Free Ballin’

I just wrote an email that I’m sending to Henry Abbott and Bill Simmons.  In the email, I provide them (and now you) with the definitive solution to the sucky NBA officiating.  I’m posting it here in epistolary form, not because I’m too lazy to re-format; it’s just how I roll. ************* SOLUTION TO NBA [...]

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I’m reconsidering the Iverson signing.  Maybe, since it came in the same week the Nets needlessly fired Lawrence Frank, the 76ers move immediately smelled of the same impatience and short-sightedness.  Maybe that isn’t the case; maybe they’re being savvy by admitting that what they started isn’t going to work, and smart to jump on a [...]

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It doesn’t have to be a great game to get my attention.  Last night’s Trailblazers/Heat matchup was competitive, but nothing special.  Watching Greg Oden and Michael Beasley go at each other, on the other hand, was sensational. Amid a bevy if impressive sequences, the most significant play of the game to me (in a big [...]

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Continuing my NBA VIEW Toronto Raptors: No fans are in worse shape than Raptor fans.  You know Chris Bosh is going to leave.  You know it, don’t you?  Toronto’s management is in an awful position (of their own making,) trying to figure out a way to entice Bosh to stay.  He says he loves it [...]

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Continuing my NBA VIEW ATLANTA HAWKS: You give a team enough lottery picks and it’s difficult to not be a good team.  If you draft  fairly well, your team will be very good, or better.  Or you could be the Hawks.  Ugh.  What a wrecked franchise.  I’ve written about it ad nauseam so I won’t go into [...]

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I’m for the 3s, myself.  This trade is fun and Toronto’s half is amusing.  I won’t get into salaries because…I don’t feel it.  Suffice to say, they have comparably bad contracts: too big, too long.  So what’s worth discussing? Toronto gets Evans: I find this amusing because it’s a deal to help facilitate Andrea Bargnani’s [...]

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Bill Simmons posted a great email exchange he had with Malcolm Gladwell, in which they discuss the NBA’s deeply flawed (league-damaging) draft.  Both make good (though imperfect) suggestions for how to improve it—I’ll write about how to fix NBA draft, in the near future—but at one point, Simmons, noting how the draft could be used [...]

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