(Sunday, July 14, 2019 10:54:09 PM)
Second-year Celtics center Robert Williams picked up some skills from former teammates Al Horford and Aron Baynes during his rookie season, as he explained in a recent interview with Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe. “Al isnâ??t the fastest person, but one thing that always amazed me about him was any time he got the […]
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 7:10:18 PM)
Marcus Morris has endured a roller coaster of an offseason. The former Boston Celtics forward was coming off one of the best seasons in his career in which he averaged 13.9 points, a career-high 6.1 rebounds, and shot 37.5 percent from beyond the arc as a primary starter for the team. Despite Morris’ success, he wasn’t expected to return to Boston.
(Monday, July 15, 2019 5:01:28 AM)
The last few years have been a whirlwind for Dwight Howard. He’s headed toward playing on his fifth team in five years — and seventh in nine years — after the Washington Wizards traded him to the Memphis Grizzlies. It seems increasingly likely that the Grizzlies will have to release him instead of finding a trade partner, which could again give Howard the choice of his new home.
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 7:52:54 PM)
It’s with that understanding that the two-time MVP knows he and the Dubs need Draymond Green — who is due to hit unrestricted free agency next offseason — perhaps now more than ever. “I feel like he’s proven how valuable he is to a championship team and can find ways to get even better,” Curry said of Green to The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson. “They know what’s up.”
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 10:25:53 PM)
WWE’s latest pay-per-view event, Extreme Rules, is taking place Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pa. and Yahoo Sports will be following all of the action. Refresh the page throughout the evening for all the results as they happen live.
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 8:59:07 AM)
Tiger Woods hopped straight off the plane to get his first-ever look at Royal Portrush, as The Open returns to the Irish coast for the first time in 68 years. Woods boarded a seven-and-a-half-hour flight from Florida on Saturday night, landing in Northern Ireland on Sunday morning. Wearing a light gray sweater on a sunny day as temperatures pushed 70 degrees, Woods appeared sluggish and somewhat stiff at times while shaking off the rust, a likely side-effect from an intercontinental commute.
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 12:25:29 PM)
Anthony Davis revealed his first press conference as an LA Lakers player that he waived a 4 million dollar trade kicker deal to help the Lakers in their pursuit of Kawhi Leonard.
(Monday, July 15, 2019 2:14:35 AM)
Andrew Benintendi is experiencing significant struggles at the plate, and Sunday night he seemed to let his frustration get the best of him against the Dodgers. In the sixth inning against Hyun-Jin Ryu, Benintendi had a 3-1 count when umpire Pat Hoberg called a strike on a pitch up in the zone. Benintendi didn’t like the call considering he could have gotten on base against a terrific pitcher in Ryu, and then struck out chasing a fastball up high and inside.
(Monday, July 15, 2019 12:38:49 AM)
Condensed Game: Freedie Freeman crushed a go-ahead 3-run homer to back Mike Soroka’s strong start in the Braves’ 4-1 win
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 3:52:27 PM)
Lewis Hamilton won a record sixth British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
(Monday, July 15, 2019 12:49:57 AM)
Brandon Clarke posts a double-double with 23 points and 14 rebounds as Memphis drops New Orleans and advances to the 2019 NBA Summer League Finals.
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 11:14:36 PM)
Daily Recap: Robinson Cano homered and had a four-hit game, while Jacob deGrom picked up his fifth win
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 4:45:14 PM)
Neymar reflects on Brazil’s 2019 Copa America win
(Monday, July 15, 2019 5:29:57 AM)
New England Patriots stars Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski were on $100,000 Pyramid Sunday. Since Gronkowski has recently retired, the two football player thought it was safe to reveal how the big guy managed to stay so positive. During the introduction segment of the game show, Edelman was asked about a little song he used to sing to Gronkowski.
(Sunday, July 14, 2019 7:26:52 PM)
England have won the Cricket World Cup for the first time after beating New Zealand
(Monday, July 15, 2019 6:11:02 AM)
On Sunday night’s Celebrity Family Feud, the NFL Players Association elected a team of current NFL All-Stars to face off against a team of Hall of Fame Legends. Host Steve Harvey kicked things off with a rather salacious first question. Steve asked, “What’s your fondest memory at a strip club?”
127 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.07.15)”
God, so much time before even training camp starts. What are we going to talk about til the fall? Or, at least, until we see Frank play in FIBA?
We can talk about how in shape Jud Buechler still looks and wonder why we didn’t add him to the roster as a 3 ball specialist instead of signing Ellington lol
To be or not to be…. a Knicks fan…. during summertime ?
That is the question !
We can talk about libertarianism, which to my understanding is not a governing system. To build large scale projects people need to organize. And if your idea of government is get out of the way and let me be, how would people organize?
How would we build roads, or go to space, or research for new medication if we don’t get organized?
Please stay away from politics. Please.
How about why Medical Marijuana Dispensaries are not called Grass Stations? Or..how come daughter isn’t pronounced “daffter” or laughter isn’t pronounced “lawter”? Or why are we waiting SO long for the final Friday film or the next Black Star album? Where in time is Carmen San Diego, perhaps? I dunno…
For those who rooted hard against Novak yesterday (I was with you), here’s a pretty good Ringer article speculating about how the lack of crowd support might be helping him succeed. A lot of the points made resonated with me.
https://www.theringer.com/2019/7/14/20693870/novak-djokovic-roger-federer-wimbledon-final-2019
Marcus Morris just fired his agent, apparently because he had a $41 million dollar offer from the Clippers that he didn’t take. So the Clippers and the Spurs both wanted him and were willing to commit to more than one year contracts. Those are well managed teams. I’m starting to think we got a good player at a good price.
Before Morris i predicted 29 wins max.
After Morris i’m saying 35.
And it hasn’t only to do with his game.
Morris brings much needed “balls” and “will” to our young squad.
And these 2 bring wins !
Federer is better and tougher than 99.9% of all pro tennis players, but Novak is mentally even stronger than Federer.
In very very close contests with lots of ups and downs the ability to control your emotions and nerves and channel all that extra energy and adrenaline into a positive response instead of negative one is a key differentiator.
