LeBron James, Lance Stephenson: BedroomBedlem

Things got uncomfortably frisky in the home of LeBron James this weekend. Sources confirm that at 12.47 am Saturday,  LeBron felt his wife, Savannah, whisper sweet nothings in his ear only to roll over and find Indiana Pacer guard Lance Stephenson beside him in the bed. After mass screaming and confusion, sources confirm that Stephenson and James engaged in a violent and prolonged fist fight, resulting in Stephenson laying unconscious outside the South Beach home. According to witnesses, James walked back inside shaking his head with a small gash on his hand. Darryl Holding, an apparent neighbor of James stated “well I don’t live in Cleveland, but I sure witnessed that!”.

LeBron and Lance have a history of awkward and confusing moments

LeBron and wife Savannah Brinson

The Indiana Times reports that despite the poor outcome for Stephenson, his spirits were lifted when teammate Paul George stated that he thought Stephenson “outplayed” LeBron during the fight.

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Greg Oden say's Embiid is the Most Promising Draft Prospect

Greg Oden, the man most well known for not owning Microsoft, not being able to tap dance and not playing NBA basketball has come out and said that Joel Embiid is the most promising rookie prospect for the 2014 Draft.

Embiid is a dominant big man, with an NBA ready body. In many ways he shows a lot of the same promise Greg Oden did going into the 2007 season. Although due to several recent injuries, Joel Embiid has been dubbed questionable by several analysts and NBA general managers. Injuries, especially back injuries, and especially in big men are a major concern in a fast paced league with an extreme workload.

 

Although Oden is willing to overlook these unfortunate injuries and possible lingering hindrances, and says "we should focus on his potential."

Quality Centres are the hardest thing to come by in the league today as well as being one of the most important parts of a team. Because, fact: it is one of the 5 positions listed on a coaches clip board.

 

When questioned whether Oden felt like Embiids case could be anything like his own, considering he has spent the last 7 years (sometimes, occasionally, rarely) successfully moving from bench to physio table to bench, Oden was still optimistic about his affects on the team.

"I'm a finals guy, no don't question this, I made the finals."..... "Joel (Embiid) can only dream of being like me."

 

Greg has also made it known that he would love to mentor Embiid if the chance ever came his way. Saying that he organised and developed a lot of the techniques he used for his injury rehab as well as his game conditioning. Believing that he could greatly help Joel and his future career, maybe even get him to the NBA Finals like he did.

Oden said that worst case scenario is he causes Joel Embiids knees to explode simultaneously, destroying any chance of a career, although stopping any pain in his back being at all relevant.

ELITE NBA BIG MEN, WHO'S NEXT?

Ive done a fair bit of reading and youtube watching for Joel Embiid. Theres like 4 guys that interest me in this draft, but at this stage he’s the only one that really excites me. Since I literally like none from last years pool, with the exception of Victor possibly (who I haven’t watched enough of to know), Im starting early on this years class. Im not getting ahead of myself though as I’ve only seen him play 1 college game, but he’s definitely the guy who I like the sound of the most. A legit 7ft with great defensive instincts, massive wing span and hands, great athlete, great skills for only a few years playing and moves well (simmons describes him as a taller serge). Other than Jordan and Wade, most of my favourite players have always been big men.

This playoffs is proving their importance again. If you want to make the playoffs, get an all star of any position and put some pieces around him. If you want to win a ring, get 2 or 3 all stars and make sure one of them is big (or Lebron James).Ive always wished that I could have seen more of Olajuwan and Robinson in their prime, but have only seen a couple of their games. Their defensive numbers are just amazing and they have attributes that set them apart. Hakeem in the post was just beautiful and Robinson was an absolute freaklete. 

Seriously, look at this guy

From what Ive read he could cover a stupid amount of ground defensively. I’m also trying to savor what its like to watch Tim Duncan, although I need to despise him right now, and certainly did last year, (I'm an all time Wade fan, and therefore follow the Heat) he’s probably going to be in the top 5 players I will get to watch in my life time.

"What did you say about me not having a Title?"

Over the next 50 years there will be other great players, but ill always remember watching Duncan, Kobe, Lebron, Wade and Durant, thats a lot of top 25 guys playing around the one time. And I also got to see a lot of KG and Shaq but they were out of their primes before I got to see many of their games. Watching KG absolutely destroy the league defensively on those early celtics teams will always be a good memory. Anyway, the point to all this is that I hope that Davis, and possibly Embiid can join this big man group one day. When the most intimidating big in next years playoffs might be Hibbert or Ibaka or Gasol or even Dwight, that sucks. Im keen for the next elite big man to come (Dwight never quite got there). I was a big Dwight fan in his first few years and I fully expected him to be the leagues next dominant championship, KG type big man. While he was elite on D for a few years, he never developed as a scorer, passer or leader and therefore fell way short of the guys I mentioned before. 

