ZoomSlowik

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 29, 2010 -> 08:48 PM) Nevada has the # 4 offense in the nation. I'd say their pretty good. Secondly, you are absolutely right about New Mexico State and Idaho on their roster, and Boise pays for this by basically having to go undefeated to have any chance at a BCS bowl. No one is arguing that Boise deserves to be there with the one loss. Only that had they gone undefeated, they would have an argument. Third, what is Boise's record against BCS teams since 2005? 1) You can't just ignore the schedule they play when you say they have the #4 offense in the country. A lot of BCS teams could put up huge numbers against suspect competition, just look at what someone like Indiana did before they ran into some decent teams. 2) Why would you pick 2006 as a starting point? 15 games is already a small sample size, that's barely an entire season worth of data, and it's not like their performance against everyone else changed at all (they lost 3 games from 2002-2004, went 9-4 in 2005 with 3 of their losses coming against BCS teams). If you want to cherry pick the data, they're 6-1 against them since 2006. That hardly seems relevant though since their entire season hinges on their performance in those few games against legitimate opponents, and if they lose one game out of 8 against BCS competition they're probably out of the national title hunt (2 they're out for sure barring a fluke year like when LSU won).

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Nov 29, 2010 -> 08:20 PM) You are out of your mind. Iowa lost to Minnesota, Northwestern, and an Arizona team that has beaten absolutely no one. Boise would not lose to any of those teams this year. But they lost to Nevada, didn't they? How do we know Nevada is any good? The only BCS team they played all year was a 5-6 Cal team, and they lost to a 9-3 WAC team (Hawaii). You just don't know because there are far too many teams like New Mexico State and Idaho on their roster that BCS schools schedule when they want a guaranteed rout. I'll put it this way: since 2002 (as far back as ESPN goes), Boise State is 8-7 against BCS teams. They're 96-5 against everyone else over that span.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Nov 29, 2010 -> 01:52 PM) No way Rose is doing what he's doing with LeBron here. Not that the Bulls aren't a better fit. I think they are. But honestly, he had the perfect setup in Cleveland. I wouldn't go THAT far. They had the shooters around him that they needed, but he basically had to do everything by himself in the playoffs. Just look at the Orlando series from two seasons ago, he averaged 38-8-8 and they still lost in 6 games. Even in the Boston series where he "gave up" last year, he still averaged 27-9-7. Someone else on that team needed to do something good in the playoffs, and it didn't happen often enough. So far teaming with two high-volume offensive players (one of which with very similar strengths/weaknesses to Lebron) isn't working, but neither was playing with Mo Williams as their second best player. He's clearly good enough to be the best player on a championship team, but he needed/needs to play with someone else that can create their own shot once in a while. He has that now, but it seems like Wade and Lebron are getting in each other's way more than helping.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Nov 22, 2010 -> 03:29 PM) Gilbert Arenas? Damn you Dbaho, beat me too it. Gilbert, Rashard (second highest paid player in the league!), Davis and Brand on all on another level of unmovable.

Well, Persa's ruptured achilles will make things a lot easier for Illinois next week.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Nov 12, 2010 -> 06:19 PM) I'd like to think that should be a requirement for any team making the tournament, other than conference tourney winners of course. It's not necessarily true for a number of the low end at large teams, especially if they're in a stronger conference and/or have a good OOC schedule (which NU doesn't). For instance, Georgia Tech made it with a 7-9 ACC record last year and so did Maryland the year before that. For a Big Ten example, Michigan and Minnesota both made the field in 08/09 at 9-9 (interestingly, Penn State didn't at 10-8).

