Diesel

JVR! The heir to Knuble. They should get him playing this year. And I wasn't specifically talking about in our organization, but a FA would be nice as well. I'd rather stay away from some dude that's over 40. I'm tired of injuries. The guy didn't even do anything last year so I don't see what makes people think he's going to be even better when he's only getting older.

Most of the opinions I get would be from sixer fans so I'm seeing what OTR thinks the best jersey to get would be. http://nba.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/p5319083dt.jpg http://images.footballfanatics.com/productImages/_206000/FF_206044_l.jpg or this jersey, but Thad instead of Iggy http://nba.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/p5268403reg.jpg I'm leaning towards one right now, but I just want to see what OTR thinks.

No video, no proof. Who knows if he even dunked on him or if it was one of those lame [expletive]s where he dunked in the same vicinity as LeBron. The camera guys could be making the entire [expletive] up about LeBron asking them to confiscate the tapes too to get their 5 minutes of fame. Noone knows. Was Skip Bayless there? No. Skip Bayless can go suck a fat one because he doesn't know [expletive].

lol my friends sister goes to UNC and had a class with Hansborough before. He told me his sister would say he would just stare off for the entire class and that she thought he was retarded.

Him and Forsberg were an amazing duo when they played together and it was just nasty. Joe Sakic seems to be one of the few remaining big names from the 90s that was still paying. I love seeing guys that play their entire career with one team like Sakic did. Great leader and I wish him luck.

Shanahan is an old penis licker. We don't need his old [expletive] on our team. I'd rather have a young guy get those minutes.

Amare sucked this year because of himself. Shaq had nothing to do with it. The season in which Phoenix acquired Shaq, Amare had the best stretch of his career scoring the ball so you can't blame his struggles solely on Shaq. Dwyane Wade(when Shaq was on the Heat) had an inferior shot to LeBron James of today yet that didn't stop that squad from winning it all. Cleveland's cast is superior to that cast as well. Shaq got 16.5 PPG and 8.5 RPG against Bosto on 63% shooting. Against Orlando he did even better getting 19.0 PPG and 11 RPG while shooting 70% from the field. He also got Dwight in foul trouble pretty well during the games and this year Orlando won't have a Martin Gortat to come in and give them some solid minutes. Their going to have to rely on a scrub to not get owned too badly. Cleveland will take that kind of production against the top Eastern Conference guns in the playoffs this year.

I think the whole point of trading Boozer is to give them more financial flexibility with Millsap. Utah is a smart organization and there's no way they see Tyrus Thomas as better than Millsap.

I like how the only reason pro Devin Harris supporters give is "Rondo has KG, Allen, and Pierce on his team". Seriously. Rondo was the MVP of Boston in the playoffs and as someone who watched all their playoff games. Anyone that watched Rondo in the playoffs can tell he was the one carrying that team and making plays for them. Ray Allen had 13 PPG on 19% shooting from downtown in the Orlando series yet it still went 7 games. Some help. Pierce averaged about 42% shooting in the playoffs as a whole. It was Rondo who kept Boston alive for his long as they were

Wow this might be the worst contract I've ever seen. Varejao does nothing offensively but finish open lay-ups from LeBron and set picks. He isn't even a good defensive player, just a player that hustles a lot and picks up a lot of fouls. This contract is absolutely terrible. Varejao is worth like 4 million a year.

The Giants are like 7 games above .500. Since 2002 they havn't done [expletive], but lose games. They havn't proven anything to rid themselves of the [expletive]ty team label. They could very well be back below .500 if they get into a slump.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/319047856_dbf1ef3e92.jpg

Tim Lincecum because I enjoy the last 3 letters of his name. I think I'd rather have him. From my understanding he is a very very good pitcher who plays on a [expletive]ty team. Hamels hasn't looked that great this year and hasn't been at his World Series form yet.

