I'm sorry I've said many times that Bill knows the NBA, I was completely wrong (part 2)

Warning: shit gets heavy somewhere near the end of this post.  Usually I enjoy picking apart Simmons, like "ha ha this guy is dumb, I'm having fun with this, tee hee."  Near the end of this post I got legitimately annoyed.  I think it comes through in the writing (I'm adding this intro after I finished the rest of it).  Enjoy!

Unfortunately, we need to compare Carmelo to a better player to prove that point.

That's a great indication that you won't be able to make that point.  This is like saying "I know where there's a million dollars in buried treasure.  Unfortunately, I need to go grab a million dollars and bury it before we go dig up that treasure."

The 2011 Mavericks won the title

Indeed they did.  Let's see how.

with a veteran team 

Average age of the eight guys who played the most minutes was 31, a bit upwardly skewed by 37 year old Jason Kidd.

built around a spectacular coach (Rick Carlisle), 

Definitely a good coach--career .588 winning percentage in the regular season, and .509 in the postseason.

an elite rim protector (Tyson Chandler), 

He definitely is, although he doesn't bring much offense.

an elite perimeter defender (Shawn Marion), 

Sure.

an elite heat-check guy (Jason Terry), 

Idiotic terminology, and overstate's Terry's abilities--I'm not saying he's never hit a series of big shots, because he certainly did against the Heat in the 2011 Finals, but his career 3FG% is just just .379 and his career 2FG% is just .484.  (In 2010-2011, those numbers were .362 and .493 respectively.)  Anyways, Terry is a great 7th man, but not really a great 6th man.  Yes, I know he won the 6th man of the year award in 2008-2009, but he was playing 34 minutes a game.  NAWT A TRUE 6TH MAN.  HE IS THE CHANNING TATUM OF 6TH MEN.

quality 3-point shooting (39.4 percent and 184 made 3s in 21 playoff games), 

Agree, that is quality, although any playoff run is such a small sample as to be negligibly useful in judging whether the team was actually a good shooting team, or just happened to get hot at the right time.  The Mavs shot 36.5% during the 2010-2011 season.

savvy team defense 

Hooray for stupid bullshit (not even really anecdotal bullshit--this is somehow less useful than that would be) that can't be disproven!

and one historically good scorer with crunch-time chops (Dirk Nowitzki). 

Indeed.  

If you believe Carmelo can lead a championship team, you’re leaning heavily on that 2011 Mavs playbook — you’d need all the elements we just covered, and you’d need Carmelo to unleash a damned good Dirk impression.

Yes, except for the fact that Dirk is better than Carmelo.

Only one problem: Dirk was better than Carmelo is.

Great, so there goes your whole point.  This has been productive.

Dirk is one of the 20 best basketball players of all time by any calculation. He’s the best foreign player ever not named Hakeem. Of the 10 best forwards ever, he’s behind Bird, LeBron and Duncan, right there with Doc, Elgin and Pettit, and ahead of Malone, Barkley and Rick Barry.  He won an MVP and a Finals MVP. He made four first-team All-NBA’s and five second-team All-NBA’s. He won 50-plus games for 11 straight years, topped 60 wins three times, made two Finals, beat LeBron and Wade in the Finals, and won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan’s prime.

I'm not going to be so Simmonsy as to claim I know exactly where Carmelo stands among everyone all time, but suffice it to say that his resume does not stack up to Dirk's.  He's never finished higher than 3rd in MVP voting (in 2012-2013, mostly because he led the league in scoring) and has only been in the top 10 twice.  He hasn't won a Finals MVP, because, as we've discussed, he's only ever come remotely close to sniffing the Finals once in his eleven year career.  He's never been first team All NBA and has been second team just twice.  His teams have won 50 games just four times and have never topped 54 wins.  Basketballreference has something called the "Elo Player Rater," which, fuck if I really know how it works, but it appears to be a crowd-sourced set of rankings.  They currently have Dirk as the 3rd best active player and 22nd best all time.  Melo is younger, so he's had less time to cement a legacy, but he's just 16th best active and 67th best overall.  This "let's build a case for Melo as a guy who can win a Finals without other superstar help on the fact that Dirk did the same" attempt is falling to pieces.

And it’s not like he had a ton of help. In 15 years, he played with only four All-Stars: Jason Kidd (2010), Josh Howard (2007), Steve Nash (2002 and 2003) and Michael Finley (2000 and 2001). Amazing but true: Dirk never played with a Hall of Famer in that Hall of Famer’s prime.

Roughly the same for Melo, certainly the same on the HOFer in his prime front.  Dirk got Kidd and Nash, but Melo got two years with Iverson (even if that experiment didn't really work out).  Melo also has played with several Michael Finley/Josh Howard type players, including Billups, Marcus Camby, NeNe, and Ty Lawson.

During Dirk’s decade-long peak (2002 through 2011), he averaged 24.5 points and 8.8 rebounds and came damned close to creating the 10-Year 50-40-90 Club (48% FG, 39% 3FG, 89% FT). 

Melo can't come close to touching those shooting numbers--for his eleven year career, he's at 45-35-81.

His career PER (23.48) ranks 19th all time, just behind Doc (23.58) and Bird (23.5) and just ahead of Kobe (23.36). 

Melo's career PER is 21.17, 42nd all time, sandwiched between Alonzo Mourning and Clyde Drexler.

And he was an absolutely phenomenal playoff performer: 25.6 PPG (12th all time), 24.2 PER (12th), 22.6 win shares (16th), stellar 46-37-89% splits in 135 games, and a couple of epic multigame hot streaks in 2006 and 2011. 

I described Melo's playoff mediocrity last post, but let's add in here that his career playoff PER is 19.94, 44th overall.

Along with Pettit, Hakeem and Elgin, he’s one of four players in the shot-clock era who averaged 25 and 10 in the playoffs. 

Melo has averaged 26 and 7, but he's need to shoot a shitload to get those 26.

And he’s an underrated leader, 

Lol Melo

a famously fantastic locker-room guy, 

Lol Melo

an insanely hard worker and someone who, by all accounts, everyone loved playing with at every point of his career.

I've never heard anything to the contrary about Melo, but I've never really heard anything similar either.

That’s why I dislike comparing Carmelo and Dirk. 

You should, because Melo isn't Dirk, and on the scale of superstars, he's not even close.

But I keep coming back to these two playoff lines:

2011 Dirk (21 games): 27.7 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.5 apg, 49-46-94%, 8.9 FTA, 25.2 PER
2009 Melo (16 games): 27.2 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 4.1 apg, 45-36-83%, 9.0 FTA, 24.3 PER

It’s not THAT far off, right? 

