The Milwaukee Admirals of the AHL are running a promo called "Don't Be Like Mike" after Michael Phelps bonging South Carolina. Here's the deal: anyone named Michael, Phelps, Cheech, Chong or Mary-Jane, or anyone who has won an Olympic gold medal gets a discount to a game next week. It gets better, if the Admirals score at 4:20, somebody in the arena will win season's tickets. As an added bonus, somebody will take home a weed wacker...the LA Galaxy say that David Beckham will return on March 9th after a deal was not completed by yesterday's deadline with AC Milan. Like any negotiation where the first offer isn't the best one, I'd wager that in this one, the first deadline isn't the last. He can walk after this season for nothing. The Galaxy would be crazy not to make a deal, it makes too much financial $ense...the Phoenix Suns are said to be looking to dump $40 million in salary - and pronto - as a result of their owner "lost" about $253 million in the stock market. Here's hoping somebody can save the great Steve Nash from that mess...among the witnesses of that plane crash just outside Buffalo on Thursday night include several Buffalo Sabres. GBVH passed on this incredible story of an AHL ref who switched to a different flight when a flight attendant told him he wouldn't want to bring his kids on the ill-fated flight because it was going to be especially turbulent..A-Rod was in the Bahamas as the steroid story was breaking last Saturday, partying with two lovely ladies, and gettin' his Goose on too, as you can see here...the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat finally got together on a trade that sends Jermaine O'Neal to Miami and brings back "The Matrix" Shawn Marion. The deal gives the Raptors loads of flexibility in this all-important off-season approaching and they'll need to make some big moves if they have any hope of retaining Chris Bosh. Frankly, with how Bryan Colangelo has operated of late - the original deal for O'Neal, the overpaying of Josee Caleron, the horrible Jason Kapono deal - I'm not sure there's much hope in Raptorland...good of LA Dodgers manager Joe Torre to wax on about A-Rod's drug usage. Funny, I don't remember him being so opinionated when he had Jason Giambi or Andy Petttitte on his team, but now he's going to talk about other teams players?...it is the NBA All-Star weekend, not that anyone should much care, but as is becoming tradition in these parts, we've got the Top 10 NBA WAGs...after selling 13,000 tickets in the pre-sale - incredible - there is now talk that UFC97 in Montreal could be in trouble because such fights are against the law. Better still, the governing body says it didn't know about last year's card. Really? If so, how are you fit to govern anything?...kind of hard to believe that the Toronto Maple Leafs have only scored four fewer goals than the Pittsburgh Penguins, no? They face each other tonight at The Hanger, and the Pens are your PTP for tonight on the puck line at -0.5 +118. Altogether now: "value"...and yes, last night's game needed an empty netter from the Montreal Canadiens to cover the 1.5 goals. Sometimes you get those breaks, sometimes you don't. At +275 though, that's a damn good break...have a great Saturday.
7 comments:
As bad as Colangelo has bungled the JOw trade and Josee Caleron, consider this range of very-likely moves:
1) Rasho Nesterovic was downright pissed that he had to leave Toronto and maintains an apartment in town. By all accounts, he'd love to return - perhaps with the Bi-Annual exception? (2 years, $1.8 million first year, $2.1 million second year);
2) Anthony Parker has been a revelation as a point guard and has basically guaranteed that he stays in Toronto as a backup 1/2 who will give you quality minutes and shore up a big problem;
3) The Raptors still have Bird Rights for Marion, Graham, Parker and Carlos Delfino. Let's assume all 4 return (a very plausible scenario), on reasonable contracts (also, very likely, given Marion's devaluation this past year and Delfino's mistreatment in Russia) or Marion and Parker and either Graham or Delfino comes back;
4) This would still leave the full MLE for the Raptors to use in free agency - perhaps for a Josh Childress instead of Delfino or Graham;
5) We will more than likely have our 1st round pick this year.
So that leaves us with:
PG Caleron/Parker/Ukic/Banks
SG Delfino or Graham or MLE FA/Kapono/Parker
SF Marion/Delfino or Graham or MLE FA/Kapono
PF Bosh/Humphries/Jawai
C Bargnani/Rasho/Jawai
With Ettore Messina at the helm.
