Qualifying Offers = Lies

If your team didn't agree to an extension with its starlet young player this past offseason - such as is the case with the Atlanta duo of Josh Childress and Josh Smith, the Chicago duo of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon, amongst others - then you've probably experienced a modicum of conversation as to whether that player will take the one year qualifying offer this offseason rather than the security of a long term deal, leaving the distinct possibility that your team will lose a key player and important asset, for jack shit in return. Talk of this possiblity happening is particularly widespread in the case of Gordon, who hasn't done much to deny it.

Let me half-arsedly set your mind at rest - it's really not that likely.

Or rather, it should be really unlikely. It might happen, but history suggests that it shouldn't. This is a list of all the rookie scale players to have accepted the fifth year qualifying offer in recent times, accompanied by a headshot for no reason other than cosmetics.



Melvin Ely

Season before free agency: 9.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 51% shooting
Season spent on Qualifying Offer: 3.0 points, 1.8 rebounds, 36% shooting
Season after that: 3.9 points, 2.8 rebounds, 47% shooting


Melvin Ely is crap. He has had one year of non-crapness in 7 attempts. That one season was, conveniently, the final one of his rookie contract. Never justifying his draft position, this one year gave Ely the chance to make a bit of money, especially given that this was probably his only other chance at a multi-year contract. (Ely was 28 at the time, after joining the league at age 24. No one seems to remember this.) Ely took Charlotte's one year QO of $3,308,615 (which may or may not have been the only contract that they offered) in preference to taking Phoenix's multi year offer, or one from the Warriors.

Ely then played like his usual wank, and is now on a minimum salary contract with the Hornets.





Vladimir Radmanovic

Season before free agency: 11.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 41% shooting
Season spent on Qualifying Offer: 9.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 41% shooting
Season after that: 6.6 points, 3.3 rebounds, 42% shooting


Seattle dodged one hell of a bullet here, when Radmanovic turned down their exceedingly generous offer of a 6 year, $42 million. Why he did this, I don't know. Maybe he thought he was worth more. Or maybe he just hated Seattle. Either way, Seattle reacted, dealing him to the L.A. Clippers for Chris Wilcox, a far better player whom they managed to re-sign for half of what Radmanovic turned down.

Radmanovic did manage to somehow coerce a full MLE contract from the L.A. Lakers, a contract which totalled 5 years and $30.427 million. But, when combined with his qualifying offer of roughly $3.1 millionish, Radmanovic managed to lose almost $10 million on the deal, as well as save Rick Sund from himself.





Mickael Pietrus

Season before free agency: 11.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, 49% shooting
Season spent on Qualifying Offer: 7.1 points, 3.7 rebounds, 44% shooting
Season after that: N/A


Pietrus has always been a very flawed player, but with the onset of the new Warriors system under Don Nelson, many of these were able to be reasonably well covered up. In the fourth season of his rookie deal, Pietrus turned in comfortably the best season of his four year career, and was courted heavily by Miami. His agent claims to have had four teams offer their full MLE to Pietrus, which makes it odd that he didn't take any of them.

In the end, Pietrus was stuck with the one year, $3,470,771 qualifying offer from Golden State. From there, the inevitable has happened - he has regressed. His stats are backwards, his weaknesses are no better than they were, and his team just missed the playoffs. Suddenly, Pietrus's package seems less attractive. (Giggidy.)





Stromile Swift

Season before free agency: 9.4 points, 4.9 rebounds, 47% shooting, 1.5 blocks
Season spent on Qualifying Offer: 10.1 points, 4.6 rebounds, 45% shooting, 1.5 blocks
Season after that: 8.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, 49% shooting, 0.8 blocks


Two key things to remember with Stromile's choice to sign the QO:

1) It was for $6.2 million, more than he would have gotten on the open market for the first season of any contract.
2) Memphis made it clear that they would match anything, and wouldn't entertain many sign and trade offers.
3) He really, really didn't want to be there.

(That's three things, but you get the idea.)

Financially, Stromile either breaks about even by turning down the QO and signing a four year MLE deal (which was the deal he signed with Houston after the QO year expired), or he's maybe even slightly ahead on the deal. Unlike most players, his play didn't decline under the QO, and while his numbers have suffered slightly in the last three years, his play remains pretty good.

He did not get his wish for getting out of Memphis, though, as he was traded back there after only one season in Houston. Tough break.






Aaaaaand........that's everyone this decade. I would go back further and include players such as Michael Olowokandi (a pretty resounding example of why not to turn down extensions), but it becomes too difficult to find the right numbers, so I won't. Those 4 are the only rookie scale players to have taken the qualifying offer since the year 2000.

They're 1-4, with only Swift making the right move. (This is unless Pietrus is ridiculously, insanely fortunate.)



First off, it's pretty obvious that 4 people in 4 drafts is not a huge amount of people to accept the qualifying offer. That goes without saying, given that 124 people were drafted in the first round of those 4 drafts. But I said it anyway.

Secondly, note that the one to have made a decent decision to take the qualifying offer was a second overall pick, which had a huge impact on the size of the offer in question. For reference's sake, here is a list of all the qualifying offers for those fourth year rookie scale players from the 2004 draft who did not get extensions:


Emeka Okafor: $7,082,635
Ben Gordon: $6,404,749
Shaun Livingston: $5,809,705
Josh Childress: $4,844,355
Luol Deng: $4,452,574
Andre Iguodala: $3,800,625
Andres Biedrins: $3,609,636
Robert Swift: $3,579,131
Sebastian Telfair: $3,543,834
Kirk Snyder: $3,313,598
Josh Smith: $3,167,882
J.R. Smith: $3,028,241
Dorell Wright: $2,910,104
Delonte West: $2,762,828
Tony Allen: $2,744,299
Sasha Vujacic: $2,605,559
David Harrison: $2,601,474

(Everyone else either got an extension, or have already been waived.)


