Let's do what Jesus would do and cut money for child support enforcement, health care for the poor, and federal student loans.

Merry Christmas, my ***. Does Bill O'Reilly really want us to get on our knees and thak God Jesus was born so that we can cut money from foster care?

To quote Iago, from the movie Aladdin: I'm so ticked off that I'm molting.

Gilbert,

What does that have to do with the Wizards?

I agree with trboz (for once). Save the non-sequitur political comments for another post. Sports is one area that's offered some respite from politics, where the right and the left can agree on a few things--like the fact that Amy's stuck with a lousy team. Even if they were playing above 500, they're still in the Eastern Conference, the designated losers in the NBA Championship.

Bullets . . . I mean Wizards fans who work in cyberspace, unfettered by geographical ties, should do the logical thing: telecommute from San Antonio.

Your team just lost to my beloved-but-miserable Blazers, with three of their starters out sick or injured. There are no excuses.

Basketball??
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wake me when the NBA Community College League starts playing team basketball instead of one on one show time crap. Until then I will continue to watch College Basketball and see whether Bill Self can turn children into team basketball players at KU.

When our NBA pro-cry babies went into International play with their one on one nonsense, they had their Rolexes handed to them.

It was a team game when Naismith put up the first Peach Basket and it still is a TEAM game. Passing and defense are still allowed in parts of the world.

ThirdPaul, note comment above from DevilDog. San Antonio plays team defense; defense and rebounding win championships. And I hope you're watching the women's game: in the women's pro game, Sacramento won a championship this year with almost nothing except passing and defense-- though really they won because Lindsay Whalen got hurt. (In this year's women's college game, people who like the NBA style of play should watch North Carolina: people who dislike it should watch Tennessee, and everyone should watch LSU and perhaps Duke.)

accommodatingly,

Excellent points - I started losing my appreciation of the NBA when too many World B Frees of the I Got Mine school were allowed to take over the game.

Interestingly, the game is also well played on the smaller college level - The women's team at Seattle Pacific plays an excellent game.

Firefall, don't be a dick. If you don't like the topic, don't comment. Very simple stuff.

Overpaid guys with pituitary problems running around on tv in their skivvies bouncing balls... and grown-ups find it fascinating? Amazing.

Once again, no mention of the Pistons, who are pretty much destroying everyone in their path...

Early-season Finals prediction: Detroit and San Antonio, Round 2...

"Wake me when the NBA Community College League starts playing team basketball instead of one on one show time crap. Until then I will continue to watch College Basketball and see whether Bill Self can turn children into team basketball players at KU."

Um, in case you haven't noticed the last three NBA Championships have been won by consummate TEAMS that brook no "one on one showtime crap". Even though one of them has the best player of the last decade.

Watch the San Antonio @ Detroit Christmas day rematch to see what real team basketball looks like.

I can't let Jason Zengerle and Matt Yglesias dominate the field of political-journalists-who-blog-about-basketball.

Especially not when Yglesias knows about as much about basketball as he does politics.

Interestingly, the game is also well played on the smaller college level - The women's team at Seattle Pacific plays an excellent game. Posted by: thethirdPaul

Pervert! You're just saying that because of that knock-out guard they have that made Seattle's sexiest athletes list.

Antawn Jamison shouldn't be playing power forward anyway. He's really a 3, but starting the stick-like Jeffries makes Antawn look massive in comparison. And what is it with Jeffries? How do his nightly numbers of 5 points and 4 rebounds earn starters minutes?

chaboard,

Do appreciate the quality played by the finalists such as San Antonio and Detroit. My problem stems from watching George Karl, when he was with the Sonics, never building a team for the finals followed by suffering through the Blazers under Paul Allen's ownership. Following the Blazers for the past five years has left me very cynical.
Being a lifetime Jayhawk fan, I still love college basketball despite all of the used car salesmen coaches, yes it includes Roy Williams and his dog Spot, in the game.

ttp,

Steve Nash and the Suns also play a great team game, good ball movement and control . . . in fact, they've rediscovered most of the things that have fallen out of favor in the NBA. Heck, they even run plays.

More:

1. It's unclear who the starting point guard is for the Wizards. When we first acquired Daniels, the projected backcourt was Arenas/Daniels, with Daniels defending shooting guards but sharing PG duties with Arenas. His anemic offense (I'm pretty sure he recently broke 30% shooting) has relegated him to the bench, leaving Hayes as the starting shooting guard. With Arenas/Hayes, Arenas has to assume all the ball handling duties, which leads to stagnation and poor offense, since Arenas is not a great distributor and he's our first option on offense. It's hard to win with your point as your first option. Arenas is just not big enough to play SG regularly.

2. Antawn Jamison is a horrible defender. It's not just that we don't have a decent backup for him, it's that he's too much of a tweener, unable to guard either SFs or PFs. He's too slow for the one, to weak for the other. That's why we have to start Jared Jeffries, who brings nothing on offense -- he's able to cover, at least competently, the other team's best offensive forward. We have to hide Jamison on defense, which is not something we can do against a team with two good forwards.

The above two points explain, in part, why Butler doesn't get enough minutes. He can't guard power forwards, and his ball handling is atrocious for a shooting guard (though it's not noticeably worse than Hayes').

3. Eddie Jordan just is not a good coach. He doesn't play Brendan Haywood or Etan Thomas often enough (particularly Haywood). Against the Lakers, for instance, he split the center minutes roughly evenly between Wood, Thomas, and Ruffin. Ruffin is 6'8", with the worst offensive game in the NBA. He switches well on pick and rolls, but is not athletic enough to do anything against a legitimate interior presence.

