The NBA: These Guys are Good

Amidst all this linsanity I have come to realize something that has always been brewing in my mind. The NBA is full of guys who can play and by full I mean every single person in the league. I think linsanity is less about Jeremy Lin, than it is about how good guys in the league actually are.

Why Andray Blatche is the Worst Player in the NBA

(If you haven't already seen it, please watch the video above before you read. Note: Blatche has 20 points, 13 assists, 9 rebounds. That's a good line, right? Reply: Watch the video.)

Let’s imagine the NBA was starting over, and each GM was set to draft a team, out of all the players in the league, that they thought could win a championship.  First pick might be Lebron, second Kevin Durant, etc, stars to build around.  In the 2^nd round each team might look for a solid complimentary player, like Andre Igoudala, or a young guy who might be a real star if they could get it all together, like Andrew Bynum.  As the rounds went on, teams would look for solid role players who could be part of a championship rotation: spot-up shooters, defensive specialists, and so on.  Gerald Wallace might go in the 3^rd or 5^th round, Eric Maynor maybe in the 7^th.  Even someone like Ronny Turiaf, essentially useless, would probably be picked up in the late rounds for a specific skill or intangible they bring to the team.

NBA Quarterly Rundown

AP Photo/Jim Mone

With the lockout shortened season a quarter of the way over (I know, it feels like it was Christmas yesterday) a couple of the Love Boat Sports authors thought it would be a good idea to take a look at some of the best and worst performances of the young season and dish out some awards.


Player Awards

MVP:

Matt (@matthouston91)- LeBron James
I'm a big fan of and believer in advanced statistics. LeBron James runs away with basically every advanced stat there is. His PER is at 35.22 (Kobe Bryant is second at 26.96), his Estimated Wins Added is 6.9 (Kobe is second with 5.6), his Value Added is 205.5 (Kobe second with 168.8...168.8!!!! It's not even close!) and he is third in Usage Rate. Even with all of those crazy advanced stats my favorite LeBron stat on the season is his field goal percentage. LeBron is shooting a whopping 56.4% from the field. He's only taking 1.3 threes a game, as opposed to 3.5 last season, and he is making 45% of them. Basically LeBron is having the best season ever right now.

Henno (@henryemoson)- LeBron James
According to John Hollinger's statistic, PER, which evaluates player efficiency, Lebron James is having the best season of all time.  That also means he is having a better season this year than anyone else in the league...  30-7-7, yeah that sounds just about right.  It's unlikely Lebron can sustain these statistics when Dwyane Wade returns, but for now Lebron is definitely the MVP.

Suck 5 1/13

The Friday Suck 5 takes a look at which 5 NBA teams had the worst past week.

5. Miami Heat- While the Heat really doesn’t deserve a spot on any bottom of the NBA rankings, they are put here simply because of 2 overtime losses this week.  The only real knock against the Heat, and LeBron James, is that they lack the clutch gene.  Against the Warriors, it was D-Wade going 2-8 down the stretch and a series of bonehead plays by Udonis Haslem that cost them the game, and against the Thunder it was missed free throws by LeBron that doomed the Heat.  The Heat will need to prove they can close out games if they want to win not six, not five, but one championship.

Friday Suck 5

Start your weekend off early with a look at the 5 NBA teams that had the roughest week!  New to Love Boat Sports, the Friday Suck 5 will be a power ranking of the worst NBA teams of the week.  There will surely be some perennial inclusions, although there will also be teams that just had a rough week or a major injury.  Here’s this week’s suck 5!

Note: Since this is the first edition, the entire season will be included in the rankings.

You Wouldn't Pay to See the Wizards? I Would.

Instead of being bored to death with my family at Deep Creek Lake last night, I stayed home and went to the Washington Wizards home opener with two other LBS writers.  The Wiz will probably win no more than 15 games in the shortened NBA schedule, but for some reason I was excited to go.  Would the average fan pay to see a team whose only marquee player is John Wall? Probably not, but I thought writing an article about why I would pay would be interesting.  So, in the ten seconds prior to me beginning this article, I decided on three different things that will be included:

1) Why I love going to Wizards games despite the fact that they suck

2) My impressions of the team after the home opener

3) Music at the end of the post

 I see promise in Javale McGee that I didn't last year

2011-2012 NBA Preview: Part I

Matt will be doing a four part NBA preview before the season kicks off on Christmas day. This is part one. 

I love the NBA. I love Christmas. I love the NBA on Christmas. So it brought me indescribable amounts of joy when Roy woke me up on the morning of Saturday November 26th to tell me that the lockout was over. The effects of the festivities that took place the night before were immediately overwhelmed with a feeling of pure joy.