Not all of these players will get a qualifying offer, because the team does not want them for that price, or indeed any price. In two cases (Swift and Livingston), the qualifying offer might actually be an advisable route, given the serious injuries from which both are struggling to recover. But only in a few cases is the qualifying offer of a significant threat to be a viable option: Emeka Okafor (who turned down a 5 year, $60 million eztension), Ben Gordon (who turned down a 5 year, $50 million extension), and maybe some of the lower players (Allen, Telfair).

Bizarrely, Okafor and Gordon have both had worse years since turning those extensions, which could mean anything. It could make them more likely to take the security while they can still get it, or it could make them more liable to have a third attempt at a successful contract year push.

The other factor here is the deep free agent class, that affects everybody in this list. Pessimists theorise that this may mean more players take the one year QO and make themselves available for the 2009 free agent market instead. Optimists might say that instead, because of the lack of money out there, those offers from their current teams suddenly look alot more lucrative and sensible. You can probably guess which of those two schools of thought I subscribe to.

Either way, it's extremely difficult to imagine those two (plus others, such as Deng and Iguodala) turning down $50+ million, twice. Especially since they haven't done anything to justify turning it down once.




HALF BAKED CONCLUSION FROM HALF-ARSED ANALYSIS:

There is not a lot of recent history on which to deduce whether taking the qualifying offer is a wise/probable decision or not. This, in itself, is indicative of the fact that it's a highly unlikely scenario. And when what little precedent there is shows the move to be a generally unwise one, that only reaffirms the idea that the likelhood of a player choosing to accept the qualifying really is nothing to fear.

Well, except for the two UConn boys.

Why John Freakin' Stockton Was So Freakin' Fantastic

A conversation with a friend about the awesomeness/awfulness of DeSagana Diop - and you can probably guess which side of the fence I am on regarding that - led to me to write about how great John Stockton is.

Come re-live that fun journey with me.



I try and keep an open mind on certain basketball philosophies. There are some players out there whose worth on the court is so mysterious that you really have to question their very presence on it, and yet, for whatever reason, they remain out there. A lot of them get regular rotation minutes. Some of them get regular rotation minutes on decent or good teams. And I always endeavour to understand why.

As an example, for many years, Jason Collins started on the New Jersey Nets. Not only did he start, but he would also play over twenty minutes a game (up to the tune of 31.8 in 2004/05). A quick glance at his statistics, though, makes you wonder why the hell this was. Collins has never shot over 43% in a season, which must be pretty dumbfoundingly difficult to do as a 7 footer, especially an athletic 7 footer with Jason Kidd as your point guard. (Even Michael Ruffin managed this once, and he did it armed with Bryce Drew leading the breaks. Bryce effing Drew.) Collins also has a rebounding average worse than Eddy Curry's, with a career average of a tumultuous 8.8 boards per 48 minutes. And worst of all was his PER, which last year was a can't-even-think-of-an-adjective-shit-enough-for-it 3.3. (Only this year, when it hit 3.1, did the Nets think "hmmm, maybe we could find a player with a more positive impact on the game if we try". Impressively, they did.)

I listened to arguments as to why Collins merited the court time that he got. On a good team, he would play more than half the game, despite seemingly not doing a single thing well. I watched closely and tried to figure out what it was that he was good at, and I listened to people paid to be flattering about him (i.e. Iain Eagle) try and polish this turd as shiny as it could get. I could see that Collins was a versatile defensive player, big and strong enough to defend the tough post players, but also fleet footed and agile enough to stay in front of the quicker tall forwards as they made their way to the basket. I also understood that he was Jesus Collins, Lord Of The Handoff (giggidy), and that while he couldn't grab any rebounds of his own, he cleared out the lane well enough while boxing out for guards to come in and sweep rebounds off of the floor. (See?!? Kidd owes all those rebounds to Collins! And his rebounding during tenures on previous teams were just lucky.) I also accepted the argument that maybe Nets head coach Lawrence Frank had a raging man-boner for him and just couldn't let it subside, for this argument is often applicable to NBA coaches. (See also: Chris Duhon with Jim Boylan, Lindsey Hunter with Flip Saunders, and Orien Greene with anybody to have ever coached him.)

I considered it all. And then I disregarded it all. This was because - and let's be honest here - Jason Collins was (is) a massive huge great big fat negative of a basketball player. There's no point in being a little things player if you can't do any of the big things well. And anyway, shouldn't "little things" players be able to shoot above 50% from the free throw line?

(Oh and by the way, how in the hell did Collins go from a near-80% shooter to below the Wallace Line in 4 short years? What changed? How do certain players - usually big men - manage to get so bad from the line so easily as they approach their prime years? See also: Magloire, Jamaal)

A similar situation occurs with DeSagana Diop. For whatever reason - and this has become much more prevalent since he was traded away - columnists and idiots alike would eulogise The Diop as if he were some kind of integral piece to the Mavericks championship puzzle, ignoring for a moment the fact that the Mavericks didn't actually have a championship puzzle (but that's a rant for another day). Indeed, Karate Diop is better than Jason Collins, which makes the situation slightly less deplorable. And Lasagna did give the Mavericks a skill with his rudimentary shot blocking that they otherwised lacked outside of the misshapen marvel that is Rick Dampier.

[Please feel free to look elsewhere while I burn through my own supply of extremely bad self devised DeSagana Diop nicknames. I'll get over it soon.]

