BobSaccamanno

Regarding AD, from a player's perspective, winning is far more important than playing in a huge market, as he seems to be attracted to. Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre, and Vince Lombardi have been as big sports figures in fans' minds as you can find and they are from tiny Green Bay. Peyton is a monster figure coming out of Indy. I can't turn on the TV without seeing Aaron or Peyton in an ad. I live in Chicago. I doubt most basketball fans could name five Bulls without google.

Honestly, at this point, I’m prepared to say that Kawhi is the best two way player in the league, and maybe by a considerable margin. If there’s a “ludicrous” speed in the movies, maybe he’s playing at a ludicrous level. He led the way obviously, but Toronto hasn’t been known for clutch play in years past. Leonard is doing most of it, but he’s brought up some of his teammates too, as the great ones do. I am not remotely a believer in Toronto's backcourt, so I give a heavy edge to GS. I don’t think Toronto can match up well at all. They seem very happy to just be in the finals, which is a good accomplishment. Milwaukee is a good team but the history in the NBA tells you that you need to overcome obstacles before you move to the next level. They have to get better. Giannis may be able to hit some jumpers against Sacramento in January, but these playoffs show you it’s all about stepping up in small windows when it really matters. At that point, he didn’t trust his jumper. Milwaukee had a good year, though. Malcolm Brogdon could play for me any time. Middleton showed good all around ability, etc. The great thing about the NBA playoffs, in seven game series, there’s no room for excuses. By definition, the better team wins.

He looks like a defensive back losing grip on a tackle of a skinny but fast wide receiver. Tackle the ankles, no one has power there.

I’m not sure how much of an open mind Lebron has to listening to a coach who isn’t his stooge. He was mostly ok with Spoelstra, I guess. Will be interesting to see how it plays out but I hope Vogel stands up to him.

Wow, thanks for the heads up. I had no idea. Your post prompted me to google it and the Lakers tried to link Lue's deal to Lebron. Lue was offended. Hopefully he's not biting his nose to spite his face. But, in terms of principle, he is correct. Honestly, its like the Lakers did that to send a message to Lebron. Either way, the Lakers should not have done that. If Lebron were gone, then you just fire Lue if that's your wish. You may have to swallow Lue money, but that's par for the course and every team does that. In the end, the money is just the cost of doing business. Nobody would lose sleep over it. It's like a rounding error for the sums these guys are making. It was a pretty stupid thing to do, IMO. The Lakers miss Jerry West. What a class guy and smart GM he has always been.

Excellent post. From a time perspective, I don't have time to watch both college and NBA intently. I choose IU basketball as a muscle memory passion that hooked me decades ago. I read about the NBA but only spot watch it during the regular season. In the playoffs, I have more time for it with college and NFL gone. Having said all that, if I were 15 years old now, there's a good chance I would get hooked on pro hoops over college. IMO, the respective pro and college products have gone in different directions. The college game has fallen dramatically behind college football. Unlike football, you don't have many top teams staying together at an elite level and coalescing over time. I don't mean teams like the 1976 Hoosiers. I mean, in any given year, do you have wars between 10 or 12 damn good teams with veteran rosters with future pros clubbing each other? Meanwhile, the NBA game has excellent coaching and teams that play tremendous team ball. I have no problem with the three ball. Look at all the extra passes, plus all the excellent coaching when you look at guys like Pop, Kerr, Budenholzer, Stevens and others. Any of those guys could just kill it in college. We aren't talking about Shaka Smart. The NBA product is incredibly lucrative now with teams worth north of $2 billion. That's not happening because it is a crap product. Quite the opposite.

I'm tired of Golden State. That's all for now.😂

I thought it might happen too. I ass-u-me that they explored this in back channels.

Texas wouldn’t ever do it. But if we could ever pick up North Carolina and Virginia, that would be amazing.

I am an IU football fan. I do like some other schools in a secondary way, but I am too embedded into IU. Obviously, my standards or expectations are different for IU football than they are for IU basketball, lol.

Steve Green is one of the sharpest IU guys ever, if you listen to him. Son of a coach. He is a Silver Creek alum and vouches for Kaufman. That’s all I need to know.

Pretty cool article on a Jasper game when Lewis and Rolen were running around. http://archive.courierpress.com/news/greatest-game-lives-on-ep-448700460-327562881.html/

Wasn't Rolen all state in basketball?

That would be like a Scott Rolen story. What an athlete he was. Maybe one of the best defensive 3b of my lifetime.

Damon was a bad man. (Slang for ”good/very tough”)

Since he’s only a sophomore, how good of a quarterback or baseball player can he be? He’s got prototypical qb size too. Of course, if he grows to 6’7, who knows. I haven’t seen him play, but from what you guys say and some articles on the web, it sounds like he is a classic home grown Hoosier kid that’s a no brainer for IU in his best sport.

