I recently got talked into playing fantasy basketball this season.  We had our draft the other night and I was able to draft both Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics. 

Seeing these players on my team got me to thinking about the upcoming season and what to expect.  I looked over the rest of the Celtics roster for this season and it looks exactly like last season's roster. 

Is this good or bad?

They won the title with that roster, but they made no upgrades or changes, so the opposition will know what to expect from them night in and night out, perhaps giving opponents a better idea of how to beat this Celtics team than they had last year.

Last season, the Celtics got off to a 29-3 start.  Some of the reason for that success was probably due to the newness of the team.  Opposing teams couldn't prepare very well for the Celtics, because, essentially, they had never played the Celtics. 

Continue reading "Celtics Look The Same in '08 as in '07; Will they Win another NBA Title?"

The tune of “Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head” must have been going through Cole Hamels mind in the top of the sixth inning of game five of the World Series on Monday night.

With the rain beating down and puddles filling up all over the in field, Hamels and the other Phillies had to be wondering why they were still on the field.  Why wouldn’t the officials call it?  Were they trying to give the Rays a chance to tie it up, so they wouldn’t have a World Series game shortened by rain?

The rain had been coming down since the start of the game and it just kept increasing in volume as the innings passed.  If it were a regular-season game, would it have been called after the fifth inning ended?  Would it have been called even sooner?

Continue reading "World Series Game Five Rainout Is a Bit Strange"

Lebron James is an amazing athlete. He is big, strong, and fast and he can pass a basketball pretty well, but he is not a good basketball player by NBA standards.

The media love to talk about James. They love to tell us how good he is and how he carries the Cavaliers to victory time and time again. James can hit a fade away three pointer and the commentators will talk for five minutes about James’ amazing ability to get you from all angles on the court.

James fans will tout his statistics as proof of his talents. They will point out his triple-doubles and his 30 or so points per game which usually leads the league. How about looking at his shooting percentages for a second?

His career .324 shooting percentage from the three-point line tells me he shouldn’t even be shooting threes. That is a terrible percentage that only gets worse in the playoffs. In the playoffs his three-point percentage is .288.

Continue reading "Lebron James Isn't Really That Good"

He shot four three-pointers and missed them all.  He shot eight free throws and missed four of them, including two near the end of the game.  If he could have made just one three-pointer and two of those free throws, the game could have been a victory for the Cavs.  Lebron James simply cannot shoot a basketball.

If you play fantasy basketball, you love Lebron because he is a stats machine.  He had two steals, six assists, seven boards and scored 22 points against the Celtics last night.  He also shot the ball 21 times, more than twice as much as any other player on his team.  If you are a Cavs fan, that is a disturbing number.

Lebron has shot 32.3 per cent from the three-point line and 72.8 per cent from the free-throw line for his career.  In last night's season opener against the Celtics, he showed no signs of improving those less than stellar numbers.  Unless he improves those numbers or the Cavs go out and get a real shooter to play with Lebron, the Cavs will never win a title.

Continue reading "Same Old Lebron Loses To The Celtics"

I am the last person on earth to say that the world series should have been decided by a rain-shortened game, but the turn of events that have lead to a 3.5 inning shootout to determine the winner of game five on Wednesday night is a bit weird to say the least.

First of all, the game should have been stopped after five innings were complete.  If it were any other game at any other time, it would have been called at the end of the fifth inning.  The only reason it wasn't was because the Rays were trailing.  I am not saying Bud Selig, the Commissioner of baseball, wants the Rays to win the Series.  I am saying that he didn't want the Phillies to be ahead when the game was called.

If he and the umpires had called the game after the fifth inning ended, he would have had to answer all kinds of questions about why he would allow the game to be suspended and continued when, under normal circumstances, a game is considered complete after five innings.

Continue reading "World Series Game 5.5: Just Plain Weird"

So I join this fantasy basketball league at the last minute.  It is just a fun league between some friends I hardly know.  They decide to do an auto-draft. 

If you have never done an auto-draft, all you have to do is rank a list of players and let the computer draft for you.  It is the fastest, most casual form of a fantasy draft.  I didn't even bother ranking my players.  I just went with the default, Yahoo rankings.

On my team winds up a player named Danny Granger of the Indiana Pacers.  Maybe I am the most ill-informed basketball fan, but I had never heard of him.  I was about to drop him, but decided I had better check his statistics from last season first.

His Yahoo ranking was 11th as compared to Kevin Garnett who was ranked 8th.  Garnett scored 1337 points last year.  Granger scored 1567 points.  Garnett grabbed 655 rebounds, Granger grabbed 486.  Garnett handed out 244 assists while Granger dished out 166.  Garnett had 100 steals and 89 blocks while Granger had 95 steals and 84 blocks. 

Continue reading "The Best Player I've Never Heard Of"