ZoomSlowik

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 17, 2011 -> 03:05 PM) Knicks were still at salary cap. I just really cant think of examples where a team in a league with a salary cap has spent drastically lower than the cap for multiple seasons. Imo it usually seems that all teams spend to the cap. The lockout wont fix anything because the reality is not all franchise are created equal. Unlike the NFL there are more than 8 home games to sell out. That's basically my point. The lockout is happening because teams would rather spend money stupidly than not spend it at all, and attendance is still dropping in a lot of places despite all of that stupidly spent money.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 17, 2011 -> 02:48 PM) Well the value of singing free agents is inherent in cap space, Im talking about the situation with Detroit where there is no added benefit of keeping $20mil off the books and they cant save face with their fans. In the teams mind the $20mil was going to spent regardless that year, it just was a matter of how to spend it. I think the only way to really drastically reduce the impact is to allow NBA teams to cut players at a fraction of the price, or makes years after 3 voidable, etc. Without that type of loophole NBA teams are going to get in the same mess. My original point was basically that they're going to get into the same messes. This protracted lockout isn't going to "solve" anything, just reduce the impact of their stupid decisions. As for Detroit, I can't imagine watching this awful Pistons' team is helping their situation with the fans. Fans gripe (b**** is on the swear filter? Seriously?) about poorly spent money too, and it couldn't have delivered a much lower return. Plus they spent it two years ago in a bad free agent class instead of saving it for 2011 like everyone else did. The Knicks sold their fans on the promise of 2011 for like 3 years while they cleaned up Isaiah's mess, the Pistons couldn't have done it for one?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 17, 2011 -> 02:25 PM) The difference in baseball is there is no cap, which means no floor or ceiling. These basketball teams figure out how much money they have and then they spend it, because outside of saving money, there is no other benefit to being under the cap. Teams worry about perception and its easy for KC/Pitt to say that they cant spend like the Yankees, Red Sox, so why even try as opposed to the Suns/Kings etc where there is a salary cap and therefore fans think "its equal" (you see the same thing in the NFL). The difference is that NFL contracts are basically fake money outside of the bonus, so those teams just dump the guy the next year or 2 if he doesnt work. If there is a hard cap it basically just solidifies what every team will spend. The only way to prevent really bad contracts is to allow teams to dump them at a fraction of the price. That's not totally true, cap space definitely has some value in the NBA. You can't sign free agents without it and it lets you take in a lot more in trades. That's why teams love guys that have expiring deals. That's part of the problem, teams won't sit on their space if they could be spending money on inferior players. Someone like the Pistons wouldn't be nearly as screwed if they had saved their money for the 2011 free agency run instead of wasting $20 mil on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva and another $12 mil on extending an aging Richard Hamilton. Every team seems content to overspend to keep their own mediocre players rather than lose them to free agency, like they're totally irreplaceable. If you can eliminate just a few of those kind of situations with shorter contracts reducing the impact of stuff like the Arenas, Lewis, Redd and Kirilenko deals, that reduces the financial issues quite a bit.

QUOTE (Palehosefan @ May 17, 2011 -> 02:19 PM) You're welcome? I'd actually like for them to get someone decent in the challenge since they seem to go creampuff-heavy with the rest of their out of conference schedule. I realize they're never going to draw UNC or Duke, but a team that might actually help their resume would be nice instead of what will probably be a terrible Yellow Jackets team.

I swear, Northwestern always plays either Georgia Tech or Virginia.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 17, 2011 -> 01:53 PM) Bad contracts are always going to happen, its just the nature of being a GM. Sure, you're always going to have some bad deals, but basketball seems to have far more large contracts that are dumb from the second they are signed than other sports. It also doesn't help that they way the CBA is written, deals are backloaded. I could go on all day with examples, it seems like teams sign guys to huge deals just because they can under the system sometimes. Unlike in baseball, you just don't see guys leave a team because the organization won't make a competitive offer very often. Teams don't seem to say "no, we can't afford that", they sign it and then deal him for 75 cents on the dollar three years later instead. Who knows, maybe with a hard cap, teams will think twice about giving out that monster deal that makes no sense.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 17, 2011 -> 01:30 PM) The problem is that a salary cap is both a floor and a ceiling. If you have a cap, almost every team spends to the cap each year, which means that mediocre players get paid because the team has nothing else to do with the money and fans will crucify them for leaving cap space on the table. An interesting idea would be to set a cap at $50mil and allow teams to buy/trade up to $10mil of cap from other teams. That would prevent a team from throwing away $5-7 mil on a bad player because they would gain an advantage by saving cap and playing a younger guy who maybe turns out to be good. Two comments: 1) I do like your idea, but I doubt it is implemented. 2) The problem is that marginal players get paid plenty anyways. Go check out the Hoops Hype salary resource sometimes and laugh at some of the amazingly ridiculous contracts that are handed out. Some of the things will help. A hard cap will prevent a team from overspending on role players just because they can and the shortened guaranteed deals will lessen the impact for injuries/stupid contracts. However, the only way to "fix" the system is to convince teams that good but not great players shouldn't be making $16 mil a year and that fringe starters and backup big men shouldn't be getting $7 or 8 mil a year. Those are the deals that are killing teams.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 17, 2011 -> 01:10 PM) I don't disagree and it is a negotiation, but still, I was blown away that the owners were going to be starting that low. They can ask for whatever they want, and they know the players will cave before they do. If I had to guess, I'd say it gets settled at a $60 mil hard cap with higher revenue sharing. Of course this is all frutrating to the fans because the system isn't the reason that so many marginal to decent players are making $7-15 mil and that is the real problem.

