Team USA and Football
I am a bona fide NBA junkie. I follow it closer than any sane person should. I read out of market papers I watch replays of old games, I can tell you off the top of my head that the NBA channel is 601 on Directv and don’t get me started on how much I love/need my NBA league pass. So, that may make it easier to understand that I have watched ever minute of every game that has been televised anywhere that the current Team USA has played. Frankly, I don’t get why this competition isn’t a bigger deal over here. Here’s what you get with the FIBA World Championships:
1. An NBA all-star team playing games that really matter. We all love the NBA all-star weekend in spite of Stern’s ridiculous refusal to incorporate a huge game of H-O-R-S-E into the weekend. We love watching all those great players on the same court together. We watch our favorite start on their own teams all the time wondering, what would it be like if D Wade was finishing that sweet dish from LBJ instead of Eric Snow. So, the first thing you get is some truly great players playing side by side. But unlike the all-star game, where both teams do nothing but throw lob passes for missed dunks and try streetball moves that usually fail, until you get near the end and Iverson takes over because he’s so hypercompetitive, these games matter. Now more than ever.
2. You get to marvel at how unathletic the rest of the world’s players are. I’m not saying their bad ballplayers or bad teams, after all they’ve been kicking our butts lately, but they are, for the most part, slow and earth bound. Let me just say this, Rasho Nesterovic is one of the more athletic international players I’ve seen this year.
3. You get to see some incredible shooting. Since the players over sees can’t jump, they all shoot and shoot well. You don’t have defensive specialists or rebounding stiffs. Every guy that walks on the floor is a threat to drain from 3 and even more likely to hit from 15 feet. And it’s not just that they get on streaks, these guys hit from anywhere all the time. If you’re just talking pure shooters, I’m not sure a single American player in the NBA would even crack the top 20. No joke
4. You get a newfound appreciation for American Refs. Think the officiating in the NBA is subpar? Watch a FIBA game. It is brutal. So far, the only pattern I can find as to when they blow their whistles is to disrupt the flow of the game. If both teams are really rolling and the tempo is steady and the game is a pleasure to watch, there will be 4 fouls called in a row and a mysterious technical called on someone that no one can explain or justify. One thing I will say though, is that I was expecting it to be very biased against the hated Americans, but it hasn’t been. It has been awful, but equally awful for the various teams. In fact, I even get the impression that the refs like most of the American players who really do very little whining except Chris Bosh who needs to shut up and wipe that scoul off his should-just-be-glad-to-be-there face.
5. You get to watch the future of the NBA with pride and hope as you see them put their egos aside and play together. Wade, LeBron and Melo have been nothing short of spectacular and I’m not even talking about their level of play. I’m talking about their ability to play together. Here are three guys who expect that every important possession for their team will be run through them and none of them are hogging the ball. Melo is the worst and Bron is the least selfish, but even Melo has been a revelation. I’ve never been a Melo fan. I was and am a James fan. For some reason, you can’t be both. I think part of it is that Melo seems a bit to much the shoot-first, me-first player that we’ve been suffering through for the past 10 years. But even I have to give him props for the way he’s playing now. He is shooting lights out and is a huge part of the reason the USA is 5-0 in the tourney so far.
Here are my other random thoughts on Team USA
I still wish Redd and Ray Ray were on this team. That shooting would really help.
Hinrich is an all-world on the ball defender. He’s the best I’ve seen at harassing a guy up the court since Mookie Blaylock. I would hate playing against him. It just looks painful.
This team is terribly defensively. They can get after teams full court and cause some turnovers, but their defense in transition and in the half court and their defensive rebounding is surprisingly bad. I know they brought D’Antoni over to work with the O, but are they having him coach the D as well? This is my biggest concern for Team USA. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can cut through our D and get to the rim. When Howard or Brand are in, they protect fairly well, but it still breaks down the D and leads to lots of open shots. I haven’t seen a team yet struggle to get open shots and that includes the poor African team they trounced last. That team just couldn’t make anything. Guys like LeBron and Melo need to step it up to help the bigs, which aren’t so big, on the defensive glass.
Coach K is great. The right adjustments, the right lineups, the right choices in his captains and the right decision starting my boy Chris Paul who is sporting a 16-3 assist to turnover ratio. Seriously, he has 6 turnovers in 5 games as opposed to 32 assists. Oh, and did I mention he was a rook last year?
