No two men should have all this power.
Since Derrick Rose and Kanye West are both from Chicago, I thought it would be cool to find some Rose highlights with some West music.
And I so happened to find a really good one.
It starts kind of slow, but if you wait 50 seconds it will be worth your while.
For those of you who can't get enough Derrick Rose, here is a story Steve Aschburner wrote about him last month.
He tracks Rose's roots all the way back to elementary school and Murray Park, where Rose used to play basketball growing up, and follows him to high school and college and the NBA.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
My Time: Blake Griffin, Maino, T-Pain And Fabolous
Now that the season is over and a little time has passed, highlight reels are starting coming out.
And you'll be hard pressed to find one better than this one featuring Blake Griffin.
The music is a mix of "All of the Above" by Maino and T-Pain and "My Time" by Fabolous and Jeremih.
And it shouldn't be missed!
I didn't write about Blake Griffin much during the season because in August I wrote that he was all-world, and the NBA had never before seen a power forward like him.
What else is there to say after that?
I mean, how many different ways can you say Blake Griffin is awesome?
Someone needs to come up with a list of a bunch of different words you can use to describe Griffin in new and exciting ways.
Not to toot my own horn, but I nail a bunch of these player evaluations and usually do so long before anyone else.
But I always go back to what John Thompson said about Allen Iverson. He said he knew Iverson was good, but he had no idea Iverson was that good!
And that's what almost always happens to me with these guys.
Even though I sometimes go way over the top in praise of them, they usually end up being even better than I thought.
And that is certainly the case with Blake Griffin.
I was extremely high on him, but never in my wildest dreams did I think he would turn out to be as sensational as he was last year. He literally took the world by storm and set off a movement which may know no bounds.
He was just that unbelievable.
Not only did he make the Clippers relevant, he helped make the NBA relevant again.
And that is saying a ton.
So enjoy the music and the clips of the all-world power forward who not only did the impossible on the court but off the court as well.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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And you'll be hard pressed to find one better than this one featuring Blake Griffin.
The music is a mix of "All of the Above" by Maino and T-Pain and "My Time" by Fabolous and Jeremih.
And it shouldn't be missed!
I didn't write about Blake Griffin much during the season because in August I wrote that he was all-world, and the NBA had never before seen a power forward like him.
What else is there to say after that?
I mean, how many different ways can you say Blake Griffin is awesome?
Someone needs to come up with a list of a bunch of different words you can use to describe Griffin in new and exciting ways.
Not to toot my own horn, but I nail a bunch of these player evaluations and usually do so long before anyone else.
But I always go back to what John Thompson said about Allen Iverson. He said he knew Iverson was good, but he had no idea Iverson was that good!
And that's what almost always happens to me with these guys.
Even though I sometimes go way over the top in praise of them, they usually end up being even better than I thought.
And that is certainly the case with Blake Griffin.
I was extremely high on him, but never in my wildest dreams did I think he would turn out to be as sensational as he was last year. He literally took the world by storm and set off a movement which may know no bounds.
He was just that unbelievable.
Not only did he make the Clippers relevant, he helped make the NBA relevant again.
And that is saying a ton.
So enjoy the music and the clips of the all-world power forward who not only did the impossible on the court but off the court as well.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Monday, May 16, 2011
Western Conference Finals Preview
This is a classic battle of experience versus youth.
Dallas is one of the most seasoned teams in the NBA and Oklahoma City one of the youngest. Boston, Los Angeles and San Antonio have all been eliminated, leaving Dallas to carry the torch for the older generation against a league of up-and-coming teams.
Vincent Thomas is sad to see the last generation pass, and his feelings touch people who loved watching the guys play in their day.
I guess you could say that I'm more used to it.
I watched in the same pain and sadness the last days of Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson, Lawrence Taylor, Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird, Walter Payton, Franco Harris, Jack Ham, Terry Bradshaw and many others.
Charles Barkley said it best, "Father Time is undefeated."
Dallas has older players who you would expect to make fewer mistakes than Oklahoma City. Due to their relative experience, they are generally smarter than Oklahoma City and know how to play winning basketball better.
