Daily Links 7/24

I appreciate all the links FL, so this is not a knock against you, but that “defensive Composite” thing is useless. I’m so tired of all these multi-tiered, convoluted player statistical ratings that mean nothing —including the overblown PER crap. They all fail to take into accoun t that BB is a team sport, and there’s no way to work in the variable of how a player’s stats are affected by and affect those of the other 8-11 players in a team’s rotation.

What happened to watching games and making assessments based on observation. You can’t get the whole story from reading box scores and plugging the stats into overly complicated formulas.

Anybody see Allen Iverson’s comments supporting Michael Vick? Boy, am I glad AI never ended up in a Celtics uniform. He’s a really unlikeable guy. Always blaming someone else for everyting, always feeling persecuted, always whining about how hard it is to be a rich athlete.

Always good to hear the views of Etan Thomas, the NBA’s Al-Qaeda correspondent reporting from Kenya. This brain surgeon should give us his views on global warming next. Maybe Thomas, instead of taking his multimillions for being a bit role player in the country he hates, should move to one of those countrys he professes hates America….and take the Huffington Post with him. I’m sure he could make millions playing basketball in the Kenya Basketball Association.

Does anybody really think Davis will not make the team?

Great that Gomes is staying active.

Looks like the thugster is still acting like a grown up. Agree with Cousin It….He can tutor Carmelo. Would anybody expect the thugster not to support criminal activity?

Honestly, Plowboy; no one cares about the right wing rhetoric that you seem so intent on pushing in every one of your posts. You should go post on some political blog if that’s what interests you.

btw, your insistence that global warming doesn’t exist not only makes you look foolish, but it also discredits the party that you seem to be campaigning for.

….because all of the GW data is so factual and all, D Dub….and the people spewing it forth are beyond reproach.

I just don’t care for the hypocracy of somebody who has become ridiculously wealthy for playing such an irrelevent role in the league trashing the country who gave him the opportunity to do so. D Dub, where else would he have that opportunity? He should leave if he has it so bad. Hopefully he doesn’t get traded here.

Hopefully Stern is right about Donaghy being an isolated case. Until the NBA hold the players to the same no-gambling standard they hold the refs to, this could happen again.

I respect your point of view, but I contend that what makes America great is that you can speak your mind if you don’t agree with your govt’s policy.

Even you, token republican guy, have to recognize the controversy in the activities of our gov’t and the effect it is having on our foreign policy. To ask the American people to not speak their minds and not question the direction of a shaky administration’s policies sounds an awful lot like Dictatorship to me, and nothing like Democracy.

I applaud Etan for speaking his mind no matter what side of the aisle he represents. It is a breath of fresh air in this day and age of the un-educated athlete that he cares enough to share his opinions in a well thought out, and well-executed piece like he has.

Does Etan’s view sound educated to you, D-Dub? About as educated as Barney Frank’s. He sounds just like somebody who got indoctrinated in the public school system, got a free college education, and majored in nothing. Sorta like a Kennedy. The fact that Thomas, by his own words, had no rebuttal to the diatribe of a really ignorant group of people speaks to his ignorance more than his intelligence. After reading his past article, it seems like he needs an excuse to spout his treasonous nonsense. Thomas sounds like an Al-Jazeera reporter. He has the right to be an idiot….I have the right to correct him. The fact that what he said doesn’t bother you makes you (using your words) look foolish. The college students he refers too, I’m sure, have completely unfiltered access to the media. Dictatorships tend to allow all views, D-Dub. The fact that he proudly writes his nonsense in a publication who has published opinions of writers who support the assination of the President and Vice President speaks to who he is.

I applaud him for speaking his mind, too. Let him keep talking. I look forward to seeing him sitting next to Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter at your party’s convention, D-Dub.

Let’s take this to off topic if you want to talk further, D-Dub.

re: Global Warming

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

I’m a red, white and blue American who reserves the right to criticize anything and everything about this country, including the NBA, when I see fit. One should not lose his citizenship for publicly criticizing his country. It doesn’t matter if he’s an overpaid jock, middle class working stiff, or homeless person.

Stern said it was an isolated case
isolated case in what , getting caught?
i could just see snl update having a field day
with this one
in other news david stern says it was an isolated case
of refs getting caught, most get away with throwing
games lets go to violet palmer

Just read the Huffington Post article Iowa and to respond to some of your comments….Yes, Etan’s view sounds very educated, nuanced, non-ideological and, in many ways, very generous. How do you know that the people on the plane were “really ignorant?” Finally, in what way is Etan Thomas enacting treason? Please be specific and avoid the “just say it’s so even though you know it’s not true” approach to debate that Ms. Coulter is so fond of.

Okay, James, I’ll join you in the blame America first crowd. The country who has spent billions aiding the oppressed all over the world and liberated people all over the world, and gives a standard of living to the poorest in our country higher than virtually anyone in the country Thomas visited. That country, who responded to an act of war in a way you and a blithering idiot like Etan Thomas don’t agree with, is totally at fault for everything wrong throughout the world. Just ask Etan Thomas…the certifiable genius. If you feel comfortable with an American citizen spouting this nonsense in a foreign country, you must be a member of the backup band for the Dixie Chicks.