It hasn’t really happened yet, not even with Italy, but in the medal round, the US is going to be in trouble late and we are going to see the return of playoff D Wade. Wade has already been great. No complaints, but he has the MJ gear. The extra gear that says now that the game is on the line and it could go either way I am going to freakin dominate everyone on the floor. He doesn’t miss under pressure and can get to the rim at will. I mean it as much as I love Bron, Wade is the single biggest reason I believe US wins gold.
All the talk leading up to and during the tourney has been about how much the NBA players struggle under the international rules. What is missing is any mention of how true that is for foreign players in the NBA. In international play, Carlos Arroyo is one of the most dangerous players on the floor. Jose Calderon is considered dominant. Carlos Delfino is game changer. We’ve seen those guys play and mostly suck in the NBA, but we don’t hear much about the fact that just because the international rules make it tough for NBA players to adjust, doesn’t mean the NBA isn’t still by far the best basketball league on the planet. No combo of Euro players I’ve seen in this tourney would be a legit threat to even get out of the lottery in the NBA. This shouldn’t be forgotten whether the US team wins or loses.
Now, on to football.
My fantasy draft is coming up and I don’t want to offer anyone from my league who might read this any insight into my mastermind strategy, but I have to make some comments about the upcoming NFL and Fantasy seasons.
I run a fantasy football league that is a keeper league with a snaking draft. Each year, we choose where we want to pick in the draft based on our finish the year before. Unfortunately, I got to choose second this year where I want to draft which tells you all you need to know about last season. Not every player is keeper eligible every year, so in our league Ladanian Tomlinson was available to draft while the other top backs, Alexander and LJ were not. I was hoping Jeff, who was choosing in front of me would stay away from the first overall pick, so I could grab it and take Tomlinson. Sadly, he was not that foolish.
So, I tried to figure out how many players there were that I would put in roughly the same category behind Tomlinson. There were/are 4. So, I chose the 5th spot in the draft knowing I would get one of them and thinking that even though I like some better than others, I had to get as low as possible so I still had a chance to get something good on the way back. The right choice? Well see. I did the same thing last year and took Deuce McAllister. Deuce went down and so did my season.
LJ and Bush are both going to be drafted too high this year in leagues everywhere
This might be the year I take a Defense earlier than the last couple rounds
I think Willie Parker and Drew Bledsoe are going to be drafted too low this year in leagues everywhere
If I didn’t already have one as a keeper (Hassleback), I would draft a QB high this year if I could get one of the good ones. There aren’t very many
If you’re into fantasy and haven’t yet and have 30 minutes to kill, try one of the mock drafts on espn.com. it’s informative and pretty entertaining. My one try led to this exchange between me and one of the other mock drafters:
Me: Randy Moss in the second round, seriously? Was that your pick or did you leave it on autodraft or what?
Him: Screw you. Randy Moss is the best WR in the game. I would have taken him in the first round (don’t know why he didn’t then), Plus your name is Stump
Me: Yes it is. Keen observation
Him: I know. Did I stump you?
Me: Did you spend the last round thinking that up or did you have your site set on “autojoke?”
Him: Stump is a funny name
Other Participants: “Him, shut up already.”
Good times.
I would love to have more discussion of fantasy football on this site, so if you have any comments or draft dilemmas toss them out there in the comments.
I am a bona fide NBA junkie. I follow it closer than any sane person should. I read out of market papers I watch replays of old games, I can tell you off the top of my head that the NBA channel is 601 on Directv and don’t get me started on how much I love/need my NBA league pass. So, that may make it easier to understand that I have watched ever minute of every game that has been televised anywhere that the current Team USA has played. Frankly, I don’t get why this competition isn’t a bigger deal over here. Here’s what you get with the FIBA World Championships:
1. An NBA all-star team playing games that really matter. We all love the NBA all-star weekend in spite of Stern’s ridiculous refusal to incorporate a huge game of H-O-R-S-E into the weekend. We love watching all those great players on the same court together. We watch our favorite start on their own teams all the time wondering, what would it be like if D Wade was finishing that sweet dish from LBJ instead of Eric Snow. So, the first thing you get is some truly great players playing side by side. But unlike the all-star game, where both teams do nothing but throw lob passes for missed dunks and try streetball moves that usually fail, until you get near the end and Iverson takes over because he’s so hypercompetitive, these games matter. Now more than ever.
