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I see several people comparing the Jason Smith hit on Blake Griffin earlier in the year and the Wade hit on Collison last night. Anybody have any thoughts on how they compare? Was the Wade hit better or worse? And should the NBA even consider a suspension like they gave Smith? As for the series, the team who wakes up and starts hitting their open 3's first will win. George especially is doing a fantastic job on Wade/LeBron, and the Heat are doing a great job fronting Hibbert/West. It will be a defensive struggle for most of the games, but I bet only one more game at the most will be in the 70's...they'll do a little better offensively most nights. But I do think losing Bosh has helped the Miami defense and really hurt their offense.

I'd say it's far from a given they beat Indiana without him. I would think that would require a big series from Hibbert. I don't know if he can do that or not. No, he honestly can't. He's not a guy who will put a team on his back for multiple nights in a row. But I don't think he needs to. He just needs to draw enough attention (and West as well, who could possibly put the team on his back himself) to give the perimeter scorers some room. The Pacers were close on Sunday and got 23 points combined from Granger, George, and Hill on 25 shots. Those are the players who need to play decently to give the team a shot.

DAMN. UNC. How do they determine these matchups? Do they try to evenly match them based on what the teams will be like that year, or based on the previous year? It's obviously not random. I believe it's a little of both with no published 'formula'. UNC just lost most of their starters to the NBA didn't they? It should be a cake walk for the Hoo Hoo Hoosiers at the Hall of Calls. Probably won't even be within 10. Yeah, let's go with that. I was kinda hoping for a re-match vs. NC State. I think IU and NCSt are basically at the same points in their programs. Really bad teams a few years ago that turned it around quicker than expected. Last year, going into the game, I thought the winner might sneak in the 7-10 seed range in the NCAAs, with the other just missing out. This year, they are a couple near locks for getting to Sweet 16, with a shot at a final 4 both. I think they were trying to draw the casual fan in. It's easier to get ratings marketing a top 15 UNC team trying to go into Assembly Hall and knock off a potential #1 Indiana team then it is an NC State team, even if they end up being top 10.

DAMN. UNC. How do they determine these matchups? Do they try to evenly match them based on what the teams will be like that year, or based on the previous year? It's obviously not random. It's in large part what's good for television (trying to create the juiciest matchups possible without creating too big of mismatches) and also who was at home/road the previous year. In this case, Duke, UNC, and NC State are supposed to be the class of the ACC next year. Both IU and Duke played on the road last year, so they were unlikely to play each other. NC State just played IU last year, so UNC was the only logical choice. As you can see, both the other two got road matchups against two of the other elite teams in the Big 10 in Ohio State and Michigan.

I go back and forth on Bosh's value. I tend to agree with some people who think the Heat are better defensively when he's out of the lineup, and LeBron and Wade taking more shots isn't too bad for them offensively. But at times like the first half yesterday they need Bosh to pick up the slack because nobody else on that roster can when LeBron and Wade aren't hitting. I feel more confident about the Pacers chances of winning this series after the game yesterday. They have a good gameplan against the Heat, and now they just need to hit a couple of those 3's that turned into transition opportunities for the Heat instead yesterday. I still think it's likely the Heat win the series especially after having won the first close game, but the Pacers aren't going anywhere either.

We can replace Brewer with Butler, but its gonna be tough to get similar production from Korver and Watson with the veterans minimum. As bad as they were in the playoffs, they were valuable in the regular season, and I think Korver really struggled getting open without Rose out there in the playoffs. Even without Rose, Korver remains basically our only dangerous shooter. I'm not sure who they are going to be able to get for the vet minimum who can come in and run around screen after screen to get open and hit 40% of his 3s. If the Bulls werent cheap, I'd suggest amnestying Boozer and resigning all 3. This way, you give Taj starter minutes, you keep most of your depth which carried us at times this year, and the difference between Boozer's contract and Brewer/Korver/Watson combined leaves you with $2.4 mil extra, which can be spent to replace backup PF and would probably net a better player than could be had for the vet minimum. But I just cannot see Reinsdorf willing to eat $50 million. Is amnesty of Boozer a realistic option? A lot of people mention this, and it certainly seems like a good idea. But I've never heard it even mentioned by any credible source. And I thought you're only liable for the part of the contract that another team doesn't pick up. Someone will pay Boozer decent money. It's not like he's making 400% of what he's worth, like Soriano for instance. If a team under the cap places a bid, then the Bulls are not liable for the part of the contract that the bid covers. From what we saw of the amnestied players last year though, teams under the cap are rather reluctant to give up that space for a flawed player like Boozer. The Bulls might be able to save 4 million a year under that scenario, but I can't seem them saving much more than that, and it could be less because the market is so limited and teams might gamble to try to pick him up on the cheap.

The Cubs didn't even get through the lineup 3 times. I wonder how often that happens. Especially when the team has 5 hits on the day.

Entering the day, the Cubs were 7th in the NL in starters ERA and 11th in relievers ERA. 13th best in offense. There is a huge chasm between 6th and 7th (the Marlins are 6th at a 3.07 ERA and the Cubs are at 3.72) while the bullpen can catch 3 teams very easily.