But overall, DeSagana Diop was not, is not, and will probably never be a good basketball player. He used to be abhorrent, so his status as a reasonable to crappy backup centre is an improvement, yet this alone does not make him good.

This was the hard line stance that I took in our conversation, and prepared to back up my claim by using a piece of trivia that I last used in March 2006, about how Diop was on course to spend the most full seasons in the NBA of any player to average less than 2 points per game for his career (and "full seasons" is a key distinction there). However, to use this piece of trivia, I had to check that it was still true.

Sadly, it wasn't. A recent offensive explosion and the subsequent giddying heights of three points per game with the Mavericks this season have boosted Garnerchop to a career average of 2.1 points per game (or that's it was at the time of writing - if he's been on a scoring rampage since then, adjust accordingly), which undermined my premise and made me feel rather empty inside. How could I talk about Daisy Gardener being one of the worst offensive players of all time when he averages quite such a tremendous amount of points? I felt like such a twat.

Still, not one to be outdone, I rebounded (unlike Jason Collins), and offered up something new in my constant quest to win petty arguments with uninteresting trivia. While looking up Jop's career points average, I also happened to notice that his career high in points in a single game is a fantastic 10 points, achieved 4 times, 2 of which came this season. (Michael Ruffin has a career high of 14, for those keeping score at home, and you've probably noticed by now that I like to use The Muffin as my barometer when it comes to mentioning historically bad offensive players. His profile explains this in more depth.)

Those 4 explosive outings came in 409 career games. How can a man not score more than 10 points in 409 games? How is that possible? Wouldn't you do it by accident one day? At one point, wouldn't your teammates decide that enough is enough and conspire to give you enough touches to crack that elusive 11 point barrier? (And these things do happen, if your team is bad enough. See Mark Madsen's seven three point attempts in a single game in the most disgustingly shameless piece of tanking in NBA history.)

Seemingly, his teammates haven't ever thought of this. So if the Nets fall out of the playoff race this season, on purpose or otherwise, then we need to push this agenda forward. Let's get Diop to 20. In fact, 15 will do. Someone start a t-shirt campaign.



Anyway, this piece of fascinating Senegalese trivia led me on to another related one.

In 1504 career games, John Stockton never once grabbed at least 10 rebounds in a regular season game. Stockton also never had ten steals in a game either, meaning that ne never achieved a triple double, which is pretty astonishing for a man who averaged a double double over 19 seasons and 1504 games. (Note - he did once have a triple double in a playoff game, but it pisses on my chips a little to mention that, so pretend that it didn't happen.)

This discovery, which is surely a harder feat to not-achieve than Diop's points total, led me into an exploration of the man and the legend that was John Freakin' Stockton, and led me to compile this concise but considerable list of reasons quite why he was brilliant.


REASON NUMBER 1: John Freakin' Stockton played 1504 games in 19 NBA seasons, and for those doing the maths at home, this means that he only missed 22 games in his entire career. He had perfect attendance records in 17 of his 19 seasons, playing all 82 games in 16, all 50 games in the strike shortened 1998-99 season, a mere 78 in 1989-1990, and a pathetically dismal 64 games in 1997-1998. For the sake of reference, Marcus Camby has cracked the 64 game barrier only three times in 12 years, and has never played more than 72.

REASON NUMBER 2: John Freakin' Stockton played 1504 games and never grabbed 10 rebounds in a game. (The lesson here, as should be obvious - if you aggressively pursue rebounds, you'll shorten your career. So things are looking up for Jason Collins already.)

REASON NUMBER 3: John Freakin' Stockton just let it go.



Stockton played until he was 41 years old, and inevitably towards the end of his career he had a few years in which his performance slowly trailed off. But right up to and including his final season, Stockton continued to perform at a high level, starting for a Utah Jazz team that he led to a 47-35 record and the playoffs, all while averaging as-near-as-is 11 points, 8 assists and 2 steals a game. He also shot .483 that season, which is absolutely remarkable when you consider that this was 2003 that we are talking about, a season that did not favour shooting percentages.

But when faced with the decline of both his own skills and the Jazz's short term future, Stockton chose to walk away while he was still near the top of his game. This may seem like a normal or sensible thing to do, but recent precedent shows it to not be so normal after all.



So far in this 2007 season (including preseason and offseason), assorted stars of varying pedigree have either expressed an interest in returning to play one more season, or have actually done so. Allan Houston re-signed briefly with the New York Knicks before being waived in preseason in favour of Fred Jones. Chris Webber couldn't keep away and signed with the Golden State Warriors. Reggie Miller and the Boston Celtics had a brief two way flirtation before Reggie decided against un-retiring to play for only the second team of his NBA career. And Gary Payton's agent also contacted the Celtics, asking if they would return his love and affection and signing him for one more half season. (They didn't.)


Now forgive me for being a bit cynical here, as it's all I know. But why oh why might Payton want to do this?

Possible reasons:

a) He thinks he's still got it.
b) He's run out of money.
c) He wants to win an NBA title, and thinks he can get one with only the token gesture of suiting up every now and then.


If it's point A, then he's very, very wrong.

If it's point B, then he's going to have to make lifestyle changes to make the prorated veteran's minimum into an amount he can live comfortably off until his NBA pension is due.

And if it's point C, then he's pathetic.


Unfortunately, it's probably point C. And, in Gary Payton's case, it's an even more pathetic gesture than usual. For you see, Gary Payton has now achieved the almost-unachievable: he's now done this coattail riding act with three different teams. I can't think of any other instance in which that has happened, and frankly nor would I want to.