2. You get to marvel at how unathletic the rest of the world’s players are. I’m not saying their bad ballplayers or bad teams, after all they’ve been kicking our butts lately, but they are, for the most part, slow and earth bound. Let me just say this, Rasho Nesterovic is one of the more athletic international players I’ve seen this year.
3. You get to see some incredible shooting. Since the players over sees can’t jump, they all shoot and shoot well. You don’t have defensive specialists or rebounding stiffs. Every guy that walks on the floor is a threat to drain from 3 and even more likely to hit from 15 feet. And it’s not just that they get on streaks, these guys hit from anywhere all the time. If you’re just talking pure shooters, I’m not sure a single American player in the NBA would even crack the top 20. No joke
4. You get a newfound appreciation for American Refs. Think the officiating in the NBA is subpar? Watch a FIBA game. It is brutal. So far, the only pattern I can find as to when they blow their whistles is to disrupt the flow of the game. If both teams are really rolling and the tempo is steady and the game is a pleasure to watch, there will be 4 fouls called in a row and a mysterious technical called on someone that no one can explain or justify. One thing I will say though, is that I was expecting it to be very biased against the hated Americans, but it hasn’t been. It has been awful, but equally awful for the various teams. In fact, I even get the impression that the refs like most of the American players who really do very little whining except Chris Bosh who needs to shut up and wipe that scoul off his should-just-be-glad-to-be-there face.
5. You get to watch the future of the NBA with pride and hope as you see them put their egos aside and play together. Wade, LeBron and Melo have been nothing short of spectacular and I’m not even talking about their level of play. I’m talking about their ability to play together. Here are three guys who expect that every important possession for their team will be run through them and none of them are hogging the ball. Melo is the worst and Bron is the least selfish, but even Melo has been a revelation. I’ve never been a Melo fan. I was and am a James fan. For some reason, you can’t be both. I think part of it is that Melo seems a bit to much the shoot-first, me-first player that we’ve been suffering through for the past 10 years. But even I have to give him props for the way he’s playing now. He is shooting lights out and is a huge part of the reason the USA is 5-0 in the tourney so far.
Here are my other random thoughts on Team USA
I still wish Redd and Ray Ray were on this team. That shooting would really help.
Hinrich is an all-world on the ball defender. He’s the best I’ve seen at harassing a guy up the court since Mookie Blaylock. I would hate playing against him. It just looks painful.
This team is terribly defensively. They can get after teams full court and cause some turnovers, but their defense in transition and in the half court and their defensive rebounding is surprisingly bad. I know they brought D’Antoni over to work with the O, but are they having him coach the D as well? This is my biggest concern for Team USA. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can cut through our D and get to the rim. When Howard or Brand are in, they protect fairly well, but it still breaks down the D and leads to lots of open shots. I haven’t seen a team yet struggle to get open shots and that includes the poor African team they trounced last. That team just couldn’t make anything. Guys like LeBron and Melo need to step it up to help the bigs, which aren’t so big, on the defensive glass.
Coach K is great. The right adjustments, the right lineups, the right choices in his captains and the right decision starting my boy Chris Paul who is sporting a 16-3 assist to turnover ratio. Seriously, he has 6 turnovers in 5 games as opposed to 32 assists. Oh, and did I mention he was a rook last year?
It hasn’t really happened yet, not even with Italy, but in the medal round, the US is going to be in trouble late and we are going to see the return of playoff D Wade. Wade has already been great. No complaints, but he has the MJ gear. The extra gear that says now that the game is on the line and it could go either way I am going to freakin dominate everyone on the floor. He doesn’t miss under pressure and can get to the rim at will. I mean it as much as I love Bron, Wade is the single biggest reason I believe US wins gold.
