thxfrthmmrs

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 18, 2015 -> 04:44 PM) But if he had to do it on a nightly basis, his efficiency wouldn't be nearly as good. Contrast that and give the MVP Rose a guy the calibur of Kevin Durant, and watch what his numbers would do. Efficiency will go down but raw number will certainly go up. He was something like 30-6-8 with 3 steals without Durant. Plus, if he he had to do it for a prolonged period of time, it's not hard to imagine he would make adjustments. Either way, I don't think it's fair to say Player B couldn't be better than Player A because Player B isn't the best player on his team. By that logic, 2011 Rose is better than Kobe from '98-04 and Pippen in all those years when he played with Jordan. Playing with another superstar certainly factors in the argument, but I don't think it invalidates the argument.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 18, 2015 -> 03:12 PM) Why? Because it is true? It is much easier to be good when you have an even better superstar attracting attention. I would swear to this day that Scottie Pippen wouldn't have been a Hall of Famer if he hadn't of played with Michael Jordan. No. Because the post you quoted specifically compares Westbrook this season to Rose in 2011. Thunder without both Westbrook and Durant this year are just 5-11, but with Westbrook and no Durant they are a respectable 7-4. Let's not forget he plays in the Western conference as well. Westbrook has certainly proven that he's capable of leading the team when opportunity presents itself.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Feb 18, 2015 -> 01:13 PM) twolves reportedly considering buying out Kevin Martin I wanted KMart at the beginning of the season, but imagining KMart and Brooks's defense coming off the bench made me puke a little.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 18, 2015 -> 11:16 AM) Westbrook also has Kevin Durant. Who was the second best player on that Bulls team during Rose's MVP year? The Durant thing is really getting old. Durant missed a ton of games and IIRC Westbrook has the highest PER of all time in games without Durant this season so I say he's doing just fine on his own.

It's really hard to rank him relative to other other leadoff hitters as there aren't many pure leadoff hitters today. Trout, McCutchen, Gomez, and Ellsbury are definitely your best leadoff hitters when they are leading off full time. If you are only looking at the full time lead off hitters, there's only a handful of them; Revere, Hamilton, Gordon, Span, Jose Reyes, are guys on top of my head that I would put over Eaton at the moment. It's also hard to rank him based on half a season of sample size, not to mention rank him as the best in the league. FWIW, he fared extremely poor in Fangraph's BsR (baserunning rating), which combines uBR (baserunning excluding stealing bases) and wSB (value from stolen base). Let's see how he does in his second full season.

Whether you're talking about suits, shirts or regular wardrobe, fitting is absolutely crucial. Never wear clothes bigger than your size as that just looks sloppy. I am 5'9" and 170. A slim fit 15.5 x 33 shirt from Brooks Brother fits me perfectly. Even when I am wearing a regular Express or CK shirt, I get many compliments from female friends because they like how well my clothes fit on me. Fitting is definitely a small change you can make to look more clean without throwing big bucks on your wardrobe. Another classic rule of thumb I think Shack touched on is owning a navy blazer, they are extremely versatile, especially for those who travel for work and have to pack light. When wearing navy, I always go for brown accessories not dark, it's definitely puts a more trendy touch to it. Also, try to color match your shoes, belt, and wristband of your watch. I don't like to spend too much on any items of clothing, as I like to experimental different styles and colors and pair with different accessories. If you're the trendy type of guy, cuff links and pocket squares are your friends. They are easy to wear as there aren't too many rules around it, and when your wear them, people would definitely take notice.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 03:23 PM) Another sleeper item that is pretty valuable-metal collar stays. Throw away those plastic flimsy pieces of s***. Truth. I switched over to metal collar stays years ago. They give your collars a much neater and cleaner look. You can get them on Amazon for like $10-15 too.

QUOTE (SleepyWhiteSox @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 05:37 PM) Yup, Rose totally coasted and barely gave any effort his MVP year............... Yup, MVP Rose was the best player in the league and did absolutely no wrong......

