Back in 2007, freshman UCLA basketball center Kevin Love -- whose father Stan played for awhile in the NBA and whose uncle Mike (and Kevin's more distant relatives, the Wilsons) were in the Beach Boys -- dominated the first four rounds of the NCAA tournament, only to look slow and short (he's 6-7.75 barefoot) and white against Memphis St.'s NBA-level athletes in the semifinals.
My idea at the time was that rather than head immediately to the NBA, Kevin Love should announce he was going to stay all four years at UCLA. That would make him very popular in SoCal (which should pay off in the long run), attract numerous one-and-done superstar recruits to UCLA, and probably lead to one or two national titles. (The downside is that the NBA pays by check and college basketball chews up your knees -- e.g., Patrick Ewing's 4 years at Georgetown were more awesome defensively than his career with the Knicks.)
Love, however, thought he knew better than I did about just how good he was, so he went to the NBA.
It turns out: he was right. This year, at age 22, when he'd be a senior at UCLA under the Sailer Plan, Love is making like the second coming of Moses Malone, leading the NBA in rebounding following last week's game in which he became the first man since Moses in 1982 to have 30 points and 30 rebounds in one game.
Last year, I though the same thing about running back Toby Gerhart of Stanford: he should announce he was passing up the NFL to try to lead Stanford to the national title in football, which would make him very popular in Silicon Valley, which can't be a terribly bad thing. But he went to the NFL, where he's gotten a couple of dozen carries as a backup for Adrian Peterson's in Minnesota, averaging 3.6 yards per carry, which is okay, but isn't exactly leading fans to demand Peterson be benched.
The funny thing is that Stanford just might have won the national title this year if Gerhart had returned for his last year of eligibility. This year, Stanford is 9-1 and #6 in the BCS rankings, with a terrific quarterback in Andrew Luck and an amazing story in Owen Marecic, who is starting at both fullback and middle linebacker. I remember when Tommy Nobis and Leroy Keyes started on both offense and defense in college in the mid-1960s, but not many since then. Marecic has scored four touchdowns rushing and one on an interception return (scoring on offense and defense on consecutive plays from scrimmage against Notre Dame.)
Stanford's only loss was to #1 ranked Oregon, a game in which Stanford took a 21-3 lead. But, they didn't grind out the clock because they they failed to get the ball enough to Gerhart.
So, I've only been proven wrong in one of my two suggestions, at least so far.
Any insights into how it is that 2 or 3 men of very great but VERY varied talents came from the same family?
ReplyDeleteBeing popular in SoCal is pretty valuable. Think new USC Athletic Director Pat Haden, member of Los Angeles Country Club and recently added member of Augusta National.
ReplyDeleteI think Gerhart was wise to enter the draft when he did. Stanford had had a great season, he'd had a great season (nearly won the Heisman) and running backs have short careers, particularly guys who run straight up and into people. He'd done plenty for Stanford, and for anybody in Silicon Valley who cared. It was time to cash in on his success.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Gerhart would have sustained a career ending injury in his senior year and never received any NFL money.
ReplyDeleteSo far he's been paid for a year and hasn't been injured in minimal work.
Oregon's 15-second-between-snaps offense is comprable to what Loyola-Marymount did in the early 90's under Paul Westhead in basketball. Their no-huddle offense gets plays off 5-to-10 seconds quicker than the opposing teams defensive players are accustomed to physically (the Ducks average 15 seconds between plays), not letting them get those three or four extra lung-filling breaths between snaps their bodies have acclimated to, lowering their level of play.
ReplyDeleteIt also doesn't allow the opposing team to use down-and-distance specific personnel, because they dont have time to get them on the field. Your nickel package, pass-rush package, and short-yardage package don't do you any good on the sideline. The total amount of plays in a game also goes up.
If a team had two strings of defensive talent that was good enough, they could alternate the entire first and second string defenses on about a 2-to-1 series ratio, so that they'd have some gas left in the second half. The thing is, only a few teams dont have a signifigant talent drop off between their first and second string defenses, and none of them are still undefeated.