All the talk leading up to and during the tourney has been about how much the NBA players struggle under the international rules. What is missing is any mention of how true that is for foreign players in the NBA. In international play, Carlos Arroyo is one of the most dangerous players on the floor. Jose Calderon is considered dominant. Carlos Delfino is game changer. We’ve seen those guys play and mostly suck in the NBA, but we don’t hear much about the fact that just because the international rules make it tough for NBA players to adjust, doesn’t mean the NBA isn’t still by far the best basketball league on the planet. No combo of Euro players I’ve seen in this tourney would be a legit threat to even get out of the lottery in the NBA. This shouldn’t be forgotten whether the US team wins or loses.
Now, on to football.
My fantasy draft is coming up and I don’t want to offer anyone from my league who might read this any insight into my mastermind strategy, but I have to make some comments about the upcoming NFL and Fantasy seasons.
I run a fantasy football league that is a keeper league with a snaking draft. Each year, we choose where we want to pick in the draft based on our finish the year before. Unfortunately, I got to choose second this year where I want to draft which tells you all you need to know about last season. Not every player is keeper eligible every year, so in our league Ladanian Tomlinson was available to draft while the other top backs, Alexander and LJ were not. I was hoping Jeff, who was choosing in front of me would stay away from the first overall pick, so I could grab it and take Tomlinson. Sadly, he was not that foolish.
So, I tried to figure out how many players there were that I would put in roughly the same category behind Tomlinson. There were/are 4. So, I chose the 5th spot in the draft knowing I would get one of them and thinking that even though I like some better than others, I had to get as low as possible so I still had a chance to get something good on the way back. The right choice? Well see. I did the same thing last year and took Deuce McAllister. Deuce went down and so did my season.
LJ and Bush are both going to be drafted too high this year in leagues everywhere
This might be the year I take a Defense earlier than the last couple rounds
I think Willie Parker and Drew Bledsoe are going to be drafted too low this year in leagues everywhere
If I didn’t already have one as a keeper (Hassleback), I would draft a QB high this year if I could get one of the good ones. There aren’t very many
If you’re into fantasy and haven’t yet and have 30 minutes to kill, try one of the mock drafts on espn.com. it’s informative and pretty entertaining. My one try led to this exchange between me and one of the other mock drafters:
Me: Randy Moss in the second round, seriously? Was that your pick or did you leave it on autodraft or what?
Him: Screw you. Randy Moss is the best WR in the game. I would have taken him in the first round (don’t know why he didn’t then), Plus your name is Stump
Me: Yes it is. Keen observation
Him: I know. Did I stump you?
Me: Did you spend the last round thinking that up or did you have your site set on “autojoke?”
Him: Stump is a funny name
Other Participants: “Him, shut up already.”
Good times.
I would love to have more discussion of fantasy football on this site, so if you have any comments or draft dilemmas toss them out there in the comments.
Comments
- I'm probably the wrong person to start breaking down fantasy football with you, since I am in the very league you mention. However, as you know from email convos, I agree that QB is slim this year. There are only 6, maybe 7 guys that I trust. Unlike most people, one of those guys is Marc Bulger, which explains why I kept him over Donald Driver. (Although I think that move my haunt me this year.)
- I'm glad to hear you speak highly of Fast Willy. I hope you are right. One thing is for sure: Staley sucks. I read somewhere that Haynes might have passed him on the depth chart which is probably the saddest report to come out of training camp so far. What ever happened to the Duece that J-Jams and I made our fourth round pick back in 2002? (Granted, he kind of sucked then as well, but at least it was injury related.)
- Not sure I agree on Bledsoe. The 'Boys will score points, but Drew is due for a catastrophic injury, plus everyone in Dallas seems enamored with this Tony Roma's Ribs guy. I give The Statue nine full games, at best. He will be this year's Kurt Warner. That is, unless Kurt Warner is this year's Kurt Warner.
- Going over to Team USA, I am right there with you. Unfortunately, I've only seen two of the five games because of lodging concerns, travel, and the cable going out. However, the exhibition game against Puerto Rico was a thing of beauty. I watched the whole second half with a smile on my face. I LOVE Team USA. I even loved the 2004 version (although I wanted to slay Larry Brown - nice work by him, by the way; the three guys you correctly mention as being the key to this team and the future of the game were all at LB's disposal in Athens and he was too dumb to know it. And it's not like they weren't good enough then. I'd better stop there or I will go roaring into the world's longiest and angriest paranthetical.)
