ZoomSlowik

QUOTE(Palehosefan @ Feb 14, 2008 -> 01:29 PM) I have seen kids change their mind after signing the LOI, but they had to sit out a year. I have never seen the NCAA grant a kid a release from his LOI just because he regretted his decision. That would be a horrible trend to start. I'm wanting the NCAA to offer an early signing period for football, and they seem to be wanting to make the late signing period have less teeth. Wonderful. It's starting to happen a bit more regularly. Off the top of my head, when Sampson left Oklahoma all of those guys got immediate releases (I know Scottie Reynolds and Damien James, think there was at least one more), and I believe that Alex Legion had signed at Michigan before going to Kentucky.

For whatever reason over the past few years UCLA just seems to have these games here and there where they can't score. It doesn't make much sense this year, they have two very solid options in Love and Shipp as well as two other capable scorers in Collison and Westbrook. They've proven that the way they play defense they can beat essentially anyone (with the obvious exception of Florida the last two years), but games like the last one against Washington do make you hesitate a bit. They'll still be in my Final Four barring an absolutely horrendous draw, and I won't rule out having them go farther.

I like Haslem a lot, he's a solid defender that can rebound and hit a mid-range jumper and score a little in the post. He's a little undersized, but still a pretty productive player. Interesting though, he's only 27, I wonder what it'd take to get him?

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Feb 9, 2008 -> 10:37 PM) And wow, the Bulls looked atrocious tonight. Guess it was too much to ask for them to look alive 3 nights in a row. Realistically with Deng, Gordon and Hinrich out they're the worst team in the league on paper. Even Miami and Minnesota have Wade and Jefferson. Granted you can say that about any team playing without their 3 best players, but when your top three scoring options are Joe Smith, Andres Nocioni, and Thabo Sefolosha, you're in awful shape. I'm actually still amazed they beat Golden State.

QUOTE(shipps @ Feb 8, 2008 -> 12:52 PM) What if you happen to have a Rabbi handy?Would it then be okay to purchase the dollar dogs? It's got nothing to do with the Jewish thing, it's that the dollar dogs don't taste anywhere near as good. Pretty sure the dollar dogs are Ballpark's while the other ones are Best Kosher.

Man, that's sad. I just looked at the standings now and the Bulls tied New Jersey for the 8th seed in the playoffs after the win last night.

Considering that Thabo has been starting with or without Gordon injured and Noah has been averaging about 20 minutes a game since Boylan took over, I don't know how you can say he's as bad or worse than Skiles in that regard. So Tyrus isn't playing consistent heavy minutes and Noah isn't getting 30 a night, it's kinda hard when you have 4 post players to divy up minutes for, especially when the guy that is your worst is a 15 mil albatross with seniority that management very well might be FORCING him to play. Joe Smith has played well of late too, so someone has to sit and it's the younger, generally less productive guys. Until someone gets traded those guys simply aren't going to consistently get big minutes.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 03:13 PM) You and your son should just eat the dogs in the park! Don't get him started Steve, this could go on for another 3 pages. Now that you mention it though, I could go for a stadium dog/brat right about now. God damn it man, the season is still 2 months away!

QUOTE(J-MAN @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 10:01 AM) I definitely take the red line when I am going to weekend games from home but on weeknights I work a few miles from there and makes no sense to drive home and take the el + my son and I traditionally stop at Home Run Inn for pizza before games - makes taking el impossible. Well, we haven't done that recently because you're anal about getting there early.

QUOTE(Felix @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 08:24 AM) Illinois did pretty well with it in '04-'05. We put up 92 on Northwestern yesterday in Evanston. I would say it was impressive, but it's Northwestern. Still, a win is a win, especially when you've been on a rough streak like the Gophers had. NU is probably one of the worst defensive teams in the NCAA. They can't stop big guys with any kind of ability, they can't rebound, and they can't cover 3-pointers. That makes for a lot of ugly results.

There's a difference between being perfect and not losing to the teams on your schedule. No one can ever really do the former, and the Dolphins are the only one to do the latter (though some will argue they had the 14-game schedule on their side). We don't really know how things would turn out given any of the truly great teams a totally equal schedule, so I can't rule anyone out based on a hiccup or two. I just can't see a play here or there one way or the other in one or two game over the course of the year definitely swinging the argument. There's no real way to know who'd win if you threw the 72 Dolphins, the 85 Bears, the 07 Patriots, any one of those mid- later 70's Steelers' teams, the 80's San Francisco teams, and those early 90's Cowboys teams in a playoff format given obvious differences in competition, player size, and eras. All of them had quite a few damn good players and had some dominant runs/years. Just looking at it on paper I don't think Miami matches up talent-wise with basically any of them, and the Bears arguably don't have enough offensive firepower to hang with the other teams either (could the defense carry them against other monstrous teams? Who knows). There's really no way to say without seeing them on the field though, which obviously could never happen.

