AtTheDriveIn

Well then stop embarassing yourself and Islam because of your ignorance. From the way you conduct yourself, the real Muslims (I say real because you're not actually a Muslim, you're family is) would take offense to you speaking on behalf of Islam like you did just before.

I don't think you even know a single thing about Islam. First, Islam is a peacful religion (Obviously the House of War has twisted this a little bit, but anyone who had read the Quaran knows this). As a Muslim, you would first never hope that someone dies for ignorant comments; you would pray for them. Second, you're not God and you can't condemn anyone to hell. Stop being stupid and embarassing the religion.

What? Since when did Howard and Bynum begin playing together? Since when are Jefferson and O'Neal only worthy minimum wage contracts? Ah you're a Heat fan. Never mind, carry on with your crazy banter.

This is all opinion. Mindless, delusional opinion. The only team who will have overtaken the Magic as a regular season team this coming season is the Heat because of their three superstar approach, but that serves as no implication for the off-season. Awfully confident of your team, aren't you? The Bucks? They replaced Warrick with Gooden and added Chris Douglas-Roberts. I'm shocked that you're not jumping on them for 'downgrading', well I'm not really, you're completely biased, but I'm just making the point. The Bulls and Bucks will continue to stay middle of the pack in the East. The Magic on the other hand, haven't regressed at all. They will field exactly the same team that they took to the conference Finals. As I stated, mindless delusional opinion. 3 point shooting and post play? What other ways are there to score nowadays? The mid range game is dead. There's only so many ways a player can score. That number is roughly 2. I think I'm correct in saying that you of all people know what the Magic need on their team. Pietrus and Reddick are plenty for wing defense if its needed so desperately, but it rarely is because Carter and whoever they play alongside Carter is usually enough. It's actually 57% Effective Field Goal Percentage, not True Shooting, but it's the same thing. And since you've brought up numbers, Richardson's counterpart (the person he's defending) shot 48% eFG, was forced into 2.5 turnovers (compared to Richardson's 1.4) and has a PER equal to Richardson's (15.5 PER) per 48mins. I don't care what kind of defender he is. Barnes in all honesty was too inconsistent to be a good defender anyway. The fact is that statistically contains his player every 48minutes he's on the court. I have a feeling someone is a little bit bitter that Magic aren't getting any worse and will continue to contend for best team in Florida and in the Southeast Division.

Just saw that Reddick signed the offer sheet for 3 years/$19 million. It doesn't seem reasonable to pay Reddick $6-6.5 million per year on average. But Otis Smith overpayed to get Brandon Bass and Marcin Gortat last off-season so anything is possible.

Uhuh. What support do you have for this?

Redd? You're not telling me that you think Redd is going to be on the bench behind Salmons, are you? The Bucks haven't had a bad off-season, but they haven't made any real steps forward. I mean, Gooden and Maggette are good acquisitions, but good doesn't win you many more games. Gooden has been on 9 teams in 8 years and the only time he's playing well is when he's on a bad team during the final months of a season. If I recall, he was okay for the Spurs and okay for the Cavaliers when he played for them, but both teams could have used any other forward and they would have been at exactly the same place as they were with Gooden. Signing Gooden seemed more a move that made sense because of his good trade value and low price more than it did a signing for a player they expect to be there for more than a season or two. As for Maggette.. well at least they have another scorer, albeit a selfish one. But the Bucks problem has been a lack of a go-to scorer when Redd goes out. At least Maggette can be counted upon to step up and provide. I like Maggette, just not for the Bucks.

Didn't Reddick sign a deal with Chicago recently? And Barnes was speculated to leave as early as Orlando's exit from the Playoffs. I'm happy with Richardson as well. Two low-key, but very good signings in a row for us.

Havn't really paying much attention to basketball recently so I don't know what's been going on. Still, if Aroyo + the players you mentioned come back, that's 6 players back. 50% of the team.

