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QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 11, 2011 -> 10:53 AM) http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AlJB...ls_games_101011 So, the entire league is coming down to save probably 10 players a year from gaining an extra year or two on s***ty contracts that they're not worth in the first place. Good to know. Huh? How the hell is that all you get out of that article? There are like 5 things mentioned in it and you're harping on one of them. Harsher luxury taxes are going to hurt virtually every player in the league because teams will be less likely to add new talent if they have to send a big check to the league. I'm sure they think it's going to reign in the big spenders, but what it's really going to do is murder non-heavyweights that are trying to contend because it's going to hurt someone like OKC a lot more to pay that money than it's going to hurt the Lakers or Knicks. Lowering the MLE is going to be a major hit to the veteran players, especially when combined with harsher luxury tax penalties. You already have fewer potential roster slots available because teams won't want to pay the tax, now your salary is almost 50% lower when you do sign. That's a pretty big f***ing deal. I'm not sure what they mean by "narrowing bird rights", but that also can affect a ton of players based on how it's changed. Teams might not be able to go over the cap to sign their own guys, which means people like Noah or Marc Gasol could be cap casualties even though their teams desperately want to keep them (again, no idea what that phrase means, just outlining a potential impact). And yes, the drop in contract length is a big f***ing deal, especially since the way the CBA is written, contracts are backloaded. Instead of someone like Lebron, who's absolutely worth every penny he gets paid and then some, getting a 6-125 type deal if he maxes out, he's looking at like 3-54 if he doesn't want to stay with his poorly managed team (actually, he'll get even less than that because the max salary will drop with a lower percentage of BRI, but since I don't know the number I'll just leave that $70 million drop there). That's an absolutely colossal change and it penalizes the guys that are actually worth the money because owners are too stupid to realize that paying Joe Johnson $20 mil a year is a f***ing horrible idea. You seem to have a rather major axe to grind against the players even though the owners are trying to force massive cuts across the board down their throats. They've already come down several hundred million from where they were last year on the revenue split and agreed to slice a year off contracts, but the owners want even more. Yes, there are some very stupid things done in regards to contracts, but the GM's/owners are the ones that have to sign the checks. Even with their griping about costs, they gave out an ungodly number of insanely stupid deals last off-season. They basically want to guarantee profits despite their own ineptitude, which is absolutely ridiculous. You don't need a rule to prevent you from signing a non-elite player to a massive deal, you need some idea of how to manage a salary cap.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 6, 2011 -> 08:46 AM) They "closed shop" in the sense that the previous owner said "f*** this, i'm not making enough" and wanted out. The NBA stepped in to control the sale. And yes, that's a worst case example, but it's still indicative of a general problem around the league - the market is out of control and management is stupid. Hence why both sides need to fix how they operate. They need a better share of the revenue and they need to reign back contracts so franchises don't get screwed for 3-4 seasons. Good players are a pre-requisite to winning championships, and my point was the small market teams that have one generally got extremely lucky to do it, i.e. getting a hall of famer who just happens to mold with the right group of guys. I don't think that happens with the way the league is currently set up. Guys are moving to get their max money even when they don't deserve it (cough* Joe Johnson* cough). Small markets can't offer that kind of money so they can't field the same quality of teams. Duncan/Nash and especially Durant are incredibly rare and care more about the team. I think their the exception, not the norm. The bolded part is true, but that's on ownership. What is Rashard Lewis supposed to do when the Magic offer him $20 mil a year, say no? The system can work just fine if the GM's/owners would show even the slightest bit of common sense and restraint. And since when can small market teams not afford max deals? You say *cough Joe Johnson *cough, but since when is Atlanta a large market? Didn't Memphis just give a ton of money to Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay? Weren't Utah and Denver luxury tax teams for quite a while? Didn't Cleveland have a payroll around $80 mil before Lebron left? Isn't Orlando one of the top spending teams right now? Did Miami have any problem splurging on three top-tier players? There are plenty of teams outside of New York, LA, Chicago and Boston that can spend money. You're really overstating the player movement issue, especially since most of your examples were TRADED. Minnesota traded Garnett because they weren't going anywhere and they wanted to give him a shot at a ring. Gasol was traded because he was pricey and Memphis wasn't winning. Allen was traded because Seattle was going into a rebuild. The problem isn't their salaries, the problem is their salaries in combination with a lack of playoff sucess. Think about it, how many free agents have really gone to a major market in free agency? Shaq (was traded to the Lakers because they knew he was leaving), Amare, Baron Davis I guess since he went to the Clippers, Melo and Deron were traded pre-emtively and that's about it (Melo was definitely gone, not totally sure about Williams). The big winner the last time we had a big free agency bonanza was Orlando (Hill and McGrady) and the big winner this round was Miami. Neither is a monster market. And I'll say this again: Lebron, Bosh, Melo, ect. didn't leave at the first opportunity. They all re-upped after their rookie deal was up. 7 years is a good chunk of their prime, and they left after that because they weren't happy with the direction of the team. If their teams had been run better and been more successful, they wouldn't need to leave. The money was there if they wanted it, but they left for a better situation, actually taking less money in a few of those cases.