The Goods On The Game, Spurs-Thunder Game 4

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.

The start of the weekend mail

Well, here is today’s offering, have fun with it.

But there’s not much for tomorrow so if you want to get in on the fun, you know how to do it. But please get ‘em in early, I only have the afternoon to work on stuff, Sunday morning starts with another 4 a.m. wakeup call for a 6 a.m. flight to Dallas and then home.

And don’t forget we’re back tonight at 8:30 for an IGBT for those who don’t have other Saturday night plans. I’m not expecting huge attendance.

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Q: Hi Doug! Well, we sadly didn't win the Davis lottery. Now we get to play the mugs game of bandying about names that don't really mean a whole lot, because we have no idea what the seven teams in front of us will do. Oh what fun.

I have a rules question that occurred to me watching the Heat - Celtics game. It concerns the goaltending rule. Lebron smacked the backboard on an early lay up attempt by Rondo when the ball was coming off of it on the way to the rim.

Is that goaltending? It of course wasn't called, but I just wasn't sure if it should have been.

Thanks for the blog and all the work. And thank goodness for the Spurs, and all they're doing to redeem these playoffs. They are playing some beautiful basketball.

Matt S, Toronto

A: Smacking the backboard isn’t goaltending; grabbing the rim or the net or blocking a shot after it’s hit the backboard is. I think that’s the play you were talking about?

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Q: Hi Doug. I read your take on the New Orleans paper cutting back to three days a week. Peter King has something about it in his Monday column, then I read about Canadian papers looking at something similar.

How much longer can we in the GTA expect all four papers to be running and to keep giving excellent and sometimes diverse sports coverage?

Kevin M, Maple

A: That’s a question all of us ask ourselves often, and have for years. You would think, given the economics of the times and the shrinking advertising dollar that there’d be some culling of the flock but not yet. We have seen National Post make some dramatic cuts to its publication schedule as part of the last round of slashes but that is as far as it’s gone.

As a newspaperman, I hope we never lose one, I think competition is good and I have friends at all the other papers; as a realist, I fear for the long-term future of the four. Can’t say which one would vanish, though, because each seems to have a niche of the market.

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Q: Hi Doug: Our Raps have a great opportunity to acquire a good player and at the same time add much needed Canadian content to our roster. Andrew Nicholson has done enough in his career in the NCAA to warrant being a late 1st round pick. I hope Bryan and the rest of the management team see this opportunity and do everything possible ($$, draft picks/current roster players) to acquire him. Do you think the Raps brass have similar thoughts?

Cheers

Rich F, Orillia

A: Oh, I think Nicholson will be a first-round pick almost certainly; I’m not sure a team with, at the moment, a glut of young fours needs to make a move to add a pick who plays that spot.

The Raptors need to improve their roster regardless of birthplace or storyline and while I do think Nicholson is an NBAer, I don’t know how good he’ll be and I don’t think the Raptors need to go out of their way to acquire him.

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Q: Hey Doug, how about a list of Uncles Considered and Rejected by Pepsi Before They Filmed the Uncle Drew Commercial? #1 on my list was Uncle Reg (Reggie Evans, his beard died white, steps into a pick-up game and grabs every rebound, sticks his foot under a few shooters, and knocks a couple of opposing bigs to the tarmac with "accidental" contact).

Mike D, Toronto

A: Well, you’ve got Uncle Oak who sits in his rocking chair mumbling in some language none of us quite understands until he gets up and smacks some kid in the head for fun.

And maybe you’ve got Uncle Chuck who sits there yelling “turrible” over and over and over again and when he’s called on to play runs into a geriatric referee and hurts his back.

How about Uncle Shaq, who stands on the sideline dining. And that’s all he does.

And then there’s Uncle HWSNBN. He watches quietly, sees the kids doing all manner of zany stuff and first time he touches the ball when he gets in a game he does some stupidly athletic thing and then walks away, bored and leaving ‘em wanting more.

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Q: I promise, no "James Johnson, the rights to Sonny Weems and a future second" for Lebron but what true assets do the Raptors have to acquire a legit SF? As Mr. McCown has said in the past (although not maybe this exactly), the Raptors have Bargnani and a bunch of guys named "Who".

Jim S, Thornhill

A: With all due respect to Bob, he’s wrong. They have a lot of “assets” actually, young bigs with cheap contracts, a veteran point guard with a solid game and expiring deal and a draft pick along with millions of dollars in cap room.