^ Jermaine? Mario Chalmers? Carlos Aroyo? If they bring back the guys you mentioned, thats 7 players from the previous roster including the ones I named. That's quite a lot of the roster back considering they only need to carry 12. Signing LeBron + Bosh pushes them to 9 players; signing their rookies pushed them to 11 or 12 (I think they drafted two or three?). That's all speculation though. They may not want to re-sign anyone and start from scratch completely.

I think it'll be similar to what it looked like last season... plus LeBron and Bosh. Unless the Miami organization doesn't want the players back, you'd have to be stupid to leave a team who has the potential to be something very special.

Where did I say anything about assists? Where did I say anything about him being a good passer? Who said anything about him playing 36 minutes? I have to say, you have me confused. Not because I don't understand what you're saying, I get it, you don't like Chris Duhon for some reason, but I don't understand why specifically you're saying it. Did you just feel like posting something so you wrote the first thing that came to your head? Because nothing you wrote had anything to do with what you quoted me for. And who says 'lol @ you' anymore? Your attempts at being condescending are frankly a little embarassing since I now have to reply to them. I'll make it simple for you. I said he's good with the pick and roll. David Lee and Chris Duhon actually rated as quite an efficient pick and roll tandem. Sports journalists all around agree with me: "What the team is left with is Chris Duhon, a player whose pick-and-roll ability is right on top of the league in terms of efficiency" - that was from SNY.tv and there are a host of others. I feel like I'm a reliable poster, but if you'd like a link to where that's from, I'll gladly give you one. Also, google "Chris Duhon - Pick and Roll efficiency" and you'll have a whole number of articles to sift through about Duhon's efficiency. You wont do it, but it's a suggestion, at least. Adjusting from giving the ball to David Lee to giving it to Dwight Howard in pick and roll situations shouldn't be a difficult task, either. For four seasons now Orlando has been built around pick and roll offenses and players chucking threes. That's our bail out plan. In Orlando, if you're shot isn't falling, keep throwing up threes. You may not like it in New York (but who are you to talk when you've lost 50+ games for 9 straight seasons), but in Orlando, we like our players to shoot threes and to shoot lots of them. The skill and efficiency of our three point shooter (to which Duhon will not be a part of given his .362 three point percentage) is the backbone which helps us win games. You can badmouth Duhon all you like, but Duhon is actually going to be an important player to us next season. You can mark those word if you like. Didn't New York just pay a 100 million for Amar'e Stoudemire for 5 years? And you have the nerve to criticise a four year, 15 million dollar deal? Sigh, where do you idiots breed?

Haslem can sign for more because he has bird years. So can Richardson if his contract (withholding being traded) is older than three years. They can both re-sign for more than just the veterans minimum. Miami can essentially throw any amount they want at them. The rest of their players, too. They wont have a hard time re-signing players now that they have the a winning core.

When the list is lmited to Jason Williams and Anthony Johnson and Rafer Alston for part of a season, somehow I don't think I'm going to regret it too much. It's been proven that he's efficient in running pick and rolls and shooting threes - the two things a player needs to be successful in the Orlando system. I think Duhon wiill be just finE.

Duhon signed with MLE money. MLE is roughly 4.5 million; we signed Duhon to 3.7 million so we still have some MLE money left over. Signing Fisher to 5 million a year first of all doesn't work anyway and second, gives us no room for anything other than minimum contracts. I don't see why there's so much negativity. Duhon is the best back up point guard we've had in years.