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 04:58 PM) Well you've got an actual example of a franchise that had to close shop because they couldn't turn a profit (NO). You have another that just needed a big loan to stay afloat (SAC). I don't think anyone is doubting that the system is broken and needs to be fixed. As to the small market comment, look at the list of NBA champions the last 30 or so years. There's a common theme. LA, Chicago, Boston and the occasional Houston (not exactly a small market), Spurs (sure) and Miami (sure). And who did those small market teams have? Hall of Famers. Each one of them. Now look at the environment of today. Ray Allen left the Sonics. They suck. Garnett left Minnesota. They suck. Gasol left Milwuakee, they suck. Lebron left Cleveland. They suck. This is a league about stars and 95% of the time it's the big market team that gets them in their best years. First off, the Hornets didn't "close shop". They were bought by the league because they weren't happy with the offers they were getting (I can't comment on how good the offers were). Second, in both of those cases, their financial issues are related to their owners' problems as much (probably moreso) than that of the teams. The Kings are in deep s*** largely because of the casino-related debt of the Maloofs (I don't know enough about Shinn to comment). Ownership finacial issues aren't unique to the NBA (I'm looking at you McCourt and Wilpon, which is even sadder given the markets they are in). That's also two teams out of thirty that are having serious problems, and I'd bet they count for a disproportionate amount of the losses. If you contracted those two teams and improved revenue sharing, you'd probably be fine. I don't get your point on the second part. Aren't good players usually a pre-requisite to winning a championship, or multiple championships in most of those cases? You also left off Detroit, who won 3 titles and isn't exactly a monster market. Plus as I said before, a major market isn't a guarantee of wins. The Knicks haven't won in my lifetime and haven't come close in like 15 years, the Clippers have sucked forever, and Chicago and Boston have both gone through major down turns in the past 20 years. Houston and Dallas haven't exactly been juggernauts either. Dallas has been good of late, but I'd say that has a lot more to do with an owner that cares than their market. The players go where they can make the most money while getting a chance to win. Tim Duncan stayed in San Antonio, Garnett was in Minnesota forever before the T-Wolves finally realized they were too inept to win it all, Nash has been in Phoenix for quite a while, Durant re-upped in OKC. There are plenty of counter-examples. Hell, even the guys everyone is griping about (Lebron, Melo, Bosh, Williams, probably Paul and Dwight soon, to a lesser extent Amare) stayed with their original teams past their rookie contracts. I just don't see how it's really that different from baseball, which isn't getting much demand for a drastic reformatting. The players are going to go for the money first, and after that they'll generally look for the best place to win. Dropping salaries isn't suddenly going to make Lebron want to play for the Timberwolves.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 04:26 PM) Am I really the only one that's leaning slightly to the owners here? I mean, you've got teams that are losing money, one team having to be run by the league (another in SAC about a year away), you have small market teams that simply cannot compete because while they get their #1 stars they either (1) can't afford to keep them there after season 3, or (2) can never afford to give him a quality cast, the players already take more than the majority of revenue without taking into account the fact that owners have to spend money to make money. And most importantly, the players don't risk ANYTHING here. The owners risk losing money every year or having to take out loans from the NBA to make payroll. The players just accept their paycheck. If the two sides were really, really far apart, and the league was demanding a lot more, sure, I'd be on the players side. But they're so damn close, the players need to stop b****ing. The NBA is willing to give you 50% of the profit, contract a couple of teams to make the league itself better AND begin structuring a revenue-sharing model to, again, make the league better. This is craziness to me that they can't get this worked out. At the very least make it a 2-3 year deal and re-work this again so that the NBA can continue the momentum from last season. As I said earlier, the numbers of losses are highly debateable. I don't remember who said it, but a famous quote is "I can turn a $1 million profit into a $2 million loss and get every accountant in the country to agree with me". Are some teams losing money? Sure, but it's hard to make every team profitable, especially with some of the dumb contract decisions teams make. The small market team thing is also BS. How many rings do the Spurs have? Isn't one of the hot teams to be the "next dynasty" the OKC Thunder? Wasn't Cleveland a powerhouse with a massive payroll not that long ago? When was the last time the Knicks were relevant? Much like the other sports, teams that make more money obviously have an edge, but they also have to be run well. The flipside to the "owners take all the risk" argument is "the players are the reason that there's a league and people are making money." No one pays to see Dick Bavetta make a big call, or Phil Jackson to sit there in a suit, or for Mark Cuban to get angry a lot courtside (though they might belive that).

