Jake

Also, at some point, Thibs might have to think about how he can get Rose and Brooks on the floor at the same time. You can't always do that, particularly due to their defense, but he ought to look for matchups that allow us to get Brooks out there without coming at a direct expense to Rose.

One thing I think we can say for sure is that this isn't the same "meh" return we appeared to be getting from Rose last season. It's really impressive at how relatively little rust he has when he was so off last year. You can tell he really put the work in to get back to form.

I honestly don't think it's a bad move. Cynical, yes, but he just needs to get his troops aligned against net neutrality. Most people don't know anything about it and won't, so if he can be the first to go out there and say it's Obamacare for the Internet, that will be a ton of people's first impression of it. Right now you can nary find a regular person who knows anything about net neutrality and thinks it isn't something worth striving for - but you can change that if you just start saying vague, negative things about it. Think of all the people who, to this day, think Obamacare is a government-run insurance company. Not only is that not true and missing the point of the law, these are the same people who will gleefully accept Medicare (aka, the government-run insurance company) one day. Republicans got out there, though, and strategically turned folks against it before they knew what it was. Dems, per usual, sat on their hands. The ugly truth about the poor messaging on this topic for Dems is that they have big businesses in their pockets, too. There's a lot of lobbying going on for this - not to mention the likely fact that most of them don't really understand net neutrality, either.

I like to think of the last few Ron Zook recruiting classes. They had relatively high rankings, but most of the top rated guys never even got on the field. Even at certain ranking levels, there are different classes of guys - the guys who are an absolute longshot but with a lot of payoff predicated on a ton of improvement or the guys who are a sure thing that is one small improvement from being great

If you think the coaches are the only problem, you are very wrong. When you play this badly, the problems are very, very widespread. I'd look to the team leaders on offense and defense - likely Cutler and Briggs - as tremendous failures in their positions as well. Of course, the largest problem is that the players aren't good enough.

I'm ready to say that Pau is worse defensively than Boozer. The blocks Pau gets don't make up for his atrocious feet and laziness nor his awful rebounding. I don't know if he's just struggling with the workload or what, but he absolutely kills us on D

There are few things more disturbing than reading the stuff college freshmen turn in for a first-year writing class. Good god, are they awful at writing. And this is at a relatively selective school: the 25th-75th percentile ACT scores are 27-31, 95% were in top quarter of HS class, 65% were in top ten percent of HS class.

Jimmy looks unreal. He's Kawhi Leonard with more MPG now.

FWIW, Danish was reportedly often reported as hitting 95 pre-draft. I know Perfect Game got him at 94 multiple times. So, he might hit 95 again. Togh to say the cause of the velo decrease - laying off, mechanics, skills decrease, making the sinker more sinkery, etc

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 7, 2014 -> 01:13 PM) Well that's good to hear. I was hoping it wasn't as brutal as "relearn all of undergrad and then some." I really need to knock the GRE out of the park because my undergrad GPA isn't exactly stellar. I got 163V/161Q/5AW with only moderate prep. I basically invested no time in prepping for the verbal part. At the time, I had taken nothing remotely mathematics-related since HS so I devoted some time relearning some pre-calculus to prepare for the quant portion. Spending a couple of hours learning about what they look for on the writing would be worthwhile. My feeling on the verbal is beyond familiarizing yourself with the sort of question format they have, you can't really prepare. You're not going to study your way into meaningfully improving your reading comprehension. Trying to improve your vocabulary is not going to pay off for the time required to do so. What I'd suggest as a starting point is to utilize one or more of the free practice tests provided by ETS online to assess where you're at. If you're close to your desired score on those tests, you definitely don't need to freak out. If you're a little sub-standard, you might want to buy a prep book (preferably one that comes with practice tests so you can retest and continue to assess where you are).