It was no accident that Novak broke Federer back and Federer couldn’t close with 2 match points or with similar advantages in early sets. Against 99.9% of tennis players Federer would have overwhelmed them with superior ability. But the gap between Novak and Federer is so small when they both come with their A game, the player that can control their nerves and use that energy positively will raise their game a hair at the key moments instead of falling a hair. Novak won because he’s even tougher.
@4
I agree. IMHO, Libertarianism is anti-civilization. It’s mass adoption and mass failures during the 19th C world led to the rise of progressive ideologies like Marxism, socialism, and Georgism.
I consider its evangelization to be a weapon of mass destruction and, possibly, the ultimate devil’s tool.
You’re missing the point, strat (what a shock!)
Why were these superstars drafted so low? Draymond? Kawhi? Because teams drafting higher were looking for stars, not role players. Most of them had some glaring (but faux) red flag that made people ignore either their physical gifts or their college production. Clarke fits that mold perfectly. He was the second most productive player (by a very large margin) in the NCAA next to Zion. You don’t need to be a scout to find that out, it was reported in a billion different ways. But because he’s “old” and “short” and not a “shot creator” he was passed over. And now he is utterly killing it against much better comp in summer league, and will almost certainly do the same in the NBA. Will he be better than RJ during his rookie-scale contract? You’re a betting man….would you have bet on RJ prior to the draft? More importantly, would you have bet that picking #3 in this draft was smarter than trading down to pick Clarke and whoever?
No you are missing the point, as usual.
You can find isolated examples of anything you want in the draft because to a large extent it’s a weighted crap shoot as I’ve been saying all along. The idea is to get the probabilities on your side as best you can, but it’s really tough.
If you are smart enough to find those rare gems with limited offensive skillsets in college that will blossom into versatile star two-way players on a fairly consistent basis you should be working for the Spurs.
IMO, the chances that Barrett becomes a solid #1 or #2 scoring option in 4-5 years are higher than for Clarke who is already 2+ years older and shoots worse than Barrett now.
Again, that doesn’t mean I don’t want Clarke too. I wanted to trade a pick(s) to get him because I think he IS very likely to become a very high level role player. But that does not mean I think it was a good idea to draft him 3rd to trade down to get him.
To me, it’s very obvious that the priority in a rebuild is to get the solid #1 and #2 scoring options because that’s the toughest thing to get. That’s why you tank. That’s why you manage cap space. That’s why you accumulate assets to trade.
Barrett has a much better chance to become that in 4-5 years than Clarke. I just wish we traded a pick to get Clarke also.
It also probably helps to be five years younger than your opponent, but don’t let that get in the way of an argument about intangibles that can be refuted about as easily as it can be confirmed, which is, uh, not at all.
Absolute nonsense.
That’s because you totally ignore that you can get volume scorers in free agency and on the trade market. We keep swinging for the fences on “potential scorers” and how’s it goink?
i would pump the brakes on clarke… summer league isn’t really all that informative… and that’s especially true with guys that are as old as clarke…. this environment is not too different than college… clarke is still older than most in summer league…. and that matters significantly…
so this idea that he’s killing it now and will almost certainly do so when the games get dialed up…. that’s a bit overzealous… sometimes you get a kyle kuzma…. and they turn out ok.. but most of the time you get adam morrison… or henry ellenson…
If we were talking about Jaxson Hayes, what you are saying would make sense. Clarke is not a bad offensive player, certainly not any more than Draymond Green or Kawhi Leonard were bad offensive players in college. He didn’t “shoot worse” than Barrett. And there are several important things that he does much, much better than Barrett and those things are shown time and time again to be transferrable. It’s not just that Clarke was passed over at #3 (totally logical and valid.) It’s that he was passed over after, say, pick #8 for player after player that had a far less chance of being an impact player in the NBA than him. For me, this is only about whether trading down was a good move, not picking Barrett over Clarke at #3.
Thankfully, GMs (including SA these days) continue to pass over guys with demonstrated skill and unquestionable statistical superiority for (mostly offensive) upside or measurables. That’s how Knox and Frank were mistakenly drafted. Thankfully, that’s also how Mitch and Iggy and Trier wound up being available to us. All of them were better on paper than several to many (to most in Mitch’s case) than those picked above them. Iggy in particular was better on paper than guys like Langford and Little and others, and getting him by trading up for nothing but cash was a brilliant move. Trier was old and had some steroid blips that turned out to be nothing really. He should have been drafted early in the second round at worst.
Ellenson pretty much sucked in college. Morrison was a mediocre rebounder and terrible passer and defender in college.
I’d be interested to see a team go all-in on analytics for the draft. Just throw the tools out the window and go with guys that have proven they can play basketball.
Pretty crazy that we need to go all in on analytics to pick guys who can play. It’s obvious that some teams are still using gut feeling and intuition to make picks. There’s no other explanation for Cam Reddish going 11 slots before Clarke. Or maybe the spreadsheet says:
Clarke 22
Reddish 19
Take that for analytics!
ok so what about kris dunn and jerian grant? or frank kaminsky and sam dekker?
None of those guys produced like Clarke and all were drafted higher in deeper drafts on paper.
Older guys like Kaminsky who dominate late in college don’t always translate that to the NBA. It’s a valid reason for looking closely at Clarke, but he’s tremendously athletic for his size-yeah, he was more athletic than a lot of the kids he was playing against, but he’s going to be more athletic than the guys he’s playing against in the NBA too.
ok so what about hasheem thabeet? wesley johnson? i could go on all day….
the point i’m trying to make is that what clarke is doing in summer league isn’t that special… ppl have wow’ed in summer league before…. and it seems like it’s ppl’s first rodeo… this shit happens every year… and just because clarke is your guy doesn’t make him unique… he’s just the next iteration….
that’s not to say he definitely won’t be good…. but the amount of certainty ppl have about him is pretty baseless…. and these are the same folks who had so much doubt about rj that they wanted to trade down to get someone like clarke…. and still think so! i mean was rj’s summer league at age 19 chopped liver compared to clarke?