It's not harsh, just understandable. Stephenson has been in the newspapers more for his off-court behaviour than for his on-court efforts in the last few years and considering that most players who have off-court troubles usually dont amount to much, it first off wasn't surprising to see him slip to mid second round territory in the draft nor is it surprising thay many expect him to ultimately fail as an NBA player because of his immaturity and selfish attitude. Out of high school, I didn't like him. He thought he was better than he was and thought that his skill entitled him to act better than those around him - examples include his misdemeneor (spelling there is shocking) and being suspended for fighting with a teammate. And then came the drama with the college selection which seemed to drag on for at leats a year. Again, he acted like he was more important than he actually was. And then I saw him play.. On the court, he's amazing. A top 10 talent. If Paul George was the tenth pick for the Pacers, then it's not unreasonable to think that Stephenson, without his issues, would have gone top 10 as well. I think Stephenson's problem isn't that he necessarily wants to be 'the man', but that he doesn't know anything else. At Cincy, he played within the team structure and wasn't a big complainer. He just didn't know what to do when he didn't have the ball. Nevertheless, if Jamal Crawford can make a living being a fundamentally weak, slightly oversized tweener guard, then even in a slightly more limited role, I think anything is possible for Stephenson. It's also not completely uncommon to see guys who can score the way Stephenson can end up being valuable assets to whatever team they're on.

Lots of rookies played more than four minutes a game for their teams..

What's the basis for that? One Summer League game? He played 4 minutes per game in only 13 games last season for a big man lacking Oklahoma team whose best center was Nenad Krstic. Eventually he might turn out to be a good investment for Oklahoma. However, he wont be getting anywhere close to the minutes you're predicting any time in the forseeable future due to a lack of ability to actually play at the NBA level consistently and effectively.

His performance in the summer league today was awesome. 21 points and a few highlight plays as well. He was guarded by Randle most of the game, who is listed as a generous 5' 10"; nevertheless it was definitely impressive to see him tear it up like he did. Though by no means should he be playing as a full timepoint guard, he's going to make a lot of people regret passing him up. Young, talented and can score the ball as well as any other rookie or second year player out there - I wish Orlando would have picked him up instead of Daniel Orton (ugh).

I'm in as well if that's alright. I'll probably send you one tonight (my time, obviously).

When are you going to give this up? I also remembering liking some of your picks as well but you've never brought that up. Remind me to never have sex with your mum. You'll hold it against me for so long.. no, wait.. too late. AboveLegit, good mock. I really should do one. I have so much time at the moment, I think I might get one started sometime soon.

His lane work was fifth best, his 3/4 sprint was better than average (no point in ranking here considering every player tested was between 3.10 and 3.70, Turner being on the high end of the scale) and his vertical was damn impressive considering his playing style and that other notables in his range included Jordan Crawford (34.5), Lance Stephenson (33.0), Patrick Patterson (33.5) and Al-Farouq Aminua (33.5). What's not impressive?

You have a lot to say for a team that's still 3-2 down, but when it comes to the Lakers/Phoenix series, the only remakr you've made is, "Suns don't stand a chance." I'd like an explination of why a team who's looked clearly superior by a long shot in the last two games doesn't stand a chance despite being even with the team who's apparently supposed to dominate them.

There are two that I've recently listened to that 'I just like' Big Jet Plane - Angus and Julia Stone and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQSxwzOngMU Tonight, Tonight - The Smashing Pumpkins ---- very sory if they're not inbedded. Neither are lyrically graceful, nor is the music all that good. But both are so inspirational, so adventourous in how they make you feel, yet both make you feel so down to earth at the same time. There haven't been too many songs that have touched me that well.

I think the problem with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the gaping plotholes in almost every chapter. There were four or five times where I've just had to stop and flick back a few pages to make sure I didn't miss anything; I didn't most of the time. Apparently Dick was pretty methed up while he was writing this novel, so it sort of explains the plot holes. Just want to throw it out there - the title - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - is the epitome of science fiction titles and will never be beaten! I highly recommend. I loved it. I'm not sure where, but you made a passing reference to The Great Gatsby. You know, as a 16 year old teen, I absolutely hated it for what I felt was the wrong portrayal of the American Dream (Like I know, I'm Australian, lol), but having re-read it this year, I actually really liked it. It's probably the most cultured novel I've read in a while, to be honest.