Built Ford Tough

I'm thinking about picking this up tomorrow during the usual Boxing Day Sale that they have at places like Future Shop (depending on how much it costs, don't have much money right now with car payments and Christmas and all) and I had a couple of questions. I am sure that they have already been answered earlier in this thread, but I really don't feel like reading through 17 pages of posts, lol. 1. What is the Assoociation mode, or whatever it is called, like? What kind of changes were made to it that makes it better and/or worse than last years version of the game? 2. What kind of improvements did they make to the gameplay? Give me some of the positives and negatives, if you have the time. 3. Does My Player get boringly repetitive or does it have good replay value to it? I find that some of the modes like these get too repetitive and/or easy which takes away some of the replay value and fun in them. 4. How difficult is this game on the hardest difficulty? I recently stopped playing NHL 10 (reason why I am finally thinking of picking this up, lol) because it got to the point where I was beating the computer 8-2 on the hardest difficulty with AI boosts and everything. Does 2K10 get to that point as well, or is it pretty good for always giving you a challenge when playing the AI (don't really play online much)? I don't expect anybody to take the time to answer all of these questions, but I would appreciate the info on the game any way that I can get it.

I got winshield wipers for my car, Theo Fluery's biography "Playing With Fire", a cheap biography of Alexander Ovechkin and a sweater.

This has been one sloppy game so far. The Magic look like complete [expletive] out there and have tied a franchise record for the least points scored in a half with 27. I'm not sure of the exact number, but Pietrus and Carter have at least 18 of those points (I imagine it is more considering it was 18 in the first quarter, I haven't paid much attention to the 2nd half). Howard has 2 points in the game. The Magic only scored 8 points in the 2nd quarter, lol. The Celtics have looked pretty bad as well. They only have 37 points of their own and have turned the ball over quite a bit. I don't know the exact number, again, but Rondo himself already has like 6 turnovers or something like that. He is looking like he will put up a triple double with points, rebounds and turnovers. The one thing that we have to give credit to is the defense being played. A lot of these turnovers have been forced and there have not been a lot of open jumpers. Both of these teams have been getting after it defensively, which is the only thing that has made this game somewhat interesting to watch.

The thing that I love the most is that I honestly don't see any of these teams turning it around this season. The Nets are an absolute lost cause and are 100% tanking the season. The Sixers are just way too dysfunctional and have talent that doesn't coexist. The Knicks, while they have played well recently, they are the Knicks. If Toronto can take care of business when they play their own division I see absolutely no reason why they can't get 10 or so wins off of these three teams alone. If they take care of business when they play their own division, it could go a long, long, way towards them finishing around the 5th or 6th seed.

I just finished watching Raptors Post-Up and on it they said that Calderon may return to the lineup December 30th when the Raptors play the Bobcats. If he doesn't return then, they said that they would expect him to pay on January 2nd against the Bobcats. Just thought I would pass the info along for those of you who haven't heard. Hopefully they keep Jack in the starting lineup though. I imagine that they would for the first couple of games so that Calderon can get his legs back under him, but I want to see Jack in the starting lineup as a permanent fixture.

My dad does and it has a lot of good info. I can't remember how much it costs per year, but if it is a reasonable price I would definitely say that it is worth it. It has some very interesting articles.

When Calderon comes back I would rather see the Raptors start Jack and bring Calderon off of the bench, just like I wanted to see Calderon come off the bench back when Ford was here. I just don't like Calderon as a starting point guard in the NBA and have ever really liked him in that role. His game is so much more suited to come off the bench as far as I am concerned. Jack fits in better with the starting lineup as he is better at working off of the ball than Jose is, which enables the Raptors to utilize Turkoglu more and let him run the offense more often. Jack is the better defender as well (although Jack is nothing special defensively either), which fits in a lot better with the offensive oriented starting lineup. By bringing Calderon off of the bench you have a great change of pace for the Raptors from Jack's more offensive/slashing oriented game and that key element that they had with the Ford/Calderon duo back. His defensive problems won't be as magnified because he won't be playing all of his minutes against the opposing teams starting point guard. His game won't be nearly as redundant either, because he won't be on the floor with Turkoglu all of the time. I have absolutely no problems with Calderon coming off of the bench. Yeah, he is making $9M this season but Jack is only making around $4.5M or so, which amounts to around $13.5M or so this season, and eventually it gets up to around $16M. That isn't absurd to have locked into one position in my opinion. It isn't ideal considering the talent level of these two players, but it is something that I can deal with. Banks' contract is the problem as far as I am concerned. Obviously if there is a trade out there that makes the team better, then by all means move Calderon, but I have no problems seeing them bring him off of the bench at first and see how the team plays with him in that role. He could have a large impact on the game if he were to come off of the bench, in my opinion. If a trade surfaces though, by all means make it.