@22
The weird thing with Kaminsky is that his rebounding and specially the shot blocking have not translated at all to the pro level. He was a pretty good rebounder and averaged almost 2 blocks a game in college. He had a pretty decent year last season when he did play.
But Clarke’s numbers in college are way better than Kaminsky’s in pretty much all categories. The per 40 numbers are all incredibly insane, shit like 4.5 blocks and 12.7 rebounds with 1.7 steals and the absolutely mind blowing .700 ts%.
Kaminsky dominated, but never to the same extent Clarke dominated last season. I get being wary of the possibility of him being a big guy on a small pond, but the production was way too good for him to drop out of the top 10, let alone all the way to 21.
I figure Clarke dropped because bigs who can’t shoot threes are the least scarce and least expensive players in the NBA. They just aren’t considered to have much value unless they’re legit superstars. Is Clarke that?
Very, very few players have dominated in college like Clarke has, advanced stats-wise. As to summer league, his 3-pt shot sure doesn’t look broken. He’s got a tremendous b-ball iq. He seems perfectly suited to position-less basketball. After pick #10 he was a no-brainer.
Age matters in their overall speed, quickness, stamina etc… If you want to argue that peak Federer was the better tennis player, I’m not going to argue.
I love Federer, but this is not the first time he’s lost a Grand Slam in the same way. It’s not even the first time he’s lost to Novak in a Grand Slam this way. He lost at least 2 others by getting a little wobbly under fire and admitted it HIMSELF. We didn’t even need me to tell you the obvious.
1. It isn’t about volume. It’s about having a versatile efficient offensive skill set.
2. I was for Bridges over Knox. Here’s the difference. Bridges is going to be an excellent 3 & D role player and you can hope for a lot more. Knox was a swing for the fences as a scorer, but Knox was not a defender, rebounder, playmaker or anything else. So if he doesn’t become a high usage above average efficiency scorer, he could be a bust. If Barrett doesn’t expand his offensive game, he’s still a very good rebunder and playmaker for a SG and will still score efficiently around the basket. His worst case is an NBA role player.
3. If Clarke winds up being a very good role player, he’ll still probably have boxscore metrics that suggest he’s a star to you. You’ll whine that everyone is an idiot for not playing him more minutes and realizing how many wins he’s contributing. You’ll never even consider that maybe it’s YOUR thinking about the game and your models that are wrong.
4. Clarke is 2 years older than Frank and a worse outside shooter. Let that sink in when you are projecting him to be a two way star player.
And as Jowles has explained, getting production on a rookie-scale deal is immensely valuable. Most 18-20yo’s picked in the lottery don’t produce much on their rookie deals.
Clarke was very impressive in his last year in college and looks good in summer league. He’s also 22 years old playing against a lot of much younger players that are less developed physically, have less developed skills offensively (or they would have put up better stats too) and not as strong as him when trying to defend him. I’m not sure what the correct age adjustment is, but to not consider it is idiocy.
I agree that we shouldn’t go by what Clarke does in SL, but I still think he’s going to be a fantastic player and I’m sad we didn’t draft him (although I’m somewhat optimistic about both our 2019 draft picks).
His statistics were, of course, off the charts, but the eye test seems to serve his stats. He looks like he has an extra gear that most players don’t have and a serious nose for the ball around the basket. If he develops a 3-point shot, holy shit…
It just sucks that these guys are languishing in shit cities like Memphis and New Orleans (no offense to anyone that lives there). The league should move them to San Diego or Jacksonville, or hell, give NYC a third team.
But in college he shot 0.6 3s per 40, and not very well. This isn’t an argument that he shouldn’t have been picked higher, I think he def should have gone 10-12 if not earlier. I do think he fell farther because of that profile. Too far in a league where points in the paint still account for almost half of team’s scoring, but defensive bigs who don’t space the floor are not that expensive to acquire in free agency…
@31
Exactly.
I’m in the position of saying he’s less likely to become a versatile #1 or #2 option than Barrett while there are posts in the archive where I suggested it might make sense to give up both of Dallas’s picks to get him because they are future picks and will probably not yield a player as good as Clarke.
There is a difference between a 22 year old player with limitations as a scorer that is taking advantage of younger weaker players and younger players with more average development ahead of them that should be reflected in where players are drafted. It was overdone (maybe 10-12 made more sense), but even the Spurs passed on him.
I think Clarke has a solid chance to be a more effective, efficient, and prolific scorer than Barrett. My point is that bigs who don’t space the floor are percieved to provide less value on rookie contracts because they’re relatively inexpensive in free agency. Isn’t Noel’s deal about the same as a mid-lottery pick?
Why we talking about Clarke? BARRETT is a Knick and looked DOPE in that last game. Can we fantasize about his ceiling please?
For those of you kind enough to check out the video of my old band Mind Carnival a while back, I’ve posted a second (and probably last) band video on Youtube. This one includes audio of our entire 5 song studio demo (running time 17:33) from 1986.
I made a slide show to accompany it, mixing in the few band photos that exist along with other memorabilia, as well as some anecdotes by me about the recording and a brief history of the band. Included is a very brief account of the surreal night we were “raided” by the police, and another about us missing out on a chance for a “big break” in Nashville. Nothing fancy, just white text on black slides.
Posting these two videos completes a couple of big checkmarks on my bucket list! Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h30gPR3LFPM
BTW, we weren’t happy with the sound of the recording, as I talk about in the video…
It sure seems to me like there’s an over-fetishization of bigs who can shoot, witness Bobby Portis (not good at basketball) earning a $15M contract from our very favorite franchise because he is sorta okay at this one skill. Portis doesn’t defend and plays a pitifully soft offensive game, but he can hit threes at a decent clip and he’s tall, so he has perceived value. I guess he also rebounds, so there’s that.
I get that stretch bigs are important in the modern game, but it seems like their value is starting to get exaggerated. Bobby Portis is the classic case. He’s really not a very good player, and it’s ridiculous that he got the contract he did.