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 02:24 PM) I may be over exaggerating a bit, but they definitely are gonna need at least 3-4 wins over the big boys and no bad losses either, they have given themselves little margin for error. Minnesota's is similar, but @ St. Joe's at least looks like a real road game, and the teams like Wofford/Siena/WKU always help the RPI. I said Minnesota's OOC schedule is a bit better on paper, but I still doubt it makes a major difference if NU is better head to head or in conference play in general. Those mid-major games aren't going to be resume-makers and St. Joe's was 11-20 last year and lost their top-2 scorers. In a way, I agree I guess. They're going to have to be over .500 in conference with that OOC schedule. I don't see them having to be QUITE that good though. If they beat the teams they're supposed to beat, split with Minnesota and won three against the top-5 in conference, that'd put them at 12-6 with likely three wins against the top-25 and another top-50 against Minnesota. That strikes me as more of a 6/7 seed type resume than bubble team. Their problem is that they don't really have a lot of games against 50-100 type teams, it's either very good ones or very bad ones. IMO they minimum they have to do is get 3 out of 5 against Minnesota, Wisconsin and Purdue and a conference tournament win. Any win in their 5 games against MSU/OSU/Illinois would be gravy. I also doubt one loss OOC or one to the bottom feeders will kill them as long as they still get a couple of decent wins (though they might need an extra against Minnesota or Wisconsin, an extra tournament win or a win against the top-3). 8-10 seeds generally don't have amazing resumes, but they're also generally not right on the bubble either. That's how I see NU with that kind of season. I guess my main point is that I think they're either going to be out or comfortably in since it will all come down to conference play rather than sitting there in suspense on Selection Sunday as one of the last four in or out.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 01:23 PM) How does Northwestern expect to earn their first ever NCAA bid with this OOC schedule??? Creighton or GT as your biggest win? Toughest true road game is at NIU? If they finish it undefeated, I think they still need to go 11-7 at the minimum in conf. play, with at least 3-4 wins against the top 5 teams. Schedule: Nov. 12 at Northern Illinois Nov. 17 at Texas Pan-American Nov. 19 vs. Arkansas Pine-Bluff Nov. 28 vs. Creighton Nov. 30 vs. Georgia Tech Dec. 13 vs. Long Island Dec. 16 vs. American Dec. 20 vs. St. Francis (Holiday Festival, NYC) Dec. 21 vs. St. John's/Davidson (Holiday Festival) Dec. 23 vs. Mount St. Mary's Their schedule does suck, but let's not go crazy here. 11-7 in what will probably be the #1 conference in the country should make them more than a bubble team, especially if they get a win or two in the conference tournament. 7 teams out of the Big Ten should be highly doable. To do that, they'd have to beat the 4 bottom feeders and get 3 more wins. It also helps that Minnesota, the other "middle tier" Big Ten team doesn't have marquee type games either (though it'll look better on paper obviously with some decent mid-majors). This is their OOC schedule: Fri, Nov 12 vs Wofford Mon, Nov 15 vs Siena Thu, Nov 18 vs Western Kentucky (neutral site) Wed, Nov 24 vs North Dakota State Mon, Nov 29 vs Virginia Sat, Dec 4 vs Cornell Wed, Dec 8 @ Saint Joseph's Sat, Dec 11 vs Eastern Kentucky Wed, Dec 15 vs Akron Thu, Dec 23 vs South Dakota State

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 07:48 PM) Boozer isn't a beast defensively, but he is a damn good rebounder and can bang. Boozer also can score in a variety of ways. Pick and pop, high post and low post. Offensively is where he excels. Help defense sucks and man defense is mediocre. He can wear you down though offensively and move some bodies. That's why Pax targeted Boozer and was always hoping to match him up with LeBron and Wade. Bosh was moreso a secondary option. Somewhat better maybe, but not significantly so. Despite a much thicker build, Bosh is just about as productive down low. Bosh gets 10 or 11 boards per 40 minutes and 5.5 to 6 attempts at the rim per game at about a 63% clip. Boozer is at 12 or 13/40 and 6.5/66 or so playing with a much better PG. Plus Bosh is a lot more effective away from the basket because he can drive as well as shoot. Either way, matching up with someone like LA would still be a major issue, as Utah found out last year.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 07:37 PM) Bosh? I kid, I kid. That is going to be the weakness of Miami. Their inside presence. They have old people who are no longer good, have undersized people, or underweight people. Bosh is a stick. He'll still provide good output from PF, but at the same time, most good/great PF's will eat him alive. Miami really should've gone after Boozer(I know he's injured now) to provide a bulldozer downlow. Then they could get away with a crusty C and they would be fine. Either way though, I'm still putting the house on Miami winning the championship until Bynum is completely healthy and shows it in the Finals. Boozer isn't exactly a beast defensively either and gets a lot of his points on the pick and roll. They'd still have a lot of the same issues.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 13, 2010 -> 04:47 PM) I got one guy joining for sure. And I think 16 teams is too much by the way. I'm gonna be forced to draft guys like Jamal Magloire. I think 12 teams is perfect. JMO. 14 can be pretty fun too, definitely makes you think more about your late rounders since your roster won't be as deep. I agree though, 16 is a bit nuts. I played a 16-team roto league last year and there was basically no free agency because guys like Andres Nocioni were on rosters.

QUOTE (knightni @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 07:32 PM) If you guys are involved with TalkBulls, Steve has a league there. They might have open spots. Shameless plug for this league. It's not really TalkBulls anymore, just a highly active/competitive keeper with tiered eligibility. Two open spots with the draft on Monday night (the 18th). First team is looking at some combo of the following keepers (keeping one from each category): 1-3 round: Paul Pierce, Troy Murphy (4th pick in the draft) 4-7 round: Joakim Noah, Danilo Gallinari 8 round and on: OJ Mayo, Jason Thompson, Carl Landry Second team is looking at some combo of the following: 1-3 round: Kobe Bryant (5th pick in the draft) 4-7 round: Mo Williams, Al Harrington 8 round and on: Jameer Nelson, Chris Kaman ID# is 7662 password is jordan Just PM/IM me or Steve to lock in a roster.