And this, ladies and germs, is all the proof you need that Bill Simmons's writing method is pretty much "Come up with idea (usually one that adheres to my already existing beliefs about the subject matter in question), write column, ignore evidence that contradicts idea, find shreds of evidence that kind of sort of make idea look non-horrible, pimp them with idiotic rhetorical questions, profit."  Seriously, we've just run down how much better (especially in the playoffs) Dirk is than Melo.  And then, in an effort to get this train wreck back on the tracks, he throws out Melo's best playoff performance (both in terms of how far his team went, and in PER), runs it up against Dirk's performance during the Mavs' title run (which is not Dirk's best playoff performance; that came in 2010 (28.4 PER in 10 games) or if you want a larger set of games, 2006 (26.8 in 23 games), and then moves on.  Fucking unbelievable, this guy.  What a fucking chode.

The 2009 Nuggets were Carmelo’s best team; they fell to Kobe’s Lakers in Round 3 with a poor man’s version of the 2011 Mavs. 

And this is where it gets pretty fucking good.  Yes, yes please.  Let's do a rundown of the 2008-2009 Nuggets (54-28) against the 2010-2011 Mavericks (57-25).  Let's look at all those items he listed at the beginning of this post and see how they stack up.

George Karl wasn’t Carlisle. 

Oh, the George Karl with a longer track record than Carlisle, a better regular season winning percentage, and a slightly worse playoff winning percentage?  Carlisle is "spectacular" but a guy with 1100+ career wins, who's never coached anyone better than young Gary Payton, young Ray Allen or young Carmelo doesn't stack up?  Cool.

Nene and Kenyon Martin couldn’t protect the rim like Chandler. 

This is very true, but what they brought in offense probably makes up for what they didn't have in terms of rim protection.

They didn’t have a perimeter defender anywhere close to Marion’s caliber. 

First of all, this isn't true, as Dahntay Jones is a different kind of perimeter defender but probably on balance about as good as Marion.  Second of all, the defense (both individual defense, and the ability to coordinate team defense) brought by Billups to that 2009 Nuggets team puts what 37 year old Jason Kidd was doing on the defensive end for the 2011 Mavericks to shame.

They couldn’t shoot 3s nearly as well (only 31 percent for that Lakers series). 

Good try, doofus.  Enough with your shitspeck-sized samples.  The 2008-2009 Nuggets were a better regular season 3FG% team than the 2010-2011 Mavericks (roughly 36% to 34%) and even with that shitty performance against the Lakers, shot 38.3% for the playoffs.  The Mavs shot 39.4% during their title run.  This is 100% wrong.  The Nuggets were a BETTER 3FG% team than the Mavs.  

They relied way too heavily on J.R. Smith, who imploded against Kobe and got outscored 204 points to 76 points. 

OK, for this one, I have no counterargument, other than to say Smith was the Nuggets' version of Terry, just not as good.  He averaged 14/3/3 while shooting 44%; Terry went for 17/2/3 while shooting 48%.  And yes, Kobe went off against the Nuggets.  He's Kobe.  

Their bench consisted of Dahntay Jones, Linas Kleiza, Chris Andersen and Anthony Carter, or, as it’s better known, the Pu Pu Platter Deluxe. 

OH GOD ANOTHER PU PU PLATTER JOKE.  NEVER GETS OLD.  Their bench also included JR Smith, who you'd think Bill wouldn't be able to completely forget about in the span of one sentence, but here we are.  Meanwhile, beyond Terry, the 2011 Mavericks playoff bench featured Jose Barea, "the corpse of" (LOLOLOL!!!!) Peja Stojakovic, and Brendan Haywood, which is pretty fucking pu pu platterish itself.  But why let facts get in the way of a narrative.  Full speed ahead!!!

And Melo’s best teammate, Chauncey Billups, played two great rounds before turning into a human icicle against the Lakers (39.7% FG, 33.3% 3FG).

Meanwhile, Melo shot 48% overall and 45% (!) from three during the first two rounds of the playoffs, then turned into a human icicle against the Lakers (40.8% FG, 25% 3FG).  You know, you'd think that if you were trying to figure out why the 2009 Nuggets didn't get past the Lakers, you'd want to see how their best player played in that series.  But I guess since we started with the thesis that Melo got let down by his teammates, we don't have time to do that.  Too bad.

Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.

GOOD JOB PUTTING YOUR COMPLETELY UNINFORMED OPINION IN ALL CAPS, TO MAKE IT THAT MUCH DUMBER!  BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!  BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!  YOU FUCKING NIMROD!  YOU ARE TRULY A GODDAMN IDIOT!

More later.

More of the same? Why not

[Note added after writing all of this: I'm sure one or two of you out there in internetland are good, non-bandwagon Heat fans.  I tried to add modifiers like "many" every time that I took cheap shots at Heat fans, so as to not throw out the good apples with the bad, but I may have missed a few spots.  As PFTCommenter would say, no offense.  I'm sorry the bandwagon shitheads make you actual fans look bad, and I hope you keep reading.]

So I guess we're not quite done discussing this whole frontrunning Heat fans thing, given the volume of comments on that last post.  That has to be a record number for this blog as far as the last year or so goes.  Sure, most of the comments in there were made by the same anonymous bozo, but it's still nice to see some participation.  And while I hesitate to give that bozo the attention he wants and doesn't deserve by addressing some of his claims in a separate post, right now it seems like the thing to do.  So let's dance.

1) Anonymous bozo, while I admire your perseverance, just understand that you will never be the most obnoxious and worthless anonymous bozo in FireJay history.  That title will always be held by the guy in the comments to this post.  Looking back, hey, how about that: in 2008, I successfully predicted that Vince Young would be out of the NFL by 2013.  That took about as much skill as predicting that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow, but still.  Feels good to be validated.

2) Re: the Boston fans and their behavior in game 7 against the Leafs and game 6 against the Blackhawks (side note: the fact that I'm defending Boston fans to continue this argument is nauseating).  You say that the Bruins had a 0.5% chance of winning the Leafs game when they were down 4-1.  I don't know where you got that, I looked around for some NHL win expectancy charts and couldn't find any, so I will accept that number as correct although I suspect it's a little high.  Whatever.  It's cute that you think you turned my own schtick on me by noting that HA HA THIS ARTICLE OVER HERE SAYS THERE WERE EMPTY SEATS MIDWAY THROUGH THE THIRD PERIOD, THAT'S SOMETHING YOU WOULD MAKE FUN OF YOURSELF FOR DOING IF YOU READ THAT YOU WROTE THAT AND DIDN'T KNOW YOU WROTE IT NYUCK NYUCK NYUCK.  But I have a few points to make.

