Hard Knocks has a decision to make

 Pic courtesy of Edthesportsfan.com

Terrell Eldorado Owens is now a Bengal, joining forces with a certain Chad Ochochinco. Stank-0 believes that TO is mellowing in his advancing age.  As evidenced by his time in Buffalo.  They begged him to act up and he still behaved. 

What this does is ease the pressure on Ocho.  TO doesn’t command a #1 or #2 corner but you can’t disregard him out there and do not discount the effect of playing with another good receiver.  It may push them both to be better.  Not sure if TO is quite a #2 but he might be able to play the other side of Ocho and that would be quite a tandem.  It would at least be a top 5 receiver tandem in the league. The only tandem that comes to mind that is better is Moss and Welker. TO and Ocho could be the Bruce and Holt of the Bengals.

Let Stank-0 say this, there isn’t an alternate reality, universe, multiverse, etc where Antonio Bryant should have signed before TO. That is just bass ackwards. 

The unknown is actually Carson Palmer.  He still hasn’t won a playoff game.  He went down in his first appearance and then got shellacked by the Jets in his next outing.  

The Bengals had to make this move to keep pace with the rest of the AFC North.  The Ravens got Q to bolster their offense, the Steelers haven’t added any weapons, but they are still a team to reckon with in the division and the conference.

Now Hard Knocks has already committed to the Jets but they may want to send a skeleton crew to Georgetown, KY to cover the Bengals.  If they don’t then you can bet good money that VH1 will have cameras swarming.

Man, September can’t get here fast enough.

Looking towards 2012

Image via Wikipedia

Stank-0 is not referring to the possible end of mankind, but to the composition to the USA National Basketball team.  Let’s start with a few key pieces of information.

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• Jason Kidd will likely be too old to get a spot on the team.  He was on them old man legs in 2008.  It’s possible he might have even retired by 2012.
• Kobe will be at the edge of his prime by 2012 but will likely be the “Jason Kidd” of the 2012 team.  As of right now, Kobe is almost 33 this year and will likely be 35 before they tip up in the London Olympics.  This is assuming that Kobe’s deteriorating body continues to hold up. 
• There will be a logjam at the point.  Chris Paul and Deron Williams got spots on lock, but there’s Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, and John Wall waiting in the wings.  As it stands today, the only player we can safely leave off is Wall, because he’s a rook.  If he progresses in the next 2 years, that will be a hard decision.  It’s not who do you take, but who do you leave off the team? The top of the food chain are: Paul, Rondo, and Deron.
• In the paint, there’s Lee, Love, the Lopez brothers, Al Jefferson, D12, Bosh, and Amar’e.
• Kevin Durant will be on the 2012 team. Fact. See you’re nodding your head.  Stank-0 doesn’t even have to defend this point.  Can you imagine KD in the Olympics?! He’ll be able to get his shot off against any defender outside of the paint. The kid got a ridiculous wingspan. Either he or Melo will be coming off the bench to lead the 2nd unit.

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Most of the Redeem Team will be given invitations to try out and most will likely make it.  2012 tryouts will be fierce.  Here’s a quick rundown of potential players: David Lee, Chauncey Billups, Rudy Gay, Danny Granger, Brook Lopez, Andre Iguodala, Russell Westbrook, Rajon Rondo, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, LaMarcus Aldridge, Robin Lopez, Eric Gordon, O.J. Mayo, Jeff Green, Kevin Love, Gerald Wallace and Al Jefferson.

Let’s be all the way real here.  With the collection of players mentioned and the Redeem Team core, how does the USA Team not repeat as gold medal winner?  We saw in 2008 that the USA team’s main weapon was the fast break, Stank-0 don’t see that going anywhere anytime in the foreseeable future.

It’s only 2 years away, excited yet?

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• No Redeem Team players for 2010 basketball worlds (sports.espn.go.com)
• For U.S., Versatility Is a Key in Roster Selection (offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com)

We are inching closer to old man-itis now.

After MJ weighed in it was only a matter of time until Magic said his piece.  Oi vey! Look, ya’ll are HOFers, multiple time champions and recognized as some the best to ever play. Why, oh why must you give your opinion on today’s NBA?

Magic’s thoughts:

“We didn’t think about it ’cause that’s not what we were about,” Johnson said at Baruch College in New York, according to Bloomberg News. “From college, I was trying to figure out how to beat Larry Bird.”

