Real Deal

I fail to see the problem with this one. I just put it up not too long ago. The funny part is...the skin you're talking about, you can't even see it, other than the black/gold color. There's no banner, no forum design, nothing.

Not really. During the summer, we'll play ball every day (really...every single day), but I don't consider that hanging out. Once I'm done playing, I'm gone. Just too much time doing other things. Bills to pay, and I live with Jess. When you're 27 and not single, things are usually turned down a notch or two.

Didn't he "leave the team" just the other day? It makes me think he was pissed over lack of playing time, which he shouldn't be because Williams is a shell of his former self. He was one of my favorite point guards in the history of the game, when he was in his prime.

Damn Dee, I was supposed to create this topic! Six years is crazy. It's scary. I know a lot of you more than I do my old HS friends. I'm very, very proud to say that, in these six years, OTR has never been sold. It has never merged with another site. I have never put it on the market, never decided to seek a merge. Same owner since 2005, same name (otrforums changed to otrbasketball, but you know what I mean), same board software, same direction. No restarts (only one, but technically not a restart because it was forced by an SQL injection hack). People have been known to criticize OTR, about how strict we are, or how we have less activity than most troll-invested sites...but how many six-year basketball sites can you name? It's true...I love bragging about the site. I love bragging about the community. I will stand here and speak it until my face is blue: we have the best core of posters a site could have, in regards to basketball knowledge (without a doubt), and maybe even sports in general. On a personal level, I have worked my ass off for this place. However, that work I do doesn't show if everyone else doesn't work as hard, either. I can put up a board, team sites, and post 100 times a day...but nobody knows it if people don't work hard to create that posting atmosphere, to start/lead/engage in discussions. For that, the only way I can repay everyone for that hard work is to hold the fort. Thanks to my staff, former staff, current and former members...everyone that has had a positive contribution to OTR over the last six years. It has never gone unnoticed. On with number seven.

Welcome to the best.

Copy and paste the code below, filling in the blanks. All correct answers get you five points. No late entries accepted. If you don't turn yours in by the tip-off of the first game, you miss out, no exceptions. Wednesday, January 26th San Antonio @ Utah (ESPN) Winner: Leading scorer: Thursday, January 27th Miami @ New York (TNT) Winner: Leading rebounder: Boston @ Portland (TNT) Winner: Player with the most threes made: Friday, January 28th Orlando @ Chicago Winner: Leading passer: Sacramento @ LA Lakers Winner: Leading scorer: Boston @ Phoenix (ESPN) Winner: Player with the most turnovers: Saturday, January 27th Atlanta @ Dallas (NBATV) Winner: Leading scorer:

Palmer isn't right for Cincinnati if they want to go with receivers like TO and Chad. Both want to make the big plays, and Palmer's arm isn't going to allow that. The longer the throw, the less accurate he becomes...and while that's the general statement for most QB's in the history of the game, Palmer's accuracy literally plummets when he throws over 20 yards, it seems. I just don't see him doing much on any team, on an individual level. Maybe if he QB'ed a team that was run-heavy, and had a solid defense, he would find his way into the playoffs...but any team that would depend on him like, say, the Colts depend on Manning...I just don't see it happening.

Before I log off and go to bed...the perfect example was Andrew Bynum. Here's a guy with a history of knee injuries, a 285-pound athlete (much heavier than Cutler, of course) who uses his knees for posting up, rebounding, jumping an entire game, who tore his meniscus in the first round against the Thunder...and he played the rest of the way, to the Finals, and won a championship, then got his surgery. Signed, sealed and delivered.

Hines Ward runs to get the football. If he can't run, he's completely irrelevant to the game. He can't block on a bad leg, can't run, can't do anything. Let's stop comparing him to Cutler. As long as Favre had his throwing arm, he was throwing touchdowns. Injure his arm to where he can't throw? He sits. It's actually that simple. Break Rivers' arm, he doesn't throw the ball...and he doesn't play. Vick didn't even heal up from his rib injury, and he came back early. If he could lift his throwing arm at the time of the injury, he would've played the following week. Brady's fractured foot didn't keep him out of the game vs. the Jets because he doesn't throw with his foot, and he doesn't kick field goals. Plenty of other examples, but there's no point because you're dead set on what you're told, just like you were when LeBron hurt his elbow (which he should've sat out for because it was a tear, of course...but that's basketball, and you should never miss games from such a sissy sport just because of a simple tear). LOL, so bringing up Ward or Polamalu isn't unrelated, but bringing up Kobe Bryant is? What if I brought up Mark Schlereth, who had around 20 knee surgeries during his football career? He was against Cutler's actions as well. You do know the tear did affect his play, and it did hurt the Lakers for a while, right? But, instead of having the surgery and us having to start Shannon Brown in his place, he kept playing. I wouldn't have to defend Kobe Bryant for anything like this, because he would play. If Kobe decided he was going to sit during the NBA Finals because his knee was swelling up, I would be pissed because players have played through it before, and he could get it drained. And you would never call MJD stupid to his face, because I know I wouldn't even be that ignorant to get my face re-arranged and have Grade III sprains on all of my limbs. Get real dude. That is seriously something bearsfan would say he would do. It's whatever. When people get hurt, they know when they do it. He didn't. Sounds stupid as [expletive] to me, and fake as hell also. Grade I sprain suffered in the Bears/Pack game, or Grade II sprain he suffered well before the game was even played. LeBron had a ligament tear in his elbow, also...we guess. Get pissed. Discussion over on my end. You guys can just praise Cutler the rest of the way, I guess.