@34
I mean, we’ve been doing it for a while. For me a good yet realistic scenario is he becomes young Andre Iguodala, less of a defender than he was but more versatile offensively if he ever truly develops a 3 pointer. What summer league showed me is that he’s much better suited to playing the 3 than the 2, and he really does have good instincts regarding passing and creating for other, so that should be his role, a slasher / secondary creator that can initiate the offense as a primary guy for some stretches. Becoming a star will take some work tho, but it seems feasible if he can develop this shot a lot, and we should not expect him to be very productive right away, but that’s true of most young rookies anyway.
The argument that he’s older and taking advantage of younger players gets debunked pretty much every year. Almost as often as the argument that he’s young and just needs time to fill out and mature. The vast majority of the time, either a guy can play or he can’t.
All summer league caveats apply but Iggy posted 21pts, 7reb, 2.5asts, 2 stocks per 36 on 61 TS%. And it looked pretty sustainable. Exciting!
wingspan too small to be effective = #1 DRtg, #3 DBPM, #1 in BLKs in Div. 1 ball
too short to score inside = .699 TS% on 24 USG%
too old to be an elite prospect = ages 23 through 26 locked up for $12.2M for the price of a non-lottery pick
I think he’ll be Iguodala on defense and Faried on offense. Not a bad player at #21.
One bad habit I’ve noticed in SL is that he seems allergic to setting a physical screen in the PnR, opting to sort of set a phantom pick and initiate the roll. I haven’t seen if he’s capable of a Draymond/Adams-type screen, yet. I suspect that Morant will be strong at passing out of defensive flashing, but it still puts a lot of pressure on the ball-handler and is more about getting a good lob than allowing the penetrating guard to get to the rim.
in what way do does the idea that older players take advantage of younger players gets ‘debunked’ every year?
Here’s an interesting stat:
RJ Barrett is the first player in Summer League history to average at least 15 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists per contest.
that was flippin awesome clash…thank you so much for sharing…i loved the notes, set lists and band band name concepts…way cool sir…
yeah, i got picked up one time by the cops for being the wrong “white” guy they were looking for…those fuckers didn’t even bother to tell me what was going on or check who i was for like four or five hours, not a very pleasant experience…what made it worse – i’m a latino 🙂
your love of music and playing with others really comes though…
seems to work in baseball…different sports, but…
Baseball is such an individual-centric sport, in a way that basketball and football and hockey aren’t, that it’s proven much harder to go all-in on analytics elsewhere. Even the NBA teams that we look at as being classically analytical do weird things, like Houston signing Melo or the Spurs retooling around a couple of guys who specialize in long 2s.
that makes sense al…which is probably the reason so many of these front office guys like james jones and vlade have their jobs – cuz of their “feel” for the game and ability to communicate well…no doubt there is definitely less synergy between baseball players (other than maybe pitcher/catcher) than in other sports…
I’ll still take Pete Sampras on grass over any other tennis player ever. He was pretty freaking good on hard court too. Clay is another story lol.
Jacksonville is too embedded in a football/college sports zone. I don’t think pro bball will work there.
San Diego? I dunno.
Here’s a theoretical question:
So according to what yall have posted in past threads, Kawhi had good defensive numbers and metrics in college but a poor outside shot. So he maintained his defensive identity but grew by leaps and bounds offensively. Why can’t Knox do the (sort of) opposite and grow exponentially on defense? I see a guy whose all arms and legs (as someone else here put it) who still has a ways to go to chisel his body – why can’t he grow to eventually use those limbs to – say – disrupt passing lanes?
Let me try that San Diego article link again
that match at the US open in 1996 when he threw up, nearly passed out while playing and still won – is one of my favorite sports moments of all time…
Pernell Sweet Pea Whitaker got hit by a car and died at age 55. Between him and Duran as best lightweight I ever saw.
Since we’re talking about tennis and basketball, here’s a hypothetical question for all of you: if the world’s greatest athletes focused on tennis instead of their respective sports, would they dominate and leave guys like Federer and Nadal and Djokovic as also rans? Think about guys like LeBron or OB Jr. playing nothing but tennis their whole lives, how good would they be?
My brother in law is a great tennis player and a big fan of the sport, and he gets mad at me when I suggest that the stars of his sport would be marginalized, which is what I believe.
The Austrian School saw human society as rationally driven by a bunch of competing self-interests, conceptualized by what they called praxiology, where human preferences and choices are always working against or in concert towards ends. So according to this theory, people will eventually realize a problem and privately decide if it’s in their interest to address a larger societal problem with any need of government interference. Citizens will privately decide if their town needs build a school, or a bridge, hospital, etc. and pool resources to put money towards that end.
The state’s monopoly on force can only said to legitimately exist for protecting private rights and free voluntary exchange, that’s it. Robert Nozick described this Lockean principle as the “nightwatchman state,” where the goal is to create an impartial arbiter like an NBA official who allows for people to fairly play by the rules of the game in a free society. But then you read extreme libertarians like Murray Rothbard and you immediately realize they’re anti-statist to the point that they don’t even support the power of courts to subpoena witnesses.
And then you see how this emphasis upon private rights creates a whole set of extreme contradictions, like the debate among libertarians on whether or not a person has the individual right to contract himself into a form of slavery (which you could argue wage labor is anyway). Under the libertarian scheme, they are perfectly fine with an infringement of individual rights as long as it is under market conditions with owners of private capital entitled to greater coercive power than states, since libertarian states can’t mandate slavery.
When a libertarian speaks of liberty, they really mean the liberty of the owners of capital and land to do what…
Would’ve been a hell of matchup between those two titans. Whitaker in his prime would’ve given Duran some fits with his evasive style, even though I think the latter was the greatest LW of all time. I am thinking Lomachenko is entering this plane of greatness. His run of title victories so soon in his professional career is still pretty amazing even when you factor in the 200+ amateur fights.
I think guys like that are amazing athletes no matter what sport they play. But when you’re reaching the level of a Federer, Djokovic, and Nadal there is a certain level of skill with the racket and footwork that not every great athlete is going to come in and master. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player I ever saw and his limits as a baseball hitter were obvious, despite having played it well into his teens.