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 04:09 PM) You can get hot in the MLB as long as you make it into the playoffs. Same with the NFL, since it's all single-game eliminations. That doesn't seem to happen very often in the NBA. The playoff structure plays a major part in that. 16 teams make the playoffs in the NBA, 8 in baseball and 12 with byes in the NFL. If you had teams like the Indians making the playoffs, you'd see fewer runs from the lesser teams (the value of things like 4th starters and long relievers also changes in the postseason, but that's another topic). As you said, single elimination also helps in the NFL. It's a lot harder for the weaker team/team that's not playing as well to win 4 games than one. You still generally have a top team winning and there have been numerous repeat champs lately.

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 03:55 PM) Seahawks didn't lose anyone near lebron caliber though. It does seem though in Nba you go in season with only a handful of teams having realistic shot at championship. In baseball yes there are Yankees and bsox always good but like 14 teams had a shot at some point. Football seemingly easiest sport for teams to become legit contenders. Different team from NFC makes superbowl every year. I obviously used an extreme example to make a point. The bottom line is last year the Seahawks were expected to be a contender for the weak NFC West conference while this year they were not. As for the second part, I guess it depends on how you define "having a shot at some point" or "having a chance to win a title". In all three sports, I'd say there are at least 10 that have no real shot at a successful season (which I will define as making the last 8 teams for continuity between the sports) going into the season, and another 5 or so are eliminated relatively early. Yes, the NBA is top-heavy, but so are the other sports. The Packers and Patriots among others had a way better chance of being successful going into this season just like the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox (yes, I realize they choked) and just like the Heat and Lakers. If anything, the NBA had MORE parity than you would expect this year given that the conference finals were Heat/Bulls and Mavs/Thunder. No Lakers or Celtics in sight.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 03:40 PM) The Seahawks made the playoffs and beat the Saints last year. The Orioles and Nats are in the group of 5-8 teams that didn't really have a shot this year in MLB. The Nats have a shot in a few years though, you can't deny that. And that was last year, when they had a better group of players and still went 7-9, not this year. This discussion is on a year by year basis, otherwise I could say the Cavaliers won 60 games last year so clearly they had a shot this year! I would also love to know what definition of "winning" you're using where one .500-ish team that makes the playoffs is doing it while another one isn't.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 03:27 PM) Note how I phrased it...I didn't say "Winning a championship"...I said "Winning". When the Bulls were struggling for the 8th spot every year, I didn't think they had a chance at "Winning". Would watch some but not always, took them having a chance to beat the Celtics to really make them worth watching. In MLB and NFL...yeah, I'd say that a huge majority of teams go into a season thinking they have a shot. Especially the NFL. Hell, the Bills and Lions are off to starts that ought to put at least 1 of them in the playoffs. The Cardinals went to the Super Bowl a couple years ago. If the Bulls didn't have a chance of "winning" when they were the 8th seed in the NBA, then how could you say that the teams in the other sports had a legitimate shot at winning? At least the Bulls got some playoff games out of it, 22 teams in baseball and 20 in football don't see the post-season and at least half of them were never really close. Someone like the Blue Jays were no closer to winning than the Bulls, and they had a relatively decent season. I don't see how you could say with a straight face that the Orioles or Nationals in baseball or the Jaguars or Seahawks in football had any chance coming into this season. It's basically the same thing, you can pick most of the playoff teams before the season even starts. And if you want to pick the rare examples of an expected mediocre team making a run, I'm sure you had the Grizzlies going to game 7 in the second round, right?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 03:04 PM) The problem with that model is that there are 20 teams that go into an NBA season with pretty much no hope of winning. This hurts their season ticket sales, this hurts their walk up sales, this hurts their big business clients, this murders their ability to grow fanbases.Just ask yourself this Q...how many people in China are going to tune in to see a Kings/TWolves game? Or buy a walkup ticket? If the NFL is the model for a successful league...the NFL operates totally differently. Almost every team goes into the season having some reason for hope. Baseball is almost the same way, with some Pittsburghian exceptions. In the NBA, if you don't have a winning local team, the only reason to buy season tickets is to see when Lebron and Rose come to town, and you can do that by buying 3-4 tickets if you really care. And there's almost zero reason to tune in on TV. Supposedly, the NBA's numbers last year showed a $300 million loss...but there were like 8 teams that turned a >$100 million profit (combined). So 20 or so teams lost $20 million each, and the rest turned in $8 million or so in profits. If you're in the $20 million lost crowd...there's very little obvious path to getting in the top if you don't nail a draft pick, and then that still doesn't guarantee you a shot at a title if you don't overspend. Really? Almost every team in baseball and football really had a legitimate shot at winning going into this season? I'd say it's highly similar, there are 6-10 teams that really matter, maybe one or two surprise teams and everyone else pretty much playing out the string. As for the money part, there are multiple different sources disputing that number because of creative accounting. Things like counting the purchase price of the team as a $40 million (number may not be accurate) loss for 10 years against their operating expenses even though they're not related.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) Then they need to allow more movement and not less, that way such moves are easier to counter if they happen. The reality is that if players really want to do this, it is difficult to stop. Heck, two of them look smaller salaries to make it happen. Especially given the interest in the league and ratings that the Heat drew. The NBA typically does a lot better when there are star-loaded teams at the top of the league.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 1, 2011 -> 07:36 PM) Jenkins was on a tear that game too though, like I mentioned earlier, he can break away from most CB's. He had a huge game largely because NU contantly had poor positioning/blown coverages/awful matchups. His first TD he was covered by a linebacker with no help over the top. It was pretty obvious that no one knew who was supposed to cover him on that 50 yard TD. There were several plays where they expected a safety playing the middle to cover him one on one on a corner route (admittedly I'm not sure all of those were Jenkins). Even when he was covered by an actual cornerback, for some reason it was always Matthews, who isn't very good and a far inferior option to Maybin. Yes, he's a good receiver, but the Wildcats put up very little resistance in coverage.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Oct 1, 2011 -> 02:02 PM) There's A LOT of time. I was really hoping Schmidt was down on that run lol. I was thinking the same thing when it happened. AWFUL pass coverage, just a ton of plays where there was no one within five yards of the receiver.