To make matters worse, Payton already has a ring from doing this, when he won with Miami back in 2005/06. So why's he hanging out desperately trying to win a ring, when he's already got one? Where's the pride in coattailing two of them, or does he feel ashamed by his first one and needs a second to restore pride? I can't see either scenario being all that profitable to his soul. And you know Gary Payton's got soul.


I don't have a problem with players that latch on with contending teams for less money than they could have gotten elsewhere, just to try and win a championship. That's not a problem with me. As any NBA "pundit" or "expert" will tell you - and I use that term very loosely - it's "all about" the rings. That is certainly the argument used to demean most players without them (or even those with them, if you're Kobe Bryant), and the alternative is to do what Reggie Miller did and stick around with a team that has no chance of winning the title just because you'll get more money that way. This is hardly a more dignified way to see out the end your career, even if it does lead to people praising you for your "loyalty", even if they misinterpret your loyalty to the chequebook as being your loyalty to a franchise.

Karl Malone, for example, played it just about right - he turned down the huge amounts of money and pleas of loyalty offered by Utah to go and spend two years for far less money trying to win a title with the L.A. Lakers. But once this bid failed, he took off. He did not go to another team elsewhere. Not again. Malone took his shot, missed, realised that his skills and health were on the way out, and threw in the towel once and for all. This was an impressive feat, especially given that he was within touching distance of one of the NBA's untouchable records - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all time points scored record.

But this isn't really about the rings. Instead, it is about the good or great players just going away and not bothering us any more, in general.



When he retired as a player, Reggie Miller went on to become a TV personality. An annoying one. So did Jon Barry. So did Magic Johnson. So did Kendall Gill, Steve Smith, Greg Anthony, Mark Jackson, Scott Williams, and a good many other players. And almost universally, they are bad at it. There must be a reason why this is. Maybe it's stubbornness and the interference of their long-term memory on their cognitive capacity. But they just are bad at it, for whatever reason. Only a few shine in this broadcasters role, and most of those shine more for their entertainment value more than their actual ability to analyse.

Some former players go into coaching, irrespective of their abilities in this area. They can't live their lives as young up-and-coming basketball players any more, so they make sure that they are around to watch those of others develop. (It's either coaching, or a cameo in a Spike Lee movie.) Almost universally they are bad at this, too. For the most part, the better the player, the worse the coach or general manager they make. (There are some exceptions, such as Joe Dumars. But for every Joe Dumars, there's three or four Kevin McHale's.)

Worse still, some of the game's true all time greats hang around awkwardly at events such as All Star weekend, demonstrating their complete lack of touch with the modern NBA game, and occasionally making matters even worse by taking the court and proving that they aren't in any way the player that they used to be. It's deflating to watch, and should be made illegal. (There's potential for a second t-shirt campaign here.)



But John Stockton doesn't do any of this.

John Stockton just played until he shouldn't, and then took off. He didn't swan out, interfere with things that weren't his business to interfere with, or humiliate himself at All-Star weekends. He followed his career's path until he reached the end, and then he left.

And that's why he'll always be John Freakin' Stockton.

"I am not racist. Just careful."

Firstly:

For all those telling me to write more, you're preaching to the converted. Unfortunately, since the start of this last NBA season, I've been annoyingly busy. I was working ever hour God sent until December 21st, and most of those hours were also at night, which meant I missed a helluva lot of NBA action. Then I was making Christmas presents, because I am a tightarse who refuses to buy people things. Then, it was Christmas day. And then on Boxing Day, I fell ill. I have been in bed since then, with a rather rambunctious fever, the details of which I won't go into. It's basically involved lots of lying down, massive temperature fluctations, more mucus than you could shake a stick it, the constant struggle to prevent your head exploding, and a disturbing craving for oranges. I'd still be in bed now, but I have to get up, for my big ol' school assessment is in for three days time. Basically I'm just wringing it out for sympathy now, so say awww or something.

Nevertheless, I've had 7 cocktail sausages and a slice of pizza, and have mustered up enough energy to return to the computer and start tackling my long to-do list, a which should feature my really-rather-important assessment at the top, but doesn't.

Instead, I've been Googling my own name. And, after finding nothing interesting from doing that, I started to Google this website.

Part way down the list of rather strange and uninspiring hits (I really need to advertise more, I reckon. Even once would be a good start) was a piece on AOL Fanhouse linking to a blog post that I made on here nearly three months ago. The post was this'un about the NBA's preseason game played in London.

I'd never noticed the Fanhouse page before now. I read through it, and also the 7 comments people had made (I DREAM of comment numbers that high). Two of them annoyed me, and I felt that I had to respond.

I could respond via the comments system on that page, but being two and a half months late, that might be a bit pointless. No one would see it.

I could maybe try and contact the person directly. But this requires effort, which I don't have. And it also might annoy them, which I don't want.

So instead, I'll write a completely un-topical rebuttal on here, two and a half months too late, and to the interest of basically nobody. Hooray!

(The quote, by the way, is from the talk radio station on GTA San Andreas, and is used ironically.)


This is the bit that I object to.

It sounds to me like the ShamSports writer was simply uneasy with seeing so many black faces on television all at once. Is he white and uneasy not seeing a face that looked like his?

No. Not even close. (Although yes, I am white. Like that matters.)

I am not offended by the sight of black people. Not by one of them, not by one million of them. I am not offended by the sight of any minority, or even any majority. To judge people based on how they look is pathetic, trivial, and the bane of my entire existence, and it should only be done if it's not serious and rather funny.

To actually be racist is just a really, really stupid thing. You might as well just top yourself if you are.

But yes, the whole thing did annoy me. However, note this key difference below.