Chargers

I've got to say no. He's generally been a good but not great player. How often can you say he was one of the 5-10 best pitchers in the league in a given year? Heck, he wasn't even the best starter on his team most of the time. I don't think there's even a discussion if he's not a Yankee. One other comment: if you don't think he's in based on his regular season numbers, his playoff numbers shouldn't really put him over the top... Regular season: 3.88 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 6.6 k/9, 2.8 BB/9, .8 HR/9 playoffs (41 career starts): 3.87 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 5.9 k/9, 2.5 BB/9, 1.1 HR/9

Some of you guys are really screwing up the brackets. If they win 50-something games and take the 4/5 seed (which seems to be the consensus), they'd get the #1 seed (the Heat by pretty much everyone's estimation) in the second round. So a lot of you are wrong on the playoff predictions by default.

Bulls win about 48 with their typical slow start burning them, especially with Boozer out. They beat the Bucks in the first round and lose 4-2 to the Heat in the second, getting people's hopes up for next season. Heat win in the mid-60's and don't lose more than 2 games in any eastern conference series, beating Boston in the conference finals. Lakers cruise in the first two rounds but are seriously tested by Portland (one of the few teams with the size to challenge the Lakers). LA wins the title with Artest and Odom making a huge difference.

Any system that determines that Deng is worth more wins than Anthony needs some serious tweaks. For comparison, Hollinger had Anthony at 15.5 estimated wins added last year, Deng was at 7.4, Noah was at 7. Basketball reference has 'Melo at 7.9, Deng at 5.9 and Noah at 6.2. Those makes FAR more sense to me (though I would personally split the difference and guess that Anthony is worth around 10 wins subjectively).

Jets

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 25, 2010 -> 06:46 PM) I haven't a clue. Like I said above, that's no where near a championship roster, and it's likely to be trapped in that 7-10 range in the conference every year where it has no chance at a high lottery pick, cap space, or help. The cap space part would depend heavily on the new CBA. With Melo, they'd be on the hook for somewhere around $40 mil for 10 players entering the 11-12 season/lockout. With the current cap figure, that'd leave them like $18 mil in cap space for the last 4 spots, which is plenty. That still includes $7 mil for Travis Outlaw, who I'd assume they'd try to dump immediately once the deal is official (Prokhorov also has MORE than enough funds to buy him out if he were so inclined). The first year of Melo's extension would also be subject to any new max salary rules according to this article on ESPN. I'll quote the important part below: To summarize, it's WAY too early to say the Nets won't have any cap space, especially when under the current rules they would have quite a bit.

