likely 4-5 more years. But his minutes need to be managed to minimize injury risks, the way the Spurs have done with Duncan, etc. But don’t think the total number of minutes don’t take their toll. Rashard Lewis hit the wall after about 30,000 minutes he was 30. LeBron has almost 36,000 (right where Jordan was after his last championship). Antawn Jamison hit… Read more »
None of those guys are LeBron. He’s not a car. He’s a human. We get worse because our reflexes and muscle memory starts to fade as we get older and it gets harder to recover from injuries. But this is due to age, not some stupid thing like minutes. If LeBron had played 200,000 NBA minutes by the time he was 21 he’d still be great. It’s age, not the mileage. But yes, they do need to rest him because as he gets older he will get more injured and those injuries usually take longer to heal as you GET… Read more »
I thought we already cleared this up in a December thread when we determined that LBJ is a cyborg?
Ha. Well I’m just pushing back this whole minutes = years theory. Because it hasn’t been tested at all. Jordan started to get worse because he got old, not because he played a bunch of minutes. This is theory that Simmons loves to talk about, but I don’t think it’s been tested at all. Minutes do not equal years. Humans get worse at athletics as they age because age kills your reflexes and your muscle memory. Not because your muscles only have so many minutes programmed into them. Also, getting older means more injuries and longer recover time. Not because… Read more »
Huh? If LeBron played 200,000 before he was 21 he would have retired at 22. Putting wear and tear on your knees, muscles/etc does cause players to fade and this can be measured fairly accurately by looking at a players minutes played. I’m not that worried about it right now, but he has started to decline due to minutes played. Only a blind homer wouldn’t agree… Oh wait?!?!?!?
Were is this data? It doesn’t exist. Players start getting bad because they get old, not because of minutes played.
Where. I suck. I suck
I think it’s fairly obvious Cols. I could give you further data like Nate had, but you would just claim it has to do with age only. Of course age matters, but minutes matter more. Players start to physically decline and need to change their games to be just as effective (or affective for the grammar nazi’s). I also think player type is also a variable. A Russell Westbrook will have to change his game a lot more than a Tim Duncan as their minutes played increase. So there are a few variables we are looking at here. There’s no… Read more »
People’s skill/health/athleticism deteriorates at different ages for different people and different usage rates. That is the obvious answer. Mike Miller and Dwayne Wade are almost the same age.
I do love how I point out an example (Malone) that basically agrees with you and you still argue.
Minutes do matter. Simply look at baseball. Pitchers have to let their arms recover or else they’ll destroy themselves. It’s obviously very different to most basketball motions, but doing any activity causes a ton of wear and tear.
Thanks David! Amazing how even when BS tries to say something nice about Cavs/LBJ, he still manages to make it some kind of backhanded compliment. Didn’t realize Zach gave birth, but glad he’s back and properly recognizing Moses Cleveland. Great call on David Aldridge Wallace! Although I read Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in college and then went in search of the time I lost while reading it… I had no idea that Eric Decker was that good at basketball trick shots… and I loved the Pop vine… he must have had nightmares about Sweet Lou and his 17… Read more »