I just find it funny that it starred out the f**ioli.

Hmm, Steve got in... Try it again guys. I double-checked the ID and password and they are correct. Make sure it's all lower-case lettering in the password. Oh, and yeah, the invites don't work for whatever reason.

Alright, for those of you in the league, I set up the league already. I did the "renew league" option and it theoretically sent out invites, but I'm not sure if it worked. Anyways... League ID- 8281 password- soxtalk Draft is currently set for Tuesday March 11th at 8 PM Central. When you're signing up, I'd appreciate it if you use either an obvious Yahoo ID/Team name or use the same team name as last year so I know who I need to hunt down later.

Yahoo Fantasy Baseball opened today, so it's time to start forming the Soxtalk leagues again! For those of you that may be new to this, Soxtalk hosts a number of fantasy baseball leagues so you can compete against your friends/rivals from the board. I believe we had 8 leagues last year of varying formats/experience levels. The number of leagues will vary depending on participation. If you're interested in participating, just make a post in this thread and we'll set you up with a group for a league (it'll probably be at least a week before I finalize rosters, please be patient). Please include the following information: 1) Your relative level of experience 2) Your preference in scoring format (head to head or roto) 3) Your previous league # and whether or not you want to play in that one again 4) Whether or not you'd be willing to be a commisioner (I'll do two, but I'd personally like to avoid doing 4 Soxtalk leagues again )

QUOTE(juddling @ Feb 6, 2008 -> 01:06 AM) and my non-KC movie would have to be Slap Shot with Paul Newman. I always have to watch that movie when i see it on TBS. Man, why, there's like no dialogue left after the editting. Major League is far and away #1 for me, and the second one is easily in the top 5. Slap Shot is also up there. Also, I can't believe I'm the first one to mention The Longest Yard, the first one was a classic. The Natural and Bull Durham probably round out the top 5 for me (okay, top 6, I just realized I can't count ). I tend to lean more towards the comedies than the serious sports dramas, though I do like most of the ones being mentioned.

QUOTE(Jimbo's Drinker @ Feb 5, 2008 -> 12:12 AM) I miss Gumby's pokey sticks. Where is watchtower 41 for lawrence food talk. They have one of those in basically every college town. That's some of the best drunk food ever.

Didn't Geovanti's have 75 cent drafts every night? I don't know why, but despite a deal like that we never went there to drink.

QUOTE(SnB @ Feb 4, 2008 -> 05:21 PM) El desmadre isn't around and hasn't been in my 4 years here. Well, it was still there in my last year (2005), but I didn't see it when I was down there for the NU/Illinois game this fall. I know that for a fact because I didn't turn 21 until April 2004, and I KNOW I enjoyed the tacos/Corona combo on several occasions. All this talk about my old favorites in Champaign (Za's, Geovanti's, El Desmadre) is really making me hungry...

I'm partial to Ino's myself, I think there are 3 or 4 of them in Chicagoland. We go to the one in Oak Park at 7100 Roosevelt, according to a quick search there also appears to be one at 1856 W. 35th Street. They have some solid burritos, and if you get an Ino's special or a steak only burrito they are absolute huge, putting La Bamba and the "burrito as big as your head" to shame (though you have to tell them what you want in it, otherwise the Ino's special has American cheese on it, which honestly tastes kinda weird). They also have some pretty good barbacoa tacos, and I also order the bistec a la mexicana pretty often, which is pieces of steak cooked with onions, tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers. Quite tasty, though it usually has a pretty good kick. I'll admit that I frequented La Bamba quite a bit down in Champaign, but after a while I moved on to El Desmadre (not even sure if it's there anymore, used to be between Za's (another one of my favorites) and Brother's on Green Street). La Bamba always struck me as gringo-style Mexican, a lot of lettuce and tomato. El Desmadre's burritos and a lot of the other stuff wasn't particularly impressive, but the Mexicano style tacos with onion and cilantro covered with the green salsa were pretty tasty, and they have/had a liquor license so I could have a Corona with it in my later years there. I also basically lived on calzone's from Giovannti's for a while, they were like $5.50 and even at my large size I could generally get two meals out of them.