There may be a hard cap, but the chances of it being $45 mil are basically zero. You know how many teams have a payroll below $45 mil right now? The answer is one: the Sacramento Kings at $44 mil. They are the only team under $52 mil in salary and 22 of them are above $64 mil. That's just WAY too huge a dropoff to be practical.

Very nice. Especially happy about Infamous, was considering getting it anyways.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 14, 2011 -> 07:48 PM) 50-50 to me. I'm sure the majority of the board will take the team that has Jordan. Which is ironic, considering my user name. Edit: Lmao@Stockton guarding Rose. My goodness that would be suicide. I just thought about it. Jordan's team has WAY better big men. Olajuwon dealt with better big men than Howard and Amare has no hope of stopping Malone (he might get his skull caved in by a stray elbow in the first five minutes).

QUOTE (bmags @ May 12, 2011 -> 01:56 PM) Losing one of your best players and ball distributors is a sissy excuse? They didn't really "lose him", he played 68 minutes combined in the two games after the injury. How much it affected him is debateable given he is prone to disappearing for long stretches even when he's 100% (see game 1).

QUOTE (zenryan @ May 11, 2011 -> 09:03 PM) David Stern will make sure that doesnt happen. Right, because the Heat haven't helped their ratings at all...

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 11, 2011 -> 04:03 PM) What? Dirk is not primarily a perimeter-oriented player? That's all I was implying. Not that Bosh was on the level of Dirk. Dirk might be one of the top 3 players in the game right now. But the days of the traditional low-post PFs ala Barkley or Duncan are pretty much over. Well, outside of Zack Randolph, I guess. The centers too. I go on rants fairly regularly how Dwight is the only "real" center in the league. The Heat would have been screwed in the mid-90's with guys like Hakeem, Shaq, Malone, Barkley, Robinson, Ewing, ect. dropping 30-15 on them every game. But this year, they might be able to win a title without facing a post scorer better than Carlos Boozer (obviously that assumes OKC or Dallas is in the finals).

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 11, 2011 -> 02:38 PM) I never said they were stars, but I think that they were way ahead of the current Miami bench. And there was a reason that Horry and Fisher stayed on teams like the Lakers and Spurs instead of the Clippers, those teams knew that they were very good role/bench players I don't really get how you can say they're way ahead of them unless you're factoring post-season shots that the Heat players haven't really had the chance at yet. They have basically the same level of production as the current Heat guys. In fact, their shooting percentages are even lower than most of the Heat. Guys like Bibby and Jones both hit over 40% of their 3's this year, that could prove pretty useful (though Bibby has shot horribly in the playoffs. It's not like the Lakers had someone like Steve Kerr that was insanely good from deep or an elite post defender like Rodman, they're all fairly middling. As for the second part, better teams do target role players, but everyone's circumstances are different and the Lakers and Celtics can't sign everyone. How much better would a marginal player like Randy Foye look if he were the starting PG for the Lakers instead of bouncing around with the T-Wolves, Wizards and Clippers? On paper he's not that different than Fisher, he just got drafted by a bad team and the Lakers signed Steve Blake instead of him. Plus a number of guys leave because the money is better on a team that wants to give them a better role. Remember how hot Trevor Ariza was after the 2009 playoffs? Now he's making more money while sucking in New Orleans. Stephen Jackson did the same thing a long time ago. That's the nature of bench players/role players; they're all relatively interchangeable. It's far easier to find someone like Fisher or Horry to round out your lineup than it is to get someone like Andre Iguodala or Gerald Wallace as the kind of glue guy that they should be and that you'd want on your roster. I'm getting way off point here. The bottom line is that you won't really know how effective they are until they have to take a huge shot when the Heat really need it. So far that hasn't happened.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 11, 2011 -> 01:21 PM) Are you serious? There is a lot of rings on Fisher, Horry, George and Shaw(and not only from the lakers), and every single one of those guys played big minutes for the Lakers. Phil counted on every single one of those guys. It is unanimous in this thread that the Heats bench is just a bunch of guys Just because they have a bunch of rings doesn't mean they're automatically good players. Fisher has career averages of 8.8/2.1/3.1 while shooting 40% from the field and 37.5% from the arc. Horry averaged 7 PPG for his career and shot 42.5% from the floor (34% from the arc). Shaw had career averages of 7/3.4/4.2 with a FG% of 40 and a 3PT% barely over 30. George shot below 40% from the field for his career and averaged 5.6 PPG in his career. Those guys aren't exactly world beaters. They're all average to below average players that happened to land on the right team with the right guys carrying the load. Yes, they hit some big shots (especially Horry and Fisher), but getting the opportunity to take those huge shots is also a major part of that equation. If those guys spend most of their career on the Clippers instead of the Lakers, no one has any clue who they are. Bosh is better than any #3 scorer that the Lakers had, and the biggest difference between Horry and Fisher and guys like Bibby, Jones, Chalmers and Miller is that they haven't had dozens of opportunities in their career to make an impact on a playoff game. Maybe they hit some key shots, maybe they don't. Obviously you need that to win titles. But a couple of made jumpers at the right times doesn't suddenly turn those guys into stars.

