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Any offense the US can bring in? Germany scoring means little right now for the tiebreakers (unless they score multiple times). The US scoring once gets them way out of the danger zone even if Germany scores.

It's a weird loop hole that's entirely related to the fact that we only signed him to a 2 year deal on his first contract, so we didn't get full bird rights. And the provision allows you to match anyways even though you wouldn't technically have the cap space or exceptions to do so. I think there would probably be better solutions though, like allow a QO system on the third year of any rookie deal, allowing a team to get that third year and bird rights. Then again, perhaps the Bulls should have pushed harder for that third year on the first contract. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I'm talking specifically about how the cap hit counts one way for the signing team and another for the matching team. There's absolutely no reason to allow it to work like that. But agree, Bulls should have fought harder for a 3rd year. But all indications are that Asik really only wanted a 2 year deal so he could cash in on a larger payday sooner. How else would you structure it though? It's not fair to the Rockets to be forced to have 5/5/15 structure when they have cap space to sign him to a normal contract. The Bulls couldn't have a 8/8/8 structure without Bird rights. It's a strange rule, but it's one the league specifically put in to help the team potentially losing the player. It was designed to help players stay with teams, while before they had no chance of staying.

Portugal could get to 4 points with a win just like Ghana could, and so the goal differential tiebreaker has to be figured out with a Portugal win as well. It's just that most are focused on Ghana right now because Ghana's goal differential is only two behind the US while Portugal's is five behind.

From someone who is fairly inexperienced with soccer, I was wondering how much stoppage time would have been appropriate for the events of that 2nd half? IIRC, there were at least two injuries, two goals, four substitutions, and a card. Is that something that normally would get only 3-4 minutes?

538 has the US's chances moving up from 64 percent to 76 percent after the draw.

I would argue that 2004-2005 Detroit was legitimately good. Defending champions who took six or less games to win each of their playoff series before playing San Antonio. They only had 54 wins that regular season, but they had the effects of the Brawl to deal with as well, and of course that's the exact same number of games that Miami won this year. Miami was still probably better, but it's closer than it appears on first glance.

So he raves about The Cubs picks after the first 3 rounds, hates the Schwarber pick, but doesn't acknowledge that the two are related? My thoughts exactly. I don't think it's the fact that they went under slot that bothered him. It's that he didn't even have Schwarber rated as a good underslot player at 4. He had him as the 26th best player which would have been a slot value of 1.87 million, and Scwarber ended up signing for a slot value between the 8th and 9th selection.

Memphis's draft pick only comes to Cleveland next year if it's between 6-14. It could easily not be Cleveland's until 2017. Miami's pick isn't that valuable unless they break the team up this year, and Cleveland's own pick would get a lot worse if they acquired Love (plus Chicago can swap picks with Cleveland next year if Cleveland gets out of the lottery). Waiters and Thompson are assets with quite a bit of baggage. I don't think that package would interest Minnesota. There's no great asset there for them to hang their hat on. I could see a Cleveland deal with Love, but only involving the #1.

I don't see how the logistics work out for a Carmelo/Love pairing. Rose at 18.86 million Noah at 12.2 million Love at 15.72 milllion If you put Carmelo at 20 million (which would already be a small discount) that is already 66.78 million for the four of them, which is over the cap. Even if Carmelo signs for a little less than that, even roster charges for minimum salary players will knock that up about 4 million more so you would need Carmelo to sign for around 12-13 million to make it work (and that's assuming you completely gut the rest of the team). So it doesn't look like you can do the Love trade first and then sign Carmelo. If the Bulls do it the other way by signing Carmelo first, the Bulls have to somehow open enough room for Carmelo while leaving salaries that can match with Love. The combination of cap holds and players the Bulls already signed seem to make that scenario impossible. I don't see any way to make the numbers work out (once again dependent on what Carmelo wants, but he would have to sign for a pretty low salary to make it work out).

and there he goes Wayne, Hilton, Rogers, Moncrief - good mix of veterans, speed and upside. And Hakeem Nicks. Surprised that the Colts took a reveiver with their other needs, although they probably will need one after next year. It makes me wonder how high they had Moncrief on their board and if they decided they just couldn't pass on him anymore.

Hendricks is going to be an interesting case. Most people like him fall apart in the higher levels, but he hasn't at all. He has a 3.07 ERA or better at every level His K/BB ratio is 3.68 or better at every level His HR rate at 3 of the 4 levels is 0.2 or lower (0.7 at high A) His highest H/9 at any level is 8.5 Are there really many good comps for this? Not very good stuff, dominates statistically at every level he's at. The Cubs should give him a long look IMO.

Yup. When you combine his struggles recently with the Hawks tactics (pack the paint on defense, spread the floor wildly on offense) there's no reason for him to be on the floor. Many Pacer fans just want him benched entirely for game 7. If (a big if) the Pacers make it past the Hawks, Hibbert becomes much more important in the next series, but in this series he's a detriment.

From an outsider's perspective: The jump ball call was absolutely awful (although slightly predictable, refs seem to equate sitting on top of someone with having the ball). Should have been a timeout, and a better chance of a foul then the jump ball. Also should have been a violation on the tip. The Bulls if they got that timeout only had I believe 3 left on the shot clock, so it would have been a tough possession and they couldn't take the last shot. But they should have had a chance. The foul with two seconds left in overtime was also really bad. As somebody astutely mentioned, Chicago and Washington (Washington especially) had very small home/road splits, so losing the first two at home isn't as disastrous as it is normally. The Bulls could very well still win at least one and possibly two in Washimgton.