Now Stank-0 can understand Magic’s sentiments because they were rivals for quite some time. Even so  Magic played with some quality teammates as did MJ and Bird, who’s thoughts are comin in 4, 3, 2, 1…  there were no 730 teammates, no Oedipal impulses, etc.

Not to beat a dead horse but MJ, Magic, and Bird each had HOFers in their primes to play with.  Also the NBA in the 80’s, players genuinely disliked each other.  Now players are homies on and off the court.

Think about it, when the original Dream Team was assembled most were well into their careers. they saw no need to yield. The practices were brutal.  Now players are groomed to play and work together.  It rubs off and can carry over.

MJ speaks!

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[Disclaimer: This post may anger you, alot. You’ve been warned.]

MJ has finally weighed in on LBJ’s decision.  He is not kind and seems to play into the myth of MJ himself.

“There’s no way, with hindsight, I would’ve ever called up Larry [Bird], called up Magic [Johnson] and said, ‘Hey, look, let’s get together and play on one team,’  “But that’s … things are different. I can’t say that’s a bad thing. It’s an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys.””

And Sir Charles chimed in as well. 

“He’ll never be Jordan,” Barkley told 790 The Ticket in Miami earlier in the week. “This clearly takes him out of the conversation. He can win as much as he wants to.
“There would have been something honorable about staying in Cleveland and trying to win it as ‘The Man’ … LeBron, if he would’ve in Cleveland, and if he could’ve got a championship there, it would have been over the top for his legacy, just one in Cleveland. No matter how many he wins in Miami, it clearly is Dwyane Wade’s team.”

Stank-0 will get to Sir Cumference but for now let’s look at MJ. 

What MJ said sounds great and strengthens our collective memory of MJ but let’s break it down shall we? Now, Stank-0 agrees with him not calling them up to join on a team.  That ain’t MJ.  His HOF induction speech showed his inexhaustible will to dominate.  Thankfully, MJ was honest about the “trying” part because Bird went through MJ a few postseasons for his rings. Of the two, he beat Magic in 1991, for a title.  Now Magic was drafted in 1979 so Magic is no spring chicken by this point, himself.  Jabbar, you know all time leading scorer Kareem Abdul Jabbar, has retired by then so this isn’t exactly the Showtime Lakers we are talkin about here either. Those are the facts.

Some more facts: uh MJ didn’t exactly win rings by himself.  A list of players he played with: SP (50 greatest), Horace Grant, Dennis Rodman (arguably the greatest rebounder in NBA history), John Paxson, Steve Kerr (best 3-pt % in NBA history), Toni Kukoc, and Ron Harper.  That’s just off the top. MJ won rings with a trio because that’s conventional championship wisdom. 

On to Sir Charles… isn’t it ironic that a man that MJ kept from ever gettin a ring is yappin about legacy? Sir Charles’ legacy is: 2 time Olympic gold medalist, one of the 50 greatest of all time, MVP, and one of the best undersized PF’s of all time.  It’s because of Barkley and players of his generation not getting any hardware that LBJ made the decision that he made.  He didn’t want to join the long list of players with this caveat: great player BUT no ring.

Now we the sports fans need to quit being so fickle.  When Jesus Shuttlesworth and KG joined up with P-squared to form the Boston 3 Party, many of us (Stank-0 included) thought: if only they had joined up earlier in their careers.  Well, now you have a new trio and you (Stank-0 is not in this group) are mad because they joined up… too soon?!  Was it because they didn’t waste double digit seasons being The Man on a team going nowhere? Did we want to see them waste seasons out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to an organization that is in the business of making money (not championships)?

Now with the specter of Barkley, Stockton/Malone, Ewing, etc in their minds, LBJ might have just started a paradigm shift.  Instead of beating their heads against the wall for 7-10 seasons and then going to a better team, these players may do skip out as early as 4-5 seasons in. You know what, Stank-0 don’t blame them at all.

Stank-0 thinks the only thing players concern themselves with is HOF, and at this point LBJ is IN.

P.S. MJ is showing some hater-ish behavior.  Maybe b/c LBJ was called the most sought after free agent in NBA history and MJ expects his name to be at the top of anything with the word “greatest,” “best,” or “most sought after. ” Just a thought.

