Week 8-11
I started this during Christmas week?
On the LA Kobes
It?s pile on Kobe time. Every sports columnist in the country has weighed in on the mess in LA.
Kobe?s fall from grace, according to John Saunders on ESPN the other day, is even greater than the one suffered by a cheating ?roid inflated Barry Bonds. Think about that? a multiple MVP winner who cheated to break the single season home run record has a better rep right now that Mr. Bryant.
To try to repair his image, Kobe recently went to the airwaves to defend himself. As Jason Whitlock points out (
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn...?page=whitlock/041216), it probably wasn?t the smartest move. Seeing Kobe go into full butt-kiss mode on national TV did change my opinion of him a little bit. Instead of coming across as a team-poisoning egomaniac, he just seems sad and pathetic. Truth be told, he didn?t drive anyone out of LA. He was too busy trying to keep his wife happy and worrying about how he was going to get out of a sexual assault charge to master-mind the destruction of the greatest sports dynasty of the 21st Century. He didn?t need to.
Jerry Buss was perfectly willing to blow up his franchise if it meant Kobe, the golden child he discovered, would stay. Phil Jackson wanted more money and refused to coach Kobe for another year, Shaq wanted more money and would never give up his Superman cape to a kid he didn?t respect as a man. Kobe is the most exciting player in the league and will play for more years for less money than O?Neal. Plus Kobe is popular with the young ladies that ODB (Old Dirty Buss) likes to party with.
Sensing that Kobe was seriously considering moving over to the other LA team, Buss did everything he could to get Kobe to come back. Dump Phil. Trade Shaq. Get rid of anyone on the team with loyalty to either one (Fox, Fish, GP, Horace, Russell and now Rush). For that final push over the top, Jerry West called Kobe and told him he?d be an idiot to play for the Clippers, with one of the worst owners in all off sports.
Right about now, the Lakers can best be compared to a Nuclear reactor about to have a core meltdown or maybe an oil tanker adrift in an Alaskan storm, inching closer and closer to the rocky coastline. So far in this 2004-2005 season, one thing is clear: this season is not going to end well for Kobe and the Lakers (otherwise known as the LA Kobes).
Continued this week?
So now LA, a city whose greatest sports memories this century came on the purple and yellow floor of the Staples Center, is stuck with the LA Kobes. While not quite the travesty of a team like the Orlando TMacs of last season, the model is similar; Kobe scores lots of points and the Lakers lose. Meanwhile Shaq has turned Dwayne Wade into a budding superstar and the Heat into a powerhouse while putting up similar numbers to last season.
In the superstitious world of sports, karma is real. If you show people up and run your mouth all season, there?s a good chance you?ll break your leg before the start of the playoffs. If you cheat to break hallowed records in your sport, you?ll go down in history with a bit steroid asterisk next to your name. If you try to buy a World Series by sucking up every aging superstar in the league, you?ll have the greatest collapse in the history of baseball at the hands of your most bitter rival.
And now Kobe is gone for a few months. I think the basketball gods finally let him have it after Rudy and the rest of his team implemented the triangle offense to get Kobe more open looks. The injustice of sending Tex Winter, the inventor of the most successful offense in the history of basketball, into retirement and then stealing his invention was just too much for the ghost of James Naismith to bear. I think the straw that broke the Kobe?s back, err, ankle was when he came out with this gem: "If people think I didn't like the triangle, that's a misconception," Bryant said Sunday after Laker practice. "I love the offense." "There's a flow to it so the defense can't sit and anticipate what you're going to do. It's all reads, and we have a good time running it."
So now Kobe has a few months off to pay off, err, finish the civil suit with the girl he violated in Colorado before taking an early summer vacation with Vanessa (the new Jackie Christie of Staples) and the kid. Speaking of the Christies, is anyone not excited about seeing Dougie get henpecked on national TV? And I can?t wait for the NBA Real World season 2: Purple Diamantes in the O.C.
Enough of Kobe, let?s look at the fates of the managers in Fricken Bayou?
When we last left our heroes in week 4, the W/L power rankings looked like this:
Keelin (I Love this team / This team is OK) 6.5
Neo (WHOA!) 6.5
BG (Tre II) 6
Kev (Lights Out) 5.5
Jbahseng (Gimme a cup of Ice / Fist of Fury/.) 5
Storm (Curly Larry Moe) 4
Stark (Nashing of Teeth / I Hate this team) 4
RC (Yaoster) 3
Prodigy (NYK-Mengke Bateer) 3
gleong (GS Warriors in ?05) 2
CPA (Melo is a BBall God) 1.5
DS (Phi Slamma Jamma / RoundMound) 1
Over the past 6 weeks, things have changed a bit.