Im impressed with the shotgun-snap-offenses that have been concocted around quarterbacks who can run since the Tim Tebow era. A quarterback who can run forces a defense to play "11-on-11". Oregon, Auburn, and Florida (with Tebow) basically are running a very updated wishbone, but a wishbone that can authentically throw and stretch the field. If a team can recruit a special athlete at quarterback who can do these things, I think in the college game this as about an effective an offense as we are going to see.***
***Can you -imagine-what Michael Vick could have done in one of these shotgun-running offenses?
They're not Memphis State anymore.
ReplyDeleteSteve, do you think the success of Peyton Hillis will help Gehart?
ReplyDeleteYahoo sports says he is only making 391K this year, so he is cheap as well as good!
Caste Football had an interesting take on Gerhart.They believe that the NFL has an unspoken agreement to shunt outstanding white running backs (e.g., Gerhart) to teams that already have an outstanding black running back (e.g., Peterson). That way the white guy doesn't get to play much (thus not upsetting the racial chemistry of the black-dominated teams) but nobody can bitch about anti-white racism either (he was a high draft choice, wasn't he!).
ReplyDeletePeyton Hillis.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of sports. Anybody is paying attention to the Asian Games?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Asian_Games_medal_table
Look at the scoreboard, gold medals only as of today.
1 China (CHN) 96
2 South Korea (KOR) 29
3 Japan (JPN) 17
4 North Korea (PRK) 5
5 Iran (IRI) 5
6 Taiwan(TPE) 4
7 Uzbekistan (UZB) 3
8 Hong Kong (HKG) 3
9 Malaysia (MAS) 3
10 Kazakhstan (KAZ) 2
11 India (IND) 1
Why is India so bad at sports? The east asians are dominant, surprise! Is there a correlation between IQ and performance in the Asian games?
It's great that you remind us of when you've made wrong predictions! Thank you.
ReplyDeletehaha i'll go easy on you, partner. i knew love just had a bad game there in the NCAA tournament, and was not running into "real" athletes. he has vastly outperformed all the players on the memphis team.
ReplyDeletekurt rambis is kind of a moron, and seems to be falling into all the same traps that most NFL coaches and managers have fallen into. africans only please, and even clearly capable europeans still should not play and should get very limited time in the game. unfortunately this trend is starting to become common in the NBA, which for a long time, was a lot, lot better than the NFL at simply putting the best players out there.
don't look now, but the miami heat are not on pace to break the chicago bull's NBA regular season record of 72 wins. if i were erik spoelstra i would be very nervous. he'll be taking all the blame.
toby gerhart was drafted by the wrong team, not sure what was up with that. well, ok, we do know what was up with that. teams which needed a running back and which were ahead of the vikings, deliberately passed on gerhart because he is not african. there's just no doubt he can outperform some of the scrubs many of these teams are starting. now he's stuck behind the number 1 running back in the NFL, so he'll be peterson's insurance policy for a few years instead of starting for a team that needs him and can use him on every snap.
i put nothing past some of these NFL teams. i have no doubt that peyton hillis can lose his job next year to some random scrub who the browns coaches favor. it's happened to him his entire NCAA and NFL career. block for slower, less athletic, less capable africans. like his stint with the broncos, hillis is only the browns' starter because all the "real" athletes are injured.
6 foot 0 inch tall michael vick is exploding on the scene! it took him 2 years to get back, but he's better than ever. shorter quarterbacks can definitely play.
I see that Marecic is majoring in "Human Biology". Didn't it used to be called "Phys Ed."?
ReplyDeleteLove as the second coming of Wes Unseld is probably the most accurate description.
ReplyDeleteMy question is - why so 19th Century?
ReplyDeleteBasketball, I read in Wikipedia, started in 1891. The first professional football dates from 1892. While baseball was established about a decade earlier.