First of all, it's pretty dumb to say the Bruins chance at coming back was A SINGLE PERCENTAGE POINT away from being the same odds the Heat faced near the end of game 6.  It is a true statement, but a much better way to put that same piece of information, given that both numbers are small, is to say that the Heat were three times more likely to come back than the Bruins were.  That's more intellectually honest, don't you think?  What if the Heat had a 1.1% chance and the Bruins had a 0.1% chance?  Would you still try to hammer home the percentage point difference rather than the percentage difference?  I hope not.  I don't think anyone should leave when it's a game 7, but still, it was more rational from a mathematical perspective for those Bruins fans to leave.  Three times more rational, perhaps.  That's pretty significant.

Second of all, while Bruins-Leafs was a potentially season-ending game for those fans, I still say it's much worse to walk out in the championship round before the game ends than to walk out in the first round of the playoffs.  And hell, check out the highlights--I'm sure the arena wasn't 100% full when they won in overtime, but it looks pretty full and sounds pretty full to me.  (To be fair to the Heat fans, they didn't exactly empty their arena during game 6 either, although I'm willing to bet a lot of the people who were there for OT had left their seats, gone to the concourse and then returned when they heard all the noise during the comeback.)

Third of all, and most importantly, the scoring effects are much different in hockey than they are in basketball.  In basketball, pretty much every team is going to score between 80 and 110 points in pretty much every game.  More to the point, a 5 point deficit with 30 seconds left pretty much always means the exact same thing in the minds of players.  We need a couple threes, need them to miss some free throws, whatever.  In hockey, especially in a playoff series when a team is facing the same opposing goalie game after game after game, a three goal deficit could mean many different things.  If it's the best offense in the league against a bad goalie, three goals might not be much to worry about.  If it's a defensively oriented team that is used to winning low scoring games, or if the other team's goalie is hot, a three goal deficit could feel like a ten goal deficit.  In that series against the Leafs, the Bruins had no trouble scoring in games one through four.  But they lost games five and six by a 2-1 score.  So at the time the Leafs went up 4-1 with 14 minutes left in game seven, the Bruins 1) had lost two in a row, always a bad thing in a seven game series, and more importantly 2) had scored three goals in the previous 8+ periods (and Toronto's James Reimer was no slouch, 8th in the league in save percentage during the regular season).  They would then need three goals in the last 14 minutes of that period to force overtime.  I think you can excuse the people who left much more easily than you can excuse the Heat fans who left game 6.  Much, much more easily.

And of course, as commenter tony harding pointed out in the comments to the last point, the cherry on top is how many Heat "fans" tried to get back into the building after they found out the game wasn't actually over.  We don't know if any Bruins fans tried that during the Leafs game, because there weren't as many cameras around since it was only the first round of the playoffs, but I'd be surprised if the scene was anything like the one that developed in Miami during game 6.

3) Your attempt to turn whether Miami is actually a superficial place into an argument is so ridiculous that I'm not going to entertain it.  But I will entertain you on the debate as to whether Miami generally has good sports fans or not.  You seem to think you've made a great point by noting Miami's attendance and local TV ratings are great during the LeBron era.  (You cite LeBron era TV ratings, but none from any other point in time; if you know of a place to get them, I'd love to see them, but for now that doesn't establish jack fucking shit, as I will discuss below.)  You also say things like

If current Heat TV ratings were bad, then that'd be taken evidence that Miami has no real fans. But the ratings are good, so it "means" that those fans are bandwagon frontrunners. Either way, the fanbase can't win, off the court at least. Nobody will ever say, "Boy those fans are really supportive," even if that's the case.

and

Well, if the attendance and ratings were relatively weak in this improved 2013 situation, then people would probably cite that as bad fandom. That's generally how a negative confirmation bias works. Damning evidence is meaningful, positive evidence is dismissed.

No, dummy.  I don't know if you're intentionally or unintentionally kicking the shit out of that straw man, but please stop.  No one is dismissing the great attendance and TV ratings the Heat currently enjoy.  It's reflective of a lot of support for the team.  It's just that the support is bandwagon support.  Let me slow this down and connect all the dots for you: this evidence is not being ignored to confirm a negative bias, because the negative bias is not "Miamians do not support the Heat in 2013."  Everyone agrees Miamians support the Heat right now.  They just don't think many of those fans always have liked the Heat or always will like them, no matter who's on the team and how long it's been since the last deep playoff run. 

Since you seem to want to ignore this point, given that I've made it four or five times now, I might as well add in no uncertain terms that bandwagon support is much better than no support at all.  Plenty of pro sports teams enjoy great support when they win and crappy support when they lose.  On again off again fans of those teams do not deserve to be mocked... unless they do things like leave game 6 of the finals when their team is down five with 28 seconds to play.  

Anyways, for reasons unknown, assuming you are being honest about not being a Miami fan, you seem to want to believe that because Miamians are supporting the Heat now, they're great fans at all times.  While I maintain that attendance figures are often misleading, we don't have comprehensive TV data, and you want to use attendance figures, so let's use them.  They definitely don't make the point you want them to make.  

The Heat have been a very successful franchise, as long as the metric for success is "going to the playoffs," which for a lot of fans it is.  Even though the NBA lets in more than 50% of its teams, it's still impressive that they have existed for 25 seasons and made the playoffs 17 times.  So there haven't been many lean years for them.  But let's take a look at couple important recent stretches.  They made the playoffs every year from 1996 through 2001.  Then:
2000-2001: 50 wins, first round playoff loss, 15th in attendance
2001-2002: 36 wins, missed playoffs, 19th in attendance
2002-2003: 25 wins, missed playoffs, 22nd in attendance
2003-2004: 42 wins, second round playoff loss, 24th in attendance

First of all, winning 50 games and finishing 15th in attendance is kind of crappy.  But the more important data point here is the 2003-2004 season.  The two year playoff drought that preceded it was only the second in franchise history.  Now, that'll hurt attendance.  But 2003-2004 was Dwyane Wade's rookie year, and a 42 win playoff season.  And attendance decreased relative to the previous season?  That's the sign of a fanbase that doesn't give a shit.  In contrast, the Cavaliers, Nuggets and Raptors also had exciting rookies trying to lead them back to relevance that year.  The Nuggets went from 25th in attendance in 2002-2003 to 12th in 2003-2004.  The Cavaliers went from 29th to 9th.  The Raptors went from 10th to 8th.  You have any wiseass explanations for that?  Were James, Anthony and Bosh just that much more exciting than Wade?  Maybe LeBron was, but those other two?