So with the Raptors winning tonight in Detroit and the Bucks losing to the Wizards, the Raptors have moved into the 6th seed in the East. To finish off 2009 the Raptors play Detroit and Charlotte, both games at home. The Bucks play San Antonio at home and then head to Charlotte and Orlando. Realistically, I see o reason why the Raptors can't win both of there games (I wouldn't bet on it but this is a much better team at home) while I would definitely be surprised to see the Bucks go 3-0 to close out the year, in fact, I would be surprised by anything better than 1-2. Hopefully the Raptors can put a little bit of distance between theirsevles and the Bucks because the first little stretch in Janurary is absolutely killer with Boston twice, San Antonio and Orlando (and somebody else who I forget, Cleveland maybe?). They are 2.5 games back of Miami for the 5th seed as well, who play New York, Indiana and a back to back with New Orleans and San Antonio. If the Raptors can manage to keep pace with the Bucks and Heat (and every other team in the playoff hunt) up until the end of January, they could really make some noise in Feburary where their schedule eases up considerably.

Lol, that had to have been one of the strangest endings to a quarter that I have ever seen. For those of you who aren't watching the game, Will Bynum lost control of the ball, picked it up just past half and then put up a prayer over top of Bosh. The shot ended up going in, but the shot clock expired prior to Bynum releasing the ball and because of this, the Raptors got the ball back with under a second left (not sure how much time exactly) and Belinelli threw up a 3/4 court shot, which, you guessed it, went in. However, he didn't get it off in time and it wasn't counted. I don't ever recall seeing something like happen before. Both shots were absolutely amazing. Too bad neither of them counted.

Troy Polamalu has played in 5 games this season. He wasn't carted off the field only to return a couple of minutes later to get an interception or anything. Paul Pierce was carried off the floor by his teammates and taken to the back in a wheelchari. He returned in like a 1:30 (of game time) and scored 15 points in that quarter. These situations are totally comparable. Noramlly I would respond in a calm manner and state a rational opinion, but after this absolutely terrible post of yours, I don't give a [expletive] what you think on the matter. As far as I am concerned, you lost all credability once you comapred the situation to Troy Polamalu.

37 points from the Pistons at the half. I am attributing most of this due to the fact that the Pistons are missing Rip, Prince and Gordon, while Bynum and Villaneuva both aren't healthy, however I haven't watched a lot of the game, so if anybody could clarify whether or not it is the Pistons lacking firepower or the Raptors playing good defense being the reason for the Pistons poor offensive half, I would appreciate it. Stuckey looks like he has struggled big time though, which is an encouraging sign for the Raptors defense. Last I saw he was shooting 1-9 or something like that. Raptors better go in for the kill at the start of the 2nd half though. I realy don't want to see another meltdown and the Raptors win a close game that really should've been a blowout.

I'll be flipping back and forth between this game, the Leafs game and team Canada's pre tournament game against the Czech's so I probably won't be all that active in this thread. From what I have raed Gordon, Hamilton and Prince are all possibly missing todays game, which means that the raptors have absoltuely no excuses to not win this game. Detroit isn't much worse than the Raptors when healthy, but if your opponent are missing their 3 best players, you better win. I have also heard that Charlie V is nursing an injury as well, which should limit his effectiveness as well. The Raptors are a poor road team, but even that should not be an excuse for losing to the undermanned Pistons. If the Raptors don't win this game, I will officially start the trade Bosh and tank for John Wall movement.

I honestly question how anybody could believe that Pierce was actually injured on that play (not saying that anybody in here has said that). Sure, he may have tweaked an ankle or something but the extent that he milked it was absolutely sickening. He "had" to be carried off of the court by teammates and then he "had" to be taken to the back in a wheelchair, yet he came back a minute and a half later completely fine with no effects on his game? Yeah right. I remember when that happened and so many Celtic fans were praising Pierce like the 2nd coming of Bernard King or something like that. It was really humerous to see their reaction to the rest of the fan bases telling them that it was obviously milked for every bit of drama/symphathy that could possibly come out of it.

Here is a quote from Triano that talks about how much easier the Raptors schedule gets over their next 30 games. I haven't looked at the rest of the leagues schedules, but I would imagine that a swing of 20 games would have to be considered fairly drastic. The Raptors have played the 2nd most games in the NBA thus far, I believe.