Moved to NBA General. It's not exactly a memorable moment we can talk about. The 90s was a massive collection of them, just like any decade, and this is more about how much more difficult (or less difficult) it was to play in the era. That doesn't mean anything. The West had more 50-win teams (8) than the East did last year (just 4), but the four contenders were LA, Cleveland, Boston and Orlando...three out of the East. Logically, you could consider a league with less 50-win teams more competitive. If said contenders are losing to bottom-feeding playoff teams, and everyone is winning anywhere from 41-49 games (.500 or better, less than 50 wins), that league would be incredibly tough. Unrealistic example because there will never be a conference that has all 41-49 win teams, but it still holds water in that the closer the teams are in regards to their overall standings, the more competitive the league may be. There's no real way of determining something like that just by team records, because all teams play each other, and it doesn't matter how many times unless the scale is too significant to ignore (ex. 10 teams back in the 60s). As many times as you play your bottom-feeders, you're playing contenders, and a small percentage increase/decrease doesn't mean anything at all because those teams over .500 could've been much better one decade than they were the other, or there may have been teams tanking that were below .500, maybe some of the worst teams ever playing in the 90s that you can't reflect in your statistical analysis. The 11-win Mavericks and Nuggets, two of the top three worst teams in NBA history, were part of the 90s (the 9-win Sixers team was in 1973). The 80s contained just one team that won 66+ games. The 90s had three teams that did it...but, to hurt the argument, they were all the Chicago Bulls teams. Jordan's era had around 40 different guards that shot 50% and (at the same time) averaged 15+ PPG in that same season. Since? Very few have done it. You can say that means players were more efficient (which is true), and you can assume it's because of the illegal zone defense and the less-talented defensive players (specialty defense, I should say). You say that, but the Bulls won six titles from 1991-1998 (and potentially eight if Jordan didn't retire). In other words, it was much tougher to get into the Finals back in the 80s. By the way, I wouldn't really count the Bad Boy Pistons OR those Spurs as 90s teams. Technically, yes, but both were more dominant in the 80s and 2000s. Neither dominated the 90s...at all. ----- But, the point is...any way you can swing the argument, there's always something else to say, another way of looking at it. The Lakers had to play the Celtics nine times back in 1962. This year, we play them twice in the regular season. Thank God for that. Does that mean the 60s were less competitive, or more? Less talented players, technically...but they were also the cream of the crop, not washed away with 150 scrubs...right? Always different angles to look at.

I'd consider wearing a Raiders shirt that read "we almost made the playoffs" on the front of it.

Uh, that wasn't what I was getting to. He did know that he did SOMETHING to his knee, he just didn't want to admit he knew because the pain wasn't bad enough for him to quit playing at the time. He didn't have to be carted off the field, didn't need assistance at all. He probably feared for his career. Cool. I'm glad Kobe Bryant isn't a pansy that decided to stop using his index finger to shoot a basketball 20 times a game when he suffered an avulsion tear, which needed immediate surgery. And, hell, that was in the regular season...and he came out with a championship at the end of it. I wouldn't be shocked if it was really a Grade I sprain, to tell you the truth. It's not like he can get fined for calling it something else. His knee looked pretty damn mobile on his exercise bike, full range of motion on a knee that isn't supposed to have it after a Grade II sprain (you aren't supposed to be able to bend your knee that far in, regardless of the pain involved...it physically won't bend), and he sure didn't find his way to the bench for the rest of the game, either. Stop acting like you're related to Jay Cutler. You guys are acting like the dude is your cousin. If MJD was rambling on about Cutler to your faces, I'm sure none of you would be running your chops and calling him stupid. None of you can prove anything, and neither can I, so all opinions are valid. I don't think he was in that much pain, at all...because he sure the hell didn't look like it, and he was standing around like he wasn't, with full range on his knee, and he never needed assistance to get off the field, never showed us the play he was injured on, and didn't know he had a tear in his MCL. All things considered, nobody would be stupid for thinking he was pissed at his team/line, or that he looked for an excuse off the field because his knee "kinda hurt" him. http://www.otrbasketball.com/forums/topic/11471-lebron-could-have-torn-ligament-in-elbow He had no idea...but he didn't care, and he's LeBron James. Shooting elbow, and he attacks the basket, and (gasp) it's in a professional sport. I would love to know when Cutler suffered his MCL tear. Guess we'll never know, because he doesn't even know. Hell, nobody can prove that he didn't do it 5-6 weeks ago...that's the best thing about all of this.

