Baron Davis: Barometer of NBA Owners Sanity

One thing I know for sure is that the NBA will lockout will end. It might take weeks, months, or years, but there will definitely be a National Basketball Association again at some point. Another thing I’m pretty sure of is that when the NBA returns, there will be an amnesty clause that will allow teams to drop one contract off the books. They’ll still have to pay that player but for salary cap purposes, the record is struck clean.

One thing I have absolutely no idea about in regards to the NBA lockout is whether or not NBA owners will have learned anything from this experience. Obviously the biggest hurdle in the negotiations between the owners and the players has been how to divide basketball related income (BRI). However the one thing that affects what the owners pull in from BRI is how much they have to pay out in salaries to their players. Long story short: the owners need to be saved from themselves by not giving out egregious contracts to players who don’t deserve them in order to maximize their BRI share.

I thought about the owners today randomly when a report came out that Baron Davis said that if he were to end up as a free agent as a result of the amnesty clause that he’d prefer to play for the Lakers, Knicks, or Bobcats. Initially I thought this was funny. I enjoyed the idea of Boom Dizzle thinking that he’d be in such demand in the upcoming free agent session that he could somehow control his own destiny and decide which team he wanted to play for. All fat and out of shape jokes aside, Davis is a soon to be 33 year old point guard with a ridiculously long injury history that barely managed to shoot over 40% from the field the last 2 years.

Facing My Mark Jackson Fears

I’m getting way ahead of myself today. Considering that there is no guarantee there will be an NBA season this year, writing about the new Golden State Warriors head coach seems like a futile exercise. The man has barely had a chance to meet his players let alone get the chance to start implementing plays or strategy for the team. However, since the NBA regular season was supposed to start this week, I’m getting a little antsy, and his lunch with the local Bay Area media has already received a lot of attention.

A little background before I dive into his quotes. I have been anti-Mark Jackson from day one. I was upset he was even considered a candidate to become the new Warriors head coach. When he was hired, I was more than a little upset. This had nothing to do with the fact that I thought he was annoying TV personality. It was the idea that he had always wanted to become a head coach but instead of actually, you know, going into coaching he chose the cushy life of an NBA TV color man. No disrespect intended for anyone who works in TV, but I’d assume if you work in TV it’s a career that you actually intended on doing. Pretty safe to say most successful NBA coaches who were former players actually decided to hone their coaching skills by taking some sort of assistant job rather than taking a gig as a TV personality.

The great Matt Steinmetz of CSN Bay Area provided all these quotes and blurbs from Coach Jackson. One of the major points Jackson was trying to emphasize was that he wasn’t a fan of “false hustle.” Basically he was saying that working long hours just to do it, or having extra long practices just to say you practiced isn’t worth it and he’d rather focus on the efficiency and quality of the work that he, the coaches and the team puts in.

SDSU Defeats Air Force and Why You Should Care

Note: I am an SDSU alum and blind supporter of the team. Everything I say in here should be taken with an appropriate grain of salt.

Coming off of back to back losses and a very slow start tonight, San Diego State pulled through over Air Force to win 41-27. The Aztecs, who were 7 point underdogs, scored on the opening possession of the game, but only saw the ball twice more in the first half, as the Falcons triple-option offense was very effective in controlling the ball and picking up first downs on key short yardage plays, including a touchdown on a fake field goal in the 2nd quarter. SDSU responded by taking the following kick off back for a TD, but Air Force held the ball for the rest of the half and kicked a field goal as time expired to tie the score 17-17 at halftime.

The 2nd half started with more of the same for Air Force as they opened the half with a 5:30 drive that resulted in a FG and a 20-17 lead. After a 3 and out for SDSU that actually lost 30 yards, all the momentum seemed to be in Air Force’s favor. However, they got sloppy with the ball, turning the ball over on consecutive possessions that led to 10 quick points for SDSU. After a Falcons 3 and out, Ronnie Hillman took over. With 2 long TD runs in the 4th quarter, Hillman finished the game with 172 yards on 28 carries, his 5th 100+ yard game this season.