So far this season the Raptors have had one of the toughest schdueles in the entire NBA, if not the toughest schedule. We all know this, and we knew that it would be the case coming into the season. Raptor fans were full of optimism coming into the season with the mvoes that were made in the offseason and we all had playoff aspirations, some even had aspirations of making the 2nd round. Some of these expectations of come to a crashing halt with the Raptors 13-17 start. However, after looking around at the schedule and what not, there is still some reason for optimisim when it comes to the Raptors. So far this season, the Raptors have lost 17 out of their 30 games. Out of those 17 games, 13 of them have come against teams that are above .500 and they are: Orlando - .750 Dallas - .714 San Antonio - .600 Phoenix - .643 Denver - .679 Utah - .571 Orlando - .750 Boston - .808 Phoenix - .643 Atlanta - .731 Atlanta - .731 Miami - .520 Orlando - .750 4 of those 17 losses have come against teams below .500 and they are: Memphis - .444 Charlotte - .385 Washington - .320 Milwaukee - .462 So if you average all of these numbers out, the combined winning percentage of teams that the Raptors have lost to is .618 However, if you take out the 4 losses against the sub .500 teams you have a winning percentage of .684 The Raptors 13 wins this season have come against the following teams: Cleveland - .724 Detroit - .407 New Orleans - .462 Chicago - .385 LA Clippers - .444 Miami - .520 Indiana - .346 Washington - .320 Chicago - .385 Minnesota - .179 Houston - .593 New Jersey - .071 New Orleans - .462 The Raptors victims this season have a combined winning percentage of .407 However, if you take out the Nets and T'Wolves attrocities, it is .459 Now I am usually a very pessimistic fan (can you blame me though? lol) but these numbers do have to give you some hope heading forward. They basically show that the Raptors are losing to the teams that they are supposed to lose to, while beating the teams that they are supposed to beat (obviously there are a few exceptions, but those balance each other out). This, combined with the fact that the Raptors schedule gets substantially easier after the month of Janurary while teams like in front of the Raptors like the Heat and Bucks schedules get harder than what they have endured thus far, particularly the Bucks, is reason for optimism from Raptor fans. Another thing to look forward to is the fact that the Raptors have already played 12 games against the superior Western Conference, 10 against the best division in the East, the Southeast, and only 2 against the Atlantic division, which aside from Boston is incredibly weak. So what do you guys think about this? Am I just a depressed Raptors fan reaching for something to look forward to, or do you agree that this is reason for optimisim heading forward?

Because you are acting like it would be absolutely terrible to sign a 25/10, 25 year old All Star, top 5 power forward in the league. Obviously the Nets are aiming at LeBron James, but so are about 10 other teams in the offseason. So you are honestly telling me that if LeBron James resigns in Cleveland or goes to New York or any where other than New Jersey you still wouldn't want Chris Bosh on your team? Right...

Bost doesn't suck at D. He is not a good defener, but he looks a lot worse than he really is because of the complete incompetence of Andrea Bargnani and the Raptors in general when it comes to defense. He is being forced to try and make up for the countless amounts of defensive blunders committed by Andrea Bargnani, Jose Calderon and a number of other Raptor players. He is a good positional defender who is usually very good with his rotations, when he is given enough time to react (lets face it, how many big men are actually able to always have good rotations and be in proper position when their is absolutely no resistance at the point of attack? Not many). He has taken a fairly substantial step forward when it comes to help defense since his rookie season where he was absolutely abysmal at it, as well as man defense (partly due to the fact that he was a 6'10/1, 210 pound 19 year old rookie forced to play center). His man defense isn't anything special by any stretch of the imagination and he gets bullied by bigger, larger players who like to play physical like Dwight Howard, Shaquille O'Neal, Carlos Boozer and any other big bodied center with a good offensive game, but really, Bosh shouldn't be forced to guard opposing centers considering his body frame and the disability that it puts on him. When he is matched up against players of his own body type he is a slightly below average man to man defender. The biggest problem though is that Chris Bosh is being asked to anchor a defense and that is not something that he is simply not capable of. To make matters worse, he is being asked to anchor the defense of a team with arguably the worst defensive point guard and center (at least in terms of players who get significant minutes) in the NBA, a rookie shooting guard who is obviously going to make some rookie mistakes and a poor defensive small forward. I'm not a delusional fan who thinks that Bosh is a good defensive player or anything like that. He is average at best when you factor in his above average help defense with his below average man defense, but he is not a terrible defender like so many people make him out to be. You can throw an elite post defender on the team like a prime Kevin Garnett or Tim Duncan and the Raptors will still be a poor defensive team because of the other 4 players on the floor with them. Lol, so if Chris Bosh is on the same level as Zach Randolph, I guess that Pau Gasol is on that same level as well because there is really no way that you can say Pau Gasol is significantly better than Chris Bosh, or vice-versa. Bosh is a top 4 or 5 power forward in the NBA, who has arguably played the best basketball from this position out of anybody not named Dirk Nowitzki this season. And as if Net fans would actually be upset that they signed Chris Bosh in the offseason. That is golden.

