Built Ford Tough

Watching the Lousiville/Syracuse game today got me thinking. The ACC is going to be unreal. Adding Syracuse, Lousiville, Pitt and Notre Dame is going to make that conference nasty. Can you imagine the conference play? Every night you are going to have marquee matchups between some of the biggest names in college basketball. The conference tournament every year is going to be March Madness-lite.

Tough luck for the Spurs since Parker has been playing at an MVP level. Can San Antonio still hold onto first without Parker for most of the stretch run?

Lol at you posting this a month later. Obviously things would be very different if I were to have written this yesterday, as opposed to over a month ago.

This O'Reilly situation is like a bad soap opera. Just when you think it is finally over, something completely random happens.

I think that was a very important win for Gonzaga against BYU tonight. Not that it was some huge showdown for first place in the WCC or something (although Gonzaga did clinch the conference with the win) but because it had been so long since they'd been tested. Since that heartbreaking loss to Butler at Hinkle, Gonzaga had reeled off 10 straight wins and had have outscored their opponents 827-545 during those 10 games. I think getting a hard fought win on the road in a hostile enviroment against a solid opponent in a very physical, tournament style game this late in the season is going to be great preperation for when the tournament does actually start.

Cleveland is on something like a 36-10 run or something over the last quarter or so. Miami was up 22 at one point and are now down by 7. Is Miami just toying with the Cavs to have another 8 point comeback with under two minutes to win again? Maybe their aiming for a double digit comeback this time?

Can we say that the best offseason move was the Warriors acquisition of Jack? Dude has been balling for the Warriors and I think you can make the argument that he has been the MVP of this team. Don't get me wrong, Curry is the better player but the impact Jack has taking over games down the stretch has been invaluable for the Warriors this year. Every time the Warriors are playing a tight game down the stretch, Jack is the one orchastrating everything and coming up with the critical plays. As far as I'm concerned, he is running away with the 6th man of the year award.

CJ Miles just went off for a 11 points in about a minute.

UNC has looked much better since Williams decided to go small and start Hairston. It was after the blowout against Miami that he decided to make the change and they've gone 3-1 since then. Their lone loss was a 5 point loss against Duke in Durham and the 3 wins have all been double digit wins (12 against Virgina, 12 against Georgia Tech and 11 against State). Hariston is averaging 18.5 points and 6 rebounds on 45 FG%. It probably took Williams too long to finally abandon his double post motion offense and go with the 4 guard lineup (even he admits he probably should've made the move earlier and is still adjusting to the lineup), but at least he finally made the change. If UNC can close out ACC play going 3-1 (they play @ Clemson, VS FSU, @ Maryland and VS. Duke) they'll likely lock up an at-large bid (assuming nothing crazy happens in the ACC tournament), which is something I didn't expect 2 weeks ago. I thought they were NIT bound.

Gay went 2-8 in the first half for 6 points. He is 6-7 for 15 points int he 3rd quarter. Gay is one of the streakiest players I've seen.

Yeah and Lucas has a $1.5M player option so I'd be surprised if Telfair is brought back. Like I said in my earlier post, Telfair probably plays 10 games and then goes somehwere else in the offseason.

Just like Blatche, McGee and Young before him, getting rid of Crawford, even if you get nothing in return, is addition by subtraction.

They clearly couldn't have or else they would've. I don't doubt that plenty of teams were interested in Redick, but I do question how much they were willing to give up considering comments he has made about his upcoming free agency. He wants $10M annually, wants to play for a contender and wants to test the market. Taking that into consideration, you can logically assume that that scared off any middle of the road team from offering anything of real value. Then you look at a team like Chicago. He'd be a perfect fit in that lineup but the problem is the money he is after. It is no secret that Chicago doesn't like to pay the tax (correct me if I'm wrong, but this year will be the first year they've ever paid it) and they'd definitely have to go into the tax to retain him. Either that, or they'd have to amnesty Boozer which they don't want to do. This likely prevented them from putting together a real good package conatining something like their future Charlotte pick, Jimmy Butler or Nikola Mirotic's rights. Orlando didn't get a great haul by any means. It is actually terrible. But I highly doubt they had very many real legitimate offers because of the uncertanty around Redick's contractual status. San Antonio was a logical choice, but thinking about it, what could they offer? The 30th pick in the draft? That has negative value in a draft as bad as this considering it just puts 4 years of guaranteed money on your books. There isn't a whole lot there that would appeal to the Magic. Milwaukee was willing to take that chance because they probably figured the reward (a probably playoff spot) was worth the risk (uninspiring young players). That and an insurance policy or even replacement for Monta Ellis should he decide to opt out of his contract or Milwaukee just realizes he sucks and casts him off.