It's because Michael Jordan was that damn good. I'm not sure if you read my post, but Nick Anderson noticed he wasn't up to his usual game and noticed some rustiness. A guy he was playing against. Cooper left because the Lakers didn't want him anymore. Neither did any team. He went over to play in Italy because the Lakers didn't want him anymore. He lost a step by 1990 and wasn't nearly the same defensive stopper that he was a few years prior to that. Kareem Abdul Jabbar at age 40 and an old Michael Cooper are far from Kobe Bryant and PAu Gasol too so don't even try it. Cooper couldn't get a job and Kareem was averaging 14 PPG and 5 RPG in his last year. Kobe Bryant is the best player in the NBA and Gasol was an All NBA player.

I didn't realize big Z was an expiring contract until just now. If LeBron opts out this year Cleveland has 46 million coming off the books with LeBron, Shaq, Big Z combined. That leaves the Cavs with roughly 30 million under the CAP. Now imagine they sign Wade to a max contract. Do the same for LeBron with the Bird rights and then retain Shaq. Does anyone else see this as a possibliity or what? That team would have some serioues potential. Wade is talking like he wants out any maybe he wouldn't mind reuniting with Shaq and his friend LeBron to give the NBA one of it's all-time great teams.

I've seen a deal that consisted of all-star Pau Gasol in the prime of his career for Kwame Brown, Marc Gasol, and Crittenton. Gasol is better than Bosh and Beasley is better and has more potential than everyone in that package LA gave up. You don't trade Wade. What an idiotic question. He is in the prime of his career and a top 3 player in the league. Trading him sets the franchise back another decade. You try and surround him with pieces and wait for opportunities. The Heat want to pair him with Bosh in 2010, but let's hope Wade has the patience to wait.

Hopefully the Phillies are back for good now. Looked really good tonight. The Jayson Werth grand slam was the biggest [expletive] slap of the night IMO

dude looks like a manlet too. That's really impressive though. I'd like to see what his workout routine looks like.

Interesting discussion. I'm not sure which side I would go with. You could always improve both ways. Ball Handling and jump shots are learned through repetition as well as lateral quickness by moving side to side picking your feet up as fast as you can. Defense requires more Basketball IQ though as it's important to know your oppenents tendencies. I think it's easier to learn offense though. Just takes a lot of repetition.