Oklahoma City is much younger and much more athletic than Dallas. And due to their relative youth, they should be able to play with more energy for longer periods of time.
Rick Carlisle and Scott Brooks are both very good coaches, and the talent is pretty much equal. Both teams have outstanding players and contributors everywhere you look.
They haven't met since January, so you can throw the regular-season matchups (Dallas won 2-1) out the window because of the roster changes Oklahoma City has made since then.
No team has an edge in this series which I can see.
The NBA has evolved over the past several years and made such a quantum leap in the volume of talented players that the difference between teams is very minor and almost non-existent, and that becomes more apparent when you look at the final four teams.
This is yet another series which is unpredictable and way too close to call.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Dallas is one of the most seasoned teams in the NBA and Oklahoma City one of the youngest. Boston, Los Angeles and San Antonio have all been eliminated, leaving Dallas to carry the torch for the older generation against a league of up-and-coming teams.
Vincent Thomas is sad to see the last generation pass, and his feelings touch people who loved watching the guys play in their day.
I guess you could say that I'm more used to it.
I watched in the same pain and sadness the last days of Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson, Lawrence Taylor, Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird, Walter Payton, Franco Harris, Jack Ham, Terry Bradshaw and many others.
Charles Barkley said it best, "Father Time is undefeated."
Dallas has older players who you would expect to make fewer mistakes than Oklahoma City. Due to their relative experience, they are generally smarter than Oklahoma City and know how to play winning basketball better.
Oklahoma City is much younger and much more athletic than Dallas. And due to their relative youth, they should be able to play with more energy for longer periods of time.
Rick Carlisle and Scott Brooks are both very good coaches, and the talent is pretty much equal. Both teams have outstanding players and contributors everywhere you look.
They haven't met since January, so you can throw the regular-season matchups (Dallas won 2-1) out the window because of the roster changes Oklahoma City has made since then.
No team has an edge in this series which I can see.
The NBA has evolved over the past several years and made such a quantum leap in the volume of talented players that the difference between teams is very minor and almost non-existent, and that becomes more apparent when you look at the final four teams.
This is yet another series which is unpredictable and way too close to call.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Coaching Experience Vastly Overrated
When I read that Jerry Sloan and Jeff Van Gundy declined interviews to coach the Golden State Warriors, I can't help but think they did Golden State a favor.
And to me Mike Brown is little more than Keith Smart with glasses.
Sloan had ample opportunity to win a championship in Utah and never got it done. And Van Gundy had his chances in New York and Houston and never brought home any championship hardware either.
And that is where Golden State got lucky because history tells us that a coach who doesn't win it all on his first job will probably never do it on his second job or later.
Going all the way back to the early days of the NBA, first-time coaches rule.
John Kundla, who coached the first dynasty in NBA history, had no head-coaching experience when he took over the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948.
The same can be said for Phil Jackson and Pat Riley.
Experience wasn't necessary when they took over Chicago and Los Angeles and led them to 10 championships.
With the number of first-hire championships in parentheses, here is the list of first-time coaches who won multiple titles on their first job: John Kundla (4), Bill Russell (2), Tommy Heinsohn (2), Pat Riley (4), Phil Jackson (6), Rudy Tomjanovich (2), Gregg Popovich (4).
Only 22 titles in NBA history have been won by coaches on their second hire or later after they didn't win one the first time around, nine of those by Red Auerbach.
You have to go all the way back to Chuck Daly in 1990 to find a coach who won more than one title after failing to win one on his first job, although Larry Brown and Doc Rivers came close, losing Game 7s on the road in 2005 and 2010.
Multiple championship winners after failing to win one on the first hire are as follows: Red Auerbach (9), Red Holzman (2), KC Jones (2), Chuck Daly (2).
Bill Sharman, Jack Ramsay, Dick Motta, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Fitch, Larry Brown and Doc Rivers all won one championship on their second hire or later.