The Cavs and Raptors didn't even make the playoffs like the Heat and Nuggets did that year.  Why were the other three teams all in the top 12 in attendance, including two non-playoff teams, but the Heat were in 24th?  Could it be that Miami fans are a bunch of stupid fucking frontrunners who have a one season lag time between the team getting good and them deciding to pay attention to it?  Sure, the fact that the Heat surged to 4th in attendance in 2004-2005 kind of supports that idea, as does the next thing I'm about to talk about, but you're the snarky genius here.  I'm sure you have some kind of explanation.

Since Wade joined the team, the only time they've missed the playoffs was in 2007-2008, when they won just 15 games and somehow managed to find significant minutes for Chris Quinn and Earl Barron.  Let's look at that season and the two that bracketed it.

2006-2007: 44 wins, first round playoff loss, 4th in attendance
2007-2008: 15 wins, worst season in franchise history, 8th in attendance
2008-2009: 43 wins, first round playoff loss, 15th in attendance

And here we see the same effect we saw above.  The team has a bad year, attendance goes down.  That happens.  But the following year, the team is good again and... attendance declines again.  Hmmm.  How about some more parallel comparisons, like I gave above?  Here's a list of all of the "missed playoff sandwiches" (playoff year, non-playoff year, playoff year) that have happened in the NBA going back to 2001, with the team, years in question, and the attendance rankings in those three years.

Bulls, 2007-2008-2009, 1st, 2nd, 2nd
Jazz, 2010-2011-2011, 6th, 7th, 6th
Lakers, 2004-2005-2006, 7th, 7th, 7th
Suns (double decker sandwich, on/off/on/off/on), 2001-2002-2003-2004-2005, 9th, 17th, 16th, 17th, 10th
Rockets, 2005-2006-2007, 23rd, 28th, 21st
76ers, 2009-2010-2011, 23rd, 26th, 25th
Hornets, 2009-2010-2011, 19th, 23rd, 26th
Suns, 2008-2009-2010, 13th, 14th, 16th.

So let me parse that for you.  Eight instances (really nine if you count the 2001-2005 Suns twice).  In six (or seven) the team's attendance rebounded when the team's performance did.  In the two where attendance failed to rebound during the second playoff year, the dropoff was not as precipitous as the 2009 Heat's was.  I'm not trying to write a thesis here so I won't take much time to explore all the ins and outs and possible reasons for these trends.  I will just theorize that bandwagon frontrunner fans (like those in Miami) take longer to warm up to the idea that the hometown team is good, because they don't actually give a shit about the team and only hear they're doing well when "buzz" has been building around town for some time.  Heat fans in 2002-2003: "They suck."  In 2003-2004: "I hear they drafted some guy but I remember them sucking last year, I'm not going."  In 2004-2005: "Wait they made the playoffs last year?  OMG D WADE IS THE BEST I LOVE THIS TEAM!!!!!"  Fans that aren't shithead frontrunner bandwagoners tend to follow their teams closely, and either will not be deterred from going to games even if there's a lean year, or if they are deterred, will return quickly once the team is good again.  I think this is the Occam's Razor explanation, although if you have a better one, I'd love to hear it.

Hey, maybe Miami fans support their other teams more fervently!  The Marlins won a World Series in 2003.  Let's take a look at how their numbers have stacked up since then.

2003: 91 wins, 28th in attendance
2004: 83 wins, 26th in attendance
2005: 83 wins, 28th in attendance
2006: 78 wins, 30th in attendance
2007: 71 wins, 30th in attendance
2008: 84 wins, 30th in attendance
2009: 87 wins, 29th in attendance
2010: 80 wins, 28th in attendance
2011: 72 wins, 28th in attendance
2012 (new stadium!): 69 wins, 18th in attendance
2013: currently 30th in wins, 30th in attendance

I'll do the math for you: during the nine seasons from 2003-2011, they were exactly a .500 team.  They never finished out of the bottom five in attendance.  Sure, bad ballpark, hot summer weather, much of the 2003 title team was dismantled and shipped away before the 2004 season even started.  None of those things are anywhere close to being good enough to explain those attendance numbers.  The 18th place finish in attendance in 2012 is the worst for any team in a brand new stadium since 2001, by the way.  No other team since then finished below 13th (Cincinnati in 2003, Milwaukee in 2001).  You know what I said about Heat fans being bandwagoners?  It appears there are no Marlins fans at all.  And a town that doesn't support one team at all is probably the kind of town that will have bandwagon fans for other teams.

I won't bother to post the Panthers' attendance numbers, they're too depressing.  And NFL attendance is meaningless.  In conclusion, feel free to continue commenting on this matter, but unless you want to address what I just presented or otherwise show that Heat fans have always supported the team and are definitely not frontrunners, maybe just keep your mouth shut.

-----------------------------

Bonus!  You complained that Deadspin was going out of its way to show the bad side of Heat fans.  While I agree that Deadspin wants (and gets) clicks by putting up posts about true and hilarious things, like the fact that many Miami fans are frontrunners, they also posted a counterpoint piece over the weekend.  It's got some real gems of non-insight and unintentional comedy.

Miami Heat Nation Encompasses More Than Brats, Ghouls, And Idiots

Awesome, awesome headline.  I think "Miami Heat Nation" is my favorite part, but use of the term "ghouls" in this context is a close second.

When the Miami Heat won its only LeBronless title, in 2006, I was living outside Fort Lauderdale. My building fees included basic cable, which was enough to get just about every Heat game and virtually nothing else worth watching. My girlfriend at the time could tolerate basketball well enough — better, in fact, than we could generally tolerate one another. So there were abundant Heat games on at my place.

It helped, too, that they were a great bunch to adopt.  Practically everyone seemed to be getting the most out of his talent, which is all it really takes to make a city proud.

So while the author is obviously not a Heat fan by birth, he claims to have adopted the team.  That's fine.  He then explains how likable the players were, from old Shaq to young Wade to supporting case members like White Chocolate and James Posey.  All things told, the author's purpose is to establish the credibility of Miami fans, a group of which he is clearly establishing himself a fringe member.  

The night they won the title my girlfriend insisted we go to the beach instead of watching the game, so I set the VCR (seriously) to record Game 6. 

