Re - Draft Part 2

So here is the way that the first round played out, along with comments by my guest writer (Jon Dahl) and myself.

1. New York – LeBron James – – Best player in the world. No brainer pick. Young, entering his prime (we tend to say this every new season), extremely athletic… Awesome teammate! Just needs the ring.
2. Utah Jazz – Kevin Durrant – When I was looking to make a pick for the Jazz, I considered the following items:
a. I wanted a young and versatile player who could lead a team for years to come.
b. I wanted a one of a kind talent that would create match-up problems for opposing defense. I have always learned that you should impose your will on others, not simply try to beat them at their game.
c. I wanted a team guy that would play with other players for the better of the team regardless of what they had to do to win.
When looking at Kevin, I feel that he best met all three. Kobe possessed one or two, so did Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony, but when I am looking down the pipeline years from now, I think that Durrant will be the one standing. I have watched him dominate on all levels so far and he’s only 21. He can play multiple positions and creates matchup nightmares for other teams. He’s too quick for forwards, too big for guards and there isn’t a spot inside halfcourt that he can’t shoot from.
3. Oklahoma City Thunder – Kobe Bryant – Most clutch player in the league. Big debate on whether LeBron or Kobe is the best player in the world. A proven winner (4 championship rings). Has been a leading league scorer for multiple seasons. Starting to mature more and more and becoming a better teammate.
4. Boston Celtics – Dwyane Wade – When I look back at my life in watching basketball, there have been few times when I have looked a player and thought that they were truly unstoppable. Dwyane Wade in the ‘06 Finals was unstoppable. Then I started to have doubts about his health, but then I remembered the Olympics when he seemingly completely re-invented his game and became a dominant defender. All in all, he’s one of the most complete packages in the NBA. I often have to remind myself that he’s only 6’4” because he plays so much bigger. I don’t think he’ll last 15 years in the league because of his reckless style of play, but even 5-6 years of Wade will be better than 10 from a lot of players.
5. Orlando Magic – Dwight Howard – There simply isn’t another center that has the potential to dominate the league the way that Dwight Howard does. I don’t think that he’s reached his full potential and I wish that he would develop a shooting touch, but even where he is, there aren’t many players than contribute to a team winning in all the ways that he does.
6. New Orleans Hornets – Carmelo Anthony – With his talent and ability to play multiple positions, I felt like he was the next best player in the draft. When he is focused, he verges on unstoppable.
7. Phoenix Suns – Chris Paul - One of the best, if not the best, point guards in the league. I believe he has the best ball handling ability in the league and is very fast. Also has a sweet stroke. Has led the league in assists the past 3 years.
8. Charlotte Bobcats – Deron Williams – He plays with a chip on his shoulder and that causes him to always play his hardest. It gives him an edge over his opponents that few have. He’s a big, powerful, quick point guard that can take it to the whole shoot from deep and in the end will do whatever it takes to win.
9. Chicago Bulls – Chris Bosh - Very underrated player. People were able to see his skills by seeing the recent all-star game as well as the Olympics. He is very versatile and has great range. Great rebounder and shows enthusiasm with a will to win. Needs to get out of Toronto.
10. San Antonio Spurs – Dirk Nowitzki – I have had a love hate relationship with Dirk over the years, but I can’t deny his talent. He can score like no other big man in the game today and his shooting technique makes his jumpers very difficult to block.
11. Cleveland Cavaliers – Brandon Roy - Another underrated player. Shows excellent shooting ability and one of the best drivers in the league. Is able to create his own shot.
12. Los Angeles Lakers – Derrick Rose - young and talented. Very quick and is quickly improving his jump shot. One of the best “up and coming” players in the NBA.
13. Indiana Pacers – Tim Duncan – Really wrestled with this pick. He’s old, but I think that he could probably twilight for a few more years when surrounded by the right team. Young players could really learn from him, but I may have drafted him to high.
14. Denver Nuggets – Al Jefferson – Double-double machine that hopefully recovers from his knee injury and comes back to full strength. There just aren’t that many that possess his ability and he’s still really young.
15. Golden State Warriors – Brandon Jennings – This could either turn into a genius pick, or it could be a disaster like drafting Kwame or Darko. Only time will tell. Definitely drafted on potential here.
16. Dallas Mavericks – Carlos Boozer - 20/10 guy. Will most likely give you these numbers every night. Excellent rebounding ability and great low-post moves. Also shows great 15 foot jump shot range. Only problems are a little bit undersized power forward (in height) and might give you off the court issues & is injury prone.
17. Houston Rockets – Joe Johnson - Awesome player. The starter for the Eastern All-Star team should be able to keep any team competitive and has a sweet shooting stroke.
18. Portland Trailblazers – Monta Ellis - Quick shooter that can score in a variety of ways. A very non-efficient player that uses possessions bad! But great scorer.
19. Atlanta Hawks – Tyreke Evans - Rookie of the year. End of story.
20. Philadelphia – Pau Gasol – Pau “KUNG PAU” Gasol was a tough choice. There are some nights that I feel like he should be higher, when he obliterates my Jazz team, but then there is the whole first part of his career in Memphis. I think this team will allow him to succeed.
21. Miami Heat – Andrew Bynum – Big men who score and rebound are a true commodity. There just aren’t that many and he’s really young still.
22. Toronto Raptors – Amar’e Stoudamire - Athletic center that can throw down dunks. A little bit full of himself.
23. Minnesota Timberwolves – Brook Lopez - Still haven’t been able to see him play really but stats are great! 20/10 player who is one of the best centers in the league.
24. Detroit Pistons – Chauncey Billups – I wonder if he could take a team of scrubs and make them look good the way that Steven Nash does. He’s got less mileage than Nash and is younger so that is ultimately why he was picked higher.

