Precious Roy

Eh, that's not that dumb. Posey is strictly a jumpshooter and Cassell at this point in his career is basically the same. In that scenario Pierce is the only guy who can hurt you one on one, so you double him and rely on your team defense to make rotations onto the jumpshooters. That's not an endorsement for Mark Jackson as coach though. I'm still holding out hope that Jeff Van Gundy will come back

I'm already discouraged by the Knicks hiring process. I don't want to see D'Antoni or Johnson on the sideline, though at least Avery might get them to play some defense.

2nd Place!

I was debating between Magic and Bird, so this is an easy choice now

Probably nothing. I'm happy with Ethier and I'm happy with Stephen Drew at SS, don't see Peralta as an upgrade there. I'm mostly just looking to improve my 2B situation right now.

Well, Igawa is going to get his shot now, but I don't expect him to do well. I thought Duncan deserved to make the roster out of Spring Training but I guess there just wasn't enough room for him. Giambi is playing pretty well, but you can bank on him getting hurt at some point and then Duncan will get a chance. If the Yankees are serious about Duncan he'll get a real shot next year, but I get the feeling they'll go after a FA 1B rather than give Duncan the job. Duncan strikes me as an Andy Phillips type that the Yankees will keep around part-time until they find something better.

We should allow ABA players as well. I'm picking George Karl and Larry Brown!

Well that's what I mean by veteran pitchers. I'd be happy with a guy who can go 6 innings, give up 3 runs 5-6 hits and a walk or 2, but it's not going to be easy to find a guy like that UFA. They may need to break down and trade one of Tabata/Jackson. It's not like we really need to keep both of them with the way Melky is turning out.

I haven't heard anything about Roger Clemens lately, I wonder what/who he's been doing. Seriously though, the Yankees need to acquire a veteran pitcher. Kennedy has been pretty bad so far and I don't necessarily trust Moose to keep pitching this well. Give Igawa a shot but he was pretty bad last year. I know Freddy Garcia is unsigned but I have no idea if he's anywhere close to pitching. Ditto John Patterson. Supposedly the Rangers might be looking to trade Millwood. Matt Morris was cut by the Pirates (!) so he's gotta be cooked. Eric Milton...christ....there's nothing out there. Fuck it, get David Wells on the phone!

I can't believe you took Carlos Gomez over my offer of Andre Ethier

I'm down

So D'Antoni should have taken him out of the games if it was obviously hurting the team. Play Skinner. Play fucking Sean Marks. Pop outcoached him. AGAIN. THE COACH IS PART OF THE TEAM. THE SPURS ARE THE BETTER TEAM. PERIOD. THEY ALWAYS BEAT THE SUNS. Bitch about Steve Kerr and D'Antoni all you want, but your argument is refuckingtarded christ...

Shaq is the Suns starting center and they exploited his biggest weakness. That's a smart play by the Spurs. They exploited a glaring weakness in their opponent. In the past Shaq's inability to hit free throws was negated by the fact that he was a dominant force on both ends. Now he doesn't even have the legs to power through with dunks under the hoop. He catches the ball under the basket in traffic and goes up for layups, which he misses half the time. It used to be an automatic dunk and maybe a dunk plus a free throw. The Spurs are the better team. Citing Shaq's weaknesses doesn't do anything for your argument.

I wouldn't say they were evenly matched this year. The Suns showed some fight winning game 4, but they threw their best punch in game one and came up short. 3 close games, the Spurs won all 3 of them. The Spurs were clearly the better team. This Phoenix team lacked depth and outside shooting, and the Shaq experiment backfired. If they were evenly matched it would have gone more than 5 games.

