New Project and a New Feature

So I have had a lull in posting anything new, but I finally have come up with something to work on and I am sure it will take me a while to figure out. I have often wondered what makes one team better than another when it comes to winning championships. Growing up a fan of Utah, I saw the Jazz win 60 games a couple of times, have the best record in the league once or twice and still come up short. Some say, that if it hadn't been for Michael Jordan, they might have won a championship or two in the mid-90's. Others will contend that Stockton and Jordan simply didn't have what it takes to win on the biggest stage. Which of these two opinions is right? I am not sure we will ever be able to answer the question in the past, but we can look to the past to see what the future may hold. For example, before the playoffs started this year, I ran some numbers and saw that the Jazz had shots blocked well above the league average. There may be a number of reasons for this, but they struggled with it over the course of the year. So looking over the possible playoffs match-ups, one definitely stood out as a terrible match-up; the Los Angeles Lakers. They blocked well over the league average of shots. You put these two things together, take away one of our lengthiest players in Mehmet Okur and you have a nightmarish four games.

So here is my objective: Determine what qualities past champions have had in common? What are some key characteristics should you look for? The goal will be to look past and see if there are some defining qualities that a team must have to be able to win. Hopefully the information will provide a valuable insight to helping choose which teams will fare better in the playoffs. Initially I plan to look at 3 different aspects: Regular Season Team Performance, Regular Season Player Performance, Playoff Player Performance.

The other thing that I will be blogging about is my progress of NBA 2K10. I have started a My Player career and unfortunately did not get invited to an NBA Training Camp right off the bat. I was in the Nets summer league and performed quite well. 12 ppg, 8 rbg, 3 apg, 1 spg, 1bpg. Not to shabby for a 6'6" shooting guard. I managed to play both back court positions and then also logged a few minutes at small forward. Alas, I ended up playing in the D-League for the Reno BigHorns. We'll have to see how it goes, but I am through my first game and hopefully starting soon. It will take some patience, but I want to see just how far I can get on this on. Stay tuned for more updates.

CopyCat

So I was told by a friend today that someone has decided to copy my idea of a Re-draft. To be fair, he claims that he has done it five times before this year and it's in a different league, but I still feel a little cheated. There are some interesting things that I noticed while reading over his version of the re-draft.

One thing that it made me realize is that I truly know very little about the NFL and I am no longer as familiar with it's personnel. In reading the top 32 players that he would draft, I realized that I don't know much about them period. I should make it clear that I manage to watch at least part of an NFL game most Sunday's that they are on. Still I was completely unaware of the names of several of this writer's top players. Not only that, but when I tried to look at the stats to see what makes them special, I could even really see anything too great about them. I don't know how respected the writer is but it did worry me that he had Jake Locker in the first round of this mock draft and Jake Locker has decided to return for his senior season at Washington. Anyway, in the off-season I have decided to become more familiar with the NFL. This should hopefully help occupy my time that I would normally spend watching sports as there won't be very many on this summer (once again, I'm not a baseball fan).

Just a few other things that I feel I need to comment on. The first being Harvey Unga. It really did put a damper on a otherwise great night on Friday when I discovered that he had withdrawn from the school. I do have to say that I admire that he nipped it in the bud and decided not to wait and see if the school found out and then had to punish him. It will be hard to replicate the success that BYU has had in recent years with such a high amount of turnover from last year. The record recruiting class that they had hopefully is up to the task because I do feel that BYU fans have been spoiled lately, and because of this have certain expectations. It's hard to believe that these expectations will be met.

Last but not least, the NBA playoffs are upon us. I was able to catch quite a few of the games on Saturday and I was impressed with what I saw. There were definitely some close games that I didn't expect to be close. It will be interesting to see how the suspension of Kevin Garnett plays into all of this. I have to admit I was little bit happy about him losing his cool. There is just something about him that I don't like. One thing that truly made me sad was the injury of Mehmet Okur. Yes, he's a Jazz player so I might feel more strongly about this than other fans in the league, but he was an all-around good guy. Even when he endured a shooting slump earlier this year, I never wondered if he was giving it his all. He insisted on playing in the final games of the year even though he was already hobbled with an Achilles tendon injury, and in the end, that determination to play is what may have cost him another five years or more in the league. I wish him the best and hope that he's able to make a full recovery.