Haha, you actually think his own team would've ripped him apart in the post game? And I saw a few clips of him on the sidelines. There were football analysts at the game that saw more, and say he wasn't receiving treatment. Not sure what to tell you. You don't seem to get it. If the Grade II sprain is so bad, if it changes your mobility and ruins your balance so much, it would be keeping everyone off their feet, doesn't matter if it's some pro athlete or some irrelevant scum of the Earth that I've become just because I'm blasting Cutler. Pro level doesn't mean jack [expletive], dude. He runs, I run, you run...on an MCL. If the fear was that he was going to get destroyed on another sack, that's a different story...but guess what? He didn't know anything about his knee. Adrenaline makes you do stupid things. It would've been dumb for him to come back in. However, athletes do it because they have that hunger to win. Jay Cutler was already getting his ass kicked, and so was his team. He walked, normally, back to the sidelines and didn't even know when he hurt his knee. Give me a break. That's ridiculous. You know damn well when you suffer a tear. I've felt it, my brother felt it, and it doesn't matter if you're Jay Cutler, Troy Polamalu, or some lazy 13-year old kid bending down to grab a chip he dropped on the floor...doesn't matter if it's pro football or tetherball, you know when you suffer a tear. Defend that any way you wish, but you're wrong. So, when the player doesn't know when he tore his MCL, and he's standing around and not sitting or acting concerned, and it happened after he was getting his ass kicked, and he didn't want to be a Bronco because he was getting his ass kicked in Denver (couldn't care less what they say about the offensive overhaul, he was only there for 2 1/2 seasons' worth of games)...it's pretty obvious that people have a right to question him. Either way, I'm done talking about the dude. The Bears wouldn't have scored a point with him in, healthy or not. If I have no idea what he was feeling, and pro athletes have no idea what he was feeling, everyone should just STFU and stop defending him or bashing him, I guess, and we have nothing to talk about at the end of the day. Cutler lost a lot of respect, from me and from a lot of people around the league and even in his own fanbase, and there's nothing anyone can do about it now. He's a grown man making millions of dollars a year...he can prove his toughness next year if he wants to change things. He doesn't need random fans and teammates sticking up for him.

The point was that he didn't even make the attempt to fix the knee. He didn't know he had a tear. A Grade I feels the same as a Grade II (quoting the doctor that diagnosed my brother with a Grade II). He didn't try on a brace, didn't ice the knee, didn't wrap it up, didn't sit down and try to relieve it of any pressure whatsoever. He stood up the entire game. He didn't limp much on the sidelines. He was smiling, at one point. He had no idea when he even suffered the injury. Third and fourth quarter, had nobody said a word about an injury, you would've never guessed. He sat down for a bit, had someone talk to him and look at it, then he was right back up after the half, standing around, walking, on what is supposedly a Grade II knee sprain with about 230+ pounds on it. I've never had a G-1 sprain, but I did have a moderate G-2 ankle sprain that I played ball on when I was a sophomore (and I sat and hurt when I wasn't playing, mainly due to no adrenaline), and I also had a G-3 ankle sprain + fracture that kept me from playing ball for the rest of my time in high school. I definitely know the difference between the two. The Bears had a better chance to win the game with him out? Not with Collins at QB, and nobody here, or anywhere, would've predicted Caleb Hanie would've come in to score all of their points. Once Cutler left the game, the idea was that the Bears wouldn't even get to the 50 for the rest of the game. Cutler had no idea he had a tear. If he knew immediately, it's a different story. When a doctor says, "It's a good thing he didn't play, he could've tore his ACL," that's irrelevant to Cutler's demeanor because he had no idea what was going on in that knee. If Cutler knew he had an MCL tear, he would've sat his ass down and remained in his seat for the entire game. Because he didn't know, what kept him out? The pain? Not enough pain to keep him seated, so that's all I need to know. Not much more to say, really. Pain kept him out of the game, but kept him standing. He didn't know he had a tear. Big Ben would've been out there, even if he sucked in the process. Polamalu missing regular season games doesn't mean much to me, about like Dwyane Wade missing regular season games with his migraines. No reason to try and compare the two. Different strokes, I suppose. I know where Cutler stands.