So Im going to compare the first few years of a few of the best big men from the past 20 years and see what kinds of things Davis needs to do to get into that conversation. Ill include KG, Duncan, Hakeem, Robinson, Malone, but not Shaq. Shaq was just too different and is not even worth comparing. Its like he played an entirely different position. Obviously these guys are the best of the best, and most of them have rings to back up their numbers. KG has huge career totals and will finish his career with one of the all time best combination of points, rebounds, blocks and steals. He has also won an MVP, DPOY and a ring. Duncan is the best PF ever, Hakeem is the best post player ever, is the all time leader in blocks and has 2 rings etc, Robinson is one of the all time great PER monsters and has a couple of rings and Malone is currently 2 on the all time list for total points. He scored more points in his career than MJ. So this is a pretty damn good list to be compared too, and obviously Davis has a very long way to go. To finish his career alongside these guys he will need to win a ring or two and continue to improve and put up big numbers. But based on what we have seen over his first 2 years, he has a great chance of being right there. Here’s the numbers for the first 2 years of this group. Note the drastic differences in the age that these players were drafted due to college/ high school trends.

Average stats after 2 years

Name	Rookie Age	PPG	RPG	APG	BLK	STL	PER
Kevin Garnett	19	14	7	2.5	1.8	1.5	17.0
Anthony Davis	19	17	9	1	2.5	1.5	24.1
Tim Duncan	21	21	11.5	2.5	2.5	0.8	23
Hakeem Olajuwan	22	22	12	2	3	1.5	22.6
Karl Malone	22	18	9.5	2.5	0.5	1.5	15.8
David Robinson	24	25	12	2	2.5	0.8	26.8

 Per NBA reference.com

The thing with big men is that they take a long time to develop, firstly they need to fill out physically and also very few have polished offensive games when they first come in. So for KG to come out of high school and play at 19 was a very interesting move. After a few years he obviously turned into a beast, but to begin with hes at a clear disadvantage just because of his age (he was almost Kevin Durant thin anyway).  Compare him to David Robinson who started playing at 24 after a full collage  career and time in the Navy to become on of the most manly men to ever man, and you can see why their numbers are so different. Seriously its incredible that Robinson put up those numbers in his first 2 years, Id take rookie Robertson over any NBA big man now in their prime. Comfortably. But at 24, he wasn’t really a rookie, he was a full grown man victimizing other men like they were children (while also being the nicest guy ever, he thought he was getting to egotistical so he went on a Christian cleansing camp…….what). Anyway Duncan, Hakeem and Malone all had college careers and came in at 21/22. Now obviously Davis’ raw numbers don’t quite stack up, expect on defense, but his PER is second only to the 24 year old Robinson! And he came in after one year of college at 19. Pretty impressive.

Now lets assume that he improves slightly over the next 3 or so years and his raw numbers increase while maintaining an elite PER. Heres what he will be aiming for

  

Average stats after 5 years

Name	Rookie Age	PPG	RPG	APG	BLK	STL	PER
Kevin Garnett	19	18	9	3.5	1.8	1.5	20
Tim Duncan	21	23	12	3	2.5	0.8	24.3
Hakeem Olajuwan	22	23	12	2	3	2	23.5
Karl Malone	22	25	10.5	2.5	0.5	1.5	20.8
David Robinson	24	25	12	3	3.8	1.7	27.2

As far as I can tell, keeping with this group is totally achievable from a statistical standpoint. Its fair to expect him to climb to roughly 22, 11, 2, 2.5, 1.5, 27 over that time which would statistically put him right there with Duncan, again only trailing the much older Robinson and Hakeem.

Barring injury theres no reason why this shouldn’t happen. His career is going to need to be assisted greatly by teammates, and hopefully things go more towards the Duncan or Malone rout rather than the KG one. KG wasted his youth and prime in Minnesota playing for horrible teams. Had he been drafted somewhere else, KG v Duncan could have really been a legitimate conversation. I just hope that AD doesn’t get stuck in a horrible situation.

He's obviously very thin, and a little injury prone at this stage, but his upside is through the roof. Hes a 6”11 PF who can handle the ball, shoot from range, score around the rim, and be a defensive menace. If he adds either a solid low post game or develops his corner jumper into a major weapon, I can see him averaging 25 for sure. Going in another direction, his brow is a funny gimmick at the moment. Hes still young and can get away with something goofy like that. However if he's going to become a superstar, hes going to want his play to shine brighter than his brow. I think he will get rid of it at some point.