So there you have it. Check back later in the week for our favorited drafted teams!

Re-Draft 2010 Part 1- Guidelines

After conducting the contraction draft a couple of weeks ago (see previous post) I was speaking to an co-worker and he gave me the idea of doing a re-draft for the whole league. The idea behind this was to create a league where the overall talent was more evenly distributed. There are some teams that seem so poorly managed that it just doesn't seem fair that they are competing on the same level as a team like the Lakers for example. After mulling over the idea for a couple of days, I finally wrapped my head around how we were to do it. The draft was conducted under the following guidelines:

1. There would only be 24 teams in the draft. I briefly describe the reason for this concept in a previous blog, but in short, it's to ensure that all teams will have the same level of talent and it will be a better overall product throughout the league.

2. The draft was conducted by myself and one of my co-workers Jon.

3. A coin was flipped and we each picked 12 teams that we would represent.

4. We were awarded each 12 spots in the first round randomly. We then could pick which of our teams would occupy those spots for the first round.

5. The second round was a "snake" of the first round (same order only in reverse).

6. Rounds 3-12 were randomly selected using a free online fantasy draft generator. This was to add a certain randomness to it, almost like a lottery.

We were not limited on time for each pick due to the time constraints that each of us faced, and thus the draft took us roughly 2-3 weeks. Although I will not be going over the full draft tonight I will preview a couple of the items that we discovered during the course of the draft.

• There really aren't that many centers in the league right now. Of those centers, very, very few have polished post moves. After drafting the first 6 centers in the first round, we really were left with tough picks being forced to take someone with size even though there wasn't as much skill. I feel that this explains to some degree why the Jazz don't have a dominant center. Frankly, we might be lucky to have two guys like Millsap and Boozer for how polished they are down low.
  
• Regardless of how unbiased we tried to to be, unfortunately we began to favor teams. We also began to feel bad for some teams. Overall the teams are fairly even but there were some mistakes made and it took us a while to realize this.
  

Overall, I am pleased with how it turned out. Over the next couple of weeks, I will post a couple of different times about this project so please check back in. The ultimate goal will to be to use NBA 2K10 to simulate several seasons to see how this all plays out. It will also help us to determine the overall quality of the draft. So keep checking back for more updates!

The State of Boxing

It all started about five years ago. It was a nightly ritual for my dad and I to sit down and watch ESPN classics with dinner. The six o'clock hour was always boxing and I got to see some of the greatest fights of all time. Naturally the the most exciting ones centered around the biggest stars, but there were two in particular that always grabbed my attention no matter how many times I saw.

The first fighter was Mohammed Ali, formerly Cassius Clay. With Ali, it wasn't just about the fighting, but it was about the entire package. I don't believe that we have since seen an athlete that has combined such swagger and confidence with the actual skills to back it up. He had the skills and speed of a lightweight in the body of a heavy weight. He could dodge a punch or simply take it in such a way that it didn't hurt him. He would allow his personality to get in the head of his opponents to the point where they were ineffective. In the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings, it details the fight Ali had with George Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle. In the movie it talks about how Ali looked to the people of Zaire to help give him an advantage. Ali purposely went down their early to insight the people to be on his side. Eventually the people in the streets began to chant in their own tongue, Kill Foreman. Foreman and his trainers became fearful for their lives and didn't leave their hotel rooms or eat food prepared by natives. Inside the ring, Ali used one of the strangest tactics ever seen in boxing, the rope-a-dope. He simply leaned against the ropes and allowed Foreman to hit him. Young Foreman was known for one thing, his incredible power that decimated so many before him. Ali simply took the punches and waited for the perfect moment. During the 8 round, Ali came alive, landed a series of punches and laid out Foreman. Although the punches weren't the most powerful you had ever seen, the exhaustion from the first 7 rounds of non stop had power punches had taken it's toll on Foreman and he never did get back up.

