November 9, 2010 may have been the most historic November 9 in the history of November 9s. The other nominees? November 9, 1799 Napolean became dictator of France. November 9, 2004 Halo 2 was released in what may have been the most hyped video game premiere ever, resulting in millions of middle school students nationwide pretending to be sick on November 10 and Playstation 2 owners, like myself, clinging to titles like Jak 2 and Ratchet & Clank pretending not to be phased by the entire school's subscription to XBOX Live. November 9, 1971 pro golfer David Duvall was born.
But none of these historic November 9s compare to the night that was November 9, 2010 in the NBA. Heat vs Jazz. Pacers historic third quarter against the Nuggets. Kevin Love's strangely dominant performance against the Lakers. There was enough in these three games for an entire week and we got it all in one night. Teams are starting to separate into the categories of elite, good, and just plain bad, and I've loved every second of it. Here's my top 10 of the week.
Quick sidenote: I think the way to judge how successful a league is doing is by how many tweaks they make to their all-star game. Struggling sports like baseball and hockey are all about adjusting their all-star game, baseball making the winning league get home field advantage and hockey adding a new tweak where team captains will pick their squads. NBA? No tweaks. NFL? All-star game is thrown in at the end of the season as kind of one final hit for the upcoming football withdraws. Adjusting your all-star game to get fans is like working out your triceps to get women, if you haven't won them over yet, a ripped set of triceps is not gonna change the entire game.
10. NBA Commercials
The best commercials on TV right now are the All-State Mayhem line, the Chase Credit Card campaign (strange alliteration), and anything related to the NBA. Here's my sublist of the top 5 NBA commercials out there:
5. The Brandon Jennings, overly intense, is-that-the-Inception-one-deep-baseline-soundtrack-in-the-background, Under Armor Shoes commercial.
4. LeBron James "What Should I do" commercial. I think it was a given that this would be spoofed countless times (South Park's version is hilarious, the Cleveland one less funny but still good) but I think the commercial is really well done. A minute thirty gets a little old on view number three and above, but the first two times I was thoroughly entertained. Also, I'd like to point out how close I was five months ago with my opening line of "LeBron James: A Burning Love"
“What do I have to do to make you happy?!” LeBron yelled as he stormed out of the bedroom.
If only I had put the "should" in there I could be collecting checks from Nike right now :(
3. Dwayne Wade-Batman-esque commercial. Wade and Dwight Howard are the best acting talents in the NBA and seeing Wade play this type of superhero made me wonder why not cast D-Wade as the Flash for the 2013 Marvel movie and see what happens? Also the Michael Caine/Morgan Freeman character in the commercial is played by Kevin Hart who no matter what he plays in the future, I will always remember him as that funny angry black guy from 40 year old Virgin:
2. Slim Chin Adidas commercials. These are the most ridiculous ads I've ever seen. The concept is hilarious, bring in Hangover's Ken Jeong to make a complete dumbass of himself and pair him alongside D-Rose or Dwight Howard who literally just stands there and suddenly the NBA players look 100x cooler than you already thought they were. Ken Jeong is becoming the Asian Steve Urkel and I can imagine every time these commercials air, every Asian male across the country simply cringes at the sight of Slim Chin on top of his, "Lady Pyramid!"
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjJ5BtbRvM. Brilliant.
9. Yao Ming
This situation is becoming a disaster. He is now out for at least a week with an ankle sprain, the 24 minute limited playtime is proving to be a mess to manage, and the Rockets who after nearly stealing game 1 of the season against L.A. looked like they should be a 5-2 or at least 4-3 type of team right now are instead staring at a 1-6 record with their next four games @ Indiana, @ New York, vs Chicago, and @ OKC. I see them being no better than 2-9 after that stretch. My prediction of the Rockets as a playoff team is looking less and less accurate, which honestly really surprises me since Scola is playing great, Battier-Brooks-Martin should have been a good enough core of guards, and Brad Miller is a solid backup center. With the surprise of New Orleans, the solid play of both San Antonio and Dallas (more on that later), and Memphis, I really don't see how Houston finishes anything other than last in their division.
8. Paul Millsap and the Utah Jazz
Where the hell did Millsap's November 9th performance come from? 46 points, 9 rebs, 11 of those points in the last 27 seconds when he stepped out and drained three 3 point shots. This was the best performance of the year so far and this week no one was more impressive than the Utah Jazz. After an 0-2 start, the Jazz have won 5 of their last 6 including wins at Miami, at Orlando, at Oklahoma City, three wins on the home floors of my rankings #3, #4, and #5 teams. The Jazz look to be powers out West because of Millsap's emergence, Al Jefferson filling in nicely for the Boozer gap, and Derron Williams continuing to be Derron Williams. In Raja Bell they finally have a guy who can annoy and somewhat slow down Kobe Bryant and I'll be very interested to see how Lakers vs Jazz games play out this season.
7. Is Kevin Love Secretly Good?
I don't think enough was made of Kevin Love putting up 23 pts, 24 rebounds, and 5 assists against the two time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. His stats on the year are 16.6 ppg 12.8 rpg, 2nd in the league in rebounds. The kicker is that he's getting around 28/29 minutes a night. There's no reason that the 21 year old Kevin Love shouldn't be playing 35 minutes a night, which adjusting his stats would put him at about 20 and 15. He showed his ability to score and rebound in bunches when he played in the FIBA tournament and I think he may be securing a spot on the 2012 Olympic team.