The Last Temptation of Krusty deserves mention. "Yeah, impeach Churchhill!" "Don't you hate pants?"

QUOTE (Palehosefan @ Sep 29, 2011 -> 07:02 PM) Dodds wants to add SMU, Rice, and Houston. 3 more in-state schools that would be his b****es. Ugh. If Mizzou has a legit SEC offer, you guys would be insane not to go. Just curious, is there any legitimate talk about trying to get TCU to switch to the Big 12? That would make WAY more sense to me.

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Sep 17, 2011 -> 09:30 PM) This could be a good season for the Illini, should be favorites in next 3 games although Northwestern very capable team. With Ohio State having a down season though this will be their best chance at a division title in the near future. Meh. NU played like crap today. They couldn't consistently run on a grossly out-sized Army front line and Colter couldn't punish them for stacking the box. They were only slightly better on defense, didn't give up many big plays but allowed Army to grind out 4-8 yards on pretty much every play (not sure why you go with a 3-man front and play back on an option team). Then again, Persa is supposed to be back for Illinois...

That had to be the worst one minute stretch of pass coverage (from both teams) I've ever seen.

Deer? Ha! Not around here. They all migrated north when the state park converted to Astroturf.

Probably waaaaay too late for a sober Slav to see this, but happy birthday!

Oh no, the corn! Paul Newman's going to have my legs broke!

Hey everybody, look at me! I'm Peter Pantsless!

Thank god, no all-purple floor at NU.

Just watched "Bart Star" again, and it might be in my top-10.

If he gets hurt seriously enough, maybe they can void his contract before it gets too ugly.

It's "Mom and Pop Art", the episode where Homer becomes an outsider artist. That episode has some solid scenes. Anyone up for a barbequed hippo?

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 9, 2011 -> 09:04 PM) When Homer was the food critic. It was a pretty good episode, but Homer asking the dog for input was priceless. The dog barks "ruff", and Homer says, "You've been pitching that all night." Then the dog barks "chewy?" Classic. I almost included that one. Homer: Well, what do you think? Editor: This is a joke, right? I mean this is the stupidest thing I've ever read! Homer: What's wrong with it? Editor: You keep using words like "Pasghetti" and "Momatoes" You make numerous threatening references to the UN and at the end you repeat the words "Screw Flanders" over and over again. Homer: Oh, it's so hard to get to 500 words.