Can Danny?

Unlike most of his career, Shareef Abdur-Rahim's retirement announcement seems to have flown under the radar. I have to make a note of it because for years, SAR has been the epitome of the good player on a bad team. A guy who puts up stats but never seems to be able to actually help his team win. Of course, he's been overshadowed of late by guys like Zach Randolph, who actually does SAR one better than helps his teams lose, but 'Reef always held a special place for me because he was tied to Antoine Walker. While Antoine was certainly a flawed player, he had a passion and a skil set that helped his teams. I never saw anything out of 'Reef that made him seem like anything more than a very talented #3 star. Yes, I know he played on some terrible teams but one playoff appearance is pathetic. Especially since some of those bad teams would have been playoff-bound if you had replaced 'Reef with an actual star player.

And since I really don't have that much more to say about 'Reef, let's re-rank the top 10 players from the first round of the 1996 draft.

Posted by SoulHonky at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A little blurb (and link to the LA Times story) about Tracy McGrady's new documentary can be found over at the Soulhonky main site.

Posted by SoulHonky at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Isn't it time for Gordon to just accept the qualifying offer and play out his year in Chicago? Not only is it probably the best move for Ben, but it would also save other NBA GM's from making a bonehead move. Ben Gordon is a great scorer but he seems to me like a poor man's Gil Arenas, a gifted player whose team fares just as well without him.

The latest rumor makes no sense to me at all. Gordon, Joakim Noah, and Larry Hughes for Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks? For starters, I don't really get the Gordon/Wade backcourt. Gordon is better with the ball in his hands and when you have Wade and Michael Beasley, you don't need that. Personally, I think the Heat have their point guard in Mario Chalmers, a good spot-up shooter who can defend.  Ideally they'd get someone bigger who can defend the tougher guard spot (and give Wade the easier assignment) but Gordon doesn't make much sense to me. Also, why give up Marion's expiring deal in order to have Ben Gordon on a long term deal as well as Larry Hughes? It would be nice to dump that extra year of Marcus Banks's contract but is that really worth it?

I don't know where Ben Gordon should end up but knowing most GM's in the NBA, it will be somewhere where he probably doesn't fit.

Posted by SoulHonky at 06:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sam Cassell said that he's going to be back in Celtic green next season. I thought his play last year at times was laughable because of how quickly he shot the ball but I'll take him as a third string PG.

The real question, though, is who isn't going to be around come opening night? The Celtics already had 15 men under contract and now will need to jettison one player. The obvious pick seemed like Bill Walker but all word out of the front office is that not only will he be on the team but he'll be a contributor. 

Darius Miles? Even if Darius doesn't make the team, I think the Celtics are going to need to find another SF because right now, the roster is slim at that spot. Bill Walker can get some minutes and Tony Allen could play some spot time there but you'd like to have a big body to go up against LeBron James. 

The same goes for Patrick O'Bryant. If we cut him, we need to find someone else to shore up the bench. We'd have Leon Powe as our backup center. 

The likely choice would seem to be Gabe Pruitt. Personally, I was never really sold on Pruitt but there's really no reason to keep him around if we already have Tony Allen and JR Giddens backing up the 2 spot and House and Cassell backing up the point. I don't think we can just send Pruitt to Europe since he's already under contract so it might be adios to Mr. Pruitt.

Could there be a trade in the works? Possibly but probably not likely. I know that a lot of fans enjoy coming up with Brian Scalabrine deals but Veal is fairly tough to move unless we take on a bad contract. And seeing that we weren't willing to give James Posey a fourth year on his contract, it would seem odd that we'd deal Veal for a contract that ran that long. And if that's the case, there really aren't that many contracts that are around Veal's numbers and only one year longer than teams are dying to get rid of.  

It should be interesting to see how this all shakes out because even with 16 people on the roster, I wouldn't be stunned if Danny Ainge had a few more moves up his sleeves.

Posted by SoulHonky at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much on the Celtics front but I just had to chime in on the Monday Night Football crews for ESPN. They are some of the worst announcers I've ever heard in my life. I like Jaws and Kornheiser but I'm not a huge fan of either in the booth. Jaws is passable and knows what he's talking about but he always sounds like someone who is trying to get off of the phone. He talks fast and seems to just want to get his point out as quickly as possible. Kornheiser, on the other hand, never has a point but always finds away to belabor some annoying storyline. If I had to hear him mention Favre one more time... well, I did so I turned the channel. I couldn't take it anymore. He adds nothing to the broadcast except for the always comical moment (usually in the early 4th quarter) when he says the game is over and there's no reason to watch anymore. You can almost hear the director in Mike Tirico's earpiece, yelling for him to say something to get people to now change the channel.