6. Indiana Pacers 3rd Quarter
20 for 21 shooting. Josh McRoberts ruined everything at the very end. The Pacers look good and I'm going to make the bold prediction that they will win their next 4 games putting them at 7-3 and at the top of the central division. For a few days. Then their schedule gets a whole lot tougher and by game 16 they'll be back down to .500 level 8-8.
5. Michael Beasely
Minnesota is proving to be a good fit for him. He is moving to more of a small forward role and is posting up several Top 10 ESPN dunks so far this year. At around 19 and 9 he's first on his team in scoring (doesn't say a lot since its the T'Wolves but still) and second in rebounding. Food for thought, was Bosh really that much of an upgrade from Beasely?
4. Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs are Legitimate Threats
I hate to buy into anything the Mavs do in the regular season or believe that the Spurs still have any form of life in their 30 year old tanks, but their performances thus far in 2010 make me believe they are more so the #2 and #3 teams out west than the younger Thunder and Trailblazers. The Mavs beat the Celtics earlier this week and the Paul Millsap performance, especially the last 27 seconds, made me curious to what Dirk will be able to do when he plays Miami. Do you put Bosh on him? LeBron on Dirk? Then who does Bosh guard, Shawn Marion? I think the Mavs will be a matchup problem for the Heat along with plenty other teams this season.
As for the Spurs, they're 6-1. They have the third best record in all the NBA. Here's a comparison between the San Antonio Big 4 and Boston's Big 4:
Parker: 16.7 ppg, 8.4 apg, 3.1 rpg, 2.6 steals
Rondo: 10.8 ppg, 14.9 apg, 5.2 rpg, 3.0 steals
Manu: 21.9 ppg, 4.9 apg, 3.1 rpg
Ray Allen: 19.2 ppg, 2.1 apg, 3.6 rpg
Richard Jefferson: 18.6 ppg, 3.7 rpg
Paul Pierce: 20.2 ppg, 5.7 rpg
Tim Duncan: 15.4 ppg, 10.0 rpg
Kevin Garnett: 15.1 ppg, 10.6 rpg
As you can see the stat lines are extremely close. Both teams have a good spark off the bench at PG/SG (Boston Nate Robinson and soon Delonte West, Spurs George Hill and James Anderson) and are loaded at the big men (Boston: Shaq, Perkins, Jermaine, Big Baby, Semih Erden, San Antonio: Dejaun Blair, McDyess, Tiago Splitter). I think ultimately the race for the Southwest Division will be between these two teams with the Hornets trailing shortly behind.
3. Hornets Are the Remaining Unbeaten Team
Chris Paul is worth 30 wins according to the Superstar formula. Last year New Orleans won 37 games and Chris Paul was only healthy for 45 of them. Back to the math formula:
Chris Paul is responsible for 30 wins of an 82 game season. 2009-2010 he played 45. 30 over 82 is a fraction of 15 over 41 aka .365. X (Paul's Superstar responsible wins 2009-2010) over 45 (games played) = .365.
(45)(.365)= 16.425 aka X
Therefore, the Hornets without Chris Paul were good for 21 wins (37-16). Now that he's healthy, I think the Hornets will win 51 games (30+21). The 6-0 start is impressive, they’ve beaten the Spurs and Heat, but I see no way that they get to 9-0 by beating the Mavs twice and Trailblazers once. The Hornets are legit, but I'm not sold with them being more than a 4 or 5 seed. Just yet.
2. Celtics Beat Heat. Again.
As of week 2 of the season, the Celtics are much better than the Miami Heat. LeBron has had two monster games against them, but DWade has struggled and Bosh has been well, the decent Chris Bosh. This was not a good week for the Heat. The Hornets exposed their lack of point guard issues, the Jazz exposed their lack of interior, and the Celtics exposed them at nearly every position. Paul Pierce tweeted after the game:
"It's been a pleasure to take my talents to South Beach. Now on to Memphis."
The Heat don't intimidate the Celtics at all and Boston is getting in every shot they can while the Heat are still developing. Eventually these words could come back to bite them, but for now Boston is the far superior team.
1. Spoelstra
I don't picture Spoelstra winnings rings. I can picture Wade winning, I can picture LeBron winning, but I can not picture Spoelstra rattling off back to back rings let alone the seven that LeBron promised. Watching Pat Riley during the game pulling out that mysterious sheet of paper and angrily writing notes (I picture the sheet being covered with just repeated "Serenity now! Serenity Now" 1000 times), hearing LeBron rave about Jerry Sloan and complain about Spoelstra's choice of minutes for him and Wade, the 5-4 start, the media panic, somethings gotta give. I won't even go Google spell check Spoelstra, if I misspelled it will anyone even notice?
Save the date, December 2nd 2010 when the Heat travel to Cleveland. If the Heat go into that game still at about .600 (which most likely they won't, their next 6 games are cakewalks) and lose to the Cavaliers (which I think they will) all hell will break loose. LeBron and Wade will have behind closed doors meetings with Riley, Spoelstra will lose the respect of his team, and eventually I think the King will demand a hall of fame coach take over.
The top 5 teams in the NBA as of now, end of week 2, are as follows:
1. Los Angeles Lakers
2. Boston Celtics
3. New Orleans Hornets
4. Utah Jazz
5. San Antonio Spurs
No comments:
Post a Comment