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 05:05 PM) People forget that during his MVP year and the following year, Derrick Rose was god damn near elite defensively. His problem was playing down to competition, but when he wanted to he was a nightmare for opposing PGs. This years Westbrook is close to MVP Rose, but people are really forgetting how damn good he was, even when he couldn't buy a call to save his life. I disagree. He was bad his first 2 years. Under Thibs he was better, especially in fundamentals and 1 on 1 situations. He still got caught by screens too many times and often times his man loses him when playing off the ball, definitely don't think he was "near god damn elite". If you only numbers this year, Westbrook is better than MVP Rose by a good margin. His per 40 minutes number is a ridiculous 32/8/9. If he didn't miss a good chunk of time, he'd be a strong candidate for MVP.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 02:09 PM) Don't get into the rebounding debate with thxfrthmmrs. He's been adamant on that for some reason for a while because Rose isn't Westbrook or Rondo with his athleticism when he has had Noah/Boozer/Gasol etc. big men for years. I remember Zoom arguing with that not mattering for a PG. I have my own opinions, but I generally lean heavily towards Zoom on that debate. I personally still feel VDN stunted his development a bit as a rookie, but that's another discussion. Rebounding is just one of the areas WB does better Rose. I am not going to split hair on how much better or whether rebounding is important for a guard or not. I think in the end it all ties back to hustle and effort plays, and Westbrook definitely puts more effort in all areas of the game, that's why I said back then "Rose could learn a thing or two from Westbrook". And the moment you were referring to I think came after Rose got out rebounded by Kidd 11-0 in a loss to the Mavs. Noah was out that game and that was pre-Boozer I believe. Coming out of college, Rose was often compared to Kidd and thought to be a nightly triple double threat. Needless to say I was disappointed that his rebounding left something to be desired, but I have accepted the fact that he's not going to be an all around guy like Kidd, Rondo or Westbrook but instead makes his mark on scoring the ball and playing within himself. To flip this back on you guys, I think I was one of the first to hop on the Westbrook train and thought he could be better than Rose, but no one took it seriously at the time. I think even had Rose not been injured, Rose vs. Westbrook would certainly be a fun and legitimate debate today.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 12:05 PM) I'd be willing to bet that Rose would have improved his passing and defense a ton had he actually been on the court working with Thibs for the past 3 seasons. Rebounds maybe not, but that'd be in part because the Bulls have had Noah and Gibson as their main rebounding guys so Rose would actually be out of position a lot of times to clean things up. I won't argue against that. But what made Westbrook the well rounded superstar he is today is he is an effort player and almost never takes a play off and plays hard on both ends of the floor. He has always been that way and now his skills finally caught up to his talent and demeanor. Rose on the other hand has a tendency to coast for parts of the game, for whatever reason. I still remember in early parts of his career he was invisible for prolonged stretches of the game and was benched by Vinny in a game against the Pacers for not playing defense. Again, that's another part of the Westbrook's game I admired over Rose's at the time.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 17, 2015 -> 09:47 AM) Because obviously you knew that Rose was going to miss around 3 years of basketball with two catastrophic injuries. No, because I believed that the 2010 Westbrook had potential to become something close to the 2014 Westbrook that 2010 Rose couldn't, even had he stayed healthy. In 2010, I saw Westbrook as a guy who would contribute to every aspect of the game and could do everything well if he plays with the right attitude. At that time, he was superior to Rose in terms of rebounding, drawing fouls, defense, and passing. Rose was better as a scorer, shooter, and floor general. Not saying WB was better at the time, but there were aspects of his game that I admired and would have liked Rose to adopt.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 16, 2015 -> 06:09 PM) This. You could replace LeBron with '91 MJ or '00 Shaq and the Heat still get dusted by the Spurs. They were that good. The same Jordan that averaged like 30-7-12 against the Lakers that year? The Spurs that lost to Heat in 2013 was largely the same team in 2014. Give me the '91 Jordan who's also better defensively than the 2014 Lebron and I will pick the Heat. Also, I don't see how a 37 year old Duncan, Splitter, Diaw or Donner could contain a prime Shaq. A Shaq and Bosh front line would be the ultimate pick your poison if I've ever seen one. I don't blame Lebron for that Finals loss, but that Heat team could definitely beat the Spurs with a God mode Jordan or Shaq.