He’s having a tremendous year. The playoffs may be wild this year.

Tangent here, but has there been a more disappointing player in the past ten years than Jabari Parker? You could blame two knee injuries, and it’s fair to consider that part of the reason but from what I saw on the Wizards the other night he was still explosive. I think it’s his game, or lack thereof, that’s the real issue. He’s not long, is not a reliable shooter, and he is not just lost and clueless on defense, he’s unwilling. I used to get Sports Illustrated and I distinctly remember him being on the cover in high school. I believe there was noise in there about him being the best prospect since James. He failed at Duke, and hasn’t defended at all anywhere. I saw a quote from him basically saying stars don’t need to defend. He is a stats guy for a losing team. That’s his career. Teams are playing hot potato with him now. Chicago couldn’t wait to jettison him. For him to be an asset, he’d have to transform himself by reducing his salary by 2/3 and accepting a role as a supporting player as a scorer with a second unit but by also improving his defense from nonexistent to passable. I don’t think that’s within his makeup. I see more of an inefficient player on losing teams whose game might have made more sense in 1989.

Stern once voided a Chris Paul trade. If the investigation finds tampering, I’d rule that Davis is forbidden to be traded to the Lakers. I doubt the league could get away with forbidding him to sign with the Lakers but maybe there is power given to the commissioner in that regard, if they find tampering. The sad thing is I don’t think the league minds, and may actually want, the Lakers to get Davis. They’ve won ten titles since 1980 and having them do well has been good for business. But, in the NFL, every small market has a chance to win, and no one thinks otherwise. We will see about the NBA which seems to like the big market teams collecting stars. The league’s calculation is that’s better even if it means letting small markets feel like it’s stacked against them (which takes the fun out of it for small market fans). If somehow the value of a small market team went down because the interest level is down, that would motivate change but it’s highly unlikely that would even change. The NBA’s trend is up big time, whereas the NFL has long term structural issues. It won’t happen overnight, but the NFL may see it’s peak in the next generation. Real Sports did a story on how statistics show that football is becoming a gladiator sport (poor and uneducated kids play, rich and educated kids watch). Malcolm Gladwell argued that it won’t be socially accepted to be a football fan a generation from now. All of this is good for the NBA over the long term.

I am glad he was fined. It undermines the Pelicans. I have a tendency to sympathize with the smaller market teams when their stars do this stuff, especially publicly. There is no reason this needs to be out in the public. They could have spoken with the Pelican management. I hope he doesn't get into LeBron's grips. Great player but he starts his self-serving manipulation of patsy younger players who are blinded by his legend. And of course Rich Paul has been trying to make a career out of being one of LeBron's flunkies.

If Davis is playing three dimensional chess, he can take a trade and then sign for an extension with player opt-outs. That way he can book himself guaranteed money in case of catastrophe but bail as he sees fit for someplace else like Dallas as future visibility improves as to where the league is headed. That has essentially been LeBron's move. The player has the leverage and the owners have allowed this to go on. I expect the landscape of the league to change drastically, starting this offseason.

If Davis has been brainwashed by his agent and LeBron, that's all good, but one team lurking that I think would be great for him for the long haul would be Dallas. Teaming Davis with Doncic would be sick.

Watching the NBA, we’ve got teams jacking up literally 40-50 threes a night. I Iike it. I am old enough to remember that 125-122 scores in the NBA were commonplace,. The nineties, which was a nadir in the sport to me, brought us the 80-77 type scores. Sure, I like a hard screen, Anthony Mason style, but watching congested paint and Ewing sweating over everybody in a confined space is not as fun to me as open basketball with athleticism at a premium. Personally, I think a pure shooter is a beautiful thing to behold. I still like defense, but open basketball doesn’t preclude the need for tough defense. You know I love Archie, and finding shooters at the college level is decidedly tougher, but one thing in recruiting is I’d like to see us prioritize some pure shooters more. I think you’re going to need to hit a fair number of threes to get done what you want to do.

I like Rozier a lot as a player. He’s really improved over time. He can be inconsistent but I watched him during the playoffs last year, and he excelled at times. Brogdon would be an excellent pickup but I’m dubious that it’s do-able. He’s such a complete player that he should be in demand.

Three teams I consider up and coming are Denver, Utah, and Milwaukee. These three teams look to be on the rise. Utah's organization in particular has done a great job building that team, without super high picks, frankly. Utah may have a very high ceiling down the line. I would have thought Minnesota was on track to be in that grouping, but they seem like a chemistry mess even though they've got some good parts. I didn't see it but heard that Leonard absolutely dominated Ben Simmons the other day. Toronto is a very, very scary team, and don't rule out they re-sign Leonard because the money difference may be significant.