Nice to see Hendricks have a nice bounceback start. 7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K. The stat that is somewhat overlooked with Hendricks is his HR rate. If he can maintain a low HR rate in the PCL that's a great sign for his ability to pitch in the majors IMO.

A random stat extrapolated from Fred's random stats: The Cubs have made the playoffs all three years that they have played on March 31st.

Just based off of those numbers, I would debate the Wichita St./Florida comparison. Florida's advantage in that scenario is of course four more wins against tier 1 opponents. That is significant, but is that worth two losses, one less win against tier 2, and slightly better efficiency by Wichita St. against both Tier 1 and Tier 2? Maybe a further breakdown gives the Florida wins more impressive status than that chart implies, but based off that I would say those two teams are dead even.

I was listening to Anthony Davis on a podcast a couple of weeks back, and he mentioned that the top four Chicago kids that year had talked about all going to DePaul together, and then one backed out and the plan fell apart. Not sure if that's common knowledge or not, but I found that pretty interesting.

Tanking is finding ways to lose games your roster should be able to win by benching healthy players and calling them injured, benching players who start out a game hot, etc. That sort of behavior has been admitted to in the past in the NBA. Rebuiliding is stockpiling future assets (cap space and picks primarily) which leaves an awful roster. That seems to be more of what the Sixers are doing. Sure, one of their primary benefits might be to also get a better draft pick this year, but short of changing the draft process to not reward the worst teams I don't know you legislate against that. Bottoming out has other benefits besides just the draft pick.

I personally don't think that Pacers bench is all that good. I'm not even all that sure it's an above average bench. However, they don't really need it to be. They just need the bench to not be horrendously awful like it was last year. They were basically playing with five players last year and made it to game 7 of the ECF, and the starters are just as good this year. Some select contributions from that bench could help push them over the top.

As Tim and TT both alluded to as well, the big purpose is to get a better consensus when the votes get this divided. Let's say there are 40 voters and 15 people have Vizcaino as 13th, but the other 25 are scared off by the injuries and have him in the 20's. Somebody else could only have 10 people consider him 13th, but everybody else who doesn't has him 14th or 15th. Which one would the consensus pick as the better prospect? Probably the latter. The 3 votes help makes sure that happens.

I'll add him next round. Give me any other names you guys want added too. I think Ivan Pineyro probably deserves to get added pretty soon.

Making the extra point automatic wouldn't really change much. It would make games 5-10 minutes shorter and give some injury benefit at the loss of a few plays per year. I think the benefits outweigh the costs, but it's not exactly a big deal. Moving the extra point back would definitely change the game though. It would start to tip the balance on two point conversions for some of the better offensive teams and potentially cause quite a few more two point tries. I've seen some fans propose this as a less radical idea, but while it's certainly a worthy idea it would definitely change things more than automating it would.

I'm not sure about that. He didn't call the plays in Indianapolis.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but yes it is standard procedure to backload deals, but there is a limit. When you cut somebody, all the cap money accelerates onto one year (unless after June 1st, in which it's split in half for the next two years). Let's say the Bears converted Cutler's salary for the next 3 years into signing bonuses. It works out that with the different prorations that his cap hits for each of the first three years would be around 4 million apiece. If they kept Cutler for year 4 in that scenario, his cap hit would be 21.5 million (with the years after that being even higher than that). If they cut him, his cap hit would be 35.9 million in dead money! If Cutler starts to struggle (say he puts up a season similar to Eli this year in year 3) the Bears would have a tough decision. They couldn't afford to cut him and take all that dead money, but they don't really want to keep paying him 20+ million to keep him either. That's the other danger in backloading besides of course just running out of money by backloading too many players. Of course hopefully Cutler doesn't struggle like that, but the Bears seemed to want to protect themselves long-term which is why they structured the deal the way they did. They have minimized the risk by giving him so many team options at the end of his deal, and if they end up converting some of it into signing bonus that will still mostly be the case. I think they gave themselves both options. They can hopefully keep this unique contract, but if they convert a modest amount into a signing bonus it will end up looking more like a regular contract. Some teams have taken this approach of loading up for a few years and then just blow up the team, but it's not usually the way teams like to operate. When the Colts for example lost Manning, they cut a bunch of other veterans and took 40 million of dead money in one year. The Raiders did the same thing this year and have even more dead money. I wouldn't necessarily assume the cap will keep increasing, at least not very much. After this year, it will have only gone up 3 million in the last 5 years. Most of the explosion in money has already happened for the NFL, and I think most expect only small increases in the cap in the years ahead. That might have confused rather than helped, so feel free to ask more!

I can't see a reasonable way to sign Carmelo without getting rid of Noah. The projected salary cap is 62.1 million. The starting salary for Carmelo on a max deal would be 22.46 million. So that means the Bulls could only have 39.64 million on the books to sign him outright. Rose and Noah by themselves cost 31.06. So that only leaves 8.58 million for the rest of the roster. Add in cap holds for Mirotic (1.075), a first round pick (somewhere between 1-2 million) and roster charge cap holds of the minimum salary for every player the Bulls are short of a full roster (400,000 approx each), and you're probably looking at more like four million for the rest of the roster. So unless the Bulls are willing to gut their entire team, or Camelo takes a discount, or somehow the Knicks agree to a sign and trade, I don't see a Rose/Carmelo/Noah core happening. And if it did, that would mean they wouldn't have room to bring over Mirotic over next year. I like this deal for the Bulls. It gives them assets, lots of money, resets their luxury tax, and gives them a better draft pick next year, all for a guy who has been great for them but there were questions on both sides whether he was the right fit for a new contract.