Lull in sports

So where do we go from here? The World Cup is over, LeBronapalooza is done, and the NFL don’t get going for at least a month. I mean really, MLB and WNBA are it?! This summer is worse than normal b/c there were the World Cup and all these other distractions but we need them to run through August or spice up baseball, somethin. That is the only thing I dislike about summer.

We need a Secretary of Entertainment, Director of Sports to resolve this summer slump. I doubt this requires federal intervention but somethin’s got to give. Maybe Lorenzo Farve win start a will-he-or-won’t-he sports story to tide us until September? *Here’s hopin*

PS Stank-0 stop slurpin LBJ. You cant be a King w/o jewelry, he’s Prince James.

Another Eastern Conference Super Trio?

CP3 talks about joining a potential Knicks trio. And given what just went down with LBJ, Wade, and Bosh we have to treat this as plausible now.

“We’ll form our own Big 3,” Paul allegedly said.

Now that is indeed important.  Stank-0 earlier posited about an Amar’e-Melo-Parker triumvirate, well the wrong PG was mentioned in that post. 

It seems that the Knicks are focusing on next summer when Melo and CP3 are both free agents.  It makes perfect sense in light of the Knicks not getting LeBron and having all that extra money laying around. 

Let’s play with this scenario shall we?

This permanently shifts the power to the Eastern Conference. The West becomes an afterthought because the Lakers are still the best team out there and no one has proven they can step up and take them down.

The Knicks, Heat, Celtics, Magic, and Bulls are fighting each other for the next 3-4 seasons at minimum.  The East is starting to look tougher and tougher.  This might raise the ceiling on how many games you have to win the make the playoffs. 

That leaves three playoff spots to the lower tier East such as the Hawks, Bucks, Bobcats, Pacers, Pistons, and 76ers.  No more throwaway games because you can’t afford to.

Now it might not swing the Knicks’ way. At this point, they have Stat and a bunch of spare parts. What would be Melo and/or CP3’s incentive to sign with NY?

This will bare some watching.  Have we entered into an era similar to the 80s, when players seems to collect on a few select teams?

h/t to Yardbarker

The parallels between Patrick Ewing and LBJ

Stank-0 had an epiphany about 12 hours ago while getting ready to go off to “work.”  In the days since the decision, people are lambasting LBJ because he chose to go play with greater talent.  We are upset because he didn’t want to stay and continue to struggle with the Cavs.  (Here’s an interesting perspective on LBJ and Dan Gilbert via SLAM.)

Have we forgotten our NBA championship history? You don’t get chips without a trio of good to above average players and that includes MJ.  So we expect LBJ to buck conventional NBA championship knowledge and carry an entire team to ringdom?  We saw firsthand in 2007 how that would work.  Another player that should get the same benefit of the doubt is none other than Patrick Ewing.

Like LBJ, Ewing was the face of the franchise.  Hell, Ewing is still the face of the Knicks.  Like LBJ, he took a team to the Finals and like LBJ got dealt with by a team with complementary and superior talent.  Like LBJ, he wasn’t paired with another good to above average player at a position that could help him carry the load.  Now Stank-0 is a big fan of the goons the Knicks had back in the day, Oak and Mase come readily to mind but they were post players like Ewing and he needed backcourt help.  John Starks? Aside from the dunk on Horace and MJ what did he really do? Think on that.

Isn’t it telling that when the Knicks got Allan Houston and Spree they went to the Finals? Unfortunately by then Ewing was quite long in the tooth in NBA years, 14 years in.  Then a few years later he was out of town and the Knick still haven’t recovered from losing the face of the franchise.  If the parallels hold up, the Cavs could be in for some tough times.

We the fans should cut these singular stars some slack.  You can be as great as you want but you don’t win rings without two or more great players there with you.

MIA Superfriends…why this will work

Soul on Ice of EdtheSportsfan.com’s thoughts on the Heat trio.  While Stank-0 doesn’t disagree with the assessment, Stank-0 wanted to take this a different direction.

For years people have been saying that LBJ needed to upgrade his team, and then when he does we want to talk about “legacy.”  The only people that truly care about “legacy” are former players, writers, analysts, and people not in the league/association.  Those cats playing?  All they want is to get paid and a ring.  Nothing else matters. 

