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December 11th, 2016
Knicks, Bulls, Lakers & Heat are all trying to acquire Blake Griffin and have been in talks with the Clippers organization.
Lakers rookie Rayshaud Hill is fined $25,000 after saying that the league favors the Warriors and you tell by the amount of calls that they get in a game. The Warriors are averaging a league-leading 33.4 free throws per game.
DeAndre is set to return from knee injury against the Mavericks.
“Back-Man [Kameron Backus] has done a great job filling in for BK [Brandon Knight]. He’s one of my favorite guys on the team.” says Durant.
Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Dallas getting lots of calls inquiring about Chandler Parsons and they are looking to make some trades and soon.
Milwaukee is uncertain about re-signing Jabari Parker this offseason.
"I gotta play better on both ends. Offense and defense. Rght now I ffeel like I've let the team down since I came back." said the Grizzlies Marc Gasol after their 7th loss in 10 games.
A source close to the team says that the Pelicans are interested in trading for Derrick Rose & Omri Casspi.
Paul Westphal says that he wants his team to play more uptempo. The Suns are currently averaging 100.9 PPG.Comment
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December 12th, 2016
The Curious Case of the Boban-Monster
What Boban Marjanovic can tell us about the NBA
The NBA is regarded as a league for tall guys. Tall through your years in school? If you've got any co-ordination, you're a lock for the basketball team. Some of the tallest people in the world play basketball; England's second-tallest man, ex-Harlem Globetrotter Paul Sturgess, played in the NBA D-League. But the tallest player in the NBA, San Antonio's Boban Marjanovic, who stands 7'3", averages barely 11 points per game and just over 8 boards per game. Just because you've got some co-ordination doesn't necessarily mean you're good.
Marjanovic is the 13th tallest player in NBA history, or 10th, if we discount players (Sim Bhullar, Slavko Vranes, and Pavel Podkolzin) who have played fewer than 10 NBA games. He's just half an inch taller than Knicks' phenom Kristaps Porzingis; both are in their second year in the league. There's one key difference. Porzingis was drafted fourth overall, whereas Marjanovic wasn't drafted, signing with the Spurs as a UDFA from the European system. He impressed sufficiently with San Antonio's D-League affiliate, the Austin Spurs (the Baby Spurs), that he was called up to sit on the end of the bench for the NBA Spurs (the Big Spurs). And there he sat for half a season, privileged to watch and learn from one of the NBA's greatest-ever centers, and privileged to learn from "Pop," one of the NBA's greatest-ever coaches.
He seemed poised to come into the season as Duncan's replacement, the next in a line of savvy Spurs steals succeeding the sage, successful veterans with more success. And the Spurs, without Duncan, and without Ginobili, haven't been bad—far from it. It's just the Marjanovic—the Boban-Monster has been an enigma for a team that so rarely has them.
Boban Marjanovic's points appear inversely proportional to his minutes
As the scatterplot above indicates, based on 6 recent games, Marjanovic scores more when he playes fewer minutes; he is also more effective playing fewer than 30 minutes per game. His best effort represented in the plot above came in a 118-85 win over the Knicks, where he scored 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. In 32 minutes, the longest outing represented above, Marjanovic scored only 9 points and recorded just 7 rebounds—a number below his size, which, I believe, should never happen for players over 7'0 who get actual playing time. The solution appears to be a small-scale Yao Ming issue—big men's legs just don't have what it takes. When Marjanovic plays with more gas in the tank, he plays better. Through November, he was averaging 11.1 PPG and 7.8 RPG to go with 1.4 BPG. The Spurs need to find a cheap center willing to split time with Marjanovic in order to maximize his efficiency.
Defense is another issue. Marjanovic is fearsome in the paint against small guys entering therein, but defending bigs—read: more polished bigs—is another issue. The Spurs' worst loss of the season, 100-75 to Washington, showed that Marjanovic isn't nimble enough by far. Marcin Gortat, one of the league's few stretch-5s, torched Boban for 31 points. More conventional bigs have found success, too: in the New York win, Robin Lopez led the Knicks with 17 points. Dwight Howard, in the Spurs' 94-87 loss to Atlanta, outworked and outplayed (how rarely can we say that about Dwight nowadays) Marjanovic to the tune of 23 points and 16 rebounds. Zaza Pachulia grabbed 13 rebounds against him. The solution is the same as above; the problem is that the longer the list of needs grows, the more expensive, more elusive, and more unavailable the list of centers grows.
In short, the Boban-monster has hardly turned in monster-like performances. But in that way he truly is akin to mythical monsters: rumours are exaggerated, feats of strength elevated and worshipped, and legends of fearsome greatness constantly on the horizon.
In real life, of course, monsters are rarely as scary as they seem.Comment
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December 12th, 2016
AFTER WEEKS OF SPECULATION THE CHICAGO BULLS HAVE FIRED HEAD COACH FRED HOIBERG. MORE IMPRESSIVE IS THAT THE BULLS HAVE ALREADY HIRED HIS REPLACEMENT. NATE MICMILLAN HAS BEEN HIRED AND SIGNED ON FOR FOUR YEARS AT ROUGHLY $3.5 MILLION A YEAR.Comment
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December 12th, 2016
THE MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES, CLEVELAND CAVALIERS & ORLANDO MAGIC HAVE COMPLETED A 3-TEAM TRADE CENTERED AROUND JEFF GREEN & TOBIAS HARRIS. THE GRIZZLIES GET TOBIAS HARRIS & A 2ND ROUND PICK FROM ORLANDO & R.J. HUNTER FROM CLEVELAND. THE CAVS GET JEFF GREEN FROM MEMPHIS & GREG ODEN FROM ORLANDO. AND THE MAGIC GET TIAGO SPLITTER FROM CLEVELAND & BRANDAN WRIGHT ALONG WITH TWO FUTURE 2ND ROUND PICKS FROM MEMPHISLast edited by ronyell; 07-04-2016, 10:01 AM.Comment
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