brah you said in quotations that Kobe Bryant is a better player than Michael Jordan. I'm not talking about first few seasons in the NBA. Your saying overall and in general Kobe Bryant is a better player which is not the case. He was rusty from playing so little during that entire year. It's only obvious. It's amazing how he can just come in during the playoffs and score 63 points in a game. Try not playing basketball for a good 6 months or so. See if your shot is effected from that and come back to talk to me. Yes Horace Grant was a key contributer of the team. Point? All championship teams have key contributers. Take Lamar Odom off this years Lakers and they wouldn't have won it all. Great Teams win championships and great players only help boosting the percentage of winning. Obviously a team of Jordan and 4 Rookies isn't going to win championships nor would a team of Kobe + scrubs, or anyone else in the history of basketball in that case. Right here brah "What exactly did Michael Jordan do better than Kobe Bryant? He's not a better pure scorer, not a better defender(most over-rated aspect of his game), and he did NOT make his team-mates better." Like the 2nd thing you said in your initial post. Exactly so the only teams it effects are the expansion teams. None of which Jordan has to even encounter in the playoffs where he dominated and won championships against the legit clubs. It didn't matter one bit. Magic was injured in the 90 Finals which was the year before that. Maybe that's what your thinking of. The Lakers posted a 112.1 Offensive Rating that year and a 105.0 defensive rating. In 1988 they won the championship with a 113.1 Offensive Rating and a 107.3 Defensive rating. Very similar numbers and they were actually superior defensively even without Kareem and Cooper. When the Lakers won the title in 1988 Kareem was 40 years old and averaging 14 PPG and 5 RPG in the playoffs. The production of Vlade and Perkins was easily superior to that old Kareem. The Lakers were only on the downfall because that would be Magic Johnsons last real season with the team. They were still winning the same amount of regular season games they'd normally win that year. Noone saw his HIV thing coming. Ok dude I just owned you on your claim of Jordan losing to teams with dominant bigmen and I was merely explaining some more details about that one loss. The Bulls wre 31-31 when Jordan decided to come back and 14-3 with him playing. Had Jordan been playing he would've been in better basketball shape and posted superior numbers to his 27 PPG and they would've gotten a better seed. It's a known fact Jordan wasn't in the best of shape that series. He airballed a potential game winning shot and had the ball stripped from him which blew the game against Orlando. Nick Anderson had some words to say too upon the Bulls elimination "He didn't look like the old Michael Jordan," remarked Magic guard Nick Anderson. Anderson took a lot of heat for that comment, but it was true. Deep down, Jordan knew it, too. So after the Bulls were eliminated by the Magic in six games, he rededicated himself to becoming the old Michael Jordan again. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1250345 The guy was playing baseball for a year and a half. Obviously he was rusty and we saw what happened when he rededicated himself to playing basketball again. Russell: The Celtics also lost Hall of Fame player Sam Jones to retirement the same year as Russell. Two Hall of Fame players retiring is going to take quite the toll. Wilt: Jerry West(the effing logo!) missed more than 50 games the next season and didn't play in the playoffs. Probably the hird best SG of all-time missing the majority of the year. Combine that with losing one of the top 3 centers of all-time and your going to see a huge drop off. Oscar: 18 PPG scorer Lucious Allen also missed the entire season. Bird: His team was only worse by 3 games, I'm not sure where your getting your information from. Magic: James Worthy missed half the year and the playoffs as well. Divac missed more than half the year as well. Injuries certainly did it's job as did the loss of Magic. Most of these can be explained. Losing a HOF player is bad enough, but there were other losses. The one that really surprised me was Oscar Robertson though. That decrease was crazy.

Bobby Jones(former Sixer all-star in the 80s)- he was at my friends church so I met him at a breakfeast thing where you could just talk to him and stuff. I remember it was the morning after the Spectrum game this year as I was wearing the shirt . He gave me some tips on defense and was just overall a really great guy. Brian Dawkins- I saw him at the gym doing his workout on April 1st this year. I'll always remember that because noone would believe me and thought I was April Fooling them. I felt like such a badass though working out in the same room as Brian Dawkins hahha. I didn't want to bug him too much because he had headphones on so I got the impression he didn't want to be bothered, but I had to meet my favorite football player of all-time . I just shook his hand, wished him luck in Denver, asked him why he was still in the area, and let him know of my mancrush on him. Winston Justice- at yankees stadium for the Phils-Yankees game a few months ago. Flyers and Phightins were there as well. I basically just shook his hand and told him to win a superbowl this year lol. dude was mammothly. And I'm pretty sure Akers went to my school before when I was little, but I don't remember it at all. I got a signed team photo though with him and Mike Bartrum's signatures on it. I mind as well add this even though it isnt me, but my dad worked at the Marriot when he was younger and it was right next to the Philly airport. He would see a lot of the visting teams players and personnell come in. The only sport he really likes though is football so he didn't know them by names, but he says he met Larry Bird and exchanged some words with him.