Needless to say I was very excited about this victory. Admittedly I am and have always been more of an Aztecs hoops fan over the football team (Fisher’s Fanatics!!). But the football program has been on the up and up since they hired Brady Hoke 3 seasons ago. Hoke took over a team that went 2-10 in 2008 and the only real positive thing you could say about them was that freshmen QB Ryan Lindley looked like he COULD be decent one day. In Hoke’s first season, SDSU went 4-8 in what looked and felt like every other Aztecs season of the past 10 years.

OBP and the Ideals of Moneyball

Since there are still baseball fans and writers out there who do not see the value of using statistics for evaluating teams and players, I wanted to do a quick post about on base percentage (OBP). Here are this season’s American League team leaders in OBP:

		OBP	Wins	Runs
	Boston	0.349	90	875 (1)
	New York	0.343	97	867(2)
	Detroit	0.340	95	787(4)
	Texas	0.340	96	855(3)
	Kansas City	0.323	71	730(6)
	Tampa Bay	0.322	91	707(8)

The number in parentheses next to the total runs scored is where the team ranked in the AL in runs. As you can see, all 4 playoff teams from the AL are in the top 6 in the league in OBP, and 5 of the top 6 won at least 90 games. Not surprisingly, all these teams minus Tampa Bay were in the top half of the American League in runs scored too. Now here are the National League team leaders:

Jose Reyes and His Meaningless Batting Title

Before last night turned into the most exciting night in regular season baseball history, the story of the day was Jose Reyes battling Ryan Braun for the National League batting title. As you probably know, Reyes dropped down a bunt in the 1^st inning of his game against the Reds to raise his batting average to .337, leaving him .003 points ahead of Braun, who had a .334 average going into his game. Wanting to protect this lead, Reyes then checked himself out of the game. Braun still had a chance to win the batting title if he had rattled off 3 or 4 hits in his game, but alas, he went 0-4, finishing the season with a .332 average and 2^nd place to Reyes. 

Now I’m not going to judge Reyes for doing this. Whether or not you feel what he did was wrong and “disgraceful to the game” is a matter of opinion and I personally don’t think it’s worth debating the merits of it. For all I know he has an incentive in his contract that guarantees him more money for winning a battle title. In which case more power to him. But what I am here to argue is that making a big deal about winning the batting title is completely pointless.

Batting average is one of the three classic hitter’s baseball stats that people still celebrate, along with home runs and RBIs. Over the last decade or so (the Moneyball era, if you will), a lot of baseball fans (re: nerds) have enjoyed watching baseball stats evolve. Being a baseball nerd and a Moneyball reader (and A’s fan), I have loved this. Websites like Fangraphs.com and BaseballReference.com have made these stats readily available for anyone to see. No longer are they locked away in a spiral bound Bill James notebook somewhere. Any national writer or everyday fan can look up and see what any players OBP, wOBA, WAR, or WPA is at anytime. While no baseball stat is perfect, using some of these advanced stats can help paint a better picture of a player than using just batting average.

Mayweather vs. Ortiz, HBO 24/7 and the Boxing Hype Machine

In my opinion, there is no better sports reality show than HBO’s 24/7 series. Being a boxing fan, it’s easy for me to say this, but many aspects of the show are appealing to mainstream sports fans and just regular TV fans alike. The first of the 24/7 series I watched was for the build up to the Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao fight. I had become aware of Manny Pacquiao after he defeated an aging Oscar De La Hoya in his previous fight to essentially become the most popular boxer in the world. I was less than familiar with Hatton, knowing only that he was a brawler from England who was regarded as one of the top pound for pound fighters in the world.