They actually don't have a 2nd pick for a while now. They owe Memphis their 2nd this year and, I believe, in 2016 (might be 15, not 100% sure). I imaine they now owe a 2nd to Phoenix for next year, which would mean they only currently have 1 2nd rounder in the next 4 years. As for the move, whatever. Kind of a waste if you ask me considering they gave up a 2nd for a guy who'll probably play 10 games and leave in the summer, but since the price was so low, you can't really get mad about it. Colangelo probably would've just used it on some European big who'll never even play in the NBA anyways. I figured this would happen since by the sounds of it OKC was asking for way too much for Maynor, probably due to the fact that they own the Raptors pick when you see what they took from Portland. He would've been the ideal candidate for me (based on what was out there) but when that was clearly not going to happen, Telfair was the obvious fall back.

The more I see of McLemore the more and more I sour on him. Don't get me wrong, I still like him more than most prospects in this draft, but I think I got a bit too carried away in my evaluation of him because I happened to always catch games when he was playing well. His lack of ball skills and one-on-one ability would make me a bit worried using a 1st overall pick on him. He has not impressed me at all over the last month or so in any area other than hitting open shots and moving without the rock. Do you really want to use a 1st overall pick on a guy like that, though? Smart was brutal as well, but at least with him you know that even if his shot isn't falling you know you are going to get rebounds, passing, solid defense and a willingness to want the ball in his hands with the game on the line. By the way, I completely agree with you on Withey. He is easily the MVP of that team and they'd be in serious trouble without him.

So Kansas makes, what, 2 shots in 2 overtimes and still manage to pull out a win. As ugly as that game was, I really enjoyed it.

I doubt he gets traded. I think it is more likely that he gets dealt in the summer than tomorrow. I won't completely rule it out, but I'd be somewhat surprised. It's funny, though. A bunch of Raptor fans wanted him back from his elbow injury to try and improve his trade value. They all thought that there was no way he could possibly tank his trade value any lower than what it was prior to his injury. Yet he somehow manages to come back and butcher it even more. It is pretty funny just how little he cares at this point.

Lol.

Not that Toronto is some offensive jugernaut, but man, Memphis has completely shut the Raptors down in this quarter after Anderson channelling his inner MJ. They've got absolutely nothing on offense. Sure, it doesn't help that the Raptors have done a lot of iso, but even the plays where they are getting movement, Memphis is always rotating perfectly, helping at ideal times, and playing fantastic ball denial. Very impressive defense for the Grizzlies to close out this game and get the win. Lol, Gay with another turnover. Is that number 5 for him in the final 5 minutes? Dude trying to play hero ball against his old team.

Raptors playing small against Memphis normal lineup. This means Gay has been guarding Randolph or Gasol and on the other end is being guarded by Randolph. Oddly enough, neither one of these mismatches has been a factor. In fact, Gay hasn't been scored on by either Memphis big and Gay hasn't scored on the other end. In fact, he has had 2 turnovers.

I feel bad for DeMar. Gay's comments made him a dead man walking in this game. Allen was pissed and is taking his anger out on DeMar. Lol at Anderson, though. 11 straight points including 3 3's.

He isn't going back to school. He is still a top 5 pick with the potential of going 1st overall even with this injury. This draft is too weak at the top for him to fall much further than that. A torn ACL is still a very serious injury, but it isn't what it was 10 years ago. Teams aren't going to be scared off as much as they used to be with these types of injuries. PS: Kentucky got their asses handed to them by Tennessee today in their first game without Noel. They were down by, I think, 35 at one point and ended up losing by 30. If you didn't know, Tennessee has had two games this year where they didn't even score over 45 points, yet they almost drop 90 (88 to be exact) on Kentucky without Noel anchoring the middle.

The most impressive thing in this dunk contest was finding out that James White can't dribble a basketball the length of the court.

Lol. First round the East guys with impressive dunks and the West guys sucking. Second round the East guys blow (save Ross, I guess, since he just played it safe) and the West guys with very impressive dunks. EDIT: Well, Faried and Bledsoe at least, Evans was "meh".

Ross holding off on the Carter thing, whatever he had in store. You can see the purple trim of the old Raptors jersey underneath his warm up shirt.