At least Gilbert's occasionally fun to watch, and when our offense clicks we can compete with anything. THe nail-biter victory over Detroit and the blowout of San Antonio demonstrate what the Wiz are capable of. I think I was spoiled a bit by last year's surprise run.

chaboard on December 19, 2005 at 12:02 PM:

Watch the San Antonio @ Detroit Christmas day rematch to see what real team basketball looks like.

Oh, yesss...I wonder if Flip Saunder's offense will make the difference between now and the last quarter of the last game of last season's Finals. Plus, Billups wants to prove that he's the best guard in the NBA, deserving of selection to the All-Star team...

As for the 'team play' aspect of the game, I gotta agree with the observation about women's basketball - in that the women's game is definitely built more around the team game than the pro and some college teams, whose game plan seems to involve shoveling the ball off to one or two 'superstars' who then do all the work while everyone else watches.

"Early-season Finals prediction: Detroit and San Antonio, Round 2..."
detroit, yes, but san antonio? hmmm...not with the way dallas has been playing lately.

I believe in what goes around comes around. When an organization treats somebody badly, they will pay for it. This is the consequences of treating Michael Jordan as badly as the Wizard owner did. Jordan was trying to get the prima donnas to work harder. They did not want to work harder; so they complained to Pollin. And, Jordan was gone very unceremoniously. Granted he was not perfect--after all, he was the one who selected Kwame Brown, who proved to be a bust. However, there were some spurts of good play making during the time Jordan was here. Most of the prima donnas from the Jordan team are elsewhere now, which is good; but, I haven't been impressed with Eddie Jordan's coaching.

Amy, there's no pressure on Jamison, as you mention, since he's only the 2nd scorer on the team, behind Arenas, but you are right that the Wizards could use a good backup to spell him (which will not be Caron Butler). For the record, Jamison can play a lot of minutes, and produce, but he's just slumping the past week or so. This is normal in the league.

The Wizards truly need another center to go along with Haywood, so that there will be a 4th guy worthy of spelling Jamison (2 deep at C and PF), and they need Jarvis Hayes to stop getting hurt every year.

And, for the record, they never should have let both Blake and Dixon go, and I especially would have held on to Dixon, but even Blake is starting to look like a real find, if he can keep up his play from the past few games.

Amy, I thought you were from Detroit?

Where is the love for a real team in this league -the Detroit Pistons?

You're a Bullets fan? C'mon.

ooga:

"Early-season Finals prediction: Detroit and San Antonio, Round 2..."
detroit, yes, but san antonio? hmmm...not with the way dallas has been playing lately.

ooga, ooga, ooga . . . That's just crazy talk, my friend. The Spurs have the best record, not just in their division, but also in their conference, and they've won the last three out of four games -- without Ginobili.

I'm betting that Christmas Day game will make you a believer.

ooga on December 19, 2005 at 1:33 PM:

detroit, yes, but san antonio? hmmm...not with the way dallas has been playing lately.

Like I said, it's early...However, as a Deeetroit basketball fan, I'm all for Dallas, San Antonio, and Phoenix (and maybe the Clippers) knocking the crap outta each other before the Finals...

And I hope you're watching the women's game: in the women's pro game, Sacramento won a championship this year with almost nothing except passing and defense-- though really they won because Lindsay Whalen got hurt. (In this year's women's college game, people who like the NBA style of play should watch North Carolina: people who dislike it should watch Tennessee, and everyone should watch LSU and perhaps Duke.)
Posted by: accommodatingly on December 19, 2005 at 9:39 AM |

And don't forget Maryland, which has some superb players on its roster, including Crystal Langhorne (USA Basketball female athlete of the year for her work on the national team this summer), Laura Harper, Shay Doron, Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver -- and none of them are seniors. I agree that North Carolina is wonderfully athletic and Duke very talented, but there's a third ACC team in the national discussion (Maryland rose to 6th in this week's poll, with UNC 5th and Duke 2nd), and it hails from College Park.

fastsize review

"Overpaid guys with pituitary problems running around on tv in their skivvies bouncing balls... and grown-ups find it fascinating? Amazing."

Seems to me if you replaced "in their skivvies bouncing balls" with the proper phrase you'd have the perfect description of politics.

I think people get a lot from sports. In no particular order: It makes some great stories that would be too corny to write. MJ sinking (what was then) the last shot of his career to win a championship was a beautiful way to punctuate a dozen other corny stories he manufactured during his career.

If you've ever played sports, they are fascinating. My guess is that why I like basketball so much is that its my favorite sport to play and the players who do it professionally do it at a level I can't even dream of matching. As I age, this becomes truer and truer. Allen Iverson is about my age, leads the league in scoring, top 10 in assists, steals, and has a pretty mediocre team in the playoff hunt. He's only a few inches taller than me and weighs about the same. I play pickup in the park (badly, no less) and my body feels it for days. And I'm in really good shape compared to most people my age. There's something awesome about that. Not me, the men and women who are able to compete at such a level and take the pounding they do.

Sports help people relate. Take someone I disagree wholly with at the political and relisious levels and we can connect around sports. There's something to that.

Finally, to imply that NBA players have weight problems is ridiculous. One of my favorite things about basketball is that you get to see the players' bodies. And, for the most part, they look fantastic. I followed the atkins diet for a good three days because I wanted my body to look like Scottie Pippen's. Pituitary problem my ass. Spoken as a heterosexual male, those guys are gorgeous.