“Let me try that San Diego article link again“.
Joseph Tsai is our only hope here in San Diego unless the NFL makes the greedy & incompetent Spanos family sell the Chargers to some billionaire who wants to bring them home.
“RJ Barrett is the first player in Summer League history to average at least 15 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists per contest.”
That’s great to hear because if RJ busts on top of Knox and Frank, that’s going to set back the rebuild yet again. I don’t care how fantastic Mitch turns out to be, the Knicks can’t afford to keep missing on top 10 first rounders.
@43
Geo, sorry to hear about your ordeal. My housemate Matt was literally working on a big school project in his room at about 9 PM on a Saturday night when the police arrived (we were downstairs in the basement). He let them in, figuring the noise complaint could have been about us. We hadn’t been playing for about 10 minutes when they arrived. One of them, a huge overweight guy, was in a pissy mood, and we did not complain or do anything to incite them. There had not been any previous complaints, either. And they soon knew they’d come to the wrong house.
A few minutes later he’s in cuffs. The whole scene was surreal b/c soon there were 3 cop cars outside and then a paddy wagon. The crowd must have thought there was a murder or something inside.
The NBA’s Twitter account wished Luke Kornet of the New York Knicks a happy birthday.
Did I miss something?
If Strat’s opinion is that Clarke slipped much further than he should’ve, but also would’ve been a poor use of assets at #3 overall…him and I are in complete agreement. Weird.
I guess the question is, to what extent do you think he’ll transcend the high-efficiency/high rebounding/medium usage archetype that keeps getting basically no money? I think without a doubt he has much higher potential on defense than KOQ/Ed Davis/Faried etc., which is a pretty big distinction. It also seems like there’s some potential as a 3PT shooter, which is what could bring him into max-player territory if it all comes together.
The flip side is if the 3PT shot never becomes a weapon and the elite defense doesn’t hold up against NBA competition…you might have yourself a super Kenneth Faried. That’s still great value on a rookie scale deal, but if he starts getting paid serious money you might be better off scouring the waiver wire.
Overall it’s a little hard for me to be upset about missing out on him since him and Mitch have pretty overlapping skill sets, but some of the names that went before him are downright indefensible.
I’m a boxing fanatic and was raised to be a worshipper of Roberto Duran, who is my dad’s favorite boxer. My dad pulled me out of school when I was eight years old to see Duran train in Miami for what turned out to be the “No Mas” fight. I’ve seen pretty much every Duran fight. YouTube boxing videos are a common late night rabbit hole for me. I love Duran.
Duran would have lost to Whitaker though. Whitaker was the worst possible style matchup for Duran, who struggled with ultra-slick boxers throughout his career, and there was nobody slicker than Sweet Pea.
Lomachenko is incredible, he reminds me of two of my favorite fighters, Roy Jones Jr and Salvador Sanchez.
My favorite boxer in the world though is Nayoa “The Monster” Inoue, a Japanese bantamweight who is a wrecking machine.
One of my extremely rudimentary, but also favorite, ways of evaluating various draft models is seeing if they regularly produce a better big board than the actual draft results. Off the top of my head, Model284 and the DMX Draft Model tend to produce boards that hold up very well historically. I’m sure there are plenty of others I’m missing.
Overall I think a good model will usually produce a better overall board than the actual results, but there are individual smart teams with the ability to outperform the best (public) models. The models clean up when teams pick the Ntilikinas and Knoxes and Cam Johnsons of the world.
I 100% agree. The Wilfredo Benitez fight is the most instructive there. Duran could not figure Radar’s slick defense out and prime Whitaker had better reflexes. He’d flummox and frustrate Duran.
Salvador Sanchez is like the Len Bias of boxing. Oh, what could’ve been if he didn’t die on his motorbike. I think he would’ve been hands down the greatest Mexican boxer of all time. That fight between him and Wilfredo Gomez was brutal.
I think Lomachenko is really operating an entirely different level of boxing than anyone in his weight stratosphere. I want to see him fight Pacquiao ASAP.
Would’ve loved to have seen him face Choclatito at super flyweight, but I don’t think that’s getting done now that Gonzalez is on the decline.
Do you boxing fans follow the heavyweights? It’s a pretty crazy group right now. Fury is insanely talented and Wilder is a bizarre freak athlete like I’ve never seen in the sport — basically just a streetfighter. And then there was the Ruiz upset of Joshua! I don’t know how they’ll work these fights out with all the new sponsorships, but I’d love to see Ruiz/Fury in the near future.
And yeah, Lomachenko is completely insane and I love watching Canelo.
@57
if i remember right clash – aren’t you working in the education field?
have you had a chance to incorporate your love of music in to your teaching?
it’s funny, i’m a fairly “stay under the radar” type person, particularly when it comes to the police…one thing i have learned though from some of my less than straight and narrow friends – when the po po comes a knocking: it’s quite time…hell, if they got a warrant, they coming in…i tend to believe they much prefer knocking your door down anyways…
no doubt we have some posters and readers who more than likely are out there working to serve and protect…and, i have zero doubt that there are some mighty fine folks putting themselves at risk to serve the greater good…my personal experience though – some of them are serious adrenaline junkies looking to get in to some shit/”excitement”…and, they got badges and weapons to back themselves up…
plus, if you deal with shit humans, that are mostly trying to deceive you all the time – that can’t have too great a humanizing effect on you…
sorry for my short sighted and not so favorable rant about the boys and girls in blue…
The heavyweights are pretty interesting right now. Fury is a weird cipher of a fighter, he moves really well for a guy who is 6’9” but doesn’t punch hard and can be hurt if you clip him. I thought his fight with Wilder was a legit draw, Fury mostly outboxed Wilder but got dropped hard twice. It was an inconclusive result and they’re supposedly rematching in February. Wilder has as much one punch power as any boxer who ever lived, his overhand right is a nuclear weapon.