OK, again, I get that this guy was not a Heat fan by birth.  But still, I find this very funny and completely out of place in an article meant to defend the honor of Miami fans.  This was your adopted team, you watched a lot of their games, and on the night they could clinch a title... you went to the beach.  Got it. 

I'd planned to drive straight back home, rewind the game and watch in something close to real time. Instead, as we walked back to the car, an unmistakable sound came down A1A: BEEEEPbeeepbeeepbeep BEEEP BEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Dammit, I thought. They won it.

I should've known better than to think I could block out an NBA title in South Florida, and looking back, that's why I get my hackles up any time someone shits on All Miami Fans.

How fucking great is that?  Let's summarize: "I was kind of a Heat fan, but not enough of one to pass up a trip to the beach (which is open and beautiful 365 days a year) to watch their title clinching game.  And then, would you believe it, PEOPLE WERE BEEPING THEIR CAR HORNS WHEN THE HEAT WON IT ALL.  WHAT A BUNCH OF CAPITAL T TRUE CAPITAL F FANS.  To this day I get annoyed that people call them frontrunners, because they know exactly how to beep their horn when their team wins a championship."  Get the fuck out of here.

The city may be an open sewer of humanity, all drug-money mansions and teen-aged plastic surgery and narcissism as a dogma, and it may include this shameless harpy, and this slappable douche nozzle, and these window-fogging twits, and after the Heat won this year a club owner comped them the one hundred thousand American dollars the team rang up for 103 bottles of Champagne, which, hospitality aside, is a moral abomination in a city that for all its overcompensating opulence routinely ranks among the nation's poorest.

Hey, at least this author probably wouldn't try to debate whether or not Miami is superficial.  Then he goes on to point out that of course, Miami is more than just South Beach, and there are a lot of poor people and regular blue collar people and middle class people, none of whom are the glitz and glam plastic surgery fake tans expensive jewelry superficial types.  Sure.  Fair enough, although I don't really think any of that challenges the idea that Miami sports fans are mostly shitty.  Then:

Rembert Browne picked up on this as he reported this serendipitous Grantland piece; (note: link removed because fuck Rembert Browne and the rest of his shithead fellow Grantland writers) left without a seat of his own (metaphor!) 

OH MY GOD THAT'S SO DEEP

he circles the concourses until he winds up in the bowels of the arena where the rank-and-file building and team staff are hanging on every play. The Larry O'Brien trophy goes by, and one person, a mover, dares to predict, "There go the trophy, bruh, right there. You know we 'bout to get that," only to see the Heat's lead become more tenuous. Brown notes the key pronoun here — "we," instead of "they" — 

SOMEHOW EVEN DEEPER THAN THE SEAT THING!!!!!

and concludes that these folks are some of the most unabashed fans in the building, the ones who possibly wouldn't be able to afford to enter the building had they not been paid to be there.

There you have it, folks: there are some low level employees in American Airlines Arena who like the Heat and seem to be "real" fans.  Therefore: everyone who likes the Heat is a real fan.  Case closed.

Seriously, give me a fucking break.

Bill's trade value column gave me herpes, part 2

A shout out to the Anonymous commenter from last post who mentioned the epidemic of "[X] SENT ME HERE" YouTube comments.  Holy balls those are annoying.  People who leave those should be sealed inside barrels and thrown over Niagara Falls.

GROUP C: "Only If They Asked to Leave"

13. Tim Duncan
The one perpetual flaw with the Trade Value concept: 

The one?

San Antonio would never trade Duncan … but it also wouldn't make any sense for, say, Portland to trade LaMarcus Aldridge for him. 

If the Spurs lose to the Warriors and the Blazers make that offer, I think the Spurs might take it.  How many Knicks fans thought Ewing would never be traded?  How many Rockets fans thought Olajuwon would never be traded?  The Spurs might want to shake things up and try to extend their window while Parker is still relatively young.  Before last year they hadn't been to the conference finals since 2008.  They've been awesome with this core for a long time, for sure, but 37 year old Duncan for 27 year old Aldridge sounds doable to me if there's no title this June.  (Of course the Blazers would never do this.)

We're splitting the difference and sticking Duncan here. I still have Duncan ranked ahead of Kobe as the greatest player of their generation,

No bias there.

if only because everyone forgets just how difficult Kobe was from 2002 through 2007

Ooh, he was so "difficult."  Chris W pointed out a bunch of racially loaded language Bill used in describing Serge Ibaka ("a freak athlete with a little 'dark alley' in him" ... "a starter on the 'Guys Who Make You Look Over Your Shoulder At All Times' All-Stars").  If I were more of a race-baiter I'd say this Kobe comment is more of the same.  Not sure if Bill meant to walk down that road, but I will happily point out that generally, to the media, when a black player is an asshole it's because he's an asshole but when a white player is an asshole it's because he wants to win too much.  Except for me (spoiler alert, I'm white) when I played basketball and baseball growing up.  I was an asshole then because I was mad about not being good, and because I was an asshole.

(an easy-to-forget story line that gets revived in Phil Jackson's insightful memoir, Eleven Rings).

Jackson's ability to deal with huge egos is well documented, and also really funny given his own continent-sized ego.

Even if I've sung Duncan's praises a kajillion times, most notably in this 2007 column 

Link: removed.  Thanks, Blogger.

and in my basketball book, please remember the following things:

• He's the greatest power forward of all time. He's also one of the greatest teammates ever. That's why the Spurs never would have discussed trading him, not even internally after about 20 drinks, at any point since 1997.

I maintain that it wouldn't be that shocking to see them trade him for someone as good as Aldridge this offseason, if they lose to the Warriors.  Just because I know you care, this Nuggets fan is rooting for the meteor in that series.

• He won four titles, two when he was the only All-Star. He's been the best player on every title team.

Howard Bryant reminds you that Thurman Munson was NOT the leader of or best player on the '77 and '78 Yankees WS-winning teams, because that would diminish Jeter's legacy by 0.0000000001%.

• Kareem won the Finals MVP award in 1971 and 1985. I always thought that was incredible. Fourteen years apart? Well, Duncan has a chance to do it this spring — even if he hasn't exactly seized control of the Warriors series so far. He won the 1999 Finals MVP, but a 2013 Finals MVP would complete "The Kareem." And if it happens, I can promise you one thing — in 2038, he won't be belly-flopping into a pool on a reality-TV show.

Take that, guy who is still famous and on TV at age 66!  I know Diving With The Stars or whatever it's called is a corny show, but should Kareem be embarrassed about being on it?  He's a world class athlete, he probably loved learning a new sport.