There are no major mass sports that were created in the Middle Ages. Jousting and bear baiting are no longer popular. And I can't think of a recently invented team sport.
There have been inventions in individual sports. The so-called mixed martial arts is a new phenomenon and very successful. Similarly there is the wonderful and bizarre Ninja Warrior sport(?) that is coming to TV in America this winter. Both are new and popular but neither has teams.
Why not?
The closest to a new team sport that I can think of is Beach Volleyball - but there the teams are only two people.
There are those who say that music reached its peak in 1928 and now just repeats itself with the same tools and concepts. The paying audience just can't absorb more complex techniques and modes.
There are also those who claim that physics peaked also in 1928 and that nothing new has been thought since.
So is it true that team sports peaked in 1892?
Albertosaurus
Another factor to consider is that the racial bias faced by white athletes run in opposite directions for the NBA and NFL.
ReplyDeleteFor purely marketing reasons and due to declining market share, it seems the NBA would do anything to promote a great white hope like Love. The NBA is in serious danger of becoming a parody of a ghettized sport.
The NFL on the other hand, seems to have a well-established practice and culture that white players should not be in positions like RB and CB. This does seem to have loosened up recently as Gerhart would've been forced into a FB or such only a few years ago.
The NFL is so secure in its market dominance it's even watering down it's product with airhead bimbos and illiterate ex-player commentators that are painful to endure. Although the NFL antagonizes it's main viewers with PC drivel, it is a much better run business and seems to be moving slightly to avoid the major mistakes of the NBA.
Dave Berri has been hot for Love for a long time.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.opposingviews.com/i/underrated-timberwolves-kevin-love-best-rebounder-in-nba
Fluke game.
ReplyDeleteLove will be dominated by the superior black men.
All Love needs is cash.
ReplyDeleteIt seems pretty clear that the lack of (American) white guys in the NBA is what the left might call a "social construct".
ReplyDeleteGerhart has gotten much better as the season has gone along, looked bad early but not so much recently.
ReplyDeleteAnd dont forget about Peyton Hillis, white running back who might make the Pro Bowl. I've also noticed an uptick in speedy white guys returning kicks and playing WR. WR's are usually the biggest head-cases and I think teams like the Colts and Patriots (2 of the most well run and smartest organizations in sports) are noticing more and more what guys they prefer dealing with.
And of course Andrew Luck's father, Oliver, was an NFL quarterback with a ton of smarts who later ran NFL Europe and the Houston Dynamo of MLS.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the NFL's greatest hope for "diversity" at the QB position, Donovan McNabb, has now thoroughly embarrassed the media for fawning on him all these years. He's performing terribly at Washington, while Michael Vick and Kevin Kolb are putting up great numbers on his old squad the Eagles.
ReplyDeleteJohn Feinstein called Shanahan a racist for benching McNabb (and he got to use the Washington Post as his loudspeaker for this drivel). Washington owner Daniel Snyder reacted by immediately throwing a massive contract at McNabb.
The fact that Feinstein and Snyder are ethnically Jewish is completely unrelated to their concerted efforts to push WASPs out of the dominant position in America's most popular sport. That is all a complete coincidence.
"Love as the second coming of Wes Unseld is probably the most accurate description."
ReplyDeleteRight.
For those interested, here is the racial breakdown of the NFL by positions:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2010/2010%20NFL%20Racial%20and%20Gender%20Report%20Card.pdf
Black quarterbacks are having a decent year: Vick has been pretty spectacular in limited games, David Garrard and Vince Young have good passing statistics, Josh Freeman is doing very well for a 22-year-old, and Jason Campbell has been winning.
ReplyDeleteUh, hate to tell you guys, but they didn't let Unseld shoot. His only offensive role was the outlet pass.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading about Owen Marecic in the NY Times over the weekend, I was wondering when we'd see a post here about him.
ReplyDeleteAlbertosaurus - very interesting observation.