What the hell, New England.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 01:31 PM) It's not just convincing them that they're not worth it...it's convincing them that they can win without it. And the reality is...they can't. If the Bulls let Noah walk for nothing in 2 years...they're not replacing his production cheaply. If the Bulls trade Noah before he becomes a FA, they're not likely to replace him cheaply. If the Bulls trade Deng for salary cap relief, they're not going to find a SF as good as Deng for less money. Several points... 1) At some point, a team has to have good/expensive players to win. That doesn't mean spending money for the sake of spending money is smart for the long term health of your franchise. Money doesn't equal wins unless you spend it well, and in many situations it's better to have cap flexibility than numerous cap commitments. 2) Not all teams are equal. For teams like the Lakers, Bulls and Celtics that are competitive and in the upper tier of revenue, it's really not that big of a deal. For someone like Utah or Denver that's good but lower revenue and probably not a real title threat, it'd probably make sense to sacrifice a player or two, especially if they're relatively expendable. If you're someone like Memphis or Sacramento, you should probably be trying to trade a guy before he gets expensive if you're fairly confident he's not going to be the best player on a team that's solidly in the playoffs (that's a little harder out east, but I digress). 3) There's a big difference if you're above or below the cap. Obviously trading someone like Deng or Noah for just cap relief doesn't make sense assuming Jerry is going to pay the luxury tax. However, that's not really important at the moment since we're talking about trading them for Anthony, not cap space. 4) Most players aren't that hard to replace. Sticking with the Bulls, they've lost/replaced Tyson Chandler, Ben Wallace, Ben Gordon, Kirk Hinrich, Tyrus Thomas and John Salmons without having a significant impact on their win total. That's well over an entire team's cap space that they're no longer paying, and the only guy they could really use right now is Gordon. The same goes for Deng (Noah would be harder to replace cheaply as a big man, though perhaps Gibson and Asik can fill in reasonably). If they really had to, they could find a reasonably priced SF that can do a lot of the same things. It's not like Deng is a star, he doesn't create his own shot, hit 3's, or post-up. I would say "above average" fits him fairly well. How much would they really lose if they replaced him with someone like Martell Webster? No, Martell isn't going to score 17 a game, but Luol probably won't either on a deeper team where he's not the #1 or #2 scoring option. However, he makes about $8 mil less than Deng, was relatively easy to acquire (IIRC Minnesota gave up a mid-first for him), and he could give you 10 PPG and respectable D with a better jumpshot than Deng has. You can't do that at every position on the floor, but once you have guys like Rose, Noah and Boozer you can mix and match a lot more.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 12:55 PM) You're 100% right...this is the key problem that will drive the lockout...over-competitition and therefore over-pricing of role players. Hell, you could easily argue that Boozer's contrat is the same way. At least IMO, the only way around it will be NFL style, partially-guaranteed contracts, but I'm open to better ideas if others have them. Either way...I'd hate to set up the team with the idea it's going to be competitive for 1 year and then start letting people go post lockout because of money. I don't think it's possible to come up with a rule that prevents bad management. Even if their contracts were partially guaranteed, your team is still screwed for 3 years or so if you overpay someone like Baron Davis, Elton Brand, Charlie Villanueva, ect. 3-year deals with say 2 or 3 mutual option years would help, but teams would still make bad signings and probably stupidly pick up a lot of the option years. Plus when they inevitably lower the max deal to try to protect themselves, teams will probably talk themselves into giving it to someone like Mo Williams a lot more easily (I do kind of wonder sometimes if there would be fewer contracts in the $12-14 mil range if there were no max. Okay, guys like Lebron and Wade get their $20 mil, but does that $12 mil for someone like Deng still seem reasonable if you're not thinking to yourself "well, at least it's not the max"?) If someone could somehow convince owners/GM's that maybe 10 players are really worth max money, not all big men with a pulse are worth $10 mil, and that just because you have a $6 mil MLE doesn't mean you have to give all of it to a marginal starter/bench player, the system would be fine. Unfortunately, I don't know how one would do that.

That line of thinking is exactly why there is likely to be a lockout. Teams would rather grossly overpay decent but not stellar players like Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay or Andre Iguodala than drop from mediocre to bad. It's even worse in the east because if you're even close to .500 you're in competition for the playoffs. Just look at teams like the Blazers, Sonics/Thunder or Bucks, they shed expensive contracts like Wallace, Randolph, Allen, Lewis, Jefferson and Villanueva and are in better shape now than they were before. But inept GM's and owners keep signing expensive vets chasing wins even if they aren't remotely close to contending. They talk themselves into it because it kind of makes sense for the first year or two, but then three years later they're stuck paying the player an increasing amount of money due to the salary structure. You're already getting less and less value for the same guy as the contract progresses, then it gets even worse if the player starts to decline (very likely for someone like Johnson that's 29 and signed for 6 years) or the team tanks. Then you're stuck paying this guy you can't move for any value while your team wins 30 games and you can't add any significant free agents because he's taking up all of your cap space, while simultaneously spending your MLE on mediocre players chasing a contender and spending beyond your means. It becomes an even BIGGER problem when you pay random scubs like Andres Nocioni or Amir Johnson $7 mil a year, which isn't all that uncommon and is a popular practice for bad teams that have to overpay to add free agents. There is basically no way that contract will ever make sense, and yet teams keep signing them. If you're a big-money team like the Lakers or Bulls you can get away with it if your owner is willing to pay the luxury tax (that remains to be seen). But for most of the teams, they keep digging deeper in the hole while making little progress.

Packers

QUOTE (ChWRoCk2 @ Sep 13, 2010 -> 10:52 AM) If he didn't have possession when he initially caught it but fell to the ground while regaining possession towards the end and then the ball comes loose once he hits the ground, yes I agree it is not a catch. I'm arguing he had possession from the very beginning, clearly had the ball in both hands with two feet, I mean heck, he even had possession with 1 hand till he let it go when going to celebrate. Idk if he made a football move but 2 feet and possession should be enough imo. To me rules need to be consistent across the whole field of play and the end zone shouldn't be an exception. I feel that had this same play happened on the 20 yard line (lets say) it would be a catch because the ground can't cause a fumble.Whatever, all that matters is GB won and should have a cakewalk next week vs. the Bills. The ground isn't causing a fumble, it's causing an incomplete pass, which absolutely can happen.