It did not offend me because I dislike looking at black people. It offended me because I really want the NBA to succeed over here, and it will never do so if it's continually promoted to such a tiny market.

That's a pretty key point that needs some funky text on it or something. I don't care about skin colours, I care about NBA basketball. And that's why it offends me that the people trying to sell NBA basketball here seem to care so much about skin colours.

Since when did the fact that it is mostly black people who play the sport at its highest level mean that it has a solely (or even predominantly) black viewing audience? Obviously, that's not the case. We all know this. And Five's TV executives probably know this too. So why have they chosen to appeal to an incredibly small market?

And if you don't think they have, you're just going to have to trust me that they did. I can't go through and relay to you every single poorly impersonated Dizzie Rascal impression used to overdub an advert for the game, or every instance of grime music, or who used terms like "blood" and "bling" and when, because I can't be fucked. You'll just have to trust me that these things were rife, to the point of idiocy. And if you can't trust my judgement on that, then just say nothing and move on. I at least saw all this, and even if my recollection or rants on the subject aren't entirely accurate, they be a helluva lot more informed than those living in a different continent could offer up.


Black culture doesn't offend me, alienate me, or upset me. But all this pandering to it, does. It's needless, narrow minded, and frankly a bit silly. Appeal to everybody, and then you have a wider range of potential viewers. And that's what you want, isn't it? It's sure as hell what I want, and I don't get paid to care about viewer figures.

People just need to loosen up their sphincters enough to be able to reach a point where they can see the words "black", "race" and "annoy" in the same passage and actually remain calm enough to judge the passage on its merits, rather than instantly getting the arseache and screaming racism. Seriously. It's not that hard.




Secondly:

Happy new year. Let's run this.

Wow, NBA fans are really spectacularly crap.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to a non-league football match. Football is a sport that we have in this country, which involves people kicking a ball with their foot (hence the name). It's a tremendous sport of flair, innovation and foul language, which unites the whole entire world in its single minded appreciation of how wonderful the beautiful game is.

(There is an American variant out there called "soccer", but it is marred by terrible broadcasting, stupid gimmicks, and a seriously shite standard of play. It is not recommended.)

The game was between Tonbridge Angels and Oxford United, an F.A. Trophy first round match. Oxford United were at home, which meant for us Angels fans a day trip out to a 12,000 seater stadium. For those unaware, Oxford United were good, back in the day. Then they went bankrupt. A man named Kassam saved them, bailed out the finances, and built them a big stadium. But it hasn't done the team much good, and they have since fallen out of the Football League (and also fallen out with Kassam, although they are stuck with the stadium named after him). They're also now flat broke again.

Despite the team not befitting the stadium that houses them, the importance of the event and size of the stadium made it a highly entertaining day out for us visitors. The official attendance for the game was 1547, and if you don't know what having 1547 people in a stadium that seats 12,000 looks like, then either watch the Florida Marlins at home, or look at the picture below:




Of the 1547 people to attend, about 220 were Tonbridge Angels fans who had travelled a helluva long way to support their team. These 220 people gave great voice, and showed the world (or at least, the rest of the world that was there) quite what being a sports fan is about.

Chants were everywhere. The songs were not particularly intelligent, and a lot of them were not politically correct. But dammit, was it fun. Songs included "Tommy Warrinow's Blue And Red Army", "Your Support Is Fucking Shit", "Did you sleep in until half time?", "CRAAAAAAAACK!!!" (toward the Oxford goalkeeper Billy Turley, who once failed a drugs test), "Who needs Mourinho, we've got Tom Warri-low", "Someone nicked your other stand" (in reference to the way that Oxford's stadium has, bizarrely, only three sides), and the mighty "who are we? TONBRIDGE!" chant that aired regularly.

That selection is merely tip-of-the-iceberg type stuff. Songs were being invented on the fly, with about 50 invented in all. The Oxford supporters in the other two stands eventually chimed in, and a call-and-response got going, with the Tonbridge faithful ridiculing the dismal turnout of the Oxford fans which such seminal smashes as "We Forgot You Were Here" and the aforementioned slightly rude one about their support, while Oxford fans responded in kind with jibes at Tonbridge's amateur status.

It was all good natured fun, brought to you by people who actually care about the teams on show. They care so much that they willingly travelled for hours to get to the place, just to stand around outside in the frankly arctic weather, in a largely desolute stadium in the city's ugly industrial suburbs, drinking Bovril out of a paper cup, and shouting for sustinence. The health and safety man may keep ordering you to sit down, but you don't, because you're enthused and genuinely interested in the action. He eventually relents, not wanting to piss on your strawberries. The old man alongside you with mild tourettes screams enthusiastically at any mildly interesting piece of action (usually random shouts of "Hey! Ho!"), and the ambitiously dressed middle aged woman to his right hisses the word "shit!" in a really sinister way every time your team loses possession. At stoppages in play, you chant out your players names, daring them to signal acknowledgement of your chant. And when they do, you woop with joy. You cheer, wail, antagonise, ridicule, toot air horns, throw your apparel with pride, and just generally make your own entertainment, while always fixated on the action.



You don't get any of that in the NBA.

Instead, you get arena music. *BOOM BOOM* "Defense!!!!!", and the like.

You get signs telling you when to make noise, and 'entertainment' ushered onto and off the court with military precision every time play stops for more than 10 seconds.

You get an experience, but you don't get to enjoy yourself. You do what you're told, and you're told to do everything.

There's a reason that Golden State Warriors fans managed to put on such a spectacular showing during their first round playoff matchup against Dallas last year - it's because they gave a shit. And they didn't care who knew it.