1. BG (Tre II) 70, 65 (135)
2. Storm (Curly Larry Moe) 56, 68 (124)
3. Neo (WHOA!) 61, 62 (123)
4. Stark (Nashing of Teeth / I Hate this team) 68, 50 (118)
5. Keelin (I Love this team / This team is OK) 54, 63 (117)
6. Kev (Lights Out) 57, 59 (116)
7. Jbahseng (Gimme a cup of Ice / Fist of Fury/.) 50, 62 (112)
8. DS (Phi Slamma Jamma / RoundMound) 50, 58 (108)
9. gleong (GS Warriors in ?05) 57, 47 (104)
10. Prodigy (NYK-Mengke Bateer) 57, 39 (96)
11. CPA (Melo is a BBall God) 43, 45 (88)
12. RC (Yaoster) 39, 42 (81)
To everyone?s amazement and horror, BaboonGuy is the winningest manager in the league. I once again blame karma and his tsunami relief thread that got a sticky.
Storm and Neo are neck and neck for 2nd and 3rd. Keelin is giving the best rookie showing, while Prodigy and roncarter are struggling vets. Gleong is having a good season in L1, while CPA is the first official MIA manager as he sits some of his best players this week.
This leads me to this official commish announcement:
I will start checking the team rosters every Monday. If a manager is MIA and has injured players in the lineup or stars on the bench, I will modify the roster accordingly. NO DEAD TEAMS!
Player breakdown:
Shawn Marion is the #1 player in the league. The guy fills up almost every category. His shot his horrible, but it goes in.
Lebron really is all that. He puts on a Rip Hamilton mask and gets better. Plus he?s the first PG/SF in the history of Yahoo.
Q is having an awesome year, thanks to all the wide open 3?s he gets on the Suns.
Larry Hughes has better numbers than Kobe. The Wizards are good. It may be time for Bill Simmons to add Washington MJ to his Ewing Theory. Kwame Brown may still stink, but even that isn?t enough to derail the Wiz.
Peja finally turned it on and is easily the best player on the Kings.
Amare is awesome, but FT% is a killer in FBB.
Sleepers:
Lebron (he will never be a 2nd round pck again)
Hughes
Rashard Lewis
Arenas
Amare
Hinrich
Damon Jones
Fred Jones
Eddie Jones
Rafer
Korver
Ginobili
Joe Johnson
Nazr
Drew Gooden
LaFrentz
PJ Brown
Damon Stoudamire
Radmanovic
Bobby Simmons
Haywood
Mihm
Sura
Brevin Knight
McInnis
Mike Miller
Reuben Patterson
Chucky Atkins
Troy Murphy
Battier
Ridnour
Josh Howard
Busts/Dogs
Kobe (depending on MRI)
Baron Davis (so far)
Yao
Vince
Zach Randolph
Lamar Odom
Kirilenko (should be back soon)
Kmart
Donyell Marshall
Mello
Jefferson
Kidd (so far)
Jermaine O?Neal (suspensions hurt)
Dalembert
Brent Barry
Mobley (need to pick it up in Sac)
Cassell
Posey
Al Harrington
Van Horn (IL is bad)
Omar Shareef Abdur-Rahim (again, IL is bad)
Ratliff
Juwan Howard (perennial Dog list veteran)
Arroyo (way to go from Olympic stud to Sloan?s SLC doghouse)
Glen Robinson (the original Big Dog)
Stephen ?the Psycho? Jackson
Latrell ?I?ll prove McHale is smart? Spreewell
Stackhouse
Matt ?day to day? Harpring
Gerald Wallace (not to be confused with Gerald Wilkins)
Kittles
Eddy Curry
Jalen Rose
Dampier
Kwame (aka the Omarosa of the Wiz)
Kenny Thomas
Etan Thomas
Wilcox
Houston
Lenard
Collison
Olowokandi
Araujo
Foyle
Luke Jackson
Vlade
Zo
Antonio Davis
Barbosa (life as a backup for Nash is not good)
Ely
Brian Grant
Ron Mercer
Najera
Flip ?I was good for a month last year? Murray
TJ Ford
Jonathan Bender
Magloire
Rodney Rogers