Before Jeff bans us, I suggest we move this to OFF Topic.

Cousin It,
I agree wholeheartedly with you. For many reasons, from strictly a on-court basketball perpspective, I’m very glad that we did not get AI. But you are right that even more importantly, the terrible intangible/chemistry problems that he’d have brought, make that non-move, in the end, a very good decision for the Celtics and their fans.

Finally Plowboy! Something we can agree on! Maybe you really ARE one of us!

Etan Thomas and his writing is a breath of fresh air and a great model of pro athletes and people in position of priviledge to face their responsibility to speak out regarding injustice. Here is a great article about Jocks For Justice which includes mention of Etan Thomas. http://www.edgeofsports.com/2006-11-30-212/index.html

SteveZ,
So true—I almost forgot about the “on the court” aspect of AI. I know I’m in a real minority, but I think he’s vastly overrated — he’s done a great job of convincing people he’s better than he is. An undersized shooter who can only shoot in streaks. And a horrible defender.

You’re not in the minority, It. The thugster is the most overrated player in NBA history. His record speaks to that.

Typical. Didn’t answer any of my questions just kept the name calling going. Sad.

Hey, any of you fellers who are interested in political talk should join me over at Patsfans.com

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-patriots/messageboard/forumdisplay.php?f=12

We’ve got a political forum over there, and we’ll need some C’s fans, like myself, to chat up the C’s forum when the season starts.

BTW, Global Warming is real, it just isn’t caused by humans. It’s caused by the sun. So your both wrong. ;D

James, it’s treasonous to give aid and comfort to your enemies by spouting that kind of ignorant nonsense overseas. Particularly when you’re representing the most compassionate country in the world. With the food undoubtly coming from taxpayers and the American farmer. If the food isn’t coming from the taxpayer, it’s coming from the people who pay Thomas’ salary. It’s hypocritical at best. Treasonous at worst. The people fighting for the freedom for this idiot to blither his nonsense are fighting a war he doesn’t agree with. Fine, join your fellow dissenters here. But don’t go on a mission of compassion and trash the people who are the source of the compassion. Because Thomas sure as hell didn’t buy 11 million pounds of rice and beans himself. Without the country who has given Thomas the freedom to make a horse’s arse of himself, the mass of poverty he’s visiting would starve further. He’s no hero, James. He’s an ignorant hypocrite. If it’s so bad here, he should move there.

This “breath of fresh air” is in serious need of Listerine.

thats true, global climate change, is caused mostly by the
sun . bodies of water like the oceans come in a distant 2nd
then humans come in 9th on the list right after cow emissions.
we have such a negligible effect on the climate of the planet
that when morons like algore spout half truths it makes me laugh

Thomas pays his taxes as well and, unlike most Americans, actually got off his behind and did something more than just paying his taxes. He actually participated in a charitable cause. He gives no aid and comfort to our enemy by critizing certain aspects of America while in a foreign country. If he was harboring terrorists, yes, criticizinng no. Now I’ll take the name calling tactics the right wing war mongers use and turn it on its head. It’s people of your ilk that are much more of threat to America than people like Etan Thomas. It is the hate mongering, labeling, and vicious ideological attacks that people like you have generated in the post-Newt Gingrich world that set up the atmosphere for the worst domestic terrorist the US has seen — Timothy McVeigh. He spouted a lot of the right wing nonsense in the name of the constitution and was given a forum for his insane hatred. I used to be a live-and-let-live progressive but no longer. I’m not going to give an inch to any right wing ideologue who looks to likes of Anne Coulter and Bill O’Reilly for their inspiration. I didn’t bring this up, you did. However, I’m not going to let you get away with it.

James, with the awesome experience of being an American citizen comes the responsibility of citizenship.

Thomas looks like the certifiable idiot he is coming in as a foreign national on a charitable mission and trashing the very source of the charity. Hopefully the receipients of the charity are smart enough to see through that. Not only trashing his country but misrepresenting it as well. Somebody calls the most compassionate country in the world the “epitomy of evil” and you have no rebuttal? Then Etan, you fool, get the hell out. If you don’t recognize the hypocracy of Thomas’ behavior here, James, I feel very sorry for you.

Much like Bill Klichnev did in Russia during the Vietnam war during his college days, or the lies John Kerry told before Congress during the Vietnam war, Thomas spouting this garbage overseas in the middle of a war all-the-while on a charitable mission….no less…from the United States, the same “U.S. foreign policy that causes Americans to be hated around the world.”…as this idiot says himself. You see nothing wrong with that? Thomas was supposedly there in an act of goodwill, remember? Earth to Etan: This is a large part of America’s foreign policy….you blithering idiot.

Hmmmm, what lies did Kerry tell? Were they sort of like the lies Bush and Cheney told to the American public to get us into the current genocide in Iraq? Was it treasonous to devulge the identity of a CIA operative during “war time”? But I digress…

The lies that were refuted by his fellow veterans. The President and Vice President didn’t lie, James. Your friends, Mr and Mrs Hillary Klichnev, Kerry, and virtually all of your other leftist friends believed the same thing until the war became unpopular. And finally, Plame and upChuck Schummer outed her husband, who should have never been there in the first place. What was done to Libby was an abomination. He should and hopefully will be pardoned.