QUOTE(thedoctor @ Jan 31, 2008 -> 07:45 PM) i think that you take the most talented players you can get every year and worry about the rest later. I would lean towards that, not only because elite players win championships but because not every elite player leaves after one year. I haven't kept track and don't feel like researching it now, but I would guess that generally like 4 freshmen tops are good enough to go pro. The freshman classes these last two years have just turned out to be absurdly good.

That is a pretty pitiful deal for the Grizzlies, those are going to be two late first round picks and they already have two young point guards with Conley and Lowry. I've got to assume two things there: 1) They were desperate to get cap space, which you do get with Brown's expiring contract. 2) The Bulls weren't offering Noah or Thomas in a deal, which definitely annoys me. That seems to suggest that one of the bigs, some future picks and financial filler (Duhon/Khryapa/sign and trade with Brown) would have done it, and that's just bogus. You could have had a lineup with Hinrich/Gordon/Deng/Wallace or Smith/Gasol and still had Thabo, Nocioni, the other veteran big, and Noah or Tyrus on the bench. s*** man... The only excuse I can think of is the Bulls/Brown/Memphis not being able to agree on a large enough 1 year sign and trade deal, and that seems like it'd be pretty minor.

The problem is that none of these guys are great fits for the Bulls, every guy they could possibly draft would require some house cleaning to get them some playing time, some of them A LOT of house cleaning. They have reasonably young guys at every position that are decent but not stellar. Unless they trade 3 guys up front they don't really have enough room for a project like Jordan or Thabeet or a non-elite big like Lopez or Hibbert (I do like Speights, but that's a lot of work for Pax to do). Even if you deal Noc and Smith you've only got around 65 minutes total for Noah/Tyrus/Gray/new guy with Wallace probably being stuck on our roster. If they take a perimeter player they probably have to deal Hinrich (mostly just if it's Rose) or Gordon, otherwise those two and Thabo take up basically all the guard minutes. They also basically can't take Donte Green because he's a pure SF and they're unlikely to move Deng. So what does that mean they CAN do? Well, take Beasley and deal Noc and Smith for some combination of expiring deals, a combo guard (ideally a bit of a project so you don't need to create another 20 minutes) and/or future picks. Those two are playing about 45 minutes (well, their averages are higher because of Deng being out), Beasley gets whatever minutes Deng doesn't at the 3 and about another 20 or so at PF, leaving another 10 minutes or so more than normal for the other young bigs. Obviously you've gotta get pretty damn lucky for that. You also gotta get damn lucky for Rose, who I'd imagine you'd unload Hinrich to make room for (I can't see them not playing him if they get him). The same kind of goes for Bayliss, he's a shoot-first PG. Or, you take Gordon or Mayo and unload Gordon. Or you end up with Budinger or Batum and end up dealing Noc to open up some time at SF and pick up whatever Thabo doesn't backing up at the two and letting them develop a bit. Bottom line is basically anything they do involves dealing some current pieces if they want their pick to get more than token minutes. Given that it's pretty obvious that they still need some help I would hope they try to get someone that can help now and that whoever it is doesn't get buried on the bench. Of course all of that assumes that they don't make any trades between now and then.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jan 31, 2008 -> 04:23 PM) Isn't it sad that the Bulls scored 67 points against Minnesota, lost, and yet they're still only about 2 games out of 8th place in the East. And Magic Johnson thinks the Knicks will make the playoffs without Starbury now. It is pretty sad, but the best the current group they're throwing out there is going to do is tred water. With Deng and Gordon out they really don't have enough scorers.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 10:12 AM) In the three games Tyrus has played 30-plus minutes this season, he's averaging 17 points, 12 boards, two steals and two-plus blocks per game. Though he may be one of the dumbest players in the NBA as far as basketball IQ goes, it seems that Tyrus can be productive when given minutes. Unfortunately, I think the opposition is normally quite productive as well when Tyrus is out there. At this point in this season though, it's time to just give Tyrus the minutes to either build his trade value or to just get him consistent experience; this season will be a waste without getting the kids going. His playing time is basically directly correlated with his level of play that day, if he's not playing smart/productive ball he gets yanked an awful lot sooner than the veteran players. Even if you drop the threshold to 20 minutes a game (13 of them) he's averaging a pretty decent 9.7 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.4 steals, and 1.8 blocks. It's essentially filtering out all of the crappy/inconsistent play. I don't know how much you can increase his trade value by doing that. His value is in his potential, not his current level of production. We also saw how inconsistent he can be with heavy minutes throughout the first month of the season. Development is another story, though he doesn't seem to be making ground there either. Recently he's turned into a jump-shooter, which is about the worst change in his game he can make considering he's barely shooting 30% from the field in January.