Man what the hell happened this weekend? Utah I can understand, but the Warriors?
Suddenly the air's become fouler than after a Le Petomane concert.
Brian leads off in Hoopsworld. I am starting to share some of his concerns myself.
Frank stirs the pot, and not in the "Go Frankie, It's Your Birthday" way ...
Pretty funny. Frank is writing a he said/she said thing and then neither Bob Hill nor Earl Watson say they read what the other guy said in the paper. I don't doubt there's a disagreement between the two on Earl's minutes. I do doubt that it's as big a rift as drama queen Frank makes it out to be.
Watson said the crux of his issue with the way Hill has been playing him is that it is retarding the development of his game and his career. Watson’s scoring average has increased every season of his career, culminating with last season’s 8.9 average. This season he is averaging 6.3 points.
“My only concern with the whole situation is that I want to progress,†Watson said. “And I feel that this year … I have taken a step back that I am not comfortable with. As I explained to him, I am goal-driven, and if I wasn’t that way I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I would be cool with just starting every game at UCLA and living in that era. But I always push myself to the next level even when people thought I couldn’t do that.
“As I grow older, I don’t want to take a step back – unless it is for a team that is legitimately competing for a championship and you know coming in that you are going to win 65 or 60 games a year and you have to sacrifice a role and it is worth it and if it is working it is working. I understand that."
Kudos to Mr. Baker for keeping me on point with the lineup changes. It is like Nate McMillan's Lineup Soup Du Jour all over again to an extent. Personally, I thought Sene was the best choice if they truly wanted to go back to the ol' phantom starter thing again.
Nothing seemed to matter for the Sonics. The only thing the move appeared to do was make both Ridnour and Watson uncomfortable, unsure of their respective roles while playing together for extensive time.
And the big men continue to fall. Villanueva out 4-6 weeks with a torn elbow ligament. Ditto Olowokandi. Okay, so maybe that's not as big a deal for the Celtics.
In the P-I, As Petro goes, so go the Sonics.
"The exhibition season was about building that bench," Hill said. "One injury (to Swift) affected three or four of our second-unit guys all at once. Johan hasn't performed, and Nick is in a slump; we just have to keep working hard to get those guys' rhythm back. It's a maturation process. We have a lot of young, talented guys that need to get their feet really, really wet."
Percy comes through with a good article for those who think the NBA's economic model needs retuning, or is totally broken ...
In the last 27 years, since the Bird-Magic era began in 1979, only eight teams have won the title. The Los Angeles Lakers (three) and San Antonio (three) have won six of the past eight titles.
That type of predictability has as much to do with a broken economic structure that forces teams to give the lion's share of their salary cap to one or two players, while everyone else earns significantly less.
We should discuss this more. I would like to know what numbers he's using for profitability. Since the league won't ever open its books to outsiders it's tough to know for sure if as many teams as he claims are losing money.
But here's the kicker:
The Times obtained portions of a letter dated Sept. 29, 2006 from eight NBA owners who pleaded with Stern to adopt revenue sharing.
The letter states: "We are asking you to embrace this issue because the hard truth is that our current economic system works only for larger-market teams and a few teams that have extraordinary success on the court and for the latter group of teams, only when they experience extraordinary success. The rest of us are looking at significant and unacceptable annual financial losses."
WOW. Amazing get that was !