Free Ballin’

HOUSTON ROCKETS:
Is there any doubt that the Rockets are going to set a record for taking charges?  Well, of course there has to be some doubt, unless you know where one can find charges-drawn stats, current and historical; I don’t.  Whatever the case, drawing charges is clearly a huge part of their defensive strategy, and [...]

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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 picture [...]

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I missed this a few weeks back, from Chad Ford’s draft news:
• We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of DeJuan Blair’s situation for the past few weeks. We’ve heard from a number of teams that they’ve had concerns about his knees and it’s only come to light in recent days that those concerns [...]

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ESPN’s rumor mill linked to the story.  The next day David Kahn said it was BS.  I’m hoping it isn’t.  Mark Jackson has been itching to coach for a long time and I’m sure he would be…great, yeah, just dandy, and how nice for a NYC guy…OK, I don’t care.  But I’m hoping and praying [...]

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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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Chad Ford makes me chuckle. His first mock draft has Tyler Hansbrough going to the Utah Jazz:
“It feels like destiny for Hansbrough to end up in Utah. His tough, blue-collar game should work really well for Jazz coach Jerry Sloan.”
Indeed, Hansbrough will fit right in with other tough, blue collar Jazz players on the current [...]

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I like the Rockets’ new point-guard tandem of Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry quite a bit, for numerous reasons, most of which you can find at any other basketball site that reported this trade, so I won’t go into all the “what this means to the Rockets” stuff.  I will just comment on Brian Cook, [...]

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Michael Lewis (yes, of Moneyball fame) wrote a piece today in the Times.  I like that Lewis is interested in analytical ways of understanding sports, and that he talks to smart people and publishes what they say.  It just annoys me when he writes as though the answers to his questions are known, and clear, [...]

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These are two things I don’t like to read about in basketball articles.  I have become really tired of “talented” as a description for an NBA basketball player.  I only use it when I’m too lazy to describe a player’s abilities any other way, because in the context of NBA writing, it’s almost meaningless.  There [...]

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Well, I guess now we’ll see how good Rodney Stuckey is.
I like trades like this, big pieces being shifted around by two teams, Detroit and Denver, that needed a change. Or maybe not. Denver desperately needed a change, and this trade is terrific for them in every way I can think [...]

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