ReplyDelete20:20 cricket is very new but not original as it's just a speeded up version of a game that used to take 5 days.
We've gone through a period where existing sports have been refined by technology, demands of the audience and commercial packaging.
It's not been a creative age for team sports but certainly it's been a golden one.
I think it has been a creative age for individual sports though - something you've hinted at. Also might like to consider the new winter olympics sports, X-games, Parkour etc...
The so-called mixed martial arts is a new phenomenon and very successful. Similarly there is the wonderful and bizarre Ninja Warrior sport(?) that is coming to TV in America this winter. Both are new and popular but neither has teams.
ReplyDeleteThere was an attempt at an MMA team sport, the International Fight League, but it failed in 2008 after a couple of years.
The closest to a new team sport that I can think of is Beach Volleyball - but there the teams are only two people.
Women's beach volleyball is much more popular than the men's version and owes much of its popularity to eye-candy appeal rather than athletic displays.
Peter
Totally off topic :
ReplyDelete"A native woman kidnapped by the Vikings may have been the first American to arrive in Europe around 1,000 years ago, according to a startling new study.
The discovery of a gene found in just 80 Icelanders links them with early Americans who may have been brought back to Iceland by Viking raiders.
The discovery means that the female slave was in Europe five centuries before Christopher Columbus first paraded American Indians through the streets in Spain after his epic voyage of discovery in 1492.
The DNA lineage, named C1e, is mitochondrial – which means that the genes were introduced by a woman.
The unknown American woman was probably abducted from the Americas and then brought to Iceland after surviving the sea voyage back. She then bore children in her new home but nothing was ever written of her existence or fate.
The study will be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Iceland is a renowned centre for gene research and the new study was led by DeCode Genetics - a world-leading genome research lab on the island which has DNA records of almost everyone living on the island."
I seem to recall a previous story to the effect that 98% of Y-chromosomes on Iceland were Nordic, but something like 50% of the mtDNA was Irish or Scottish. Those naughty Norsemen really lived the stereotype.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteWhat's your take on this article from Rick Reilly and the criticism of McNabb?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=5795495&type=story
And you are right: Black quarterbacks are having a solid statistical year.
Vick is playing solid football, though the defense is so afraid to hit marquee players for fear of a fine that they aren't playing tenaciously anymore.
Garrad, Campbell, Freeman and Troy Williams (former Heisman Winner) are playing good football, though none of them are anywhere near the league of Tom Brady right now, or Matt Ryan of the Falcons.
"Why is India so bad at sports?"
ReplyDeleteI think Steve has covered this in the past. Indians are naturally low on machismo. Yes, even lower than the Chinese. This is probably the reason why India has historically been the source of pacifist religious movements and ideologies.
And dont forget about Peyton Hillis, white running back who might make the Pro Bowl.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure who was being more optimistic - Bill Clinton's mother when she gave her son the middle name "Jefferson" or the Hillis family when they named their son after the greatest running back of all-time, Walter Payton. Just further proof that the only thing holding back the children of Arkansas from great accomplishments are low expectations!
Hillis, by the way, was a third string Southeastern Conference back. He only ran for 348 yards and 2 touchdowns his senior season. So until Gerhart is successful at the NFL level, I won't be convinced his college numbers weren't inflated. Kevin Love, on the other hand, has made me a believer.
Actually Dan Snyder made a genius move- leaking that McNabb was guaranteed 40 million and Feinstein and Wilbon could back off the insane racism angle- when the real details came out- The skins are on the hook only for 3.5 million if they cut him at then end of the year. Voila- get rid of your terrible qb and protect the coach from being called a racist in Chocolate City- all for a measly 3 million- genius.
ReplyDeleteLove=Unseld, heard it for 5 years - was happy Steve wrote a post about KL w/out mentioning Wesley.... then the commenters had to screw it up.
Unseld did more harm to the Bullets than good- maybe a worse GM than Elgin.
