Precious Roy

Best Buy = No Buys Isn't Walmart the top music retailer in the country? You can't hit #1 without them. And Walmart seems a lot more friendly to the GnR target audience, namely people old enough to actually remember them. Whenever I go to Best Buy all I see in the music section are teenage girls and hot topic rejects.

I'm torn. I don't like it, but at least it makes some sense to me. On the one hand this puts us in great shape for the 2010 offseason, I get that, and I'm down with that plan. It's a crapshoot of course, but with money to burn, the allure of NYC and a coach that most guys around the league would be happy to play for I like our chances to get at least one of the big names. On the other I hate that we're throwing in the towel on this season by trading our two best players and dismantling a fun team that had a legit shot at the playoffs. It just really sucks as a fan that we're looking at another season that's essentially over before it started. For different reasons than the last couple years and with a greater sense of optimism for the future, but it still crushes any hope I had that this would be the year that things would be different. I guess from Walsh's perspective he felt like he had a pair of palatable deals on the table and it was better to make them now than to wait til later on, in case the team continued playing .500 ball, in which case it would anger the fanbase a lot more than it might so early on in the season. And I guess maybe it's better to make deals while you can than to wait til the trade deadline or the offseason when the landscape might change and you might not find the right trade partner to suit your needs. D'Antoni was trying to spin it like even though it was obviously a move for the future the players we got back will give us a chance to win now. I don't really buy that. I don't think we'll be terrible, but we won't be very good either. This is a such an obvious step backwards in talent, it would be a miracle for D'Antoni to get more than 35 wins with this group. Al Harrington and Tim Thomas are essentially the same player, outside shooting 3/4's who've played center in smaller run n' gun lineups. Not that I expect the Italian to give us anything this year, but with him in the lineup that would be 3 outside shooting big men. We lose our best rebounder and we now have no post presence whatsoever. Maybe this puts Curry back in the picture but he's been deeply entrenched in D'Antoni's doghouse so I wouldn't bet on it, and he doesn't pass or move well enough to fit the offensive flow anyway. I doubt Marbury reenters the picture either. Mobley might be a good fit but he's an average player and our backcourt is really small now. The one upgrade I see here is that our defense might improve a little, Thomas is pretty good I think, Harrington I haven't seen enough of in recent years but I know he was regarded as a pretty good defender when he was with Indiana, Mobley is a wash, better at staying in front of his man and using his body than Crawford but won't create turnovers and fast breaks like Jamal did. Bottom line is without any sort of inside presence the defense still won't be very good. Nate Robinson has had a really good season so far and now it looks like he's our best player. He's going to have to be mini Michael Jordan for this team to be any good.

I get wanting to develop the guys who'll be around beyond this season, but after Stephon did everything they asked and has been a good soldier every step of the way it's pretty shitty to do him like this. Mardy Collins is playing 10 minutes a night so far. Anthony Roberson 8. Do these guys really factor into this team's future? Does Chris Duhon really need to be playing 35-40 minutes a game? Seems like it would be pretty easy to give Steph 20-25 minutes a night. I understand not wanting to waive him because he's definitely going to be tradeable later on. I'm sure he'd have more trade value and could be moved sooner if he was playing, but just as an expiring contract alone he could be moved at the deadline whether he's playing or not. But I do believe that Walsh would balk at taking back any contracts that go beyond the next offseason. However, wacky trades are commonplace in the NBA, come February you might be able to snag a legitimate impact player for next to nothing simply because a team wants cap room to go in another direction. I figure Walsh is hoping some sweet deal falls in his lap, and if he doesn't like what's out there he's content to let the contract run out, or maybe they'd revisit a buyout after the trade deadline if they don't move him.

Why is Boras taking credit for A-Rod's contract?

He'd fit because by attacking the basket he'd create easy baskets for Howard, either off of putbacks or dumpoffs, or Lewis/Turk on the wings. The Magic have two thirds of a great offense, and what they're missing is a guard who can get into the lane and create shots for himself and his teammates. And on defense Iverson can gamble for steals knowing that Howard is behind him. I wouldn't consider Lewis a slasher at all. He can create his own shot, sure, but he's a natural shooter, not someone who consistently and aggressively goes to the rim. He has a lot of games where you look at his shot chart and 85-90% of his shots are from 15 feet out. He does a lot of standing around behind the three point line as well. And from what I've seen of Orlando this year and last neither he nor Turkoglu is particularly adept at setting up Howard. The Magic are basically a jump shooting team with a great big man, so I don't see how they'd suddenly have a huge logjam in the paint by adding Iverson of all people. What team do you think he'd fit best on?

I'd like to see AI win a championship but I don't think it's going to happen in Detroit. Looking toward the offseason, I think he'd be a great fit in Orlando.