Let Stank-0 stick a pin right here.  Since everyone wants to prattle on about legacy so much, let’s do so.  Why should these players care about legacy when we have elevated the myth of the perfect MJ to Olympian heights? We have made MJ into some sort of basketball playing god.  We forget that several championship teams went through MJ for their hardware.  He is clearly the best of his generation, but beyond that is speculation. [The league had to institute new rules to slow down Wilt, goaltending and 3 seconds in the paint.] End rant.

This will work because it relievea LBJ and Wade of things they did not like to do.  James is a facilitator, that is what he’s put on this Earth to do.  He functions best with the ball in his hands putting his teammates in a position to score.  James is not a scorer, but he can score.  No man his dimensions should be able to see the floor like he does.  A facilitator functions at optimum conditions with a finisher/scorer/closer.  Wade is that guy. 

In Stank-0’s opinion, Wade is best when he is off the ball, however, the Heat did not have another player to pick up the slack, so he became the primary ball handler and ran the offense. There would be games (Game 4 against the Celtics) where he would have to pour in 40+ just to get the W.

They are the answer to each other’s prayers. James gets that finisher and gets to run the offense while Wade gets to move off the ball and just get buckets.  Neither wear themselves out anymore or have to save some for the end fo the game. This is what is truly scary.  We may see both of them unleashed and unshackled. We may have entered the period where James averages a triple double for a season or two…or three. You’ve been warned.

The Heat will be most effective with James/Wade pick and rolls with the option to pop to Bosh for a jay from 20 feet and in.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd…if the rumors of a 2008 Olympic pact are indeed true, CP3 may been SoBe-bound if he isn’t dealt by the Hornets.

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LeBronapalooza not as good as advertised

Not rockin that anymore.

So the free world knows that LeBron will join Bosh and Wade down in SoBe.  The ESPN special was anticlimatic precisely because ESPN let the cat out of the bag. Um…World Wide Leader, you had damn near everyone watching your channel to see where he was goin, don’t spoil it by runnin and tellin.

Let’s deal with the aftershocks, shall we?

• What does this do to the Cavs?  Are they done or are they done done? Stank-0 says blame Delonte West.  Was it really worth losing your franchise? If you don’t know the rumor about Delonte go Google it.
• The Heat are the story for the next season. Will Pat come back down and steal another ring from another head coach by takin the reins of the MIA Superfriends? Who will go down there to sign? Alot of players went after there’s because of the imminent CBA. Who’s out there that can sign with Heat?
• Is the Western Conference a forgotten conference now? Is the Eastern Conference the Heat’s for the next 3-4 years? Celtics not getting any younger, D12 still got .25 post moves and Chi got another undersized big man to add to their team of shooters.   
• Can we pencil in MIA vs. LA for the Finals next year? How huge would that be to see Kobe-Gasol-Odom/Artest against LBJ-Flash-Bosh.  *Joygasm in 3,2,1…*
• How does Amar’e feel?  He downgraded no joke. From a good point guard to the coach of Seven Seconds or Less but none of the talent to make it work. Should have waited on LBJ or stayed in PHX.
• You guys ready to do this all again next summer when Melo comes on the market?  You know you are. The Russian billionaire owned Nets will have guap (cake, chedda, ends, bills, etc.) to throw at him, and everyone that lost this summer will try to win next summer.

Anyone else ready for the NBA season? Actually, let the NFL come through and crush the building.

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Bosh + Wade = LBJ to follow?

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Chris Bosh was pairing up with someone, we assumed it was LBJ, it’s Wade.

This certainly changes things for LBJ.  His hand is being forced.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this for LBJ.  We were supposed to wait with bated breath for him to decide his future and that of the NBA.  If this story is true, then who can LBJ pair with or who is left to pair with him. Dirk, Rudy Gay, and J-double re-upped with their respective teams, Amar’e is Empire State property. Young Chris. Paul Pierce opted out basically to force the C’s to pay him more guap, advantage Pierce. 

LBJ has a few options, stay in CLE with the same cast and keep getting the same results or take a chance on Chi or go to SoBE with Bosh and Wade.

Home is where the heart is but rings are where the trios are.  LBJ, it seems the air has been taken out of your decision.  Did you honestly think you were gonna convince Bosh to come to CLE?  Really son?  Or was that cover for when you go elsewhere by saying, “I tried to upgrade our team. It didn’t work.”

Now as we await the formal announcement from the Heat, LBJ’s all that’s left. Then maybe we do this all over again with less frenzy next summer, with Melo.