Dan in DC.... the self-proclaimed authority on all sports topics on ISteve
Did Helene Edwards really write all Unseld did was the outlet pass???
ReplyDeleteGo back to the sewing circle Helene, the boys are talking sports.
Dan in DC
Jody, do you really think white GMs passed on Gerhart bc they wanted a black guy?
ReplyDeleteYou believe they WANTED to make their team worse for some ethnomasochistic reason and possibly imperil their jobs? For a smart guy you may be slightly mentally ill.
Dan in DC
Why the drop off in boxing interest? The great white hope is the heavy weight champ?
ReplyDeleteOther topic, Gerhart doesn't look very good.
Someguy
"Hillis, by the way, was a third string Southeastern Conference back."
ReplyDeleteTechnically, he was highly recruited and was moved to fullback...behind a guy who was runner up for the heisman twice, and a guy who averaged almost 9 yards a carry in college. Both 1st round picks.
Unsled was a non-scorer, however he also won an MVP.
BTW, the whole moustache-twirling, stovepipe hat thing about teams being told to draft white guys and bury them behind black stars his highly entertaining...
Roger Godell: C'mon Red, you know it's your turn to draft the white guy, give him a million dollars of your money, and bury him behind Adrian Peterson so he won't break all of Emmit Smith's records.
Red McCombs: Dang, Roger, c'mon, I did it last time, make Jerry Jones do it!
Roger Goodell: he did it with that saftey Jody's always talking about on Sailer's website, you know, the one who won one footrace against a black guy, We all know he'd break Jerry Rice's receiving records if we didn't make him play kicker.
Red McCombs: What about Wayne Weaver down in Jacksonville?
Roger Goodell: Oh be fair now, Red, he orchestrated that whole cocaine bust by shoving that white powder into his nose without Matt Jones knowing it and calling the cops...
You believe they WANTED to make their team worse for some ethnomasochistic reason and possibly imperil their jobs? For a smart guy you may be slightly mentally ill.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, pro-black PC is so out of hand in this country that taking "a black man's job" and giving it to a white guy opens one up to charges of racism.
Going to the NFL is a stunning deal for a backup player. You're making $350,000-500,000 per year to hang out on the sidelines and not destroy your body.
ReplyDelete@George: Human Biology at Stanford = premed. Do the research yourself next time. And, yes, I'll bet you wish your daughter could marry him.
ReplyDeletelol, his name is Kevin "LOVE?"
ReplyDeletehahahahaa
ahahah
ah
I think Anon just above makes an excellent point about what good money might mean to a run-of-the-mill NFL sub: we fans judge our sports heroes by a set of criteria they may not apply to themselves. That is, we want them to go pedal-to-the-metal, all-out, no-holds-barred (insert every other sports cliche your HS coach yelled at you) in a quest to earn a place in the sport's pantheon.
ReplyDeleteBut a smart player may realize he's never going to be one of the all-time greats and thus make the really huge paychecks; he may find it more sensible to earn an excellent, enjoyable living for a decade or more while husbanding his talent and trying to take the best possible care of his prize asset, i.e. his body, while building up the contacts and insider knowledge that will make him an excellent, enjoyable living as a broadcast color man or a convention speaker after he retires.
College can provide some of this networking opportunity for a good player, but the NFL is a quasi-national stage, and the law of diminishing returns is likely to kick in at some point once a college star is already well-known. The risks of career-ending injury are so very, very high . . . .
"And you are right: Black quarterbacks are having a solid statistical year.
ReplyDeleteVick is playing solid football"
Vick isn't playing "solid" football -- he's playing spectacular football. I love dogs and hate the Eagles, but facts are facts.
I'm sorry but as soon as anyone starts talking about sports I have to turn the page.