Last note: I don't think San Antonio will get past this suddenly petrifying Warriors team unless Duncan kicks it up a notch and becomes the best player in the series. The Spurs can't win with 20-and-10 Duncan; they need 27-and-15 Duncan. After all these years, does Tim Duncan have one last old-school throwback playoff performance lurking inside him? 

Like I said, go meteor.

12. Dirk Nowitzki
One of my favorite NBA lists …

Dolph Schayes
Hal Greer
John Havlicek
Kobe Bryant
Tim Duncan
Paul Pierce
Dirk Nowitzki

That's the 15-Year Club — the only seven NBA players who spent their entire careers with the same franchise, played at least 15 seasons AND won at least one title.

Why isn't Hakeem on that list?  He'll never be traded!

You don't just stumble onto that list — all seven are Hall of Famers, with 21 rings among them. Think about what the list means: excellence, durability, longevity, loyalty, championships … it's your best-case scenario for a basketball career, basically.

Thank you for spoon-feeding that to us.

And you need a little luck along the way. I don't know how Schayes and Greer played that long with all the bad sneakers, bad food, bad medical care, scary travel, second-hand smoke and everything else that should have stopped them back then. Havlicek had a Secretariat-size heart 

Isn't that usually an extremely dangerous condition?  Good for him for overcoming it.

and superhuman stamina. Duncan nearly signed with Orlando. 

And then they ended up with T-Mac that offseason instead, and would end up unloading his contract in exchange for Stevie Franchise as he was in the middle of his meltdown.  Roll the laugh track.

Kobe's Lakers career nearly fell apart twice. 

HE WAS SO UPPITY

Pierce was nearly traded 935 times. Dirk lucked out with a wealthy owner who always spent enough money to compete (so he never had to pull a KG), as well as one sizable break: During the summer of '04, Dallas was the consensus favorite in the Shaq Sweepstakes when Kobe forced the Lakers to trade Shaq the Lakers decided to trade Shaq, only Mark Cuban (astutely, as it turned out) made Dirk untouchable.  At the time, that decision was a much bigger deal than anyone remembers now. 

ONLY A BASKETBALL VP OF COMMON BASKETBALL SENSE LIKE ME REMEMBERS CORRECTLY.

A rejuvenated, pissed-off Shaq guaranteed you one title, maybe even two. 

Good thing the Mavs stumbled into that title as the fifth or sixth best team in the league seven seasons down the line, or that decision would have been really fucking dumb.

We all knew it. (As it turned out, Miami won in 2006, and probably would have won the previous year had Dwyane Wade not gotten injured.) When the Lakers could only get Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant's contract for him, I ended up creating the Vengeance Scale to figure out exactly where Angry Shaq ranked among the most vengeful people ever, ultimately assigning him an 8.7 

Who or what else is he going to place on this dumb scale as a reference point?  I hope you guessed "long-dead actor."

(just behind Charles Bronson in every Death Wishmovie).

Sports = movies!

And yeah, I ridiculed the Mavericks for keeping Dirk over dealing him for Shaq, too, even calling Dirk "the German Bob McAdoo" (not a compliment). I never thought you could build a championship team around Dirk's offense. 

And as it turns out, you almost couldn't.

A lot of people felt that way. Looking back, resisting that enticing Shaq trade was probably Cuban's third-greatest NBA moment, 

Passing up winning titles with Shaq?  In the sense that it vindicated his decision to stick with a career Maverick, I suppose it was pretty great in hindsight as of July 2011.  Prior to that, he probably considered it one of his dumbest moments.  Bill is probably just fawning over Cuban for turning down the trade because a Dirk/Kobe Lakers team would have won 5+ titles in the last decade.

trailing the time he stared down David Stern after Game 5 of the 2006 Finals, and, of course, this picture.

I almost always delete Bill's embedded videos/pictures.  But not that one.  Pretty fantastic.

What happens with Dirk going forward? 

HOW WILL WE LOOK BACK ON THIS MOMENT IN TEN YEARS?

Kobe, Pierce and Dirk have one thing in common: They don't have to chase a title like Karl Malone did. Dirk controls his own destiny; if he wants to retire in Dallas, Cuban would be delighted. Kobe probably controls his own destiny, even if there's increasing buzz (no, really) that the Lakers would amnesty him if it guaranteed them Chris Paul and Dwight Howard. 

Bill was probably one of those people who, back in 2004, was like KOBE TO THE CLIPPERS.  IT'S A DONE DEAL.

11. Blake Griffin
After winning three NCAA titles at UCLA, Sidney Wicks became memorable as an NBA player for four reasons: Portland drafted him no. 2 overall, then Wicks slowly morphed into the first we-used-to-love-him-now-we-hate-him Blazer (the first of many); along with Curtis Rowe and John Y. Brown, he's widely credited in Boston for briefly murdering Celtic Pride and nearly causing Red Auerbach to jump to the Knicks; 

HOW DAY-UH HE ONLY AVERAGE 15 AND 10 FO-AH A TEAM THAT DIDN'T WIN A TITLE!  RUINING CELTIC PRIDE IS HIS GREATEST CRIME!  HE IS NAWT LIKE HAVLICEK OR BIRD OR COUSY OR MCHALE!  BOOOOOO!  I've said this recently, but I'll say it again: Boston fans react to spurnings, real (Ray Allen) or perceived (Wicks) like 15 year old girls react to being dumped.

and he had his butt famously kicked by Calvin Murphy, a legendary NBA fight because Wicks was ONE FOOT TALLER than him. 

NAWT SOUTHIE TOUGH!

I left this reason out: My mom thought Wicks was incredibly handsome and gushed that he looked like a black Omar Sharif. That I remember this all these years later tells you exactly how frightened I was that my least-favorite Celtic might become my stepfather someday. 

I'm not touching that one.

But here's why Sidney Wicks stands out for NBA/history reasons …

He averaged 24.5 points as a rookie, then saw his scoring average drop every year for the next nine years until he retired. Do you realize how hard that is? You have to willingly become 7 percent worse every year for your entire career — it's like intentional atrophy. 

I'm sure it was 100% a conscious decision on his part.  He absolutely did it on purpose.

I don't know whether he's the Dave Stapleton of basketball, or Dave Stapleton was the Sidney Wicks of baseball. But that brings us to Blake Griffin … 24 years old, marketable, likable, wildly entertaining, one of the best five forwards in basketball, and one of the best in-game dunkers who ever lived. Should we be concerned by this Wicksian career arc?

