Author: John Paulsen (Page 728 of 937)

      Bucks fire Krystkowiak

      April 17, 2008 /

      New Bucks GM John Hammond (formerly the VP of the Detroit Pistons) acted quickly in his first few days on the job and fired head coach Larry Krystkowiak.

      Krystkowiak, who was named head coach on March 15, 2007, won 31 of 100 games with the Bucks.

      The Bucks will immediately begin their search for a head coach. Former Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle and former Chicago Bulls coach Scott Skiles are expected to be considered, and it’s possible veteran Larry Brown could be in the mix. Brown, who coached the Pistons to the 2004 NBA championship, has said he wants to return to coaching.

      There’s enough talent in Milwaukee to make the Bucks a perennial playoff team. The team has two terrific scorers in Michael Redd and Mo Williams, along with a promising front line that features Andrew Bogut, Yi Jianlian and Charlie Villanueva.

      Being a long-time Bucks fan, I watched a ton of games this season and it’s clear that the team was lacking the chemistry necessary to win games consistently. I would typically blame the head coach, since it’s his job to take the talent that’s there and get those players to buy into his system. That simply didn’t happen this season.

      The Bucks’ owner, Senator Herb Kohl, needs to make a serious hire, not another no-name, first-year gy. I love the idea of Larry Brown coming in and whipping this team into shape. He has led tremendous turnaround efforts in the past and his disciplined mindset still lingers in Detroit. The other two names mentioned – Scott Skiles and Rick Carlisle – are also known as serious hard-asses, but they don’t have the reputation that Brown has. I’d be a little worried about Skiles since he was unable to do much with a talented Chicago team this season, but any of these three hires would be an improvement.

      NBA, Rumors & Gossip

      Chad Johnson wants out of Cincy

      April 16, 2008 /

      After a few months of insinuations, Chad Johnson has officially asked to be traded.

      Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson left no room for doubt Wednesday: He wants out of Cincinnati as fast as possible and he doesn’t plan on reporting for any future Bengal function — mandatory or voluntary.

      “Nothing has changed from what I’ve been saying for three months that I don’t want to play for the Bengals.”

      Johnson made one of his strongest statements in saying he is not planning on reporting to any team functions because he wants to be traded.

      “I want to be traded before the draft, and if that doesn’t happen, I want to be traded as soon as possible,” Johnson said. “I don’t intend on reporting to anything.”

      As this was happening, I always got the feeling that he and the Bengals would repair the relationship and he’d be in Cincy this season. But it’s hard to go back from statements like these. (Though Kobe did it, so who knows.)

      Possible suitors? The Raiders jump to mind, though they may not have the cap space after all their signings this summer. Wherever he lands, he’s the type of player that can shift the NFL landscape.

      Fantasy Football, NFL, Rumors & Gossip

      Will Kobe benefit from a three-way MVP race?

      April 16, 2008 /

      I’m not sure why I’m spending so much time thinking about the MVP race. Maybe deep down I just don’t want to see Kobe rewarded for his tumultuous offseason. Something irks me about a player being rewarded with such an honor after throwing his teammate and GM under the bus and then taking credit for his team’s turnaround when an All-Star is gift wrapped and dropped at his doorstep before the trade deadline.

      Something occurred to me as I was eating my oatmeal this morning – since, by most accounts, it’s a three-way race, could KG and CP3 split the “good teammate” vote allowing the Kobe die-hards to win it for their guy?

      Let’s assume that 40% of the voters intend to vote for Kobe, and that 60% are going to vote non-Kobe. If that anti-Kobe vote splits 50/50 between Paul and Garnett, Kobe would win with a 40/30/30 ratio.

      Of course, voters have a five-person ballot and points are awarded based on a player’s position in the ballot – 10 points for first, seven for second, five for third, three for fourth and one for fifth, so it’s not so simple. But if that ratio translates to the entire ballot, it’s conceivable that Kobe (or another player) could win the award with less than half the first place votes.

      One thing’s for sure – now that Kobe is on a team with 50+ wins, the MVP race is far more interesting.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      Let’s reshuffle the NBA playoffs

      April 15, 2008 /

      Well, the playoffs are set…sort of. There are still some teams jockeying for position, but we now know the 16 teams that will comprise this year’s playoff field.

      And the 12th-best team in the league, the Golden State Warriors, will not be playing in the postseason.