"Hey Girl"

On to the next big man related topic, Ive heard media people pronounce Embiids name both Joel and Jo-el. Im not sure which one I think sounds better. Obviously Joel is a better name for 99% of the population, but I kinda like Jo-el Embiid. Maybe my reservations are due to Jo-el Anthony, a man who I dearly love, and whos game is the worst case scenario for any big man. Joel Embiid sounds solid, dependable, and so on, while Jo-el Embiid sounds exotic and unpredictable. Its these kinds of observations that convince me I’m destined to write for ESPN.

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Western Conf. Finals Game 3 Recap: Clothing Issues the Biggest Problem for OKC

The Thunder won, by enough. 106-97.
Im not recapping the entire game for you, because I saw it, and if you really care you would have or will watch it yourself. Although I must mention several topics. (I must point out that I am a raging, KD fan and therefore cherish the Thunder).

Serge Ibaka. The 6ft 10inch guy out of the Congo, flipping showed up. And I mean that, after it was expected that he wouldn't. Only 10 days ago Serge suffers a major calf strain which is firstly diagnosed as a season ending injury.
Although 2 days before game three the injury changed to a Day to Day situation before he walks out on the court for the game.
Now either we are seeing a rather major cock up by the young team doctor or a organisational tactical move. One in which Sam (Darth Sideous) Presti attempted to manipulate the wise and unrelenting Spurs Jedi council into believing that they didn't have to deal with the ring protecting tyrant any longer in the hope of springing an attack on them. Obviously Master Popovich, or Master Pop's as the youngling's call him, is far smarter than Yoda and expected the return all along. (This relation to Star Wars is gradually falling apart the longer I go with it).
Anyway, say this was a plan from the beginning they went to the extent of making Serge believe it. He reported that "he cried after hearing the news from the doctor," that he wouldn't be able to play in the playoffs.

How it happened doesn't really matter now, he is back, hopefully to stay.
Let us all be reminded of how important he is, because whether we are committed fans or just pretend we know things about the NBA, we can all generally discuss the Thunders two superstars, whilst Serge gets far less, and often none of the spotlight. Todays game, yet again highlighted the fact that the power forward dramatically changes games.
Yes Russell Westbrook is a better player, although to the Thunder, Serge is just as important, but gets no where near as much credit. He doesn't get triple doubles, isn't as exciting and doesn't dress like a blind man without a carer.
Although Ibaka does get good stats (15.1ppg, 8.8rpg, 2.7bpg, .536 FG% this season) most of what he does doesn't come in the form of raw box score numbers most fans idolise players for.
Most obvious of which is his ring protection, in the first two games of the series the spurs scored 120 points in the paint (Gm 1: 66, Gm 2: 54) without Ibaka. In game 3, with what should be a "not 100%," PF defending them the Spurs scored only 40, not to mention the 4 blocks.
Not only does this stop them scoring in the paint, Serge is the anchor of the defence. Without him the thunder look awful. Russell diving on every pump fake and taking massive risks most SanAntonio possessions, he is truly the biggest gambler since Archie Karas. Kevin has to play bigger than he is a lot of the time and even Thabo couldn't handle anyone without the security of the rim stopper behind him.
Serge, stretches the floor, provides a 3rd reliable scoring option and sets damn good screens (which actually the other OKC bigs can do, for the most part (if KP gets there in time)).

Serge Ibaka changes this series. Someone give him some love.

Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard will need to come out stronger in game 4 for the Spurs to win away. Tony Parker uncharacteristically threw the ball away far to many times today and it hurt them. He had 4 turnovers and contributed to a few others whilst shooting 4 of 13 from the field after an awful start to the game. Kawhi had 10 for the game although almost seemed non existent for most of the game besides a big dunk in the third.
Manu was brilliant in the first half and normally a spurs team where he scores 20 plus is a winning team, although no one came with him or was able to take over when he went quiet after the major break.

Game 4 will be very exciting, the Spurs will certainly adjust and Serge will be able to rest before then. OKC's biggest problem which stood out after game 3 although was the clothing issues presented by the back-back-backup centre Hasheem Thabeet. I snapped this picture at the end of the 4th quarter today.

Remember the days when your mother dressed you.

After sitting on the bench for so long the 7 foot centre has unfortunately forgotten how to properly wear clothes. This has become a problem for 3rd string big men in the past having spent so much time watching the game from the sideline that they cannot formulate the correct body actions to place their shorts in the acceptable position. 

When questioned after the game today about his extended minutes, (3:24, couldn't have been more than that, I don't care at all about him so cannot be stuffed to look it up and get it right), he responding by saying "yes it was very unfortunate, I was pumped and ready to go when coach pointed to me. I started strong, but after my first foul call I looked up at the screen and noticed my shorts where up covering my nipples." When the reporter asked if it hurt to have your shorts that high, Hasheem gingerly reached for his crotch and then left the room.