Year 1: DNP (knee surgery)
Year 2: 22.5 PPG, 12.1 RPG, 3.8 APG, 51% FG, 64% FT, 16.8 FGA, 8.5 FTA, 1.3 stocks, 21.9 PER
Year 3: 20.7 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 3.2 APG, 55% FG, 52% FT, 15.5 FGA, 7.1 FTA, 1.5 stocks, 23.4 PER
Year 4: 18.0 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 3.7 APG, 54% FG, 66% FT, 13.4 FGA, 5.3 FTA, 1.8 stocks, 22.4 PER

Yeeeeesh. What happened to his rebounding? (Great question.) 

Conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.  Year 2: 38.0; Year 3: 36.2; Year 4: 32.5.

Why isn't he getting to the line as much? (No clear answer.) 

Conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.

Is he shooting more jumpers? (Quick look at HoopData says … nope.) 

Probably not, considering his FG% is holding steady.  Also, conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.

Did he lose shots to Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford these past two years? (Probably.) 

Yes.

And should we be worried that bigger power forwards can bully him down low, the way his archnemesis Z-Bo did in Round 1? (In all caps: YES.) 

Z-Bo is really, really good.  Griffin's defense kind of sucks, but I'm not sure how much we're supposed to "worry about it."  He's really good.  He's not perfect.

What about Kirk Goldsberry breaking down Blake's offensive game by saying, "He's obviously great near the basket, but he's below-average everywhere else"? (A big fat YES.)

MY GOD LOOK AT HIS POINTS PER GAME, THEY'RE DOWN 20% SINCE 2010-2011.  IT'S ALMOST LIKE HIS MINUTES PER GAME AND FIELD GOAL ATTEMPTS PER GAME HAVE DECLINED A ROUGHLY EQUIVALENT AMOUNT SINCE THEN.

On the flip side — that's what we love about the guy. I have probably watched him in person 55 times at this point; he's the most fearless basketball player I've ever seen. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You watch Blake Griffin the same way parents watch their 9-month-old child crawling around a house that hasn't been childproofed; you never feel safe, not for a second. Nobody wants anything to happen to Blake. That feeling lingers over the air in every Clippers game, especially because it's the Clippers, the most jinxed franchise in sports (see my 2009 "Curse of the Sacred Buffalo").

We went over this last post.

Stripping aside all the fanboy stuff, 

Something Bill excels at.

you're getting an 18-8 every night from someone who plays one end of the floor and treats every game like he's an X Games contestant. That's not a superstar. That's a star. Big difference.

I agree-why is he #11 on this list?  Why is he ahead of Kevin Love, Chris Bosh and Al Horford?  Because DUNKZ?

We always judged Blake on his preposterous potential — well, what happens if he already reached it?

I think he probably has, other than getting a little better at hitting midrange jumpers.  He's still very good, and I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth and defend Griffin while also tearing him down, but that's the position Bill and his inability to be anything but hyperbolic (EVERYTHING IS EITHER SEVERELY OVERRATED OR SEVERELY UNDERRATED OR ON THE WAY TO BEING ONE OR THE OTHER) have put me in.

His outside shot hasn't improved in three years; opponents beg him to shoot it (especially in the playoffs). He can't affect games defensively with his athleticism like, say, Shawn Kemp in the mid-'90s. He isn't a good enough rebounder right now. He isn't big enough to be your small-ball 5, and he's not strong enough to handle bigger power forwards like Duncan and Z-Bo. He thrives in up-and-down, ABA-type games, but as soon as those games slow down (especially late), so does his effectiveness. And he's a never-ending injury risk because he plays so recklessly.

Which is the biggest knock on Love (not the recklessness, but the fragility), and in my moderately informed opinion Love is a better player.  But I guess Griffin goes this high because of.... again, DUNKZ?  Wait, no, just figured it out.  It's because Bill is a Clippers STH, and sees Griffin in person all the time.  Since we're talking about a non-Celtic, I almost forgot about how staggeringly bad bill is at objectivity for a second there.

And look, we're edging into the top 10 here. We're putting up the Superstar Rope in front of the Trade Value nightclub right now. Blake Griffin isn't good enough yet. You could rank him higher because he's the most popular Clipper ever, 

Watch out, Danny Manning!

someone who earns his max contract from a popularity/interest/star power standpoint. And you could rank him lower because he's just not that valuable yet, and because his icy relationship with Chris Paul — if any coach who's even remotely competent the next coach can't heal it — 

Second typo that could have been fixed by rudimentary editing in this segment (I deleted the other one, in the Duncan section).  STET AWL CHANGES.  STET AWL CHANGES.

is straying into "Him or Me" territory. We're getting there (as covered in Part 2 of last Friday's column). So we're splitting the difference and sticking him here.

Chris Paul is a crybaby, a serial flopper and a shithead.  I hope the Lakers sign him and re-sign Howard.  Watching those two fall short of impossibly high expectations every season through 2018 would be a delight.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Let's take a trip back in time and review the most commented-upon post in FireJay history. While I strongly disagree with Chris W's position (because the NBA playoffs rule and nothing about them should be changed), I will defend to my death his right to say it. Especially if it leads to 50+ comments, some of them not even all that shitty.

The Important Part is that Andy Reid Looks Like a Bloated Walrus

Picking on things said by ESPN.com commenters is kind of like picking on things said by devout racists, the mentally ill, or Joe Morgan. I mean, it's kind of like the definition of low-hanging fruit. However I'm about to do exactly that. I think I'm justified in doing so because this particular comment was the "featured comment" on the website's front page last night. That is to say, out of every comment the site received on Sunday afternoon/evening, some clod at ESPN's offices thought this was the best/smartest/most relevant/most poignant/some combination of all of these. So I guess I'm more picking on that clod than the commenter himself, which I think is valid. Let's face it- how hard is that task? You go through a couple hundred comments and pick one that isn't stupid. And yet apparently it's not as easy as it sounds. How do I know that? Well, the NFL playoffs are down to four teams. Commenter 808forlife, what say you about their respective quarterbacks?
Donovan, Big Ben, and Warner are all Super Bowl QB's with plenty of big game experience. Flacco? Out of his league.

First of all, sir, I like your angle here. You have taken a controversial and not at all widely-held viewpoint and expressed it in a thought provoking way. Bully on you for that. But I digress; let's talk about why this is a "featured comment" worth blogging about. Here's what I'll give Mr. 808; Warner and Roethlisberger are legit. You won't find many people criticizing their big game credentials. Also, Flacco has never played in a conference championship game. (Although, to be fair, before last Saturday he had never played in a divisional playoff game and he didn't do too badly there. But let me get to the point.) So that's all well and good. Let's move past it and get to the retardery.