I'm not claiming that the only reason those Pistons teams beat those Chicago teams was their dirty play/mindgames, what I'm saying is that to today's young players Isiah Thomas is nothing compared to Jordan, he's a footnote in Jordan's career, and that there isn't near the same level of respect. As far as Brown/Thomas go, between those two, Dolan and Marbury there's more than enough blame to go around. Brown did a terrible coaching job with his million different starting lineups and rotation changes and so forth, and yes, he did go over Isiah's head when it came to the roster. I'm not taking sides, just saying that Thomas undermined Brown's relationship with the players, beginning with Marbury. If the team captain is feuding with the coach and Isiah is playing good cop, justifying Marbury, and ultimately adding fuel to the fire, why should any of the players respect Brown? Maybe this was done unwittingly, but that's what happened. Marbury probably would have been a bitch either way, but Thomas could have lessened the damage to the team and he didn't, thusly we got a 23 win season that year, and we got a Marbury that Thomas couldn't control once he became the coach. The Knicks under Dolan have been such a mess, there's so many threads to pull, it's not like there's just one thing that went wrong at any given time.

I also think he'll do well with Charlotte. This isn't like New York where the media turned it into a circus from day one, and created deep divisions within the organization by trying to create another Larry Brown/Allen Iverson story. Raymond Felton v. Larry Brown isn't going to be frontpage news. Plus there's a big difference between Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan. I doubt Jordan will undermine Brown the way Thomas did, and todays players have infinitely more respect for Jordan than they do Thomas, Jordan is the GOAT, Thomas is a guy who retired in 93, whose teams had to play dirty to beat Jordan. And there's the whole UNC connection. They'll play for Brown knowing that Jordan is looking over their shoulders.

Too bad Larry Brown took the Charlotte job, he would have been a good coach for Dallas

4th place!

I like the new Jordan commercial where he's basically like, "It's not my fault nobody can live up to the hype, quit being bitches and try harder."

That doesn't make any sense.

Duncan is the anchor of everything they do on both offense and defense. I mean, even tonight when he was absolutely lighting it up, most of the openings for Parker's shots came from the two man game with TD. The Spurs are kicking ass so far, you think they want to get that back to back title monkey off their back? It looks like the Suns took their best shot in game one. They still might win a game or two, I would hope they can at least manage a win at home before marching back to San Antonio for their execution, but there's no way they're winning this series now.

The 6ers have totally outplayed the Pistons for 3 quarters, hopefully they don't get comfortable and take their foot off the gas. On a related note, Flip Saunders is absolutely terrible.

So I just saw on the ESPN pre-game that Josh Howard admitted he smokes pot in the off-season. He also said a majority of NBA players do the same thing. He'll get vilified by the media I'm sure, but it's not like he said anything that everyone doesn't already know. Jalen Rose could barely contain his laughter when commenting and was basically like, "Josh Howard is a dumbass for blowing his cover" and they didn't even bother to ask Baron Davis who's probably baked out of his mind right now.

I think at this point Seattle should just make a deal for the name/colors/future team if they get a new arena and move on. It really sucks that the Sonics are moving and I really wish they weren't, but at best they get two years of a lameduck Sonics team and kill their chances at getting a new one. That doesn't benefit anyone. Stern is a fucking prick, they need to suck it up and play nice. I agree with Teke about Schultz. Yeah, there was very little if any "good faith" from Bennett about keeping the team in Seattle, but nobody forced Schultz to sell outside of the state and the reason he sold in the first place was he couldn't get the state to build him an arena. I would think Stern and his lawyers will destroy Schultz. I generally think it's bullshit when taxpayers are expected to pay for what amount to private arenas. Subsidizing the cost because of what it can bring to the city to create jobs, revenue, support locally owned businesses etc., absolutely, that's reasonable and fair. But when the concern is luxury boxes, higher capacity and just generally reasons to grab more money from the very same taxpayers, and they expect the state to pay for it like it's some absolute privilege that their presence is being graced by a pro sports team, well, fuck that. Get the fucking rich as hades NBA and all the corporate sponsors to chip in, it's not like a state like Washington is so awash in cash that it doesn't have anything better to spend the money on.