That was enough for me to decide to get back into the world of professional boxing. I had in essence sworn off the sport of boxing after the Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson debacle in 2002. I had semi-regularly followed the heavyweight division for a while and this was by far the most compelling fight Lewis had had as champion. Though Tyson was long past his prime, I had believed him to be the only heavyweight who could actually give Lewis a run for his money. With Lewis’s last handful of fights coming against such no names as Francois Botha, David Tua and Hasim Raham, I was hoping Tyson could channel some of the skills he possessed that made him a boxing phenom and regain the heavyweight title. Forgetting that it was 2002 and not 1995, Lewis embarrassed Tyson. While Tyson showed some flashes early, it was clear he was nowhere close to being in the same class as Lewis. By the 3^rd or 4^th round, it was evident that Tyson knew he had no chance and essentially stopped fighting. Finally in the 8^th round, with Tyson barely having the energy or willingness to throw a punch, Lewis knocked Tyson to the canvas and the referee counted him out.

I had felt duped by the boxing hype machine. Even though I knew this would have been a much more entertaining fight 6-7 years previous, there was enough hype and promotion around the fight that led me to believe that it would actually be a close, hard fought battle. Lewis only fought once more in his career and retired as the undisputed heavyweight champ. Since then, the division has been dominated by Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko. Both are amazingly talented fighters but have been (perhaps unfairly) punished by the fact they don’t have a very entertaining fighting style in the ring and that the heavyweight division is the weakest that its ever been. Even though there were many great fighters still active (including De La Hoya), heavyweight fighters are still the huge draw for casual boxing fans, which I was at the time, so with nothing exciting going on for a while, I stopped following the sport altogether.

Would You Rather: Upton vs. McCutchen

Arizona Diamondbacks right fielder Justin Upton and Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen have become two of the sexiest names in baseball in 2011. And for good reason. Both players have become legitimate stars after they were high first round draft picks in the 2005 MLB draft (Upton 1^st overall, McCutchen 11^th). Both were All Stars this season, they are both currently in the top 6 in WAR in the National League and both players have been the best players on teams that have over achieved this season (and up until 2 weeks ago both of their teams were in pennant races, not so much anymore for the Pirates). But the question today is whom would you rather have going forward?

Despite both being drafted straight out of high school, Upton was much more of a known commodity than McCutchen. In 2002, Justin’s brother BJ Upton was the #2 overall pick in the draft. Billed as being even more talented than his older brother, Justin one-upped BJ by being the 1^st overall pick and made his big league debut in 2007 at the age of 19 and has never looked back. McCutchen made his big league debut for Pittsburgh in 2009 at the age of 22 and has been their starting CF ever since. Let’s take a look at the numbers, starting with McCutchen:

Thoughts on Rich Harden….

This past Saturday I was in attendance in Oakland for the scheduled doubleheader between the A’s and Angels. Having never been to a doubleheader, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but 7 hours and 19 innings of baseball later I walked away a very satisfied customer. Any baseball fan would have enjoyed the pitching matchup in Game 1, featuring 2010 all star Trevor Cahill starting for Oakland against maybe the best pitcher in the American League Jared Weaver for Anaheim. As a diehard A’s fan though, I was looking forward to game 2, which featured Earvin Santana pitching for Anaheim against Rich Harden for Oakland.

Having followed the career of Harden, I was curious to see if he still had anything left he could give the A’s. He made 2 mistakes in the game: allowing a 2 run home run to Mark Trumbo in the 2^ndth inning solo shot to Vernon Wells. Other than that, Harden was masterful: 7 innings, 4 hits, 2 walks, 9 strikeouts, which included striking out the side in the 7^th. His fastball reached as high as 96 mph on the stadium radar gun. He got a no-decision as the A’s went on to win in 10 innings, but he pitched more than well enough to earn the win. I immensely enjoyed watching Harden pitch. To see him pitch so brilliantly after everything he’s gone through in his career was thrilling. But it was the timing of the start that got me thinking...