If it were just about Anya, I completely agree with you. As Exile said though, I don't know if it is all about Anya. It could be because Crean liked what he did with Creek and Oladipo. It could be just his general contacts in the region. I would certainly hope Crean wouldn't give out something as important as an assistant coach primarily for one player. Even putting aside the ethics question, Crean doesn't need to do things like that to recruit players. As for the Roth situation, I'm pretty sure that you don't get approval for an injury waiver until after your senior year, no matter when the injury occurred. So Roth didn't count in regards to the oversign. I feel bad for him, because he's done everything asked of him. But a 5th year on scholarship would just be a bonus, not a guarantee. I hope he gets to play somewhere next year, whether it's for Indiana as a walk on (not likely) or somewhere else.

Pitcher A: 7.02 K/9, 3.07 BB/9, 0.66 HR/9, 18.7% LD rate against, 3.59 FIP, 3.74 xFIP Pitcher B: 5.73 K/9, 2.73 BB/9, 0.55 HR/9, 18.0% LD rate against, 3.38 FIP, 4.12 xFIP The differences between them are not that huge. Z isn't going to be able to strand 88 percent of his runners all season, and Volstad will start stranding more than 46 percent of them.

Tracking flyballs/linedrives isn't all that athletic of an activity. It's largely instinctual after years of following balls coming off bats from that distance/angle. Well, then spend some money to make an app where players can "see" thousands of fly balls coming off a bat (based off real plays in games) one after the other and watch it on their IPad from different positions on the field... the player has to decide quickly which way to break. You could even use the accelerometer/GPS and camera to do an agumented reality thing. You could even have it support different wind conditions at the different parks, etc, so you could see how a ball reacts with the wind blowing in or out. It's not going to be as good as real practice reps, but I have to believe something like that would accelerate the learning process. All kidding aside, this is the sort of thing you do in the offseason, not the middle of a season. You'd have to give LaHair all of next winter/spring to try and learn the position. The all star break wouldn't be enough time, especially since he will be playing in that game. If this were his first time playing the outfield, I'd agree. But LaHair has 157 minor league games out there. He even had 107 major league innings of playing the outfield just last year. He's familiar with what needs to be done out there, even if he isn't very good at it.

Dumping at least 2 of them without adding salary (or dumping all 3 and re-signing Asik to a small deal) gets them out of the luxury tax. That seems to be the goal if that info is true. And that's a really scary goal because the Bulls will likely have to go into the luxury tax eventually to not get worse than they are right now. There are ways to build the team and avoid the luxury tax, but they won't be easy.

What I'm glad to see from LaHair is that the peripherals are slowly improving. The strikeout rate is slowly coming down, the walk rate has picked back up, the amount of line drives are up, and the IFFB percentage has continued to drop. The BABIP and HR/FB rate are still ridiculously high, but the other numbers are starting to get into ranges where they won't indicate huge trouble for him when the BABIP and HR/FB normalize.

I don't see Volstad getting pulled from the rotation anytime real soon. Other than a handful of poor innings Volstad has looked pretty good, so it's not like there is no reason not to hope he'll get it together. And Wood wasn't exactly mowing them down in Iowa, either. Unless they think Volstad has something mechanically wrong that makes him incapable of pitching out of the stretch, I agree they won't pull him anytime soon. The biggest reason his numbers are so bad is a 46.3% LOB rate, which is just ridiculous. Opponents are hitting just barely better than league average against him, the LD percentage he's allowing is fine, his HR rate is good, and the only other issue is that his K's are slightly down so far. Overall though, pretty solid and eventually he'll start getting out of these big innings.

I didn't say anything about taking Volstad's spot. I said I thought they might try and give Wood another start while he's up here. I can see the benefit, but they probably didn't think it was worth playing so shorthanded for a few days. Four bench players runs out really quickly, and with the off day coming up and with Garza going to take his next turn all the starters are going to get an extra day of rest anyway. And by the time they would need Wood to break up that 13 game stretch he'd be eligible to come back up anyway.

Amnesty Boozer. Brewer, and Korver all have team options I believe they can decline to free up space. The Bulls can free up about 10 million of space by amnestying Boozer, cutting Brewer, Korver, Watson, and not re-signing Asik. But then they only have 6 players on the roster so they would have several holes to fill with that limited space. If they just amnesty Boozer, they would be able to use the full mid-level exception instead of the mini one they'll be able to use now by being a taxpaying team. Of course that's also 47 million out of the Bulls pockets for a player who wouldn't be playing for them anymore. And if they did use the full-mid level exception, they'd probably be looking at jumping back into the tax the very next year to re-sign Gibson.