First-time coaches who won one title the first time include Les Harrison, Al Cervi, George Senesky, Alex Hannum, Larry Costello, Al Attles, Paul Westhead and Billy Cunningham.
All other championships were won by coaches who won at least one on their first hire and others on their second or later.
Put it all together and 39 of the 61 NBA titles (63.9%) have been won by the coaches who started by winning one on their first job after being hired with no head-coaching experience in the NBA.
The same model holds true in the NFL.
Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, Don Shula, John Madden, Tom Flores, Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Jimmy Johnson and George Seifert (pretty much all of the greatest coaches in NFL history) had never been head coaches in the NFL but went on to win championships during their first hires.
Mike Shanahan and Bill Belichick are the only coaches to win multiple Super Bowls after failing to win one with their first team.
This isn't to say that no experienced coach should ever be hired again, only that inexperienced ones shouldn't be overlooked simply because they don't have the experience.
Inexperienced coaches who are in over their heads can be public relations nightmares, so teams tend to hire experience out of "CYA" more than anything else.
But we have more than a half century of history in two different sports which tells us that first-time coaches are the best coaches, particularly for teams which want to win multiple championships.
Jerry Sloan and Jeff Van Gundy don't want to coach Golden State?
The Bay Area should be so lucky.
Note: NBA coaching data is from Basketball Reference.com. NFL coaching data is from Pro Football Reference.com. Here is a quick reference to NBA champion coaches.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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And to me Mike Brown is little more than Keith Smart with glasses.
Sloan had ample opportunity to win a championship in Utah and never got it done. And Van Gundy had his chances in New York and Houston and never brought home any championship hardware either.
And that is where Golden State got lucky because history tells us that a coach who doesn't win it all on his first job will probably never do it on his second job or later.
Going all the way back to the early days of the NBA, first-time coaches rule.
John Kundla, who coached the first dynasty in NBA history, had no head-coaching experience when he took over the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948.
The same can be said for Phil Jackson and Pat Riley.
Experience wasn't necessary when they took over Chicago and Los Angeles and led them to 10 championships.
With the number of first-hire championships in parentheses, here is the list of first-time coaches who won multiple titles on their first job: John Kundla (4), Bill Russell (2), Tommy Heinsohn (2), Pat Riley (4), Phil Jackson (6), Rudy Tomjanovich (2), Gregg Popovich (4).
Only 22 titles in NBA history have been won by coaches on their second hire or later after they didn't win one the first time around, nine of those by Red Auerbach.
You have to go all the way back to Chuck Daly in 1990 to find a coach who won more than one title after failing to win one on his first job, although Larry Brown and Doc Rivers came close, losing Game 7s on the road in 2005 and 2010.
Multiple championship winners after failing to win one on the first hire are as follows: Red Auerbach (9), Red Holzman (2), KC Jones (2), Chuck Daly (2).
Bill Sharman, Jack Ramsay, Dick Motta, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Fitch, Larry Brown and Doc Rivers all won one championship on their second hire or later.
First-time coaches who won one title the first time include Les Harrison, Al Cervi, George Senesky, Alex Hannum, Larry Costello, Al Attles, Paul Westhead and Billy Cunningham.
All other championships were won by coaches who won at least one on their first hire and others on their second or later.
Put it all together and 39 of the 61 NBA titles (63.9%) have been won by the coaches who started by winning one on their first job after being hired with no head-coaching experience in the NBA.
The same model holds true in the NFL.
Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, Don Shula, John Madden, Tom Flores, Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Jimmy Johnson and George Seifert (pretty much all of the greatest coaches in NFL history) had never been head coaches in the NFL but went on to win championships during their first hires.
Mike Shanahan and Bill Belichick are the only coaches to win multiple Super Bowls after failing to win one with their first team.
This isn't to say that no experienced coach should ever be hired again, only that inexperienced ones shouldn't be overlooked simply because they don't have the experience.
Inexperienced coaches who are in over their heads can be public relations nightmares, so teams tend to hire experience out of "CYA" more than anything else.
But we have more than a half century of history in two different sports which tells us that first-time coaches are the best coaches, particularly for teams which want to win multiple championships.
