UMFan83

I pulled some selected quotes from that Knicks forum regarding Lin. Good stuff. And by far my favorite one: Wow...just wow. Imagine if John Lucas got some burn in NY.

Several years too late. His offensive numbers in 06-07 blow away his numbers this year, and his D was very good, if not to this year's standards. Chicago won 49 games that year and had no All Stars, so its not difficult to suggest that he should have represented the Bulls. 06-07: 18.8 PPG, 7.1 RPG, 2.5 APG, .517 (!!) FG%, .143 3PT% (only attempted seven 3's), 18.7 PER 11-12: 16.0 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 2.5 APG, .439 FG%, .371 3PT%, 16.29 PER. This is not to say he doesn't deserve it this year because he definitely does. But his monster year in 07 went unrewarded.

I thought that was pretty obvious.

From a hoops standpoint i think we are almost as good as them. Their guys know how to get the whistle and ours dont. And they have LeBron who can neutralize DRose in end game situations. We don't have 2 guys who can keep LBJ and Wade in check the whole game. Overall, we're very close, but the last 3 times the Bulls have played the Heat, Bulls have basically been terrible at the end of the game. That's not a coincidence. Ugh, not this argument again. There was a thread on RealGM after the last Heat game that refutes this...having trouble finding it at the moment. And even if that was completely true, you act like this is written in stone and will never change. Rose will never be able to do anything with LeBron defending him. The kid is 23 and still evolving his game, its very plausible that Rose can find a way to succeed with LeBron guarding him.

Neat. That will go nicely with that road accomplishment a couple of years ago. I think that one was 'first team to ever win 5 consecutive road games (with no home games in between) against teams above .500'.

The halftime score: Michigan 22, Nebraska 15. And you thought Illinois - MSU was bad. Nebraska is shooting 5-23 and 0-9 from 3. Michigan is shooting 8-24 and 5-17 from 3. So combined they are 13-47 (27.6%) and 5-26 from 3 (19.2%) Awful

Michigan and Nebraska combine for a 6-27 shooting start with 3-17 coming from 3.

Gotcha. Thanks

I don't remember WGN ever broadcasting a game when the game is also on FOX. I thought FOX has exclusive rights during the time period that they broadcast games.

I didn't catch the game but the trib write up suggested that the Emery definitely should have saved the 3rd and 4th goals. Who knows if they even know what they are talking about. This was what Brian Hamilton said:

The Cubs should take him to Cafe 28 if he visits the city. Great Cuban food just blocks from Wrigley. But if he asks them to show him a Cuban person were screwed.

I wouldn't go that far. There were ways to make this team a fringe contender in 2012 without handing out bad contracts. Go on. Which free agent contracts did you wish the Cubs had handed out this offseason? Of the biggies, CJ Wilson's deal is the easiest to defend, but that price almost certainly wasn't available to the Cubs. Reyes? Fielder? Pujols? How did you get from what I said to "Rob wants to sign 'biggies'?" I was talking about spreading the money around on marginal upgrades and making a handful of smart, low-cost trades. Targeting Edwin Jackson and one of Kuroda / Oswalt would likely be better in the short term than Wood/Volstad/Wells. Trading for Alberto Callaspo would be better than Ian Stewart, and only cost marginally more. This wasn't a 71 win team last season. There was enough room in the payroll to add players to take us to a mid 80's win team. That doesn't always put you in the playoffs, but it gives you a shot. I get why the front office decided to target a future window instead of opting to make slower yearly gains. And I don't necessarily disagree. But let's not pretend it was the only option. I agree with this. If you sign Edwin Jackson and the Cubs suck and you don't want to keep him long term, there's likely to be plenty of suiters for him come July. So you trade him and get assets. Isn't that what the club is trying to do (accumulate assets)? I have no problem with what the Cubs are doing, though it does make me wonder why they won't use the excess payroll lost from last year to do stuff like sign Edwin Jackson with the thought of trading him for prospects in July. Does Theo not deem that a cost efficient way to build the club, or was it the Cubs plan to keep payroll around $100 million until we had the pieces in place for a run?

Because in the current system you don't get a chance to slip up. Even one loss in the middle of the year can blow your chance at winning your conference division, at which point you can just write off your chance at playing for the championship. That's fine but having a 4 team playoff makes more regular season games important. To me that places a higher value on the regular season. Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way because I get what you are saying too. Regardless, the margin of error is still going to be razor thin for contending teams so the regular season is not going to be any less compelling and the individual games aren't going to be any less important.

Can I have the honors of overreacting and suggesting the playoffs are not a lock for this team? What a spectacular free fall for this team.

Apparently, "Duncan Keith" is the number 5 trending topic in the US on Twitter right now. He must have done something laughably bad.

Lemme guess....defensive zone giveaway directly leading to a goal?

I keep looking at the projected lineup and wonder where the heck the power is going to come from. We finished 15th in baseball in SLG and 20th in HRs last year, and lost our 2 best power hitters and replaced them with Ian Stewart and Brian LaHair. SLG% and HRs last year DeJesus - .376, 10 Byrd - .395, 9 Soriano - .469, 26 Stewart - .221, 0 (ok .441, 18 his last full season) Castro - .432, 10 Barney - .353, 2 Soto - .411, 17 Then you have LaHair. Probably not as bad as the Astros or Padres but not exactly a dangerous offense. I do like the pitching depth so that will keep us in games more often than not, and the defense has to be better than last year. I'd guess a win total around 70-75, more because of improvements in run prevention than improvements in offense.

The clippers curse hit late this year.

Just came here to post this. That's good stuff. [expletive] awesome!

I figured the 'hey guys look, we tried' mantra would have fit in better with the previous regime

It would annoy me a lot. I like Vitters, but I doubt he's in Theo/Jed's long term plans. However, he is a toolsy, still young guy who a scout-heavy organization could still overvalue. Even if you think his likelihood of becoming a successful major leaguer is near 0, his potential trade value makes him far too valuable to simply give away. Yeah you make a good point about having value. That said, if Theo thought there was legit value there, I'd think he would refuse to give him up as compensation.

My rankings, given all teams are completely equal in talent and salary is not an issue: 1. LA Lakers 2. Miami 3. New York 4. LA Clippers 5. Dallas 6. Brooklyn 7. Chicago 8. Orlando 9. Boston 10. I dunno...Atlanta maybe

In terms of the ranking of prospect that Vitters is, I think that's too much, but all rankings aside, I really don't care if Vitters is the compensation. I probably should care more but I don't.

I hate how opponents of a playoff are always talking about how a playoff devalues the regular season. That is such a load of crap. If anything, a playoff puts more importance on the regular season. As it is now, probably only 15 teams in D1 go into a season with any thoughts of competing for a title. When they lose a game, in most years that's a death blow. Eventually 2/3rds of the way into the season there are only 3-4 teams with a NC hope. The other 100+ teams are playing out the string of meaningless games for pride (and recruiting favor). In a 4 team playoff you can lose a game and still be right in the discussion. Going into the end of the regular season there might be 10-12 teams still alive for an playoff berth. That gives the last few regular season games a crapload of meaning for many teams. So yeah, it's an incredibly stupid argument. I cannot believe that there is this much traction for a playoff system as as recently as 2 years ago, it seemed hopeless.

I didn't watch the game but judging by the box score he had a terrific game. 10-17 shooting 28 points 8 assists. Good stuff, but I doubt he can keep it up.