Terrible follow up to a promising start the other night. And of course Elton Brand killed them, 24 points on 12-19 shooting. The Knicks had a terrible night shooting and this looks like a team that simply can't compete if they're not knocking their shots down. My worry is that if nights like this are a common occurrence over the first couple weeks Marbury's benching is going to become a bigger distraction. D'Antoni kind of put himself in a no win situation the way he handled this. I wouldn't have had a problem with Marbury being in the rotation from the start, but now that D'Antoni has made it clear he's not in the plans he has to stick to his guns. If they have more shitty nights like this the Marbury situation is going to be a bigger topic of conversation, and it could begin to divide the team or cause D'Antoni to lose some of the players. I was hoping they could get out to a great start and he would become a non-issue. This would be the worst case scenario, but this is the Knicks, we've been dealing with the worst case scenario for three or four years now.

Jacobs is relatively cheap lefty power, plus they have the DH spot to play with. Billy Butler got most of the ABs there last year and he kind of sucked. I don't think the Royals had a single player put up an .800+ OPS last year, which Jacobs has done twice in his three full seasons. Not a bad move for the Royals.

Good deal for both sides, and Bynum will only be 25 or 26 when the deal expires, which means he could be looking at two more big contracts (probably max deals by that point) over the course of his career.

The Knicks looked great for 3 quarters, then the game got way closer than it should have been in the 4th, but at least they held on to the win. The offense looked really good most of the game, Miami's defense or lack thereof had something to do with it, but pretty much everyone in the 7 man rotation is a good shooter, a good passer and able to score in a few different ways. D'Antoni has everyone sharing the ball and making the extra pass, and they did a decent job pushing the ball up the court and getting some easy baskets. They shot 48% as a team, hit 9 threes, had 27 assists on 42 FGs and were active on the offensive boards. Too many turnovers, but they did a good job forcing Miami turnovers so they didn't hurt themselves too bad there. Really everyone in the 7 man rotation played well individually, but Lee, Chandler, Crawford and Randolph looked especially good. As far as negatives go, this team is going to struggle to get stops all year. They got dominated inside by Udonis Haslem....the premier power forwards and centers around the league are going to eat them up. Dwight Howard could drop 50 on them. Hell, Al Horford could probably drop 50 on them. Lee and Randolph rebound well but they don't defend the rim at all and as a team they gave up too many second chances. The Knicks are going to be a fun team to watch this year, but if they had a stopper inside or at least an athletic shotblocking forward who could challenge people at the rim they'd really have a shot to do something this year. D'Antoni is going to try and play Jared Jeffries at center when he's healthy, which might be an upgrade, but it clearly isn't the answer. The big surprise was that Marbury didn't play at all after playing a lot and looking pretty good in the preseason. Interesting to see where this development takes us.

Congrats to the Phillies and the long suffering Philadelphia sports fans, but Christ was that a shitty way to win a world series

I'm psyched to finally see Greg Oden. Should be a great matchup between him and Bynum.

Isiah Thomas is a scumbag. For anyone who hasn't heard by now he lied about the OD and tried to blame the entire thing on some vague issue with his 17 yr old daughter. Now maybe there was something with her that led to him ODing on the pills, but what kind of father would try to deflect this off of himself and drag his daughter into the story. What a piece of shit.

I'd like to make one change to my keepers I'm going to release Mariano Rivera into the wild and keep Shane Victorino (rd. 15)

Nate Robinson, G, NY

I'd like to see the Dodgers win it all just because I like Torre. It would be an added bonus to see the Red Sox get burned by the ultimate "Manny Being Manny" scenario. But seriously, Cubs, wtf??!

The Cubs are so depressing

Nice D there by Manny

I might be willing to give Slice some sort of benefit of the doubt if he had done anything other than walk directly into a knockout in the opening engagement of the fight. The way he charged in unprotected when it was obvious he was being baited to do exactly that with that high leg stance by Petrozelli, it really exposed how amateur his approach to the sport is. Worst possible outcome for Elite XC, but it's their own damn fault. They shouldn't have let Shamrock put himself in the position to get hurt the day of the fight, and they shouldn't have put Kimbo in there with anyone but a sure thing loser once Shamrock was ruled out. I'm betting the idea was Kimbo gets the easy win over Can Shamrock, they sign Tito Ortiz and they do the marquee fight with Tito and Kimbo. Now they have to spend time building Kimbo back up and there's really no guarantee he can beat anyone decent, and now that he's been exposed they can't just take the easy way of booking him if they expect him to be a top draw. They could do the rematch, but Seth would probably just beat him again. I guess best case for them they do Tito vs. Petrozelli and Slice vs. Ken, with the winners facing off. I bet the show still did their best rating yet.

Mickael Pietrus, G/F, Orlando

Yeah, I don't expect anything special out of Shaq and figure to drop him at the first sign of trouble. I'm sure I won't finish the year with him on my roster, but if he can stay relatively healthy for the first couple months and give me 12-14 pts, 7-10 boards a block or two and a FG% boost while Bynum and Love round into shape, that's all I want from him. That upside looked more appealing than most of the other centers and power forwards out there at this point.

Probably a terrible idea, but fuck it

....Paging Tim McVeigh....

Yeah, my team kicked some serious ass this year