Take 100 reasonably passionate and well-informed sports fans. Ask them to do an association with you: say "Donovan McNabb," then say "big game," and ask them what's the next thing that comes to their mind. I am pretty sure that about 95 of them are going to say "Throwing up during the final drive of Super Bowl XXXIX." I mean, fair or not, that's just the first thing that comes to mind. Although the guy has had a moderate amount of playoff success, he's only made it to one Super Bowl and then allegedly lost his shit when the chips were down during that game. So I'm not entirely sure I'd rather have him over Joe "hey did you know rookies don't usually play well during the playoffs?" Flacco for the remainder of the NFL season. I'm not saying he's not good, but touting his big game credentials along with two guys who have actually won Super Bowls (without vomiting) is dumb. Thus, 808forlife/ESPN comment chooser, you've picked a real stinker here. You're both fucking morons, but one of you is just some asshole who comments on a sports website while the other is truly and completely terrible at his incredibly simple job. I guess I'd rather be the former than the latter.

Oh, and what about the other five fans who didn't associate McNabb and "big game" with throwing up during the Super Bowl? Four of them will say "Campbell's Chunky Soup" for some reason. And assuming the fifth is Jack M, he will say "Andy Reid is fat," which doesn't make a lot of sense in this context but is definitely true. That Jack is such a hater.

The Dreaded Return of Hockey or Terry Frei, Depending on How You See Things

It's tough to believe that in just seven short weeks, preseason hockey will be attracting 4,000 people with nothing better to do to arenas all across North America. So to get back in the swing of things, let's stop off at Terry Frei's latest article to see what's not funny.

If the New York Islanders get around to hiring Ted Nolan's successor by opening night, nine NHL head-coaching jobs will have turned over since the end of last season.

Haha! You see - because they haven't... they haven't filled the position yet! And they might not before the season starts! That would be awfully silly of them! And perhaps the Islanders can all wear different styles of goofy hats! That would be uproarious!

Barring a long-shot choice on Long Island, such as Providence Bruins coach Scott Gordon, three men will be getting their first chance running an NHL bench: Atlanta's John Anderson, Florida's Peter DeBoer, and San Jose's Todd McLellan.

In the past few days, ESPN.com has offered up Power Rankings -- the Kings and the Thrashers being at the bottom of their conferences helps explain why their next coaches have formidable tasks ahead of them -- and on the mind-games front, the Top 75 Fantasy Players.

Mind you neither of these are linked in his article so that you can see them, you have to go to ESPN.com's NHL Portal your own self. I can top Terry's laziness by just not nitpicking all of his article, which is exactly my plan, but give it a little effort. There's not an awful lot to do during the hot days of the Denver summer - besides Rockpile tickets or Elitch's - and that doesn't embiggen Mr. Frei to give us links.

Here's the third period, so to speak: Coaching rankings.

On the premise that it would be excessively presumptuous to rank them 1 through 30 -- after all, we're not talking about uniforms -- the rankings are done in groups. They are also purely subjective.

Because the Power Rankings aren't purely subjective?

He follows with exactly what he said, a long and boring list of every coach broken into three boring groups. I'll be taking a tasting from each menu.

The Elite ...
... or the men who get the most out of their rosters, regardless of how good (or otherwise) those rosters are.

Barry Trotz, Nashville
The only coach the Dallas Cowb ... er, the Nashville Predators have ever had has done a remarkable job under changing circumstances. He, along with general manager David Poile and associate coach Brent Petersen, is a testament to the positives of stability. Under less-stable leadership and in less-capable hands, this franchise would be a joke on the ice.

Man, if there's something that I hate more than Terry Frei it's the Predators. But I do not understand what joke he's trying to make with the Dallas Cowboys. Other than fans of both teams are glaring idiots. Just how elite are the Nashville Predators under Barry Trotz? In 738 games, 324 wins, 308 losses, 60 ties (remember ties?) and 46 Overtime Losses. A very elite .500 team.

The Proven ...
... or the guys you know can pull it off until their voices get stale, it's time for a change, or the general manager needs to save his job by making someone a scapegoat.

Andy Murray, St. Louis
If you don't believe he's one of the best coaches in the league after his work in Los Angeles and then with the Blues, just ask him.

Andy Murray isn't egotistical. He may not be the best coach in the league, but he never has said anything along those lines. His work in St. Louis has been stellar if you count half of each season as a whole. The NHL does not, and he could be axed if the Blues miss the playoffs... again.

The jury's still out ...
... or the first-time NHL head coaches who still have to show they can be productive in what passes in this sport for the long run.

Bruce Boudreau, Washington
What a story. Finally gets his chance after years of coaching in the minors and wins the Jack Adams Award. But after the newness wears off, can he prove it was indicative of a difference-making touch?

The Jack Adams Award is "Coach of the Year." Lumping him into the same category as Wayne Gretzky's head coaching abilities? Not such a great idea.

The Suspect ...
... or they'll have to prove some people wrong to be considered (back) among the elite.

Mike Keenan, Calgary. We all know the man is a quirky genius on many levels, and he stayed relatively low-profile last season, so he might have learned some lessons. But given his recent track record and volatility, he's still in this category ... for now.

Mike Keenan has proven what a glaring prick he is. Which should lump him into "The Proven" category. It's also a much easier joke. The difference being that I'm on Blogger getting paid nothing and he's sitting on top of a bed made of money with many beautiful women posting on ESPN.com, which doesn't let you use the work "prick." Advantage: Firejay. Prick prick prick.

Barry Melrose, Tampa Bay
This is in no way, shape or form a knock on our former ESPN colleague.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmullet.

How the heck can we know yet? ...
... or the first-time NHL head coaches.

Todd McLellan, San Jose
McLellan is in a decent situation; the other two aren't.

To call San Jose a decent situation is to call Fire Jay Mariotti is just a sports blog. Clearly, both are more than just that.

And what sort of audience posts comments on ESPN.com? nhldude11 let's Terry Frei have it with this barb: nhldude11: way to go terry frei... you forgot the islanders and the flames idiot.


In the first 12 words of this article, it is established that the Islanders have no head coach. And I had no problem finding the Flames. To be put in the position to defend Terry Frei is hard, but if you're that stupid to log into your account and leave THAT as a comment... just stop watching the sport, please. Arena football needs you, nhldude11.