That's not terrible at all. And that MLE gives us some options, and we'd have some actual assets to use, and we'd still have a first-round pick there with a little more talent infusion, too - so there's reason for hope in Toronto, still. Yes, the Kapono signing has been a failure (although there was logic to it at the time) and the JOw trade was an epic fail (that lacked any serious logic to it). But still, Colangelo hasn't completely fucked us over, and in 2010-11 we now have a combined $12 million in expiring contracts between Kapono and Banks. And Caleron for whatever reason(s) remains a valued trade asset.
Nice breakdown BK. Highly contingent on that MLE being a solid choice if Marion doesn't return.
Do you like Marion's game?
I do like Marion's game for us. I'm of the opinion that his production is going to look a lot more like the half of a season he spent in Phoenix here than it will the unfavourable situation for him in Miami. Will he entirely get back there? Maybe not - but close.
What happens immediately is that our offense gets better. We don't have Jermaine O'Neal taking 25% or so of the possessions at his horrible rates of efficiency. We get 18% or so of our possessions being taken at good rates of efficiency. The other 7% will be dispersed between Kapono, Bargnani and Bosh (or so one would imagine). So we should start to move up from our current position as the 20th-most efficient offense in the NBA, if for no other reason than he rebounds the ball offensively better than both Moon and O'Neal (we're currently 29th in the NBA in offensive rebounding percentage). If Bargnani and Bosh can both prove to continue to be able to get to the FT line more frequently, then basically I'd just offer a rough estimate that Marion's addition improves us by about 2 points per 100 possessions, which would put us at 12th this year offensively (if we played the whole year with him). Defensively is what's hard to guess. I'm assuming he'll have a positive impact, but that's hard to guess at. Moon racks up defensive stats that are tracked (i.e. blocks, steals and when he's in the mood to, defensive rebounds) like a crazed MoFo - but in the three games I've tracked the Raptors with Project Defensive Score Sheet, he was unimpressive, giving up a lot of allowed FGs and doing a poor job forcing misses on shots that he didn't block outright. JOw's defensive contributions are hard to determine, too. He racks up some great numbers himself, but seems to make us a much worse defensive rebounding team and we improve a lot with Bargnani in and him out.
All in all, it's a good move I think. JOw wasn't making our team better at all (quite the contrary, in fact) and Marion very well may.
Should the left side of the Yankees' infield now be known as "Jeter and the Cheater"?
I agree about JO getting his numbers but the Raptors getting better team numbers with Andrea even if he doesn't get them.
Addition by subtraction of JO for sure. Efficiency stats are very obvious in his case, especially offensive usage.
Listening to Colangelo, he seems to want to bring Delfino and Parker back. Can you see a big you like we might be able to get with the MLE?
Caleron/Ukic/Parker/Banks
Delfino/Parker/Kapono/Banks
Marion/Kapono/1st rounder
Bosh/MLE/Hump
Bargnani/MLE/Jawai
What do you think? I guess if the economy is an issue and everybody is cheap this summer it could be Childress and Rasho but judging by Bryan's comments we'll be guard heavy before looking at the MLE. I'd love to see Rasho back he's not a 3-5 yr solution. Stopgap.
Silly BK, stay in your shoes. Everybody knows Jeter has to cheat to his left to make up for a defense that is approaching Caleronesque.
Right, Rasho is definitely not a long-term solution and is certainly a stop-gap. However, as stop-gaps go they don't get much higher-end than that.
As far as bigs available as free agents this coming season, it's a pretty thin herd. David Lee would be the best available, and New York may not be interested in matching a full-MLE offer for him if they're bound and determined to sign two primo 2010 free agents.
I suppose adding Delfino, keeping Parker and adding a first round pick wing player-type restores us to being a young, competitive team with options.
And TB: that's an epic response, I would respond by reminding people I was talking about Jeter AND the Cheater - but that's too funny to dwell on for now. Kudos.
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