ECN before I begin let me tell you my last two paragraphs were to kingfish, not to you since you seemed confused. Then don't open up your first post with a statement such as "Kobe Bryant is a better player than Michael Jordan" or "What exactly did Michael Jordan do better than Kobe Bryant?" You basically opened up your statement comparing the two. And MJ may have had a losing record, but his rookie year be brought the Bulls to the playoffs for their first of 14 consecutive appearences in the Jordan era. MJ's 2nd year in the league he played 18 games in the regular season starting only 7 of them because of a broken foot. I'm not sure if that year should even count. However in the playoffs he scored 63 points against arguably the greatest team of all-time in the 86 Celtics which is the highest amount of points ever scored in the playoffs. Ever. More than Kobe or Wilt. He averaged an astonishing 44 PPG on 51% shooting in the series. This is coming from a 22 year old kid against arguably the greatest NBA team of all-time and when he's coming off a severe foot injury. Yeah You said that Kobe is a better defender than Jordan which isn't the case. You mentioned Jordan didn't always guard the best player. I reminded you that Kobe didn't either who you claim is better(which isn't the case). Young Jordan was way better defensively than any Kobe. I don't care. Dirk has a much better overall offensive skill-set and can get a different arsenal of shots off than Prime Shaq, but that doesn't mean he's a better scorer. It's all about being dominant and nobody could stop MJ or force him into bad shots. It's why he routinely shot around 50% nearly his entire career. lol dude just wow. You use a watered down league as an excuse for Jordan's dominance. I hope you know that by bringing down the "overall quality" this affects every team including Jordan's bulls. Jordan proved to be able to play against the top competition and dominating them so I see a watered down NBA as a bull[expletive] excuse. Hakeem, Shaq, Ewing, Robinson, Barkley, Malone/Stockton all had the luxury of playing in this watered down NBA during their prime yet all of them walked away with 0 titles during the years in which Jordan played a full season. I was talking about the 80s when I mentioned the Celtics, Pistons, and Lakers. The Lakers were still a good basketball team in 91 by the way. James Worthy was only 29 at the time and was around the prime of his career. Magic Johnson averaged near a triple double for the entire playoffs with an amazing 22 PPG, 13 APG, and 8 RPG. He was still Magic as he was still All NBA 1st team and was the MVP of the league just one year ago. Byron Scott was still playing at a high level. And Sam Perkins and Vlade Divac more than made up for the loss of Kareem combining for 31 PPG and 15 RPG in the playoffs providing legit inside forces. The Lakers were still a damn good team. They went 11-3 in the playoffs up until facing Jordan's Bulls. Yeah but how many times did Shaq lose to guys like Shaq, Ewing, Robinson, Hakeem, and Zo? He didn't see much of Hakeem and Robinson since they were out West, but he was 10-1 in playoff series against Shaq, Ewing, Zo with his only loss coming in a year in which he just jumped back into the NBA right at the end of the year. It was really his preseason for 95-96 in which he came back ready and determined leading his team to an NBA record 72 wins. People like bringing up the 55 wins Pippen led the Bulls to in 94. What about the Bulls in 95 before Jordan came? Not many people realize that team was 31-31 when Jordan announced he would come back. Jordan only averaged 27 PPG though in his comeback which was uncharacteristic of the 30+ he would get year in and year out. Not to mention he was working on his baseball game for the past year and a half. The Bulls went 13-4 with Jordan back and it helped them get 47 wins which wasn't that good of a seed. Nonetheless without Homecourt they upset the higher seeded Charlotte team with a "dominant bigman". With a full season to get in basketball shape and if Jordan returned earlier to get the Bulls homecourt throughout the playoffs there's little doubt Jordan's Bulls would've been playing Hakeem in the Finals that year. The guy got back into basketball right at the moment after playing baseball he wasn't preparing at all.

I forget where I heard it, but here's an article that mentions it as well as some other things Kobe did as a leader. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bryant-ariza-gasol-2464110-lakers-jackson

Arenas has played like 15 games the past two years. Noone even knows if he'll be that same all-star talent that he was and I Don't think he's going to be as good. If he is playing at a high level Washington will be an alright team. This team still has no bigs though and all their good players are perimeter oriented.

Maybe if Devin didn't get owned by "D-Whistle" and if he could guard him then he would have a ring. Letting Wade average almost 40 PPG for the final 4 games isn't exactly something that's going to help your team win the title.