Derek Fisher was clearly frustrated by the big mans lack of awareness and commented by saying "us veterans do all we can to teach these kids how to act in the NBA, although we can only do so much, some guys just don't get it."

This has become an ongoing problem for Thabeet who was embarrassed to reveal it occurred once before on the 21/12/2012 photo below (the last time he really played basketball).

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Fixing the NBA

This week I lived at home by myself. This is not a first-time occurrence, but it is the first time I've been home alone since I began full time work. In my scramble to complete domestic duties before leaving for work, I found my mind was not as sharp as it needed to be. One morning I forgot to shave, and worked a day with a slowly protruding chin fuzz that displayed a red tinge by days end. The next day I forgot to brush my teeth, and was so self conscious that I rushed home to correct my displeasing mouth gas. But not all was for a loss, as on Thursday morning while absent-mindedly pouring milk on my cereal, I realised it was not milk, but in fact Farmers Union Iced Coffee. Despite the generous contribution I was making to my future diabetes diagnosis, I plowed through the coffee-infused bran bowl. It was going to be a good day.

This was confirmed by a phone encounter at the clinic in the afternoon. One of our receptionists is named person x, a darling woman who is as innocent as she is soft-spoken. person x informed me that an elderly gentleman was enquiring about a product that his coach had suggested we may stock, she believed it could have been a form of back-brace, and did not recognise the product name. This is how I received a written note from the front desk saying, "Do we stock any Erectomax?". 

Yes, Erectomax is a herbal supplement for erectile dysfunction, and no, we don't have any at the moment, sorry. Poor person x now has a Google search history looking for Erectomax, and we have a story for every work-related function until the end of time.

Anyway, the reason I decided to write something today was this;

The NBA is about 40% crapper than it needs to be.

A bold statement, but after watching the best part of 2 hours of basketball today, I am uniquely positioned to make this claim. This is how to fix the NBA. 

Clip arts make presentations 43% better (no reference) 

Without any particular order, the following amendments must be made by Commissioner Silver:

1) The moment that Dwyane Wade retires, the league must scrap the conferences and seed playoff teams according to league-wide win records. I enjoy the fact that the Heat should cakewalk to the finals this season. But it is clear that the difference in quality between the top four teams in each conference is wider than Big Baby's prom night suit jacket. It's disappointing to watch the rotting carcass that is Kevin Garnett brick open lay ups while guarded by the likes of Ray Allen, and we should not have to do so in the second round of the playoffs. Meanwhile, a Clippers team featuring two future first ballot hall-of-famers (CP3, Barnes) will likely be hustled out in 6 or 7 games by the Thunder. Don't get me wrong, OKC are a great team, and the chemistry between KD, Russ and any referee during the fourth quarter is a sight to behold. But we would be better served by having elite teams on opposite sides of the bracket, with the great match ups in the later rounds, and as soon as Wade hangs up his jockstrap this must be implemented. The latest numbers project the league would be 0.5% better in this scenario.

2) The NBA must slash the number of replays and fourth quarter time outs to 1 for each team in the last 2 minutes of a game. In today's matchup between the Clips and the Thunder, I spent more time adjusting my scrotal position in my ever tightening pants than I did watching basketball. This is due to the NBAs insistence that every call is reviewed when a star player bitches about a flagrant foul or out-of-bounds scenario, which just happens to be every single play in the fourth quarter. There was one possession in which CP and Russ collided and the ball was knocked out of bounds. The refs made opposing calls regarding possession, and Chris Paul began bitching like he'd been voted off the Bachelorette, while Russ made what can only be described as a vicious rape face. This led to approximately 6 minutes of TV review, and four minutes of scrotal repositioning, completing killing the mojo of the game. It's bullcrap and everyone hates it. The league instantly becomes 0.5% better if the change is made.

3) The NBA needs a fundamental overhaul of the statistics presented on-screen during a televised game. The current wave of statistics are nice and all, but not particularly interesting. Today an ad was displayed for the NBA draft combine, and this got me thinking, what statistics do they gather at the event? Height, weight, vertical leap and so on are great but they don't tell you what every NBA fan wants to know - How big is his schlong, and what happens to it during an NBA game?

Think of it this way, would you rather see a graph with percentage of teams 4th quarter points for Westbrook and Chris Paul, or would you rather see a pop-up 'Schlongometer' when they hit a go-ahead step back three? And wouldn't this give a whole new meaning to the term 'heat check'? The fans want to know what's happening down there when the games on the line. What is the physiological response that occurs to the wang of DeAndre Jordan when he's on the line to win the game? 

As far as I can tell, if they give us this, the league is 39% better. And it's probably higher.

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