There are some interesting young heavies on the horizon too: Filip Hrgovic from Croatia who is well-rounded and has great amateur pedigree, seems like a future champion. Also Daniel Dubois from the UK, big strong attacking power puncher and just a baby at 21 years old. Efe Ajagba is another guy who is a fearsome puncher, looks like an Adonis.
I mean, I think there is no question that if you got a lot more people from across the spectrum playing tennis the composition of the top players would change dramatically. It’s a sport that is a lot easier to pursue if you are wealthy right now. The Williams sisters have shown what’s possible but it’s obviously still incredibly difficult if you are coming from a disadvantaged background.
Beckham Jr. definitely could have the makings of a good player. He might be a little short. As for Lebron. not many 6’8 guys have been able to hack it on the pro tour other than as serve bots. The four greatest mens champions are all 6’1.
I wonder about what kind of physical attributes lend themselves to being a great tennis player and if anyone has quantified it. Baseball players all have insanely good vision. I wonder if top tennis players have special hand eye coordination, balance, agility, reflexes etc. Some guys can also just swing a racquet harder than others.
In the tennis world I’m intrigued by the French kid, Felix Augier-Alliasime. Like Federer his game is really aesthetically pleasing.
I meant Canadian, FAA is French Canadian. Sick player.
Yeah, Hrgovic seems really talented, but I can’t imagine him going against Wilder, for instance. That’s why the division is so interesting, maybe, because a lot of heavyweights are just off the usual charts and differ so wildly from one another. Ruiz is a really sound boxer but he looks like a bar bouncer, and Fury’s height/length/quickness combo is so rare… but then Wilder, who just swings his arms basically, might be the best of them all.
Wilder has one other sneaky great attribute besides his punching power: he can bring that power late in fights. He was fully beaten against Fury but managed to unload a fucking savage one-two in the 12th round of that fight and nearly take Fury out. Wilder has flashed this late power a number of times in his career.
Part of it I think is his freakish build: he’s 6’7″ but only comes in around 215 pounds, while the other big heavies who are that height come in the ring at around 250. He has sort of a Kevin Garnett body type, it’s all wiry muscle and he has massive strength. I think it’s something about that body type that allows him to have such concussive power late in fights.
I need to see more from Wilder before I say he has better punching power than Earnie Shaver.
How would we build roads, or go to space, or research for new medication if we don’t get organized?
Private roads with tolls exist
see Elon Musk
Private pharm companies do medical research so they can develop new drugs to sell
There’s a misconception that because we want Government out out of X, that means we don’t want X.
I’m just answering a civil question in a civil manner. Can we be civil to each other and avoid personal insults?
But because he’s “old” and “short” and not a “shot creator” he was passed over. And now he is utterly killing it against much better comp in summer league, and will almost certainly do the same in the NBA. Will he be better than RJ during his rookie-scale contract? You’re a betting man….would you have bet on RJ prior to the draft? More importantly, would you have bet that picking #3 in this draft was smarter than trading down to pick Clarke and whoever?
Replace all of that with Rui Hachemora. There are tons of examples. I remember thinking how nuts it was for so many teams to pass on Myles Turner. And how anybody could draft Knox over SGA and Mikal Bridges. But some guys just can’t dominate a 3 on 3 like Mr. Knox.
https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/default/poster/10/8/break/images-medium/magic-eight-ball-outlook-not-so-good-photo-researchers-inc.jpg
and, just for good measure:
http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/kKnp275EqCxlS/giphy.gif
I get that stretch bigs are important in the modern game, but it seems like their value is starting to get exaggerated. Bobby Portis is the classic case. He’s really not a very good player, and it’s ridiculous that he got the contract he did.”
This and older college players entering the draft are the 2 current market inefficiencies – see Mitch, Jarrett Allen, Capela, Jaxson Hayes…. and Clarke, Mikal, Rui
Pernell Sweet Pea Whitaker got hit by a car and died at age 55. Between him and Duran as best lightweight I ever saw.
Of fighters I’ve seen, Duran, Caesar Chavez, Mayweather Jr., Pacquio
Mayweather is a defensive genius. Be fun to see those 4 fight in their primes.
@57 Thank God none of those thugs got trigger happy with you guys. Also glad there wasn’t a dog around, because he would probably have gotten shot.
They can basically do whatever they want to us, and afterwards just state they saw a furtive movement, feared for their lives, and the dog was coming right at them.
Yeah, I think hand eye coordination thing is the most important attribute for tennis (and baseball). You also need a deft touch (for drop shots, e.g.) and obviously lots of stamina (definitely not for baseball!)
I do think LeBron could dominate tennis if it was his one sport from childhood. Once he learned how to serve he’d pretty much never get broken, and he could put so much power behind his ground strokes he could overwhelm his opponents.
Mayweather at 130-140 lbs was unbeatable. People look at the older Mayweather at 147-154 lbs and think he’s just a defensive fighter with no power who runs and wins decisions (he is not a runner at all, nobody fights better in the pocket than Mayweather) but Mayweather in the 130’s used to knockout and absolutely dominate boxers. Mayweather from junior lightweight to junior welterweight is one of the best boxers ever.
was a big boxing fan growing up, stayed that way up until the 2000’s…the 70’s and 80’s were full of great fighters and fights…once i saw an mma match though, it was hard to stay interested in boxing…
now that the tables have turned in terms of popularity for boxing and mma, and, more and more mma (UFC, PFL, and Bellator) slip behind paywalls (ESPN plus and DAZN), seems that we’re getting more “free” televised boxing on espn and fox…
watched a couple of interesting boxing matches this weekend…still though, hard to compare with watching someone get kicked in the head…goodnight holly, sweet dreams 🙂
Mayweather-Duran would have been interesting because Mayweather was not great against pressure fighters. The two guys that gave him the most trouble were Jose Luis Castillo and Marcos Maidana, both guys who turned up the pressure and threw lots of punches at Floyd. He beat them both, but Duran was far better than both of those guys.
Duran has talked about Mayweather and said that he would’ve targeted Floyd’s ribs with that Philly Shell stance he uses.