Did you miss the part where I mentioned he was worth 5.2 WAR in 2004? Let me know if LaHair ever sniffs that. To be fair, that 5.2 WAR is largely because of his incredible fielding numbers that year, which is either extremely flukish or more likely just plain wrong. His UZR/150 in 2003 was 2.8. In 2005 it was 6.5. In 2004 it was 30.7. He's only had 1 other year where it was even double digits! (excluding 2009, when he only had 50 fielding innings all season). That's why there's such a huge discrepancy between fangraphs and baseball reference for that year. BR has him as a good defensive player that year, and only has him at 2.7 WAR for 2004. That's probably closer to what Patterson was that year, with a possibility of up to a 3.5 or 4 win player. But he almost certainly wasn't anywhere near a 5 win player. It's very fishy to have a player coming off a major knee injury have by far his best defensive season of his career, which is what the fangraphs numbers would indicate.

Butler is heading to the A-10 in 2013 to replace Temple.

You wouldn't be surprised if we get Hamels, Jackson and Rizzo are solid MLB players in their first year, shark progresses, and whatever else he had in there? Damn, gimme some of that optimism! Signing a FA? Not unusual. Two highly touted prospects being at least serviceable their rookie seasons? Not unusual. A talented pitcher maintaining or improving on the success of what (ideally) is a breakout year? Not unusual. Yes, but even if each of them have a 75% chance of happening, the odds of all of them happening are not good. So if you need all or nearly of them to happen to reach the goal, there is a problem. That's all too many ifs means in that context, which is hardly a meaningless statement. And of course some of those are not a 75% chance (signing Hamels for example is nowhere near that).

The real problem I have is with the 15 morons that voted neither of them first. Include the 8 idiots that didn't have Pops in the top 3 and the 18 fools that didn't have Thibs in the top 3. I could accept arguments for Vogel or Hollins. The Rivers and Karl votes are terrible. ETA: Why did Monty Williams get a second place vote?? The problem for Vogel is the timing in which he took over last year. He did most of his best coaching work last season when he completely transformed that team both in style and playing time mid-season. But he didn't coach nearly enough games to get much consideration for the award. This year, it's been a much easier coaching job for him. He's had a mostly healthy roster, and the only things he's had to do was to get them to all buy into the team concept and work in the four new additions. He's done a fine job this year, but he hasn't needed to be exceptional. I might give him the coach of the last year and half award if there was one, but I think third should have been about his ceiling for the Coach of the Year award. Popovich was the right choice IMO. Bird could very well get Executive of the year though.

Think of how awesome KGs column will be in a year. "Barfight, anything is possible!" There's a perverse part of me that hopes the Bulls amnesty Boozer and sign KG. Just to watch the backtracking. That and I'm afraid we dump all our cash in extending him for far too long (i.e. more than 1 year) Just for clarity's sake (since this is the second time in a couple days somebody's mentioned amnestying Boozer) but the Bulls aren't going to have much cap space even if they do amnesty him. They have 48.8 million committed between Deng, Noah, Rose, Hamilton, Gibson, Butler, and 500,000 of Korver's contract. So they could have up to 8-12 million in space, but that would involve waiving Korver, Brewer, Watson, not re-signing Asik. Since they are very unlikely to waive Watson and almost certainly not going to waive Brewer either, amnestying Boozer gets them under the luxury tax but that's about the only benefit for next year. It might help clear some space for the two years after that depending on what the Bulls decide to do with players like Asik and Gibson.

Yew, he was terrified of shooting. Didn't shoot terribly when he did against Miami, but I think he did against Indiana or Atlanta. He was 19-39 against Indiana including 10-17 from 3. And that was mostly a bad game 5, he had made 8 of 10 3's in the first 4 games. It looks like against Atlanta he had a couple good games and a few poor games, and then against Miami he was pretty nonexistent.

A quick look at the last 2 playoff teams: the 2008 Cubs had at least 12 players on their playoff roster who were in the organization at the beginning of 2006 (I couldn't find the full roster). The 2003 Cubs I didn't doublecheck any individual player, but when looking at the playoff roster I'd guess about 6 were in the organization at the beginning of 2001. It makes sense that the next Cubs playoff team should be a higher number than most both because that seems to be the philosophy of the front office, and also because the Cubs farm system is filled with quantity right now that should be able to fill up those spare parts of a major league team. But it really depends how many spare part for spare part trades they make, and of course how many years it takes to get in the playoffs.

I don't know why the NBA wanted them on Saturday (are there any scheduling conflicts for either arena?) but once they were it was pretty obvious they were going to be the first game. Miami-New York was obviously going to be the ABC game, Dallas-Oklahoma City had to be the late game, and TNT has higher priority than ESPN so they were going to pick Chicago over airing the series none of the networks want in Indiana-Orlando (and that's with good reason).

It's not like the last day of the NBA season is that important anyway. Several teams resting starters and several other teams actively tanking. This year, it is a really boring day. The Knicks need a win to clinch the 7 seed, but they play Charlotte. The Grizzlies need a win to clinch home court advantage over the Clippers, and they play the hobbled Magic. Denver needs a win to get the 6 seed, and they play hobbled Minnesota. It would be a big surprise if any of those teams lost, and the only other race is Atlanta/Boston HCA (and tiny things like Chicago clinching HCA in the Finals).