namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
The 2006 NBA Finals start tonight!
namkcuR said:The 2006 NBA Finals start tonight!
inmyplace13 said:I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time.
Headache in a Suitcase said:pistons in 3... i'd bet my next pay check on it
Headache in a Suitcase said:now i don't dislike dwyane wade, persay... but the nba media machine is making me nautious. if i have to hear one more person compare wade to michael jordan, i'm going to throw something at my TV. you can't be michael jordan if you're not even the most important player on your own team... which is, and i don't care what anyone says, shaq.
speedracer said:
There's one respect in which the comparison with Jordan is very accurate, and it's in the way Wade has expanded his offensive game.
Last year, Wade would attack the basket with reckless abandon. However, since he's a relatively small guy, he took a lot of hits and eventually his body completely broke down in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, allowing the Pistons to take the series.
This year, he's expanded his offensive game to include more midrange shooting, especially that unguardable 15-18 foot fadeaway jumper. As a result, he has more ways to score and can stay healthier. This is happening in his third year in the league; Jordan didn't start diversifying his offensive arsenal in this manner until quite a bit later in his career.
Headache in a Suitcase said:
michael jordan averaged 37 points per game in his third season... without shaq.
for once i agree with mark jackson. wade is a stronger, slightly taller version of allen iverson.
Headache in a Suitcase said:third year jordan would have averaged 47 a game in today's nba... he played in a time where if you scored so much you got sent to the floor and the guy didn't have to worry about being suspended for 5 games for doing it.
Headache in a Suitcase said:isiah was a better all around player.
it hurts just so say that
Headache in a Suitcase said:pistons in 3... i'd bet my next pay check on it
Imarocker said:any of you experts want to wager a paycheck or 2 against the PISTONS, you let me know...they aren't even trying against Milw.
speedracer said:Why doesn't Larry Brown just resign? If he still wanted to coach the Knicks after the season, he can't still possibly want to coach after dangling in the wind for so long, can he?
Maybe he's pretending to want to still coach just so he can swing public opinion on his side, but he still has way more goodwill on his side than the Knicks front office -- he can either quit or deliver an ultimatum and get away with it.
DALLAS -- Commissioner David Stern is appalled by the state of the game.
Not the NBA game, mind you, but the game as it is played by a significant percentage of young Americans who aspire to make it into Stern's league.
"There is something totally wrong with the development system for young basketball players," Stern said Friday at his annual NBA Finals news conference. "It historically has not been the place for professional leagues to do [something about] it, but on the basis of the consistent failures of everyone else to do it, we are at least thinking about it, and we'll be getting some dialogue with some interested parties to see if there's something that can be done here."
The subject came up at a Finals in which the Dallas Mavericks have become the first NBA team since the Houston Rockets a decade ago to be led into the championship round by a foreign-born player.
International players are flooding the league and now make up almost 20 percent of the NBA's player population, and scouts are increasingly turning to Europe and South America to find young players who have been developed with a focus on fundamentals rather than flash.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich summed it up recently by noting how his team usually has a choice on draft night between picking an American player who has been coddled by sneaker companies throughout his teenage years and a foreign player who has spent six or more years playing for his country's national program. And as we've seen with San Antonio's recent drafting patterns, the Spurs have been making the latter choice nearly every time.
NBA officials first broached the subject with other interested parties last winter at a meeting in Chicago that included: officials from Nike; current and former college coaches Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith and George Raveling; NCAA president Myles Brand; and representatives from AAU programs. A follow-up meeting was held recently, but no consensus has emerged as to how to address a problem that has been festering over the past two decades.
Twenty years ago, players typically honed their basketball and life management skills in college, then came into the NBA in their early 20s. Nowadays, however, the best American players are often identified before they even reach high school, and sneaker companies and AAU coaches often have a greater influence on those players than their high school coaches and hometown mentors. The end result has been a generation of players entering the league with enormous skills and potential -- but with a lack of comprehension of many of the intricacies of the game that are so important at the highest level.
"The roster of NBA teams is going to be enriched by huge numbers of international players, and it's going to happen," Stern said. "But I also believe that the production of American players and their development is going to go through a renaissance. If we have to fuel it ourselves, OK. Maybe we're viewing it as our obligation to become involved in something we never wanted to touch because it was both unpleasant and possibly deleterious to their academic health, but we're talking about it internally."
Incoming deputy commissioner Adam Silver expounded on Stern's statements in an interview with ESPN.com.
"As David said, from a college and NBA standpoint, it's often too late -- by the time the rules allow us to first engage the players -- to do anything in terms of skills and personal development," Silver said. "There's a morass of rules, some Byzantine, that we're just beginning to understand. We've never done that kind of a thorough investigation into the layered rules and don't yet have an understanding of what we could do, or what others could do.
"We're not as concerned that we get involved, as long as there's a system that produces American players that can compete at the highest levels by the time they're of NBA age. That's what our concern is," Silver said. "We just don't want to bury our heads in the sand and pretend [that] somehow players will arrive miraculously as fully developed adults when there's a screwed-up system all along the way."
inmyplace13 said:Well, I went up to the AAC today since it's the closest I'm going to get to being at the Finals. Mostly just strolled around the shop looking for this new shirt that has Avery in a general's uniform on it. I wanted to get a green Diop shirt to round out my collection (white Quisy, blue Mbenga) but the only green alternate T's they had were Dirk. I did buy an official Finals program though, so at least I'll have that.
I also got four tickets to Tuesday night's "Beat The Heat" watching party. Basically it's five dollars admission to watch the away games on the jumbotron in the AAC. It ought to be a good time, and if it is I'll probably get tickets for Thursday and Sunday's games as well.
I'm still dumbstruck about all this. I've had faith for years and years, but now that they actually made it here....unreal.