This isn’t a good example since pharmaceuticals spend more on marketing than they do on research.
I just remembered my favorite fighter from the insane plethora of amazing 80’s fighters in the lighter weights- John Mugabi. The man was a “beast”, but couldn’t get past Hagler. I was so upset when he didn’t win that fight.
The craziest fight of the 80’s that I remember was Arguello Vs Pryor. I remember thinking Pryor had to be on something to take that beating and not go down. Sure enough it turned out he was lit up on coke.
This isn’t a good example since pharmaceuticals spend more on marketing than they do on research.
goalposts>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>goalposts
@87
You don’t have an issue with the fact that privately owned companies who are in the business to develop cures are spending more money on creating demand for their product than for developing new cures? Also, the libertarian argument doesn’t take the major role subsidies play in the development of new drugs. We have system where R&R is a socialized cost since it costs around 1 billion dollars to develop a new drug and government subsidizes a third of biomedical research, then the profits are then privatized into pharmaceutical hands.
is it bad that most of the “real” news (outside of sports) i digest comes from john oliver and trevor noah…
Yes
lol
JK, you mentioned Roy Jones Jr. You think him going up to heavyweight messed up his career?? After his fight with Ruiz he had to lose all that weight to return to light heavy and it looked like it mess him up, no way a prime Roy Jones gets knocked out by Tarver and Glen Johnson. I think it would’ve been cool if he would’ve stayed at heavy and fought the “smaller” heavweights at the time like Byrd and Holyfield. Going up to heavy just for 1 fight with Ruiz I think messed the rest of his career up which was a shame, hated to see him get knocked out by guys who had no business beating him. Roy Jones in his prime was incredible to watch.
@ 88 you’re moving the goalposts again. I’m simply stating, in response to another post, that drug research would still take place with Gov’t. Meanwhile, you’re bringing up Gov’t subsidies to a libertarian – think about that.
I think there was probably some PED weirdness going on with Roy Jones around that period.
Roy was 34 when he moved up to heavyweight to face John Ruiz, so he was aging anyway. But yeah, he was never the same after that move up to heavyweight. Jones was not a fighter like Mayweather or Hopkins who was destined to age well. He was great because he had amazing reflexes and athleticism. He wasn’t a schooled, textbook boxer like Mayweather/Hopkins/Andre Ward. Once he lost the fast-twitch reflexes, he was pretty ordinary. He was like the Russell Westbrook of boxers.
Speaking of Holyfield, I won a lot of money betting on him vs Tyson twice. Talk about a guy living off his reputation. It was like the Phil Jackson MMM. WTF were people (ans Phil) thinking lol
Yeah, Tyson was never the same after he left Kevin Rooney. It’s embarrassing watching replays of the Buster Douglas fight and seeing Tyson’s corner in between rounds.
@93
Oh, I thought you were using the pharmaceutical industry as an example of libertarian free-market economics when you wrote that “private pharm companies do medical research so they can develop new drugs to sell.”
See, my critique is that 1.) pharmaceuticals aren’t as incentivized by the market system to develop new drugs as you think (they’re more incentivized to game it with marketing and holding onto patents) and 2.) these industries aren’t as libertarian as you think since they rely heavily on government subsidies for their biomedical R&D.
I promised myself I wouldn’t get into it, but what libertarians can’t seem to understand is that business men themselves don’t want this super advanced form of libertarianism, they want the state to be there for them whenever they want. What they want is a patchwork system where the government only intervenes when and where they want to, and keeps them free to do whatever else they want in every other aspect or period.
That’s why it never has worked and it never will, and it’s about as utopic and unrealistic as they seem to think communist ideas are. The government is far too useful for major corporations to agree to something like that.
What does annoy me is when people actually believe this is possible, which is also what annoys me about people who still believe trotskian ideas are viable in 2019.
@ 97 I was simply responding to the idea that new drugs wouldn’t be created without the Gov’t. I’m not disputing that crony capitalism isn’t our current status in pretty much every industry. There is nothing libertarian about any industry. Uber and airnb, for example, started out libertarian/free market but the State took care of that in short order.
I think it really says a lot about right-wing libertarianism that a major debate in their ranks is whether or not a person should have the right to freely and voluntarily sell themselves into slavery because the issue pits the two core principles of their philosophy — the concept of free voluntarism vs. property absolutism — in contradiction against one another. You can gleam a lot about the problems with how a libertarian conceptualizes “freedom” by how they answer that question. Can a person be free to sell away their freedom? If they say “yes” then you wonder how they reconcile this endorsement of private tyranny of market relations when they are so critical of government tyranny. If they say “no” then they are admitting that certain restrictions of private individual freedoms must exist in society towards a common good.
Tyson was a very measured, disciplined fighter in his early years. If you watch his early fights against Trevor Berbick, Larry Holmes and Tyrell Biggs in particular you see a guy who set up his offense very patiently and did not waste a lot of energy. He had perfect footwork and was always in position to attack. After the Spinks fight, which was his last fight with Rooney, he became much more of a wild, attacking fighter and gradually abandoned the footwork and head movement that made him such a perfect offensive fighter. By the time of the Douglas fight he just expected every opponent to crumble every time he landed a glancing blow.
He ran into the wrong guy on the wrong night, because Buster Douglas was really talented. Douglas was an underachiever who never fully dedicated himself to the sport, but at his best he was a very effective heavyweight, kind of a precursor to the tall jab/right hand heavyweights that would soon dominate the division like Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko.
Bruno you’re absolutely right. I’m in no way saying that the US is ever going libertarian. It’s not happening. I’m simply expressing my principles. Libertarians are maybe 5% of the population. We want to be left alone. Most people want Gov’t to take care of them. They won. We’re the country of free shit.
Oh yeah, there were 2 Tysons. The younger version was as good a boxer as you’ll ever see. Prime Tyson beats the shit out of Douglas imo. He was just a headhunter by then.
@100 I have no idea wtf you’re talking about. I promised not to insult anybody so I’ll just say that you should respond directly to what I’m not saying or I’ll just ignore you.