The other fighter was Mike Tyson. He was never the best technical boxer. He was never the biggest, but his punches certainly packed the most power that I have ever seen. He was explosive putting his entire body behind some of the punches. Growing up from a rough background, Tyson had a certain killer instinct that you didn't see in many. From the time the opening bell rung, he was looking to take his opponents head off, and a couple of times he nearly did. Cuts aren't something unheard of in boxing, the the time that I saw one of Tyson's punches nearly rip a man's nose off, I new I was watching something different.

There is one fight in particular that stands out in his career and it's not one fight that he won. Twenty years ago yesterday, February 11, 1990, Tyson flew to Tokyo to take on Buster Douglas, a top contender at the time. Buster has often been viewed a lazy fighter. He never trained particularly hard for his fights. He often showed up a little overweight and a little out of shape. Everyone in the sporting world expected it to be a quick fight. No one could have predicted the outcome based on the events before the fight though. A short time before the fight, Douglas's mother passed away and there was a questions of whether or not he would even fight. That death motivated him in a way that no one could imagine. The Douglas that showed up in Tokyo was lean, mean and ready to fight. The rest is history. Douglas looked a step ahead the whole night and eventually knocked Tyson out with a series of vicious combinations.

It turns out that that night meant more in the boxing world than just a knockout of the current champion. It marked what I consider to the be the end of one of the most entertaining sports in history. Boxing has never been the same and newer more exciting sports have come to fill it's place. The heavy weights the 60's, 70's and 80's are now gone, replaced by overweight fighters who stand in one place and exchange punches. And none of that particular quality that made both Tyson and Ali so exciting to watch. When you saw a fight of theirs, you could feel that something great was going to happen. Since then, that feeling has been gone, and the boxing world has died because of it.

Which Would You Choose?

I have lived in Utah most of my life and I have been a fan of the Utah Jazz for as long as I have watched professional sports. I have known one coach, Jerry Sloan, and one type of offensive system, the pick 'n roll. Up until last year, there was one owner, Larry H. Miller, and one commentator, Hot Rod Hundley. You could say that I at least know what to expect when I watch the Jazz. I know that they will win more than 40 but less than 60 games. I know that they will be in the division race most of the year. I know that they will sometimes frustrate me with their steadiness and I will often clamour for change when I become frustrated. But in all of the this, I know that they will have moments of brillance where they will leave me feeling as if they could beat any team on the planet. What I life we lead as fans.

I recently was in a discussionwith a co-worker where the discussion inevitable came around to the fact that the Jazz had never won a Championship. We came close two years, being stopped by Jordan both times, but we have never won it. In researching something else though, I came across a statistic that peaked my interest. Over the last 25 years, from 1984 - 2009, what teams are the winningest teams during the regular season? I was slighlty shocked by what I discovered. The usual teams bounced around in my head, the Lakers and the Bulls were the top of my list, but I was surpised by two of the top three.

1. Los Angeles Lakers - 65%
2. San Antonio Spurs - 61%
tie - Utah Jazz 61%

That is right! Over the last 25 years, the Jazz are the second winningest team in the league. In fact if I include the game fom this season so far, the Jazz have taken over sole possession of second place. Then I realized just how fortunate I have been. Now before you try to criticize this, I do understand that they haven't won the ultimate prize, but for nearly my entire life, I have had the opportunity to watch an amazing franchise go to work and consistently be one of the top in the league. And as I thought about it more, not too many franchises have won a title during that same time period. Here is the list of teams that have won.

Chicago - 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98
Los Angeles - 84, 87, 88, 00, 01, 02, 09
Houston - 94, 95
Boston - 86, 08
Detroit - 89, 90, 04
San Antonio - 99, 03, 05, 07
Miami - 06

That is all! Only seven teams have won the NBA championship during that span, and one of those teams and a one year peak where they won (Miami) and nearly didn't make the playoffs in the years surrounding it. That leaves 23 teams that have not won the championship. Of the teams that have won, San Antonio had a couple years where they were down right awful. The Bulls have not been able to come close to greatness since Michael or even during his baseball hiatis. The Celtics, even though they are one of the games greatest franchises probably would wish to forget the 22 years in between their championship years. Detroit had 2 good teams that each spanned a couple of years, and were fortunate to win as much as they did, but they still had a rough run in the late 90's. Los Angeles was not relevant until Shaq graced them with his present and they were forutnate to land of the most talented shooting guards ever in the game. Miami has certainly had it's fair share of miserable seasons.

During that span, the Jazz have experienced 24 winning season. Their only losing season consisted of a roster of role players and was during the years after Stockton and Malone retired. That is pretty incredible!

So how do you feel? Would you want the teams that wins but never wins it all, or the team that might come close, but then doesn't for many years. I think that I'll stick with my Jazz!