Magnetic Curses

if griffey could play at all he'd be in the rotation. and he knows that he won't play behind shaw and egwu.

nick anderson

Bring back Kreutz has to mean no Garza and Williams. That's the only way you are going to improve the OL. Webb isn't going anywhere. Maybe you upgrade the OT position he doesn't play, but that's not enough. If you have Kreutz and Webb back, you better have a FA OL brought in and a high draft pick starting. carimi is going to be a guy you plug in at LT and then just forget about that position for 10-15 years.

:banghead: i don't get why this is so troubling. lovie doesn't call offensive or defensive plays. he dictates team defensive philosophy but that's about all. the players love him. i really don't know why people hate him so much. wait, it's because he isn't out there making an ass out of himself when things don't go his way. he exercises restraint and serenity, so he can't be a good coach.

how does this happen? they scored on literally every possession in this game. what a career night all around. [expletive] off toronto and your lucky asses.

It shouldn't take a tirade from Toews to get people to play up to their capabilities. I think that's the larger point, not that his tirade happened to work for one game. i disagree, this is a fairly young, talented team prone to extended periods of lackluster effort. and this is why toews is the captain, it's what a captain does. even the older players look up to him.

i wish i could find spike lee's reaction to the knicks picking balkman in the first round.

Like father like son i knew something was wrong when he told me he didn't want candy. i DID want candy. well you're father ate it!

and they should bring back ditka!

Of course it is. What it isn't is a contact sport. Which basketball is. D Rose's brand in particular. The thorns, obviously, the laurels you have down. What I'm saying is that laurels are clear and absolute and the thorns are subjective and mostly irrelevant to winning. Well you're baffling yourself then because I clearly did not describe Rose in those terms. To use your terms, I described Rose as both a brawler and a dancer who resorts too often to brawler for the writer's subjective taste. I then described that subjective taste as idiotic and hypocritical. What's your issue with that? Now you sound like the bizarro Bethlehem Shoals. Your desire to view Rose as grace personified without acknowledging his duality as both graceful and brutish is not only inaccurate, but also a disservice to Derrick's considerable talent and physical intelligence. Derrick Rose can run by you, through you around you or jump over you. You clearly appreciate the by, around and over but not the through and Shoals is too hung up on the through. My whole point is that this discussion is beside the point. The point being that basketball is not art, it's sport. It's not even mostly about aesthetics so getting hung up on them is pointless in anything other than a rhetorical exercise. basketball is always about aesthetics or else it would be called a slot machine. people don't like to watch the 04 pistons or the late 90's-early aughts devils or 2000 ravens. they want to see the dramatic, they want actors and the stage and they want to watch the actors do incredible things. this is what makes money and keeps the sports themselves solvent. ben wallace is never going to have a statue and neither is prince or even billups (except maybe in park hill)

i still don't understand at all. ballet isn't balance, athleticism, and controlled acrobatic movement? i'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around both the laurels and the thorns that he is receiving as a player. you describing the mere functionality of rose and the outcome that he elicits as if he were russell crowe in a barroom brawl is baffling to me. it is not the end that makes him such a brilliant player, it is the running and jumping and twisting and contorting and wrapping himself and finding a crease and then unwrapping himself as he glimpses daylight and extends a powerful arm as a maestro at the end of a symphony and the ball falls softly, gently into the net as if he were practicing alone.

right? it's not like he just runs over players like lebron does. he may be big, but he's not that big. i thought the whole book on him was that he avoids contact by making insanely acrobatic ballet moves, which is why he doesn't get to the line more. haters can't have it both ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJJ6R4SR2tw graceful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NArREQUaGo&feature=related graceful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ge0A7Mfcg&feature=related graceful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXiDL0ZqGRY&feature=related graceful he may be the most "graceful" player to ever dribble a basketball. he makes several of these plays a game.

Saying the word "subjectively" followed by the words "I find" is interesting. I also disagree that Derrick's game is particularly graceful. Chris Paul is graceful, Steve Nash is graceful. Rajon Rondo is deceptive and slinky. Deron Williams is deceptive and strong. Russell Westbrook is athletic but suffers a lot from the same thing Derrick does. That being sometimes the athleticism can get them places where other pg's can't go and sometimes they overcommit and have to either bail out with a chaotic pass, shoot a bad shot or turn it over. Westbrook is better at drawing a foul to avoid a bad outcome in those situations which is a significant value. Some of that is skill but some is probably due to him being weaker than Derrick. He plows through a lot of potential fouls that other players don't and can't. Derrick is athletic, strong and more aggressive than any other point guard in the league. He really is the point guard equivalent of LeBron and Griff. If you can find beauty in the brutish efficiency like me, then you subjectively think it's beautiful. Objectively the best argument that can be made is that it is so damn effective that it has to be beautiful because anything that contributes that much to winning basketball games has to be considered beautiful in much the same way a white shark breaching with a seal in it's mouth is beautiful and terrible at the same time. That said, I can understand why subjectively, a basketball fan could appreciate a graceful, ballet-like point guard more. if you don't think that [expletive] like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIYbWg_qNe0&feature=related is graceful, you're a hater. a dirty lowdown hater. maybe it's just people don't watch rose, i don't know. i just have no clue as to how people think that someone like paul or even steve [expletive] nash is graceful and derrick rose isn't mikhail [expletive] baryshnikov amidst a bunch of tanglefooted clods.

it's indiana and he has been recruiting well. if you recruit well at indiana you can walk around pantsless and rape nuns. they don't care, as long as the those guys have 4 or 5 stars by their names the fans, alumni, and administration will be satisfied.

ha, don't get me started, I could go off on about 20 tangents... i would argue that felton is a huge loss long-term. huge. this was his last year there anyway, they weren't gonna re-sign him why wouldn't they re-sign him?

ha, don't get me started, I could go off on about 20 tangents... i would argue that felton is a huge loss long-term. huge.

i'm sure he would die from grief

Where are people getting this and why does it keep getting repeated? They're in the middle of trying to sell the franchise. It's not happening. I haven't looked into it that much. Are they really going to DNP-CD Rip from here until the end of his contract? I don't see anyone picking up that contract any time soon. No not forever but they aren't buying him out this year. Maybe after the new CBA gets finalized they try to work something out but not during this season. I keep seeing national guys talk about how the Celtics or Bulls or whoever would have interest if he was bought out. Well no [expletive]. Most contenders would have interest if it doesn't cost anything. The local guys (plus Marc Stein and others who use some sense) have said there's no way he's getting bought out this year. i would imagine that starting for the bulls would interest rip more than playing for any other contender.

i agree, it would seem like buying him out would make the franchise look more attractive. an old guy sitting on the bench and making tons of money for a couple of years doesn't seem to be a very nice piece to build your franchise around to me.

the knicks gave up some significant players though, i'll give them that, but they consolidated those players in the person of one of the league's top players and a veteran presnce at the point.

It doesn't improve their standing in the East. They are still going to be a the 5th best team at best. they'll have 2 superstars and chauncey billups. granted, they get much worse defensively, but they have their core to build around going forward.

that wouldn't be terrible, and he'd have to come to chicago, right? right?

no to rip. isn't his contract super duper bad and long?

well, we had a nice competitive team once.