The NBA isn't faaaaaaan-tastic until people start being fans. This means passion. And passion doesn't generally involve sitting down, clapping appropriately.

Forget the family experience that the NBA looks for when selling tickets. Let's start stocking these arenas with people who will actually want to be there, and who will follow the action without prompting. Instead of banks of seats filled with people sitting down eating, let's have people up and cheering, singing, bringing atmosphere into a place that's supposed to ooze it from every turnstile. Let's not have 46 minutes of gentle appreciation and two minutes of giving a toss.

If you don't think this is possible in a game of basketball, watch the Euroleague some time.

(And don't sell alcohol at the venues, either. Lest we forget what happened three years ago.)

(By the way, I've never been to an NBA game. This ignorance may or may not be painfully obvious in the above. I hope not.)

Why aren't NBA players loyal?

(Editor's note - season preview series will continue soon. I just can't be arsed with it right now. And besides, I'll only go and write something very long about one team just to find that they make a major trade immediately afterwards. It's inevitable. Sod's law, they call it.)



Why aren't NBA players loyal to their teams, such as how the fans are, and such as how the fans think that they should be?

Ask Fred Jones.

Jonesy signed with Toronto for 3 years and $9.9 million in July 2006, as a part of the Raptors' cap room spendage that season. The third year of the contract was a player option year, for $3.5 million.

Upon being traded in February of this year to Portland in exchange for Juan Dixon, Jones agreed to forego his player option year as a part of the trade, a decision that, once made, cannot be recanted. Jones explained his acceptance to do this as such:

"From seeing the team, knowing some of the players and knowing the direction they're headed, I was more than happy to be a part of it".

Bless him. How sweet. Such gallantry and chivallry will serve him well in future life.

Apparently, though, they aren't good traits in this here NBA game. For it was barely four months later that Portland traded him once again, this time to New York as a part of the multi player Zach Randolph deal. Still currently in New York, Jones is faced with the very real possibility of being waived by the Knicks, due to their present roster spots crunch and their desire to keep both Jared Jordan and Demetris Nichols. Jones was only included in the deal for his expiring contract, as was Dan Dickau - Dickau has already been waived, which doesn't bode well for Jones. And if Jones does wind up getting waived, training camps have begun and most teams have full rosters. Barring a stroke of luck, the earliest return Fred would be looking at would be in early 2008.

The irony is that Jones' contract would not have even been expiring, had he not declined the player option 16 months before he needed to make a decision.

So Fred's loyal move towards the Blazers, giving up a year of multi million salary and a year of almost-certain employment just to be able to join them, has now left him perilously close to a situation in which he could be out of the league altogether, only 16 months after signing a three year deal.

Wouldn't happen in the real world, let me tell you.

And that's why the players are loyal to themselves first and truly foremost. Fred turned down $3.5 million in an act of charity, yet now, if worst comes to the worst, he won't even earn $100,000 in the D-League next season, should he get stuck there.

Poor bastard, in both senses of the word "poor".

The bench player handbook

For those amongst you who, like me, have a strange fascination with transactions, both those finalized and those possible, this is a bad time of year for you. This is late August, the draft is long since gone, and most of the juicy bits of free agency have passed us by. Of the remaining free agents, only a select few are good enough to be starters in this league - Ruben Patterson to name......one - and merely the journeyman remain. This is the NBA's equivalent of what it's like to try and completely scrape clean an almost-empty pot of jam - you can try and try and try to clean every last morsel out of the jar, and occasionally struck it lucky with a decent sized chunk. But most of the residual jam offers up stubborn resistance, and is not even worth your time - even if there was a practical way of getting it off there, you wouldn't garner anything useful from it anyway.

Additionally, when writing these new player profiles for the site, I have had a very tough time trying to keep them interesting. How, for example, do you make the profile of JamesOn Curry read wildly different to that of Jannero Pargo or Salim Stoudamire, when they are very similar players? It's a quandry that has cropped up all too often. Too many players are too alike too many other players, and too many players conform to stereotypes.

So, let's look at those stereotypes and give them broad definitions based around the pioneer - the trendsetter, if you will - of that particular stereotype. Every team needs their role players, after all.


1 - The Jerome Williams: The athletic forward whose only real skill is the fact that they are an athletic forward. They're too small to play power forward unless against others such as themselves, yet they have not the dribbling skills, jumpshot or defensive footwork to play much small forward. They compensate by running around a lot. A classic player-without-a-position situation.

Notable examples: Darvin Ham, Linton Johnson (although he's nearly good enough to not qualify), Jerome Williams, Ryan Bowen
Pencil them in: Mike Harris


2 - The DeSagana Diop: They're tall. They're athletic. They're often foreign. This perks your interest. It's rarely worth it.

Notable examples: Boniface N'Dong, DeSagana Diop (the poster child), Peter John Ramos, Mile Ilic, Didier Ilunga-Mbenga
Pencil them in: Cheick Samb, Marcin Gortat


3 - The Esteban Batista: They're tall. They're strong. They're far from athletic. They're often foreign. They're often white. They don't do much else. This also perks your interest. It's also rarely worth it.

Notable examples: Esteban Batista, Dalibor Bagaric, Mengke Bateer, Jake Voskuhl, Jared Reiner
Pencil them in: Aaron Gray, Marc Gasol, Kyrylo Fesenko


4 - The Zoran Planinic: Dedicated to those taller guards - often European - who are touted as being tall point guards, yet who are basically shooting guards (or, occasionally, small forwards) with slightly above average dribbling skills. These players are generally exposed during any subsequent attempts to play point guard due to their lack of foot speed, and also aren't exactly primed for the two guard position due to their decidedly temperamental jumpshots. The old saying goes that your position in the NBA is defined by the position that you are best at defending, yet it wouldn't go amiss for these players to get themselves a defined position on offense. For the "bit of one, bit of another" thing isn't really working.