Jerry Sloan and Jeff Van Gundy don't want to coach Golden State?
The Bay Area should be so lucky.
Note: NBA coaching data is from Basketball Reference.com. NFL coaching data is from Pro Football Reference.com. Here is a quick reference to NBA champion coaches.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Friday, May 13, 2011
Eastern Conference Finals Preview
NBA officials and television executives are probably still drunk after all of the champagne they popped when the Atlanta Hawks didn't advance to the conference finals.
MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago's media market going against the star power of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade for David Stern and the NBA was no doubt an orgasm-producing outcome.
And either of those teams advancing to the championship will be great business for all parties involved, not only for this season but for future seasons as well.
Many think Miami will roll over Chicago. But don't be fooled by what we just saw in the last round.
Atlanta has as much talent as almost any team in the NBA and is a good coach away from being a legitimate contender. And Miami benefited significantly from injuries to Shaquille O'Neal, Jermaine O'Neal and Rajon Rondo.
After seeing how the series played out, I would take a fully-healthy Boston team over a fully-healthy Miami team in a seven-game series.
Unfortunately for Boston, it didn't work out that way.
There is nothing to be gained from looking at Chicago's 3-0 sweep of Miami during the regular season.
LeBron James didn't play in the first game. Mike Bibby (not on the team yet) didn't play in the second. Joel Anthony didn't play in the third.
You could go back and forth with these playoff (or regular season) matchups for five hours and end up more confused than when you first started.
I wouldn't dare pick a winner in this or any other series.
The only thing I can say for sure is that it will be great television.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago's media market going against the star power of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade for David Stern and the NBA was no doubt an orgasm-producing outcome.
And either of those teams advancing to the championship will be great business for all parties involved, not only for this season but for future seasons as well.
Many think Miami will roll over Chicago. But don't be fooled by what we just saw in the last round.
Atlanta has as much talent as almost any team in the NBA and is a good coach away from being a legitimate contender. And Miami benefited significantly from injuries to Shaquille O'Neal, Jermaine O'Neal and Rajon Rondo.
After seeing how the series played out, I would take a fully-healthy Boston team over a fully-healthy Miami team in a seven-game series.
Unfortunately for Boston, it didn't work out that way.
There is nothing to be gained from looking at Chicago's 3-0 sweep of Miami during the regular season.
LeBron James didn't play in the first game. Mike Bibby (not on the team yet) didn't play in the second. Joel Anthony didn't play in the third.
You could go back and forth with these playoff (or regular season) matchups for five hours and end up more confused than when you first started.
I wouldn't dare pick a winner in this or any other series.
The only thing I can say for sure is that it will be great television.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Gordon Hayward's Rookie Season Highlights
You've got to see this highlight reel of Gordon Hayward's rookie season.
Set to Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up," it's not flawless but is still one of the best you'll see.
Before the season I wrote about rookies who could have the next Iverson moment, and Hayward was certainly the one who had it with his magnificent performance against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
He had a bunch of other key moments too. And many of them are included in this wonderful highlight reel.
It starts off at the draft and goes to summer league before moving quickly to the regular season.
Showing skills and versatility, Gordon Hayward certainly made a name for himself as a rookie this year.
And the best part about it is that there is still more to come.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Set to Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up," it's not flawless but is still one of the best you'll see.
Before the season I wrote about rookies who could have the next Iverson moment, and Hayward was certainly the one who had it with his magnificent performance against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
He had a bunch of other key moments too. And many of them are included in this wonderful highlight reel.
It starts off at the draft and goes to summer league before moving quickly to the regular season.
Showing skills and versatility, Gordon Hayward certainly made a name for himself as a rookie this year.
And the best part about it is that there is still more to come.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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Spoelstra Survives
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra made it past the second round and did it quite easily thanks in part to some fortuitous injuries to key members of the Boston Celtics.
I was critical of him heading into the second round for a few reasons that I didn't fully detail at the time.
