I have been in a trance all day thanks to Pat O'Brien. I heard the voicemail messges yesterday and that alone was enough for me to join the Pat O'Brien fan club. Then today I come in to work and read a NY Daily News article that detailed many of his other exploits while working on "Access Hollywood". If you haven't read up on Patty, take some time to google his name and I promise that you'll never look back on old NCAA Tourney games running on ESPN Classic the same.
In case you haven't heard the Magic have completely imploded as team and are now out of the playoffs (if they started today). This all began with the Cat Mobley trade and continued when Dog (oh, I mean Doug) Christie went on the IR with sand in his vagina. The final straw occurred two nights ago when the Magic not only blew a fourth quarter lead against the lowly Charlotte BETcats but also lost Hedo Turkoglu for the season with a broken wrist. Sure, Steve Francis will come back in a couple of games but he hasn't been the same since they traded his boyfriend and Johnny Davis switched him to the off-guard position. Which, apparently, Steve thought meant he had to be off his game.
At this point the Magic might as well feed Dwight Howard the ball 30-40 times a game and let him continue to develop as a go-to-guy on offense because they are NOT going to get back in the playoffs and will most surely look to trade Francis this offseason. I was with Magic GM John Weisbrod on many of his moves this summer (even the Drew Gooden trade because he needed a new atmosphere, though they SHOULD NOT have included Anderson Varejao but that is besides the point ) but the Mobley trade has been devastating to this team in two major ways:
(1) Chemistry: He should've known that Francis was going to pout for a solid month once Mobley was traded. Do you think that Siegfried would've been able to carry on with the show as if nothing happened if the StarDust brought in, say, Wayne Newton to team up with him. You think I'm joking here...I'm not. Francis and Mobley had a weird man-love thing going on that I will not even attempt to fully comprehend Yet, this is not nearly as big an issue as the second reason which is (2) Offense: Alot was made about the Magic needing more defense, which was true, but this was often in the same breath as people proclaiming that they were just fine offensively. This could not have been further from the truth. The Magic were an average (at best) offensive team that fooled people by quickening the pace. Essentially, the Magic had four good offensive players who were all fairly inconsistent in Steve Francis, Grant Hill, Cat Mobley, and Hedo Turkoglu. Each of these guys are capable of carrying a team for stretches but they are also all very capable of going 2-14 on any given night as well. The Magic needed contributions from all these guys to be a dangerous offensive team especially when you consider what little offensive contribution the Magic's frontline have given them. As young as he is, Dwight Howard has been the most consistent offensive presence on that frontline all year long which is not a postive sign for anybody, other than Dwight.
Essentially, the Magic were a decent perimeter oriented offensive team who needed all the points that they could get because of some glaring defensive weaknesses. Wesibrod reasoned that by subtracting one offensive player for a defensive player, he could make the Magic better on defense without losing much on offense. Well, he was wrong. Very wrong.
Here's why: Mobley was one of two real three point threats (along with Turkoglu) that the Magic had. The threat of him shooting kept defenses honest, thereby allowing Francis and Hill the kind of space they needed to get into the lane. When this threat dissapeared, so did the driving lanes and with it the ability to improvise that are so vital to both Hill and Francis's game (especially Francis). In Christie, the Magic got not only an over-the-hill defender but also a half-man/half-bitch who couldn't move on like a professional should after being traded. He can talk about his bone spurs in his ankle all he wants but everybody knows that he just quit on the Magic. Even when he was playing, Christie was showing his age on defense while also displaying that his lack of offensive skill had been covered up by the very skilled passers and cutters who he'd been playing with in Sacramento.
When it all shook out, the Magic ended up trading their most dangerous perimeter threat for a defensive stopper with eroding skills and a bad attitude while also asking a great bench guy like Turkoglu to change his role mid-season and become a primary offensive weapon, which he has never, ever done before.
Yep, that's a pretty good way to sabotage a season. Success (even marginal) was fun while it lasted.
As for tonight's NCAA tournament games:
Louisville-Washington should be unbelievably exciting. Of course, Georgia Tech-Louisville was suppossed to be great as well, and we all know how that turned out. This game has the potential to be very euro-centric, what with all the great shooters and ballhandlers on the floor coupled with the fact that neither team has a true post presence. Don't get me wrong, the post guys on both teams have alot of skill but none of them are traditional in the back-to-the-basket sense. If any game can be as overall exciting as Wake-WVU, this is the one. I have the Cards going to the Final Four so I'll stick with them here but they'd better get 20 each from 2 of the big 3 (Garcia, Dean, and O'Bannon).
The other game that really excites me is the OSU-Arizona matchup because it will feature a nice contrast in styles. OSU is best when they are playing tough man-to-man halfcourt defense while Arizona will gladly match points with you all day. If Channing Frye's balls finally drop tonight then the Cats could put a hurting inside on a very undersized Cowboy frontline but I still think that OSU will win in a close one. My reson for this is twofold: (1) OSU's defense, which has been discussed (however briefly) and (2) John Lucas Jr., who has really won me over this past year. I never thought he was that good and I still think he has very little NBA future, but he has proven to be a very good college point guard who is as clutch a player as you will find in the college game today. He is sooo much better late in the game and I think he's the difference tonight.
One last thing about this game: JamesON Curry is extremely good (waaay better than I had imagined last year) and I think he'll be a first round draft pick (at PG) within a few years. The rest of the country should send a thank you note to the Eastern Alamance County Sheriff's Dept. for busting him last year. If he hadn't been busted for doing his best Sir Smoke Alot impression last February he would be playing in Chapel Hill and you could pretty much have put a bow on the ACC in January. Roy Williams also wouldn't have to curse at Bonnie Bernstein again in a couple of weeks either.
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5 comments:
That was the best moment in uncensored cursing that I can recall.
Dwight Howard has exceeded my expectations by many fold. I saw him play against Randolph Morris last year and he looked OK. Not dominating and certainly not worthy of the #1 pick. I knew Morris was a good player, but I still expected more from Howard. I saw LeBron drop 52 on Trevor Ariza. But I was wrong and Howard looks good.
I heard JamesOn sold $40 and $50 worth of dope to an undercover cop in his HS. Obviously he doesn't have a very good handle on risk/reward ratio.
Dwight Howard has far exceeded my expectations as well. Even though I was a huge proponent of drafting Okafor, I was cutting Howard some slack for a pretty average performance on ESPN versus Morris because I had heard such great things about Morris. If I'd have known (like I do now) that Morris was a big stiff who was at least 4-5 years away from being a serviceable NBA center then I may have thrown up at the thought of drafting Howard. Moral of the story is that Howard is going to a top 5 NBA player barring some unforeseen tragedy and I would've blown that pick.
You saw LeBron hit up Ariza for 52? In High school? Was this in a tournament or something? That's pretty impressive when you think about the kind of athletic defender that Ariza is/was.
Yup. 2 years ago me and Geoff went to the Saturday games of the Prime Time Shootout in Trenton. It's probably the best collection of HS talent in the country - usually about 10 of the top 25 teams in the country play during the 3 days.
We saw about 6 good games through blinding hangovers acquired in Philly the night before. It was LeBron's 1st game back from his suspension. They were playing the #6 team in the county, and it was never even close. He was unstoppable like I've never seen before. You could have put 3 more All-Americans on the other team and they still would have lost.
LeBron owned the sellout crowd. He coaxed us into giving him a standing O when he left with about 5 minutes left in the game and 52 points. Definitely one of the best sporting events of my life.
And to commemorate the occasion, I made out with arguably the ugliest girl in Philadelphia the night before the game.
I had no idea that you'd met my sister. Small world.
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