So, there are any number of “assets” who would yield something in return, it might mean combining some of them but isn’t that why you acquire them, so you can make deals attractive other teams?

What if they were to package Amir and the pick, or Ed and the pick or Jerryd and the pick in a sign-and-trade? What about James Johnson as a cheap backup? There are myriad “assets” at Bryan’s disposal.

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Q: Doug, in your recent article you wrote: "In 1996, they (Toronto Raptors) were No. 3, moved up to No. 1 but were bounced to No. 2 by virtue of an expansion agreement that said they couldn’t have the No. 1 selection for the first three years of their existence."

Can you explain this "expansion agreement"? Did such an agreement exist for the Grizzlies and Bobcats? If it did not exist for one or both of these teams, why did the NBA place such a restriction on the Raptors?

Which other team would deserve the number one pick more than a new team coming into the league?! Seems very odd and unfair for a new team.

Mike S, Toronto

A: Not sure I can explain it more than it was the expansion agreement, the negotiated terms that allowed both Vancouver and Toronto to get into the league and it did exist for the Grizzlies as well.

I don’t believe the Bobcats had the same clause in their initial agreement but I am not 100 per cent sure; it was a different negotiation with the league.

And it was done – at least in the case of Vancouver and Toronto – to make sure the new teams, which were destined to be awful, weren’t going to get three straight No. 1 picks, an unlikely scenario but a possibility the existing teams didn’t want to think about.

Of draft picks and legacies and, yes, Liz's big weekend

Think I mentioned that a few of the Henchmen are out in Minnesota this weekend for one of those gang workouts for draft eligible kids that’s basically for second-rounders.

Well, it’ll be interesting to see what they think when they get back.

As you know, second-round draft picks haven’t been the most glorious part of the past for the HOTH, unless you’re thinking Remon Van de Hare, Giorgos Printezis, Solo!!!!, DeeAndre Hulett or Tyson Wheeler are just gems being polished.

And this year, it could be double the fun, given that the Raptors now have two picks in the second round.

Or it couldn’t, according to Bryan.

“It may even be unlikely that we utilize both picks, one being a little bit later. Maybe you take a player based on future, if there is someone on the board who piques our interest but would be better served playing a season or two in Europe whether or not that player was an international player.

“A lot of times a second round pick finds himself in a situation where the contract offer is just not there and they are better suited going to Europe and making a little bit of money and developing their game.”

I know one of the fun things to do is rag on these guys for not making the most of the second round picks they’ve had and, sure, Van de Hare, Wheeler, Hulett and Printezis are pretty good examples but, frankly, it’s so much more an inexact science when you’re picking 35-60 that teams probably deserve a bit of a break from constant criticism.

We know the draft is a crapshoot in the top 10 or 14 (see Oden vs. Durant, everyone vs. the Lakers wanting Kobe, etc, etc, etc), think how much basic luck you need to have a second-rounder pan out.

Lots. And lots.

I don’t know if these guys, or any team, can find a gem that far down the list, for every Manu Ginobili (who was years away from being a player when he was chosen, huge credit to the Spurs staff for that one) there are dozens of gambles that simply don’t pan out across the league.

It’s why I tend to zone out when the second round starts, it’s barely worth paying attention to.

More Bryan on it:

“Second round picks have been places where teams have hit the occasional triple, maybe even home run. You could call a Manu Ginobili in the second round parked in Europe, that’s a home run, maybe a grand slam. You look at the Paul Milsap pick, that’s a triple and yes, we acknowledge he was on the board when we picked that year. But that’s where you have to do a lot of homework, but again get a little bit lucky as well.”

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So Liz gets to the big 6-0 in charge this weekend or something, right?

Funnily enough, it’s not all over the news down here in OKC but I did hear about it from back home.

Good for her; couple more decades or so and she can reach the level of Hazel.

Of all the jobs in the world, wouldn’t being Queen, or even a basic run-of-the-mill lowly Royal, be one of the all-time greats?

You don’t do an awful lot, people bow and curtsy towards you all the time and you can travel wherever you want on someone else’s dime and see the world.

People fawn over you, the hours are what you make them and no one’s really ever been fired from the gig. It’s a job for life and it looks really, really easy.

Outside of Canadian Senator or Governor-General or something like that, it seems like one of the great jobs in the world.

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Love the way the league rigged that game last night so the Spurs-Thunder series got much better.