Professional athletes are ripping him a new one, the same pro athletes that have played injured before. You, me, or anyone on OTR doesn't need to say a damn thing about it, in that case, because obviously, we aren't professional athletes and we don't know. I haven't heard a single person defend him yet, other than his teammates and some of you guys. When pro athletes, who should know best, are slamming the dude, it speaks volumes. Maybe he should've been sitting on the sidelines, instead of standing up the entire time and moving around, acting like a backup QB that was watching the starter fight through a tough game. If he was really hurt, and if he couldn't come back in, he [expletive]ed up with his body language, and it's still his fault. No sympathy towards him, whatsoever.

Something to note as well...put this on my life, when I walked back in the house during the third quarter, and saw Cutler standing around and not playing, and Collins in there getting killed, I immediately asked why the hell he wasn't playing. There is no injury I can think of that would allow him to stand up, walk around, receive no immediate medical attention, AND keep him out of the most important game of his career. The Grade II sprain is probably the smallest tear he could possibly have, or else he would've been sitting down with his leg out, not bending it, not being able to balance as he stood up. Two people on Rome, two people saying players have a right to question his heart and toughness. Those players (also) would know better than any fan out there, especially D-Sanders and MJD.

Being a professional athlete compensates for the increased weight. And I'm sure my brother wasn't 100 pounds as a 15 year old. That's ridiculously thin. He's an athlete, on the biggest stage of his career. Jim Rome is on right now...and he's even wondering why Cutler couldn't remember when it happened if it was bad enough to keep him out, and how Cutler "hurt himself with terrible body language" and why he didn't slap a brace on and give it a go, why weren't there team doctors or trainers trying to get him into the game, etc. Why the team was quick to defend him WITHOUT knowing the results of the MRI. Why Rivers played with a torn ACL in a playoff game, but Cutler didn't with the partial tear in the MCL. Sounds like a lot of people - athletes and football analysts - aren't defending him. But, I digress. Tears and sprains are the same in the MCL if it's not a Grade I. I think he sat out the biggest game of his career because they were down 14-0 at the half, and Cutler was getting destroyed and feared he would end up like Joe Theismann by the time the game was over. Like I said, there are examples of players acting that way...Ryan Leaf did it. All that needs to be said is this: there are players that have played with a Grade II sprain (partial tear). Cutler didn't, in the NFC Championship game, and while he wasn't playing, he was walking around normally, standing up most of the game, and didn't show any effort on the sidelines with any type of brace, or pain meds, anything...and that's why he's being criticized.

By the way, everyone on NFL Live is throwing him under the bus AFTER knowing the Grade 2 sprain. They're also mentioning all of the players that are tweeting about it and smashing Cutler for what he did (or, well, didn't do)...had no idea there were pro players doing that. So, I guess that has to mean something. It's the NFC Championship game, to go to the Super Bowl, to go out and do something you fight for every day of your career. I'm starting to side with all of them on this.

People may have a right to be upset, then, because there are athletes that have played on a Grade 2 sprain, and there isn't much of a difference between playing football at a pro level, and playing basketball in high school, when we're talking mobility. Both are running as hard as they possibly can, one is pivoting and stepping into crossovers and slides, the other is stepping into throws. Thing is, one is a finely-tuned professional athlete, the other was a high school freshman. If it's based on just pain alone, well, Cutler should've been playing in the biggest game of his career to date.

For one, my brother was advised to sit out the entire week, and beyond that, to avoid a complete tear. What was Troy's grade? I'd like to know what the grade was for Jay, exactly. If it was a Grade III, I completely understand why he was sitting. Partial tear is a Grade II, depends on how much pain he can handle. If it was a minor sprain, though, a Grade I, he's a complete sissy.

My brother went a full week of basketball practice with an MCL tear. Just putting that out there. And he was a freshman in high school. Ryan Leaf is one. I'm sure I could name others.

At 33 years old, Gary Payton was a top five defender in the NBA. Same with Dennis Rodman, at 34 years old. Same with Scottie Pippen, 34 years old. Out of the list, everyone over 32 is either far too old to even play basketball (Ratliff and Smith) or never played defense to begin with (Fisher). Kobe's knee is the excuse for him, although he doesn't close out on shooters as much as he should. Artest's defensive rating is as low as Luke Walton's, and Ron has absolutely no excuse for it. Gasol's defensive problems are due to physicality (lack of). He's 30, not 38...and it's something he has had a problem with since the days he looked like a 14-year old boy in Memphis. Odom doesn't know how to contest a shot. Half of the time, he puts his hand up a little, then brings it down and turns to watch the rim before the shot is even released. Defense isn't just about a player's knees (athleticism). Our players' defensive IQ's, the lack of help, the lack of focus, the missing physicality...being 30-32 years old shouldn't change all of that.

Blake, for reasons already stated. Rose is a boss, but Griffin is a beast. If he develops a consistent jumper (and it looks like he will, eventually), he's going to be unstoppable, and will draw more doubles than Rose has ever seen.

TIME: 7:00 PM ET TV: FOX