What are you doing, Billups and Garnett?
This picture has nothing to do with anything
We just need something to take our minds off the Nyets' victory

(Via Andy Gray's SI Vault)

While I am currently not too happy with the San Antonio Spurs, I still like them, and still root for Tim Duncan. In related news, I just got done reading this article by Dan Shaughnessy about Tim Duncan. Basically, Shaugnessy gives Duncan almost no credit simply because he isn't exciting to watch and plays for a small market. What??

Look, I hate trying to rank players, especially since generational differences make it impossible to truly compare people in a fair fashion. (Thanks to rules changes, defenses reacting to offensive trends and vice versa, etc., the style of ball played in the '60s is vastly different from the style of ball played now. Likewise, the style of ball played today is vastly different even from the style played just five years ago!). That being said, when a player has 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, 2,000 blocks and 2,500 assists, you can pretty safely call them one of the best players of all time. (Fine, maybe not "Top 10," but you don't just immediately dismiss him!) Tim Duncan has won a ton of hardware and rings with the Spurs, and him controlling the paint and simply dominating the glass for years is a big part of the equation. No flash, no frills, just pure excellence.

Shaugnessy decided to go watch Duncan play in person the other night (at Boston, natch). Of course, watching Duncan now to form your opinion about him isn't very wise when obviously that'll skew things because Duncan's past his prime, and is declining rapidly, as all basketball players -- and particularly big men -- are wont to do after so many years in the league. It's sad. I still love Timmy D, and he's still a good player, but he's fairly obviously not the same player he was just two or three years ago. But ridiculous articles like Shaugnessy's just make me die a little inside.

In lighter news, I'm sure you've often wondered why I don't watch women's basketball. (What do you mean you've never ever wondered that before? Just humor me for a minute.) This is just one more reason for me to ignore it. This goes beyond your standard bawful fare and goes straight into "EPIC FAIL" territory:


Yes, Xavier senior Dee Dee Jernigan missed two consecutive wide open layups to blow an easy trip to the Final Four. Missing free throws is bad enough, but missing two straight layups when nobody is within the same zip code as you to defend the shot? Come on.

Worst of the Night in Pictures:

20100329-tim-duncan-yi-jianlian
The reach-around for the nipple grab is just the icing on the cake


20100329-devin-harris-courtney-lee
Of all the awkward, mildly homo-erotic high fives I've seen over the years, this has to be near the top of the list

Nationally Televised Games:
Suns at Bulls: Okay, I feel bad about stat cursing the hell out of the Spurs last night and ruining history. However, as noted by godhimself48 in the comments, Derrick Rose just pulled a Devin Harris and may have stat cursed the hell out of his Bulls in an interview with ESPNChicago.com after Tuesday morning's shootaround.
"We're still going to make it. You can't think about stuff like [not making the playoffs]. In my mind, we'll be making the eighth spot. We'll be playing LeBron -- playing Cleveland."
Ruh roh.

All The Other Games:
Kings at Pacers: Eww. The Purple Paupers are injury-riddled (Dominic McGuire's out for the season! Oh no!) and the Pacers are rolling. This could be their longest home winning streak since the '03-'04 season. And I still can't explain it.

Thunder at 76ers: Speaking of bad teams winning for no obvious reason, the Sixers have taken down the Hawks and Bucks in their past two games. What gives? Are the playoff-bound teams being hypnotized into thinking they're really just the Nets by some broke guy who does hypnotizing comedy shows who is trying to make up for some earlier gambling losses? I'm ready to believe almost anything at this point.

Clippers at Bucks: John Salmons is the East's sixth-leading scorer in March. Conversely, he only averaged like 4 points per game when I had him on my fantasy team a couple seasons ago for a few weeks. What's the deal, Fishman?

Wizards Generals Bullets at Rockets: The Bullets still haven't won a game in the month of March, and they only have two more chances: this game, and tomorrow night at New Orleans. It's like the Nyets and Bullets did a Trading Places-esque switch for an entire month, except one team is downtrodden and awful, and the other team is slightly less downtrodden and slightly less awful. Not quite the Winthorpe/Valentine difference, but still a decided class difference.

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18 Comments:
Blogger Basketbawful said...
Dan, just let me point out that despite dropping TD out of my top 15 current players list, I've always been a fan and love his fundamental game. That dude is straight up crazy. Timmy is and might always been in my top 15 all-time.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Also, regarding the video. Evil Ted and I just watched that like 10 times, and we decided that shit wouldn't fly at our pickup league. Not just the missed layups, but the horrific defense where the Stanford chick dribbles the length of the court and hits an uncontested layup...that play BEGAN with only 4.4 seconds on the clock. If the X-Women had just stood in a line like a wall the game at least would have gone to overtime.

Damn.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Dan - is that you having an orgasmic moment in the video?