Notable examples: Zoran Planinic, Marquis Daniels, Thabo Sefolosha, John Salmons, Jiri Welsch, Sasha Vujacic
Pencil them in: Cedric Bozeman (in anticipation of a fairytale comeback), D.J Strawberry (sorta)


5 - The Eddie House: Small guards who come into a game solely for the purposes of putting up lots of long jumpshots and running around enthusiastically. The genre is named after Eddie House himself, a man so perfectly awesome at this role that it defies any attempt of mine to explain it. If you're short (or tall by normal human standards) and want to make it in the world of basketball, this is probably your best bet.

Notable examples: Eddie House (obviously), Jannero Pargo, Salim Stoudamire, Quincy Douby, Damon Jones
Pencil them in: JamesOn Curry, Guillermo Diaz, Robert Hite


6 - The Eric Piatkowski: A logical extension of the Jannero Pargo type. Decent sized perimeter players whose offense is limited to an extremely good outside jumpshot, and whose defense is just plain limited. Something of a retro position that I cannot ever say enough good things about.

Notable examples: Eric Piatkowski, Casey Jacobsen, Voshon Lenard, Fred Hoiberg, Matt Carroll
Pencil them in: Brad Newley


7 - The Pat Garrity: A further extension of the Jannero Pargo genre, this role has similarities to the Jerome Wiliams genre above, in that the player concerned has no defined defensive position. They're power forwards with no power to their game, forced to play the position due to their lack of speed. The other slightly massive difference between this group and group one is that this group of extremely unathletic players also happen to have fantastic outside strokes. These players tend to share other common traits - they are usually absolutely abhorrent defensive players, and piss weak rebounders. They also seem to nearly always be white. This group compromises the most one trick ponyness of all the groups listed here. And yet, every year, one or two fresh faces pop up, despite the continued failure of all those to have previously trodden this path. It's dumbfounding, but it's faaaan-tastic.

Notable examples: Pat Garrity, Steve Novak, Scott Padgett, Matt Bonner
Pencil them in: Nick Fazekas (not quite yet, but just you wait.......)


8 - The Malik Allen: One final twist to the one dimension shooter saga. These guys are tall, with centers size. And they can shoot. Yet they also all suck at every other facer of the game. But, then again, it landed Troy Murphy a $58 million contract.

Notable examples: Troy Murphy, Malik Allen, Martynas Andriuskevicius, Kevin Pittsnogle, Damir Markota, Pat Burke, millions of others
Pencil them in: Kosta Perovic, Oleksiy Pecherov


9 - The Chuck Hayes: They may be undersized, but by God, that doesn't mean that their rebound is not theirs. Not tall enough for traditional power forward/center size in this league, and without the eye popping vertical to overcome this, these players choose to go the other way - they beef up, and work harder than the other guy for the rebound. Try and take it off them, and they'll kill you, no questions asked. This is especially true for Lonny Baxter, who has a thing for guns and shooting - if the White House doesn't scare him, then neither will you.

Notable examples: Chuck Hayes, Craig Smith, Lonny Baxter, Brandon Hunter
Pencil them in: Chris Richard, Carl Landry


10 - The Bruce Bowen: Decent sized reasonably athletic small forwards who play good defense on the perimeter, but who are contractually mandated on offense to stand in the corner and wait for an open three point attempt. To attempt to do anything else would result in asyphixiation, death, or worse.

Notable examples: Bruce Bowen(the master), Ime Udoka, Jumaine Jones
Pencil them in: Thabo Sefolosha


11 - The Ibrahim Kutluay: Disenfranchised European player who was pretty good back on home soil but who is not good enough in the NBA to crack a rotation. Rather than accept this, though, they opt to play off of their misguided sense of entitlement, sulk, and invariably wind up being bought out for a minimal amount so that they can return to Europe and vent. A relatively modern genre that I'm truly enjoying.

Notable examples: Ibrahim Kutluay, Arvydas Macijauskas, Sergei Monia, Vassilis Spanoulis
Pencil them in: Viktor Khryapa, Sarunas Jasikevicius


12 - The Mateen Cleaves: If you're not good enough to get into the game, you may as well act like you're happy to have been given such good tickets to see it. This genre is for those players who like nothing more than to come flying enthusiastically off of the bench after a good play, smacking arse and waving towels, and acting like nothing could be more right with their life. And why shouldn't they be happy? They get paid to sit down. I wish I did.

Notable examples: Mateen Cleaves, Ronny Turiaf, Eric Piatkowski, countless more
Pencil them in: Um, don't know. Hopefully, everyone.


13 - The Kelvin Cato: "Why does no one want me? I'm tall, I used to be good, what gives? Come on, just give me a minimum salary, I'll make it worth your while".

Notable examples: Kelvin Cato, Bo Outlaw, Michael Olowokandi, Alan Henderson
Pencil them in: Michael Sweetney, Vitaly Potapenko, Danny Fortson


14 - The Gary Payton: The former star who still wants the ring really, really badly. They'll forego their pride, their legacy and their reputation to sign for pittance just to try and get it. Named after Gary Payton, a man who has done this twice - once with the Los Angeles Lakers and once with the Miami Heat. Strangely, having won the ring, Payton still did not then retire, and eked out one more season of poor player for the minimum salary in a bid to win a second. He did not do so. Now, hopefully, that will be it.