Way to completely miss the point of the thread. I knew that I shouldn't have used Gasol as an example. And how the [expletive] am I criticizing him? You get so damn defensive every single time somebody mentions the Lakers. Its cute, really.

I have thought about making a thread about this for a little while now, but I hever decided to actually make the thread up until now. How much does winning and the market that the player plays in effect how you value that player when it comes to rankings and what not? This may not be a very clear question, so I will try to further explain my point below. When Pau Gasol was in Memphis nobody really compared him to players like Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire and Dirk Nowitzki, whether it was because they didn't feel that he was talented enough, won enough or whatever. When it came to the best power forwards in the NBA, Pau was always considered to be below the first tier (Duncan, Garnett, Dirk, Bosh, Amare) and he was lumped in with guys like Carlos Boozer, Antwan Jamison and David West (good players, but fringe All-Stars year in and year out). However, since he was traded to the Lakers, it seems that his value has almost doubled. Not only is he widely considered to be the superior player over guys like Chris Bosh and Amare Stoudemire, but I have read on different message boards that he is comparable to players like Dirk Nowtizki and is arugably the best power forward in the NBA right now. The funny thing is that Pau Gasol is really not that different of a player from his days in Memphis. Sure, he is a better defender than he was in Memphis (not by much though) and he has been rebounding the ball better this season than he has throughout his career, but he is still basically the exact same player that he was in Memphis. His post game, passing, jump shot, basketball IQ and basically everything aside from his slight improvement in defense and rebounding is the exact same as it was in Memphis, yet he is now considered to be arguably the best power forward in the game today, or at the very least, undoubtedly top 4. The only thing that has changed about Gasol is that he now plays for one of the elite teams in the NBA, arguably the most storied franchise in NBA history and in probably the biggest market and most popular franchise in the league. So that begs the question, how much does the market that you play in and the team that you play on effect your value? PS: This thread isn't specifically designed to talk only about Pau Gasol. I just used him as an example as he was the first player that came to my head that fit this thread idea.

Oh no you didn't! PS: I'll try to post my thoughts later. I don't really feel like thinking up a good response right now, haha.

http://www.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/63531/20091220/murphy_may_be_an_option_for_cavaliers/ What do you guys think of this? Do you think that a trade for Murphy would be in the best interest of the Cavs? I think that Murphy is exactly the kind of power forward that you would want on a team with LeBron and Shaq on it. He is one of the better shooting big men in the game today, he is a very solid rebounder and adequate defender. Having him on the floor with LeBron and Shaq stretches the defense out to the 3 point line which will give both of these two more room to operate down low. He is a great fit for the team if you ask me. A trade of Big Z for Troy Murhpy makes sense for both teams. Cleveland gets the stretch 4 that they need and Indiana sheds Murhpy's contract for the expiring contract of Big Z. It works under the cap as well.

Great job there Devin. You sure are getting the troops fired up to compete every night. Its not like they threw in the towel about 3 minutes into the game last night or anything. I just love it when players spew this kind of BS. Like I, and RD, said earlier in this thread, he is one of the biggest reasons for the teams struggles. It is his piss poor effort and absymal play that has been played a large part in the Nets horrific start. I guess you can't say that his teammates aren't following his lead though. He comes out and plays selfishly and like he doesn't give a [expletive] and the rest of the team follows suit.

Honestly, I don't think that they would be any worse without him. As the season goes along, sure, but as of right now I don't think that it would make much of a difference. Just going by averages, I am sure that the Nets would manage to steal a game or two without Harris in the lineup. They would be bound to run into a team that has a terrible game or something like that.

I don't feel for him one bit, considering a large part of the reason why the Nets are 2-24 this season is his absolutely terrible play. He has been selfish with the ball, shooting absolutely terribly (36% on the season) and has been playing no defense either. Yeah, he has had some injury problems and yeah the Nets don't have the most talented roster but Devin Harris's play is a huge reason why the Nets are sucking this season. He has been absolutely awful. And to think, people thought that Harris was more valuable to the Nets than Carter was last season. I remember when I got into a debate with somebody about who the Nets MVP was and he laughed when I said that it was still Carter. Harris is a good player, don't get me wrong, but he is a good second option at best. An ideal role for him is what he had back in Dallas which was a great, two way, change of pace guard. He simply isn't cut out for this kind of role.

Nate Robinson won last year.