But I still love you geo
kind of a precursor to the tall jab/right hand heavyweights that would soon dominate the division like Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko.
describes Holmes, who maybe had the best jab I’ve ever seen
I watched the 30 for 30 on Buster Douglas and didn’t realize how good he was leading up to the Tyson fight. He fought Tony Tucker for the IBF belt in the heavyweight tourney and was dead even with him in the scorecards before being knocked out in the 10th rd. That was his last loss before facing Tyson, leading up to that fight he had 6 wins in a row including wins against Berbick and Oliver McCall. Douglas wasn’t some tomato can when he faced Tyson, he had proven to be a pretty decent fighter who was on a good streak leading up to that fight.
It’s not just crony capitalism, though. There is actual merit to public-private partnerships in our current capitalist system. Take a look at how penicillin, arguably the great medical invention of the 20th century, was developed. Alexander Flemming came up with the basic formula we use today in 1928 in lab and successfully tested the antibiotic by the late 1930s, but it wasn’t until the middle of WWII, when the War Production Board found the way to successfully mass produce and distribute it to soldiers that the drug took off. Merck, which had bought the patent for the drug in 1942, wasn’t able to secure a method production or market for the drug alone without serious federal government intervention because of the massive risk involved. And this is really the point because science, at its core, is a methodical process of trial and error and private enterprises in the business of making profits are very risk adverse. Under our capitalist system you need that entity like government which is willing to mitigate the risk by incurring costs without worry of going under so the scientific process of research and development can play out to see in a potential cure will feasibly work out in the end.
Don’t worry, I am not so easily offended. It wasn’t written in response to your last point. I was just making a general observation.
This. The Easton Assassin had the best jab of any heavyweight ever. Damn thing was like a piston, with deadly accuracy and major pop. His fight against Shaver was legendary.
A friend of mine used to date this bartender who lost a fight to Larry Holmes
If you go six rounds with Larry Holmes in 1973 people will still want to hear you talk about it 35 years later
New name for this site: Knickerboxer
My father was a professional heavyweight boxer back in the day. He co-holds a prestigious record that will never be broken. I grew up loving boxing but have drifted away since the 1990’s. It might have started when I paid closed circuit to see Ali vs. Holmes, which was a disgraceful money grab that never should have been allowed. I can’t stomach MMA, way too violent for me (which is laughable considering how violent boxing is!)
I just think that boxing is no longer a mainstream sport like it was back in the day. I’ll still watch an occasional bout, but never care much about who’s boxing or who wins.
Holmes might be the most underrated heavyweight champ ever. Most action-packed heavyweight slugfest I ever saw in real time was Ron Lyle vs. George Foreman. The most dramatic non-heavyweight fight I ever saw on closed circuit was Hagler vs. Hearns.
Chavez – De la Hoya was the beginning of the end for me with boxing. I was with a bunch of Mexicans and we were all rooting for Chavez but the fight was a joke of a money grab.
The cash grab has been a part of boxing for a very long time but the thing that has really changed and has pushed it to niche sport status is the way promoters hold exclusives on fighters, which results in almost all of the top matchups being impossible to make.
The best possible matchup in the sport is probably Errol Spence vs Terrence Crawford. Those guys are both brilliant fighters who would have been great in any era. But they’ll never fight each other, so their other fights seem kind of pointless. If Ali and Frazier had never fought each other and just talked a lot of shit while fighting Jimmy Ellis and Jerry Quarry over and over again people probably would have lost interest in them pretty quick.
I’m a diehard fan and there are not a lot of fights I get excited about these days.
Watching the summer league finals. Pablo Prigioni on the sidelines.
Hmm… son of a Jewish heavyweight boxer…OMG Z-Man is Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hillbillies (Max Baer Jr).
@118 naah, but that’s a funny bit of trivia!
Travis d’Arnaud – holy crap!
Brandon Clarke summer league mvp. Next stop, NBA MVP.
Anyone who doubts Clarke at this point doesn’t know shit about basketball
I would rather that than Knickerpoly. Thank you to the boxing community for reeling this thread back to sports.
So a pharma company. It’s run by a board, which represents the owners, and selects a CEO and other suits. Isn’t this structure just like a government? These guys have a pretty strong control over their employees. In many cases as strong as a national government does, or stronger. So what have you achieved?
Sure, an employee can resign but which form of governance would be used by his next employer? And if you’re saying the employee can resign again and again, and everyone can be on their own, you’re basically saying no to any effort to organize. Which brings me back to my original question, how do you get organized?
I’m in.
first time watching him play…looks like a young ready made four, active guy…think I saw him make a three too…seems a lot stronger than he looks…I don’t know – maybe he could play center…
why wouldn’t memphis trade us him for knox, heck, we could throw in DSJ and frank…
I wonder what it would have taken to get in position to grab him…
him and mitch together would be fun for a lot of years…
the grizz hung on about 2 seasons too long, but, they have really made a nice pivot this year…
Adios freedom of movement. Also, if you own the bridge into town you own the bridge.
SpaceX is funded pretty explicitly by government subsidy as per Musk himself.
With a heavy public funding aspect.
Libertarianism has always struck me as replacing government control with corporate control. The end result is basically neo-feudalism. Heavily decentralized with local fiefdoms controlling most of people’s lives.
Should say “you own the town.”
Say you get libertarianism implemented. How does anyone get ahead if they’re born poor? The roads are all private (and any one can refuse service to anyone else) so you’ve got no way to leave the area you were born in unless you’re allowed to. Most small one employer towns eventually devolve into company towns eventually, with company script and company housing and jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the cost of living so folks spend their entire lives in debt so that even if they could find a way to leave they can’t because they owe too much to the employer. The increase in transport costs from all the pay roads mean a huge increase in the costs of goods that have to travel so you see a big exodus from larger cities that would otherwise be insulated from that sort of small town problem. There’s no public education so you’ve got no access to knowledge, no way to educate yourself out of the situation. It looks a lot like the gilded age, except without a frontier you can run off to and the opportunities that affords. And of course, it’s illegal to organize to try and better your situation because that’s tantamount to government.