Blogger Will said...
That video is proof: there are men who watch women's basketball.

Blogger Will said...
here's Washington's starting lineup
Shawn Livingston, Nick Young, Mike Miller, Fabricio Oberto, and Andray "Mr. Maturity" Blatche. I do believe they are challenging that lineup Chicago trotted out a few weeks ago (featuring the immortal Acie Law) for worst lineup of the year.

Blogger Dan B. said...
Bawful -- Hard not to like anybody who just plain gets it done like Tim Duncan, right? Also hard not to like somebody who makes so many awesome faces.

And yes, that was some absolutely horrific defense.

BadDave -- No, it is not me. In fact, I had the audio muted when I watched the video earlier. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch it now. Hold on.
...
Oh my God. That "OHHOHOHOH" just made the video ten times more hilarious.

Will -- Let me get this straight. Shaun Livington's Reconstructed Knee? Fabricio Lacktator Oberto? Mike Miller? Nick "Who the Hell Am I?" Young, and Blatche? That's the best you can do, Washington? Jesus. Way to give your fans the middle finger.

Anonymous The Other Chris said...
Stat curse alert! D. Rose says "we will make the playoffs". Promptly lose to the Suns. 8 games left, they will be two games behind the Mighty _inos assuming the Craptors can beat the Clippers tomorrow.

I'm actually happy I have tickets for the April 11th Bulls/Toronto game now. Who gets to be cannon fodder for the world's largest ego, and who doesn't even get the "privilege" of being Lebron's plaything for four games? Stay tuned!

Anonymous Anonymous said...
That chick should have just dunked it. AMIRIGHT? LOLOLOLOLOL

Blogger chris said...
AND...

Sergio Rodriguez takes a rejection, falls, then gets stepped on by Ronnie Price - with Rodriguez being called for a tripping foul!

Thank you, ESPN Sportsnation, for that clip.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE YOUTUBE THIS!??!?

Anonymous armand_a said...
That girl's misses is such an epic FAIL in itself that I feel the need to refrain myself to make further comments. Let's just have a moment of silence.

Anonymous armand_a said...
By the way, by looking at Stanford's bench, does the NCAA made it a rule that women basketball must be coached by either males or lesbians?

Blogger Preveen said...
What makes me sad, just a few years ago the West All-Star team back court would be Shaq, Yao, Timmy, KG and Dirk. Right now, the only one actually playing at a high level seems to be Dirk.

Blogger Dan B. said...
Preveen -- Indeed. Shaq is the size of a small car and has to make frequent trips to the shop. KG's knees are no longer alive. Yao is a walking injury. And Tim Duncan has just suddenly aged 10 times too fast like the guy in that one crappy Robin Williams movie.

Blogger Henchman #2 said...
Dan Shaughnessy once wrote a book entitled "The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino". It is best not to take him seriously. He wrote at the Globe during some prime years, with Ryan, Gammons, McDonough, Collins, all guys who went national decades ago, and it took an explosion of internet sports sights to water down the talent pool enough for SI to pick him up.

Anonymous JJ One said...
Just wanted to say I love your German names for Dirkules, Bawful. Although ´The big game des blonden Bombmeisters.´ would be correct, it´s the total ignoring of German grammar that make them even more funny..

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Just wanted to say I love your German names for Dirkules, Bawful. Although ´The big game des blonden Bombmeisters.´ would be correct, it´s the total ignoring of German grammar that make them even more funny..

Just so you know, I took six years of German and I'm always tempted -- in, like, an OCD kind of way -- to use proper grammar. But it really is funnier to me to mangle foreign languages.

Anonymous gebwel said...
to be fair, shaughnessy's article did mention duncan's greatness and he didn't outright dismiss duncan. people are entitled to have opinions, and it's just a pity that TD didn't make his top 10 list. if you think about it, that list is a pretty crammed one. of those 10 he mentioned, i'd probably take cousy out to insert duncan. then again, some of the next 12 players deserved to be in the top 10 as well, depending on which categories do you weigh more.

Anonymous Tim said...
Well it took me two days to catch up on howm uch I have missed (screw you, bad wireless signal) and I gotta say, I've missed a bunch. But the last thing to actually load was that video of that chick. I know it has already been said, but good God. The misses were bad enough. Apparently she has some ability to magnetize a ball and cause it to repel away from a rim or something. X-Men style (no pun intended here, just coincidental.) But what is infinitely worse is that absolute lack of any idea of how to play D. I was sure it had to be going to OT and they were going to show a replay from ten angles, hence the length of the clip. But I couldn;t even bring myself to puke, I don't know if I have ever seen that, even from Vag-sanity. To WATCH her do that to you? Facepalm, hand in the face, none of it does that justice. If this were Japan, they would have committed a ritual group suicide at center court within minutes. I don't even know what to say, I guess I am still in shock. And of course, I'm just sayin...