      We knew this was coming. It has been obvious since the start of the season that a good team from the West was going to miss the playoffs this season. Not only that, but the Portland Trailblazers probably should have made the postseason too.

      I suggested this almost a year ago, but what if we threw the conferences out and just seeded the playoffs #1 through #16? Our first round matchups would look like this:

      #1 Boston vs. #16 Portland
      #8 Phoenix vs. #9 Orlando
      #4 New Orleans vs. #13 Cleveland
      #5 San Antonio vs. #12 Golden State

      #2 Detroit vs. #15 Toronto
      #7 Houston vs. #10 Dallas
      #3 LA Lakers vs. #14 Washington
      #6 Utah vs. #11 Denver

      Just look at these storylines: Shaq vs. Dwight Howard, CP3 vs. LeBron, the slow it down Spurs versus the up-tempo Warriors, the Lake St. Clair battle between Detroit and Toronto (separated by just a four-hour drive), the Battle for Texas (Houston vs. Dallas), the Battle in the Mountains (Utah/Denver) and, of course, Kobe facing the team that gave him Kwame Brown.

      Potential second-round matchups: Celtics/Suns, Hornets/Spurs, Pistons/Mavs and the Lakers/Jazz. Tell me you’re not going to want to watch as much of that round as possible.

      If it were up to me, I’d give the best team in each conference one of the top two seeds, so that would make the Lakers the #2 seed and the Pistons #3.

      What do you think? Should we scrap the current system?

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, NBA Finals

      Why Chris Paul will win MVP

      April 15, 2008 /

      The following is an excerpt from my year-end awards column. Click here to read the entire post.

      There are four serious contenders for this year’s MVP: Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James.

      LeBron continues to grow. His gaudy averages – 30.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 1.8 steals and 1.1 blocks – seem to get gaudier by the year. But the Cavs will finish below that important 50-win mark, which means that they simply aren’t an elite team. Throw in the fact that Cleveland is just 27-23 against the East and the record looks even worse. The MVP award hasn’t gone to a player on a team with fewer than 50 wins since the 1981-82 season, and the streak won’t be broken this year.

      All due respect to Kevin Garnett, but his numbers just aren’t MVP-caliber. I don’t look solely at stats, but they play a pretty big factor and Garnett is one of eight players who average at least 19.0 points and 9.3 rebounds a game, so it’s not like he’s in exclusive company. If KG does defy the odds and win his second MVP, it will be due to the defensive mindset that he brought to the Celtics. The team’s transformation on that end of the court has been something to behold. This is why KG is all but a shoe-in to win the Defensive Player of the Year, which isn’t a bad consolation prize.

      So it’s down to two. It’s tough to compare the stats of a point guard like Chris Paul to a scoring guard like Kobe Bryant, so I like to double the assist numbers and add that total to the average points to determine the total number of points that the player is directly responsible for. In this case, we’re looking at 44.3 for Paul and 39.3 for Bryant. Paul also averages almost a full steal more than Bryant, shoots more than two percent better from the field and a full percentage point better from the free throw line. Paul’s Points Per Shot (PPS) is 4% higher than Bryant’s. And he does this all with 1.6 fewer minutes per game, so he’s clearly more efficient than Kobe, which gives him an advantage in EPG (+1.0) and EPM (+0.055). Kobe is the better rebounder (6.4 to Paul’s 4.0), but other than points, that’s the only stat in which he’s superior to Paul.

      And then you have the likeability factor. Paul has it and Kobe doesn’t. Bryant is no doubt a popular player, but he’s also the league’s most hated. Meanwhile, Paul seems to be universally loved. Like it or not, being the most valuable player to some degree requires a player to be a good teammate, both on and off the court. Kobe’s on-again/off-again trade demands last summer, along with his decision to throw Andrew Bynum and Mitch Kupchak under the bus, have destroyed any shred of “good teammate” rep that Kobe had left.

      Some sportswriters will weigh the likeability factor more heavily than others, but I think most voters are just looking for an excuse not to reward Kobe’s offseason antics by giving him his first MVP. And in Chris Paul they have the perfect alternative. No one thought the Hornets would be this good and CP3 is one of those guys that simply makes everyone around him better. If you only consider the on-court performance, an argument could be made that Kobe’s season is more deserving, but the NBA is not played in a vacuum, and Kobe’s wild summer will seep into voters’ minds, as it should.

      Paul wins it in a tight finish.

      Photos courtesy of Flickr.

      NBA

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