- Interesting that you mention Bosh's whining in the context of that fact that he should just be happy to be there. Chris Sheridan of ESPN wrote an article about Bosh riding pine and how it "wasn't what he signed up for." I couldn't tell who came across as more annoying - Bosh for being a baby or Sheridan for indulging him like that. The column read like Sheridan has some sort of man-crush on Bosh; either that or some sort of financial stake in his PT. Just a weird piece. And I'm sorry, I'd rather have Brand or Howard on the court - tough crap, Chris Bosh.
- I'm so glad they added Hinrich. Not only is he the Pasty Gangster, but he is the perfect compliment to Paul at the PG spot. And you are right about Paul, he is a once-in-a-generation point guard.
Okay, that is enough for this one. On to the next!
I'm not a Bulger believer. I think he was a product of a high powered system and see him as serviceable at best this year.
Good reference to the year you took duece with that pick. he killed you that year, but he did have a great 4-5 game run in his career.
You could be right about Bledsoe, except for the Romo part. That's all Parcels hype to light a fire under Bledsoe. The Tuna wouldn't start someone without experience in a defining year like this if you offered him first in line at a buffet.
I'm still not ready to talk about Larry Brown and what he did to American basketball.
I read Sheridan's piece on Bosh. First, I disagree with Sheridan more than just about every other guys who writes for espn except for maybe Bayless. Second, I agree with you. Strange piece. It actually read like he was trying to stir up trouble. Maybe he's worried that all his Eurolove and predictions about chemistry problems with our guys was going to make him look bad, so he thought he'd try to make up a contraversy.
What is also funny about that piece is that I read it before I watched the game (tivo) and when I sat down to watch, I expected to see Bosh dominating. Instead what I saw was Melo hit some more 3s, the US finally play some decent half court D, LeBron finish play after play and Bosh pick up a bunch of points with the game way, way, way out of reach.
Bosh showed me nothing other than he crashed the offensive boards hard. Howard was more impressive in his limited playing time. I like Bosh's game and have no problem having him on the team (though, how much more would I rather have KG?), but he has absolutely not made a case for more playing time. He fouls needlessly, looks lost on offense and whines and looks angry all the time.
I don't know what Sheridan saw.
the "Pasty Gangster." I love it. That one's going to stick.
A few thoughts from the preseason games tonight (I had to cover them all for Rotowire):
- Bledsoe sure looked good tonight. I still think he might break in half, but I take back most of what I said about him. How come no one is commenting on the fact that Terry Glenn and Bill Parcells are reunited? The guy called Glenn "she" for three years in New England. And now Glenn is just killing people out there. Crazy. By the way, Dallas is going to win 11 games and they may even win the NFC. Which makes me want to throw up in my own mouth.
- Did you see Phillip Rivers? Fumbled the opening handoff ... touchdown. Fumbled on the next series ... a few plays later, touchdown. Wow. I wonder how the Chargers feel about the fact that they are going to go 7-9 this year and be trotting out A.J. Feely for a good portune of the season? I'm telling you, the Raiders are going to do just fine in that division.
- Michael Turner might be this year's Larry Johnson. If LT gets hurt, he is going to put up monster numbers. He is powerful, has a 5.7 YPC average for his career, can break off long runs, and can catch (and block). He doesn't have the end-of-the-year sample like Johnson did in '04, so he won't get drafted in the fifth around (maybe not at all in some leagues), but I really believe if LT were to go down ala Priest, Turner could be a top 10 back. He's absolutely sick. I can only imagine what he would do in Denver.
- Gore looked good tonight ... Larry Allen can still run block, that is for sure.
- Byron Leftwich is going to get killed at some point this year, I am sure of it. The Jags simply cannot block. At all. They won't win even eight games this year.
- The pride of WSU, Jerome Harrison, is a pretty good back. He can catch the ball and he's outperforming Doughns in every preseason game. And its not just a case of the backup racking up stats against the second-team defense. The Browns have been mixing Harrison in early and often and he is getting it done. He had 56 total yards in the first half today (over 100 for the game) while Droughns was like 8-for-17 or something like that. Along with Jerious Norwood and Wali Lundy (104 yards tonight, looked fantastic), Harrison is my favorite rookie back that I won't be drafting and then will be causing me to regret that fact in a little over a month.
I'm sure there's more, but I'm tired. Peace.