My main problem with Spoelstra's coaching is that it looks like he is letting Tom Haberstroh and the guys at Heat Index coach the Miami Heat.
Haberstroh has been critical of Miami's starting five.
He planted the seed about Miami's starting lineup featuring Mike Bibby and Zydrunas Ilgauskas near the end of the regular season and started beating the drum during the Philadelphia series.
The next thing you know, Bibby and Ilgauskas were benched four minutes into Game 5 against Philadelphia, never to return.
All of a sudden, Bibby and Ilgauskas were Siamese twins, linked in a joint performance where their value couldn't be determined individually but only in concert with one another.
Spoelstra didn't take the time to see which one was the problem.
He reacted quickly and benched both in what looked like a move to appease his critics more than anything else.
But it turns out Haberstroh hadn't done his full research.
The Bibby-gauskas twins weren't the problem at all; it was Ilgauskas alone. And Haberstroh had some more numbers to back it up.
It so happened that Miami was lethal when Mike Bibby and Joel Anthony played together with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, even against Philadelphia and going back to the regular season.
In there was this astonishing statistical nugget: That unit had played only nine minutes together against Philadelphia and only 35 minutes together during the season.
Haberstroh released this story before the Miami series against Boston.
Four games into the series, Spoelstra was reacting again, this time removing Ilgauskas from the starting lineup in favor of Anthony.
There are two problems here, the incomplete information it looked like Spoelstra reacted to the first time and the fact that he had a strong lineup which he hadn't yet discovered.
Isn't Erik Spoelstra the coach of the Miami Heat?
Shouldn't he know who his best units and players are without me (see Joel Anthony) or someone else having to tell him?
Isn't that what he is paid for?
And how is he going to lead a team to a championship when he can't filter good information from bad in making the best decisions for his team?
Every team Miami faces isn't going to be as small as Philadelphia or as injury-riddled as Boston. At some point Spoelstra is going to have to win some games against some legitimate competition.
And when that time comes, I'm still not sure that he'll be able to get it done.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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I was critical of him heading into the second round for a few reasons that I didn't fully detail at the time.
My main problem with Spoelstra's coaching is that it looks like he is letting Tom Haberstroh and the guys at Heat Index coach the Miami Heat.
Haberstroh has been critical of Miami's starting five.
He planted the seed about Miami's starting lineup featuring Mike Bibby and Zydrunas Ilgauskas near the end of the regular season and started beating the drum during the Philadelphia series.
The next thing you know, Bibby and Ilgauskas were benched four minutes into Game 5 against Philadelphia, never to return.
All of a sudden, Bibby and Ilgauskas were Siamese twins, linked in a joint performance where their value couldn't be determined individually but only in concert with one another.
Spoelstra didn't take the time to see which one was the problem.
He reacted quickly and benched both in what looked like a move to appease his critics more than anything else.
But it turns out Haberstroh hadn't done his full research.
The Bibby-gauskas twins weren't the problem at all; it was Ilgauskas alone. And Haberstroh had some more numbers to back it up.
It so happened that Miami was lethal when Mike Bibby and Joel Anthony played together with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, even against Philadelphia and going back to the regular season.
In there was this astonishing statistical nugget: That unit had played only nine minutes together against Philadelphia and only 35 minutes together during the season.
Haberstroh released this story before the Miami series against Boston.
Four games into the series, Spoelstra was reacting again, this time removing Ilgauskas from the starting lineup in favor of Anthony.
There are two problems here, the incomplete information it looked like Spoelstra reacted to the first time and the fact that he had a strong lineup which he hadn't yet discovered.
Isn't Erik Spoelstra the coach of the Miami Heat?
Shouldn't he know who his best units and players are without me (see Joel Anthony) or someone else having to tell him?
Isn't that what he is paid for?
And how is he going to lead a team to a championship when he can't filter good information from bad in making the best decisions for his team?
Every team Miami faces isn't going to be as small as Philadelphia or as injury-riddled as Boston. At some point Spoelstra is going to have to win some games against some legitimate competition.
And when that time comes, I'm still not sure that he'll be able to get it done.
Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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