QUOTE (SleepyWhiteSox @ Feb 15, 2015 -> 08:39 PM) It still wouldn't make sense Yea right.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 15, 2015 -> 08:21 PM) Remember when Rose/Westbrook was a debate? Westbrook is the Shaq of pgs. I remembered back in 2009-10 I said Rose could learn a thing or two from Westbrook and I was toast by pretty much everyone on this board. But that was back in the days when Rose could do no wrong in the eyes of everyone in Chicago.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Feb 15, 2015 -> 01:08 AM) Ditto. They're pretty much saving the dunk contest. A damn shame some of these guys don't look up some players on YouTube doing dunks. Some guys are spectacular. (Jonathan Clark before he destroyed his knee was amazing) I am sure most of them do. Thing is most of those YouTube dunks take many attempts to before they succeed. And doing it in a competition on National TV is a lot more pressure than dunking at your local gym. Personally I think the new 3 attempts rule is stupid. They should go back to 90 seconds and let guys do whatever they want. At the end of 90 secs, give them 1 final attempt. Oladipo's last attempt of the one hand 360 off a lob could have been special, but he bombed his first two attempts and had to play it safe on the last attempt.

Snell' breakout reminds me a lot of Jimmy's second year, showing flashes of a good NBA player. I think we are striking gold again with this pick.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 10, 2015 -> 12:48 PM) Given there are 2 games until the all star break, I kind of wonder if they'll just shut him down and be conservative. Would be really big if we were able to pull these next two out and head into the ASB with some positive momentum. If he's healthy enough to play then he should play. Thursday night against against the Cavs is both important in the standings and in the season series vs them. We could use some positive momentum heading into the break.

Someone refresh my memory on why the Sox don't qualify for the competitive balance rounds? I believe the 10 teams in the smaller markets and/or 10 with the lowest revenue qualify for the lottery. The Sox attendance was among the lowest the past few years, ergo low revenue (unless we really save THAT much with the low rental cost of the Cell). I understand Cardinals are in because of their market size, but how did Mariners qualify again?

QUOTE (Boogua @ Feb 9, 2015 -> 04:41 PM) I always thought it was interesting to see what happened with Lebron's heave statistics once Battier joined Miami. I had no idea that Durant was that low either. It really isn't a huge issue, though. He had 0 heaves in the last 3 years with Miami. You could tell he was very selective with his shots and was challenging himself to shoot .600 for a while.

Came across an interesting stat today. Chris Paul, Durant, and Westbrook has 11, 5, and 10 heave shots, respectively, in their career. That's 26 heave shots and 1,712 games between the 3 of them. Kobe has 47 in 1,014 games, and Lebron has 32 in 885 games. Meanwhile Rose already has 28 heave shots in just 330 career games. Just goes to show how much crap Rose gives about his own stats.

Much needed win tonight. It will be a dog fight in the second half of the season for 2nd or 3rd seed. We are 3 games back of Toronto for the 2nd seed, and tied with Washington for the 3rd seed at the moment. The difference between the 2nd or 3rd seed will be playing Milwaukee or Charlotte in the first round versus playing one of Toronto, Washington or Cleveland.

Bulls need to run more pick and rolls. It's the easy play to run in basketball yet the hardest to defend, especially when you have to pick your poison between a attacking Rose and sweet shooting Gasol or Mirotic. We also need to pass the ball more, and move better without the ball. Too much Rose or Brooks dribbling on the perimeter and other guys just watching. The offense doesn't have a good flow at all.

I won't cry about it at this point if Thibs does get canned. His defensive schemes are aren't as effective as they used to be now that it's popularized around the league and many teams feature a stretch big that will make us pay. Offensively, the play calling is beyond apprehensible, and his rotation management is an adventure every night.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 3, 2015 -> 05:36 PM) You know who looked pretty terrible his first year? Marquis Teague?