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Looks like rain might be coming here, maybe some stool time later this afternoon and what better way to kill some time than doing mail, right?

Let me hear from you so I can get it done and maybe sleep in tomorrow morning. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

Click. Write. Send.

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How the heck did it get to be June already?

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So what do we think might happen up in Boston tonight when Game 3 unfolds?

The one thing about this group of Celtics that’s been impressive the past few years has been their mental resolve but coming back after that gut-wrenching Game 2 loss is probably going to be too much for them to handle.

They didn’t get a lot of calls while LeBron and Wade kind of ran amok, they did all they could to keep the game close and still couldn’t close the deal in the final few minutes and you wonder when the mental grind is going to get to them.

Tonight?

I wonder.

The one guy I want to watch closely will be Rondo, who was so utterly excellent in Game 2 with nothing to show with it. We know he can be brilliant, we also know he can be mercurial and go for stretches where he has little impact on the game.

I do know that given the circumstances – the iffy bench, the health of Ray Allen, the stakes of being down 2-0 to a team that has better talent – this has to be one of those nights where he follows up his Game 2 effort with something close it in Game 3.

Can he?

Not sure.

But if he can’t, the Celtics can’t win and I can’t see that series even getting to five games.

Not much pressure on the kid, is there?

All that’s on the line is this series and, in some ways, the legacy of the Big Three. This is unquestionably their last kick at the can, it’s strange to think that the “other” guy is going to be so responsible for how they’re remembered.

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The Goods On The Game, Spurs-Thunder Game 3

Hi, folks.

Ready to go again?

Maybe the conspiracy is there's no NBA conspiracy

Let’s say you run a multi-billion dollar business that’s growing every day; your brand is recognizable at all four corners of the Earth; your products make money for you and themselves hand over fist.

Of course you’re going to jeopardize it by trying to pull off some gigantic conspiracy.

Why not risk losing it all, hoping that whoever’s in the Circle Of Knowledge won’t talk and the secret will go to several graves with those who hold it.

Come on, people.

Give your heads a shake, would you?

The basketball world – especially the dark corners where the conspiracy theorists live – has been abuzz with all kinds of zaniness following the New Orleans win in Wednesday’s lottery (some of have mocked them already) and it’s kind of out of control.

Comical. But out of control nonetheless.

Look, as I mentioned this morning, I’ve been in the room when the lottery’s been conducted. Seen the ping-pongs balls taken out of their locked cases and dumped in the drums, watched them pop up, seen the stifling security that goes along with it. It’s not “fixable” and it can’t be “rigged.” It is, frankly, what it is.

And here’s a first-hand account of last night you might want to read.

While all that was transpiring in a room a floor removed from the TV studio where the show came from, I was standing in the back of that studio minding my own business and joking with some colleagues.

All of a sudden a back door opens, a couple of rather burly, imposing fellows wearing earpieces walked by flanking a very studious man carrying the envelopes. They were place on the podium, everyone was watching, the security dudes were still hanging around and I don’t recall seeing David Copperfield magically levitating New Orleans to No. 1.

I once heard David Stern suggest, in response to some question about the rigging of the lottery, suggest his league wasn’t in the business of committing felonies.

Makes entire sense to me.

Look, it doesn’t matter what I say or what other people write or what the league does. There are those among you who will think forever that some grand conspiracy is constantly at work, that things are pre-ordained because it’s easy to think that.

Forget for a minute that you’ve had to count on the continued silence of who knows how many people to rig something like the lottery – and a good conspiracy needs a very small circle and the more in it, the easier it’s broken – think about that risk.

You want to put the entire global basketball world at risk so that one team can get one specific player?

Besides, if it worked, how come the Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t win multiple championships after getting LeBron? How’d the whole Patrick-Ewing-to-New-York thing work out in the winning of championships?

If these have been rigged, they’ve been awfully poorly executed, haven’t they?

I had more than a few people who asked this morning why the league doesn’t just run the lottery where all can see it.

Well, there are a few reasons, actually.

First, it takes about 90 seconds to actually conduct it and what do you do with the other 28:30 of the half hour TV show?

Second, it’s boring. I mean mind-numbing boring; it’s not like Faye Dance could take you through the little burgs where it’s being held telling folksy Wintario tales.

And third – and most important – is this:

What would the conspiracy theorists have to talk about when it was over?

Have a nice day.