Notable examples: Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, Kevin Willis, Chris Webber
Pencil them in: Reggie Miller (oh God I hope not), P.J. Brown, Jalen Rose


15 - The Jacque Vaughn: The "heady veteran" point guard who doesn't run nearly as well as he used to, yet who continues to look for (and sometimes get) NBA work as an old timer whose "experience" will help the team's younger point guards, and also provide a calming influence on the court. But basically they just aren't very good any more and are out for what they can get.

Notable examples: Jacque Vaughn, Randy Livingston, Howard Eisley, Anthony Carter, Darrick Martin
Pencil them in: Jeff McInnis, Brevin Knight


16 - The Michael Curry: You have absolutely no idea what this guy is supposed to do.

Notable examples: Michael Curry, Michael Ruffin, Scot Pollard, Adrian Griffin
Pencil them in: Hopefully, no one. Ever.



These people are not to be overlooked, though. Not in any way. The defending champion San Antonio Spurs, for example, have two number 10's including the poster child himself, a number 4, a number 6, a number 7, recently traded away a number 2, recently traded for a number 11 to go along with the one they already had, have THE number 15, and have themselves an extremely successful number 14 in Robert Horry.

Of course, they also have Tim Duncan, which counts for a lot. But do they really win their three recent titles without checking off a good half of the criteria thrown up by this list?


(Yes, probably)

The Celtics compared to the Bucks

Consider what recent fortunes have been like for the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks.

Last year, both of these teams pulled the incredibly-unsubtle-tank-job routine, rivalled only in blatantness by that of the Minnesota Timberwolves. So obvious was it that then-Celtic Ryan Gomes essentially admitted to the tank job in an interview, saying, and I quote:

"I probably (would have played), but since we were in the hunt for a high draft pick, of course things are different," Gomes said. "I understand that. Hopefully things get better. Now that we clinched at least having the second-most balls in the lottery, the last three games we'll see what happens. We'll see if we can go out and finish some games."

Say what you really feel, Ry.


Both teams put most of their eggs in one basket, trying their best to lose out, hoping for one of the top two spots in this year's draft, and thus a chance at Greg Oden or Kevin Durant.

Both were the victims of bad karma, and failed to move up, ending up with the 5th and 6th picks respectively.


From there, Boston has gone on to trade for two All-Stars, one of whom is arguably the most talented player of his generation still in the back end of his prime. They are left with plenty of work to do, yet they have become instantly vaulted towards the top of the Eastern conference and into title contention.

Whereas Milwaukee is mired in the middle of a soap opera.

Enough has been said about Boston and what they've done, but Milwaukee and GM Larry Harris seem to have been overlooked somewhat. After a poor 2004-05 season in which they finished with a disappointing 30-52 record, the Bucks beat long odds to win the lottery, and also had maximum cap room available to them. This offseason, they once again had potentially maximum cap room, and a high pick (number 6) in a supposedly powerhouse draft.

And once again, they have not taken advantage.

2005's offseason yielded Andrew Bogut with the number 1 overall pick, one of the better players of a weak draft but far from the best. The cap space was spent on re-signing Michael Redd to a maximum contract (decide amongst yourselves whether it was worth it, but the correct answer is "no"), signing the Most Improved player of the previous season (Bobby Simmons) to a $46.4 million contract only to then see him miss one season and disappoint in the other, and re-signing Dan Gadzuric to a considerably overpriced deal, all while letting the considerably younger, considerably cheaper and considerably better Zaza Pachulia sign with Atlanta, unchallenged.

This offseason brought much of the same: they signed another starting small forward in Desmond Mason, who figures to not only make the Simmons signing look that much worse, but who should also be roughly the equal of the man he is replacing - Ruben Patterson - and signed Jake Voskuhl to compete with/replace Gadzuric at the backup center spot. Voskuhl, too, figures to be the mere equal of the guy he has replaced, the unheralded Brian Skinner. (OK, so "unheralded" is a blatant embellishment. But you know what I mean.)

In addition to the disappointments in free agency, the Bucks also have an ongoing saga with their draft choice at number 6, Yi Jianlian, whose agents and 'people' warned Milwaukee that their client did not want to play there, going as far as refusing to let Bucks personel watch a private workout conducted by Yi. The Bucks took the risk and drafted him anyway, and now Yi is refusing to sign for Milwaukee.

All in all, something of a cock-up.

In between these two mismanaged offseasons, the Bucks traded T.J. Ford to Toronto for Charlie Villanueva, a can't-miss trade that they somehow managed to miss on. They also made an extremely poor trade, dealing Desmond Mason and a first round draft pick to New Orleans for Jamaal Magloire, a man not only coming off of serious injury but who also played the same position as Bogut, whom they had drafted only 4 months previously (Magloire then went on to disappoint mightily and was shipped out for spare parts at the start of last season). And Milwaukee also managed to compound their problems at the 2006 draft by needlessly trading their 2007 second round pick to San Antonio for the utterly useless Damir Markota - due to last year's tank job, that pick went on to become as high as number 33, meaning that Milwaukee missed out on Glen Davis and Jermareo Davidson, amongst others.

And they had Terry Stotts as head coach. Come on now.

The result of all this as things stand is a Bucks team that figures to be mired once again in mediocrity (or, at best, decency), and its place as a team that has more than ample opportunity to improve considerably more than it has done. Can anybody really see them as being anything more than a low seed/late lottery team, even if things begin to go their way for a change?

Larry Harris has made some good under-the-radar finds in his tenure as GM (Pachulia, Charlie Bell, Ersan Ilyasova), but perhaps he would do best to let someone else manage the financial side of things. For he and his team just got outmanoeuvred by Danny Ainge.

Danny Ainge, for Pete's sake.