ReplyDeletecrimesofthetimes.blogspot.com
@Truth - Great comment, but the owner of the Vikings is now Zygmont Wilf, not Red McCombs.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that the market is undervalued for white players at positions where they normally don't thrive like WR and RB. I am not surprised that smart managers like Belicheck in NE and Polian in Indianapolis would expose that market weakness. They have down it with others: Indy has done that on defense (Gary Brackett anyone?) for years now, turning undrafted "who dats" into solid starters. NE paid a steep price for Welker (2 2nd rd picks from a division rival) but ex-QB Julian Edelman has been an adequate sub for Welker. There's a reason these franchises are consistently performing above average (which goes beyond Brady and Manning).
@DaninDC:
Great insight on the McNabb/Snyder kerfuffle. Snyder is a micromanager and ruiner of a once great franchise, but you can't say he doesn't know marketing. Genius move, and he made Feinstein look silly. Two birds with one stone in my book.
Finally, Kevin Love was on Bill Simmons' podcast this week. He let out that on the Olympic team this past year his fellow teammates used to call him "Token", which (and I) thought was endearing (he didn't play all that much). Furthermore, they all agreed that it was funny and that NO ONE would mention it to the media. Question: would white teammates be comfortable enough doing that to a fellow black teammate on the golf/hockey team? And if it were found out, what would result, if anything?
Also, Love was available at 12-1 to win the rebounding title earlier this year. Needless to say, his odds have dropped as he is now the NBA's leading rebounder.
@anonHuman Biology at Stanford = premed.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily. I love terms like "pre-med" and "pre-law". They usually serve to give the undergrad an infated view of themselves academically. Go to the alum page at "Human Biology". It reads like a list of a progressive's dream occupations. Low on content, high on ideology. Sounds like Human Biology produces more massage therapists than doctors.
Caste Football's take on Peyton Hillis:
ReplyDelete"Peyton Hillis is clearly a very talented all-around running back and should be the starter. But for the past 25 years the NFL has refused to let a single White man run the ball as a starter except in "emergency" situations when all the "real" running backs were injured. And on each of those occasions -- whether Brock Forsey, Heath Evans, Brad Hoover, Travis Jervey, Brian Leonard or Peyton Hillis -- the "emergency" running back has acquitted himself well only to quickly find himself moved back to his "proper" position of fullback. Hillis is a classic power back who would be an unquestioned starter at tailback in the integrated NFL of the 1950s, '60s, '70, and early '80s. But given the total "whiteout" on White RBs going back close to 30 years now, it's hard to be optimistic about Hillis's career trajectory from here, especially with Mikey Holmgren calling the personnel shots in Cleveland."
For purely marketing reasons and due to declining market share, it seems the NBA would do anything to promote a great white hope like Love.
ReplyDeleteThen it would be nice if the NBA would instruct its officiating crews to stop favoring black players over white ones. One reason why white players do better in college ball and worse in the NBA is the differing quality and consistency of the refs.
Women's beach volleyball is much more popular than the men's version and owes much of its popularity to eye-candy appeal rather than athletic displays.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I recall an interview where a woman beach volleyball player was asked why they played in attire so much skimpier than that of their male counterparts.
With a straight face she replied: "Comfort".
Unsled was a non-scorer
ReplyDeleteYou, of all people Troot? That "non-scorer" somehow managed to average 10.8 points per game over his 984 NBA game career.
Woooooah, 10 whole points a game!?!?!?
ReplyDeleteKnock me over with a feather!
Woooooah, 10 whole points a game!?!?!?
ReplyDeleteLooks more like 11 than 10, my innumerate friend.
Would you describe Bill Russell as a non-scorer?
"Would you describe Bill Russell as a non-scorer?"
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I would "describe" Russell as a non-scorer, he WAS a non-scorer and he averaged 15 points a game.
Unseld, over the course of his career averaged 3 layups and 4 free-throws (OK Paul Krugman, 4.8) per basketball game. That's not a scorer.
When will all the black half-pipe snowboarders start getting respect?
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I would "describe" Russell as a non-scorer, he WAS a non-scorer and he averaged 15 points a game.