The Mike, Mike, and Mike team just doesn't seem like a pro announcing squad. Greenberg makes his fair share of mistakes, all of which Ditka jumps on and points out. Ditka sounds like a grumpy old man. Even when he's complimenting someone he sounds upset. This crew also doesn't seem to understand the idea of tossing to a commercial because right before each commercial break you usually have Ditka or Golic rambling on about the last play. 

I like all of these guys in their regular jobs of studio analysts but really only Tirico should be in a booth and I'm not sold on him as an A-game announcer. 

Posted by SoulHonky at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, being the man who traded for Vin Baker isn't enough for Chris Wallace. He is clearly trying to be the worst GM of All-Time so he's going to look to take out his most recent competition by making the same mistake Isiah Thomas made AFTER Isiah Thomas already made it.

(I particularly like this picture of Wallace below because it looks like he's awaiting the answer to the question "Hey, what are all of those people doing in the arena?" I feel like moments after the picture was snapped, Wallace turned around to look at the picture and said, "There was a concert, right? Was it Aerosmith? You know, I used to work in the town they started in...")

The rumors of Zach Randolph to Memphis are gaining steam, this time with Darko Milicic and Marko Jaric as the key figures. Right now the thing holding the deal back is money (the Grizz want the Knicks to pay for Zach's contract). I'm assuming there also might be some hestiation because Jaric's deal is three years and would still be on the books for the Great LeBron Chase of 2010. Ideally, the Knicks would dump Zach and clear all of his cap space, not just half.

While the money might not be exactly right, this trade actually makes the Knicks better. While Darko and Marko aren't star players, they do complement two of the more talented Knicks. Jaric is exactly the type of guard you want to pair with Jamal Crawford; he can guard either position and run the point, allowing Jamal to focus on scoring. Darko would be a solid complement to Eddy Curry. He's big, can defend, and will hit the boards. Granted, neither Darko nor Eddy is known for actually giving 100% but at least this duo works in theory (which the Zack and Eddy combo didn't). 

There's no reason to go back into how Zach is a bad fit for the young Grizzlies or how it doesn't really make much sense to dump Gasol for cap reasons but then deal for Zach. The bottom line is that the Grizzles have a good amount of young talent and there's no reason that they have to do the Wallace Special of taking on an abhorrent contract in the name of saving money. Yes, they might have to pull a Brandon Roy for Theo Ratliff type deal and give up some talent to clear space but that makes the most sense because they have some redundant talent. There isn't a team out there that would take Mike Conley, Darko, and Marko for a solid player on a short contract? The Blazers are rumored to want Conley. A deal involving Raef Lafrentz, Channing Frye, and Peterri Kopponen, and/or Martell Webster wouldn't work?

It also can't be stated enough that this deal is something that fans and cameramen will abhor: when the Grizz are losing they now would have to watch Zach Randolph dribble around aimlessly and toss up airballs instead of being able to glance over at/cut to Adriana Lima (aka Mrs. Marko).

There are only two groups of people that are rooting for this trade: Knicks fans and Sonics fans. Adding Z-bo is the kind of move that could get the Grizz one step closer to losing their remaining fans and setting the relocation plans in progress. I'd still have my money on the Bobcats (They won't move until Bob Johnson and Michael Jordan sell the team but I could see them losing patience very soon) but the Grizz are slowly but surely becoming an even bet.

Posted by SoulHonky at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Oklahoma City Thunder have revealed their logo and it's stupid. To me, it looks like the generic NCAA Tournament logo and it just doesn't seem like anything that would really sell jerseys/hats/etc.

To be fair, Thunder isn't exactly an easy word to logoify (and no, that's not a word). Most teams that go with the nickname go one of two routes. The first is to ignore the difference between thunder and lightning and just go with a bolt of some sort. This just doesn't seem to make good sense to me and I'm happy that the Okalahoma City Thieves didn't go that route.

The other option is usually related to Thor, the Norse god of Thunder. Often times, it's just a hammer although some times, like with the Berlin Thunder logo (right), it's the man himself. Of course, I'm not sure how celebrating a false god would fly in the Bible Belt. Still, it's cooler than a random picture of a basketball.

Even worse, there's really no way for this logo or even this basketball team to live up to the legacy of the Thundercats so I really think this team is setting itself up for failure. And they were starting off with such an easy assignment; all they had to do was find a better name than Supersonics. And it's not like Oklahoma is known for great sports names, although there is a hockey team called the Tulsa Crude which is just so terrible that it's pretty awesome.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the name Thunder is pretty lame so I guess the logo suits it well.

Posted by SoulHonky at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)