The turnout figure I posted is not at all based on registrations. It is based on the voting-eligible population, which includes both registered and non-registered voters. They use data from census research, American Community Survey (to determine the amount of non-citizens), and prison records (to determine number of incarcerated and felons). A quick look at state-by-state data: Top - Maine, 59% Wisconsin, 56% Alaska, 55% Oregon, 52% Colorado, 52% Bottom - Indiana, 28% Texas, 28% Utah, 29% New York, 29% Tennessee, 29% Mississippi, 29% Oklahoma, 29% Even disregarding explanations, it's sickening to think that we are effectively ruled by such small portions of our citizenry. There's an extent to which we try to keep people from voting, there's an extent to which people's lives are too hard to really think about politics, some people just suck, some people are careless, the entire institution is rather unsupported structurally....whatever the reason, it hardly feels like living in a democracy when only a third of the people who can decide who governs end up deciding who governs. The portion of people old enough to vote who cannot legally vote has also increased in the past 30-40 years due to the rising felon population. While I get pissed at the Republican Party for what I believe are voter suppression tactics, the Democrats that have control in various places in the USA hardly over-extend trying to use their power to get more people to the polls. The goal of both parties ought to be to get as many people to vote as possible with as little fraud as possible. One party is just focused on the fraud and the other party isn't focused on anything. You couldn't spend too much money on trying to make sure your country gives a voice to as many people as possible. What's most difficult to account for is the possibly disenfranchising effect of geography. I live in Ohio, which is supposed to be super swing state. Despite living right smack dab in liberal Columbus, I live in an uncompetitive Republican congressional district. In statewide elections, it was clear long before the elections that Republicans would win everything easily. Several city-wide positions were uncontested. I voted, but I feel that the main thing of consequence that I did was cast votes for the local Green Party who needs them to get ballot access back (state government had no problem using bipartisan cooperation to pass laws removing third parties from the ballot unless they meet new, onerous requirements).

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 7, 2014 -> 11:43 AM) Could anyone who's taken the GRE give me a rough prep time estimate? Is 3 months adequate? Depends where you're starting from, of course. With that said, I'd say regardless of starting point, after 3 months you're looking at seriously diminishing returns. Feel free to PM me if you want any other thoughts/advice

Pop is probably cognizant of the fact that in these primetime rivalry matchups, the guys won't possibly take it easy on themselves. He might also know that he'll have a hard time keeping them on the bench after meeting a minutes limit in these games.

Bosh, his last year in TOR: 24 ppg, 11 rpg Bosh, first year in MIA: 19 ppg, 8 rpg Bosh, this year: 24 ppg, 11 rpg Love, last year: 26 ppg, 12.5 rpg Love, this year: 18 ppg, 12 rpg

Lowest voter turnout since the 1940s, if not of all time, according to collected data. Gotta love voter suppression, er, fraud prevention strategies!

Before LBJ came to Cleveland, I said that Cleveland would be best off if they just got rid of Kyrie. I really think he's actively harmful for a team that intends to win. Wouldn't blow my mind if the conflict with LBJ could end with Kyrie going out of town for some more useful role player types

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 6, 2014 -> 09:21 AM) There was a report that came out that suggested Lebron is letting this team sink, letting them learn the hard way that they arent what they think they are. Interesting strategy The Theo Epstein strategy - if we're losing, everything is going according to plan. If we're winning, everything is going according to the plan. No matter what, I'm doing a good job

Kyrie: 0 AST

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 5, 2014 -> 10:38 PM) Rose started slow but he really popped right before halftime and played well for the rest of the game. Watch your words...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 5, 2014 -> 02:40 PM) So all a bunch of BS. Anyone can pick a number out of a hat and say, those are the probabilities, although they may be wrong. There is no way to really confirm any accuracy. He was pretty accurate with the electoral college last Presidential election. FWIW, Wang (Princeton) is trying to improve certainty (not just being right is better, but being right with higher probability). Nate Silver has tried to take an approach where it's okay that he gives relatively weak probability to his predictions.

Jimmy looks just unreal, though. I can't wait to pay him all the millions

The second Rose steps back onto the court, Thibs is working him too hard and it will be our downfall.

I'd like to keep Beli, but not for that price. Non-tendering him makes us unable to re-sign him, right?

I don't know if it's wishful thinking or what, but I've had this dream that Republicans act less awful once they feel like they are in control

Now looking like an almost complete blood bath for Republicans. Will be interesting. They will be gaining some control right as the country is relatively crisis-free, all the favorite indicators improving. Will Obama be credited with those things the same way he was blamed back when they were worse? POTUS election in 2016 looking exceedingly meaningful as it will be hard for Dems to get Congressional control