ReplyDeleteYou have some high standards. don't you? Many of the best players in NBA history end up being "non-scorers" in your book. Robert Parish? A pathetic 14.5 points per game over his career.
So tell me - what's your cut-off point between the scorers and the non-scorers?
My idea of a non-scorer is more in the Kurt Rambis range: 5.2 points/game.
@george: You win. Obviously, kids go to Stanford to become massage therapists.
ReplyDeleteA non-scorer scores less than 1 point per two minutes of action, e.g.; starter - 40 min per game - less than 20 points per game.
ReplyDeleteI went to Stanford. HumBio is indeed considered the pre-med track. Almost any other BA is considered easier. Over a third of those who major in HumBio go to medical school. As for your underlying criticism that it is an easy major, consider that three HumBio majors have won the Rhodes scholarship in the past 6 years. Here's the booklist for the core course:
ReplyDelete• Alberts, Bruce, et al. Essential Cell Biology (3rd ed.). New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2010. • Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition [1859]. Boston: Harvard
University Press, 1964. • Durham, William. Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1991. • Sadava, Hillis, Heller, & Berenbaum. Life: The Science of Biology (9th ed.). Sinauer Associates, Inc., 2011.
- available in Loose Leaf format and Hard Cover from the bookstore
Marecic doesn't seem to do anything the easy way. If he had majored in American Studies, then you could be rightly suspicious.
A non-scorer scores less than 1 point per two minutes of action, e.g.; starter - 40 min per game - less than 20 points per game.
ReplyDeleteSo what is widely considered to be one of the best frontlines ever in the NBA (Parish, McHale, Bird) had only one scorer.
I'm not buying it.
For his career...
ReplyDeleteKevin McHale averaged 17.9 ppg in 31 minutes - scorer.
Robert Parish averaged 14.5 ppg in 28.4 minutes - scorer.
Larry Bird averaged 24.3 points in 38.4 minutes - scorer.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/aingeda01.html
A non-scorer scores less than 1 point per two minutes of action
ReplyDeleteThat means that, according to you, a non-scorer scores less than 0.5 points per minute played.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played 57,446 minuted in his NBA career, and scored 17,440 points.
That is, he averaged 0.3 points per minute played, or 0.6 points per two minutes of action.
So according to you, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a non-scorer.
"20:20 cricket is very new but not original as it's just a speeded up version of a game that used to take 5 days."
ReplyDeleteActually it's a speeded up version of the one day game. The vast majority of cricket matches are one day affairs, a five day is a 'test match'.
Dude, what in the holy hell is wrong with you?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/abdulka01.html
Jody, I wouldn't say that Kevin Love has "vastly outperformed" Derrick Rose, the leader of that Memphis team. In fact Rose is averaging 26 pts, 8 assists and 4 rebounds for fairly good Chicago team and was also on the US National team (along with Love) this summer.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's tough to see how Rambis has any racial animus considering his starting front court is Love and Darko Milicic (40% of the starting line-up).
Watching the Warriors-Grizzlies last night and the Warriors played an Asian-American from Harvard, a Latvian and two black players who went to Davidson College and Virginia Military Institute. Their white starting power forward was injured. The Grizzlies played a Spaniard, a Venezuelan, a black player who was born in Belgium and had an Iranian on the bench.
Which is to say that the NBA is nowhere near the monocultural institution some on here would have you believe.
Truth said...
ReplyDeleteDude, what in the holy hell is wrong with you?
According to that link, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played 57,446 minuted in his NBA career, and scored 17,440 points.
That is, he averaged 0.3 points per minute played, or 0.6 points per two minutes of action.
Can't you read?
No, it clearly says that K.A.J played 57,446 minutes, and scored 38,387 points. Clearly. Like in English.
ReplyDeleteThe 17,440 is in a category abreviated TRB, which means "Total Rebounds." They made a glossary available, Sport.
Let me guess, you're one of the dozens of 150 IQ, National Merit Scholars that is on this blog every day?