QUOTE (Felix @ May 10, 2011 -> 09:52 PM) Very true. Smith also gets assisted on a lot of his shots from that range, unlike Rose who is generally creating his own shot (which also plays into your point about hands in his face). Still, it's interesting to look at the perception of both players shots when the reality is there isn't that large a difference in their shots. It's also only a one year sample. Look at previous years and you see why there is that "perception". Smith shot 29% on long 2's last year and was between 31 and 34% the three years before that. Rose shot 43% on long 2's his rookie year and 44% last season. That's a pretty huge difference.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ May 2, 2011 -> 02:36 PM) BTW, Rondo needs to get his head out of his ass, he had his first assist in the 2nd half, if he isn´t getting assists, he is basically worthless. I'd say more than that, he needs to score too. He HAS to make the Heat pay for using Bibby so much. Both teams have weak benches and bad centers, so if Rondo isn't an impact player it's basically Wade/Lebron/Bosh versus Pierce/Allen/KG. The Celtics aren't going to win that way.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 10:15 PM) Also the 2K Sports games sold for about $20 less, IIRC. I don't remember about the other franchises I think that was only a one-year deal to try to steal some thunder from the Madden juggernaut. I doubt they could have sustained that over the life of the franchise.

I got that E-Mail and my first thought was: how could they argue that you were "overcharged" when Madden/NCAA cost the same as virtually any game released, exclusive license or not? I mean if you want to argue anti-trust or that the quality of the product suffered that would be one thing, but the price is a dumb thing to target IMO.

Northwestern added a home-and-home series with Notre Dame. They're not going to play for a few years, but still,

The NCAA is ridiculous sometimes: Potential new rule regarding the NBA draft process. So what does that really mean? The deadline to pull out of the draft and retain your eligibility would now be BEFORE the NBA's deadline to even declare for the draft. So because some coaches got their panties in a bunch about roster uncertainty, players will have basically no time to have their draft status evaluated. It's not like coaches can replace someone of NBA caliber at this point in the year anyways, virtually all of the top-100 recruits have signed and you're not going to get someone joining the party this late. Instead, guys will be making life-altering decisions with less feedback from their future employers, likely leading to more poor decisions, with very little benefit to NCAA teams. Because coaches really need to be able to go after that 3-star recruit that they'll probably wish they hadn't signed in two years to "replace" their departing stud. Hopefully sanity will prevail and it will get shot down at the next stage of approval, but knowing the NCAA it'll pass because god forbid someone actually tries to get PAID for drawing thousands of fans to arenas and millions more in the television audience. /Rant

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Apr 12, 2011 -> 11:46 AM) Nice. Glad he is coming back though. I'm probably in the minority but I think Baylor will actually be better off without Dunn. Baylor will be a VERY interesting team, but I'm not sure that necessarily means they'll be good. It's hard not to be impressed with their athleticism and length, but they had that this year too and struggled mightily. Dunn had a pretty brutal year and Jones was merely solid despite his immense physical gifts (he seems like a shooting guard trapped in a center's body). Jones has to be more of an impact player this year and they need to find guys to make plays on the perimeter. Dunn was a large part of the problem with that bad FG% and high turnover rate, but Walton is their only proven guard and he wasn't exactly a stud. Franklin is an interesting transfer and Bello is a highly touted recruit, but the former missed a ton of shots at Cal and the latter seems to be more of an athlete than a shooter. Obviously Miller could/should be a star, but he seems like more of a PF and they already have two guys up front in Perry Jones and Acy. Also, is Anthony Jones still going to get minutes? He was one of their few guys that hit outside shots this past year, but they have a logjam at the forward spots. Like I said, they'll be fun to watch, but I'm not sure how much better they will be. A lot of it will depend on how the newcomers perform.

Perry Jones is returning to Baylor? That one surprises me...

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 11, 2011 -> 12:52 PM) Please. They're the best in the East and are a game away from having the best record in the league. IIRC their record against contenders is better than anyone else. They've earned that. They don't have to win out for them to be considered great this year. By this logic, the Cavaliers were a great team the past two seasons. You absolutely have to win in the playoffs to be considered great. No one is going to care that the Bulls had 4 more wins than the Heat and 5 more wins than the Celtics (obviously there are two games left) if one of those latter teams makes the Finals.