50 Best Players in the NBA 2009-2010

What did we ever do on Sundays before NFL RedZone?

Okay, so, recently, I offered the following picks for the upcoming NBA season; as part of that preparation (and preparation for my upcoming fantasy seasons; last year I won 2 titles in my 3 leagues; I'm only playing 2 leagues this year, we'll see how it goes) I've compiled this list - the 50 best players in the NBA.  Right Now!  Or rather, I'm projecting through this season.  I'm speaking to you from the future.  From beyond the grave!  My chief, by far and away, main measures are Hollinger's PER and Pelton's WARP numbers; I look at some plus/minus as well. 

With that - the 50 best players in the NBA:

1. LeBron James SF-1
2. Chris Paul       PG-1
(neck and neck, close enough that if you flip-flopped them, no one should protest; it's not that King James isn't every single drop as good as you think he is; it's that CP3 is better than advertised).
3. Dwayne Wade  SG-1
4. Dwight Howard  C-1
(clearly the 3rd and 4th best players in the league; there's not really a good argument that 1 and 2 aren't 1 and 2, regardless of the order, and not really a good argument that 3 and 4 aren't 3 and 4 and in this order).
5. Tim Duncan   PF-1
(the starting PF on my all time NBA team is still, in 2010, the starting PF on my current NBA team)
6. Kobe Bryant  SG-2
7. Chris Bosh     PF-2
8. Dirk Nowitzki  PF-3
(5-8 really is a your mileage may vary situation: Dirk was my top pick in both fantasy leagues; I picked 7th in both 12 team drafts, which made me grumpy)
9. Al Jefferson    C-2
10. Kevin Durant   SF-2
11. Deron Williams PG-2
(same shakeup is possible at 9-11; Jefferson's coming back from injury, so this is an optimistic view of his return)
12. Pau Gasol PF-4
13. Brandon Roy SG-3
14. Amare Stoudemire PF-5
(this can also be re-ordered in any way you prefer; I had a choice in both fantasy leagues of Dirk/Amare, and with the Suns re-installation of their hyperkinetic offense, that might have made Amare a better choice; had he center eligibility in my leagues I would have picked him)
15. Tony Parker PG-3
16. Manu Ginobli SG-4
(add good complements in Jefferson/McDyess/Blair and that's why the Spurs are right there with the Lakers to come out of the West).
17. Andrew Bynum C3
(Yao's gone or he would have been above this spot; Duncan and Amare are also really centers, but listed at the 4 here, so this shouldn't be as startling as it is.  I had Bynum/Biedrins decisions to make in both fantasy leagues, I went with my GSW guy.  If Bynum can't stay healthy again, this ranking is error.)
18. Rajon Rondo PG-4
19. Jose Calderon PG-5
20. Steve Nash PG-6
21. Chauncy Billups PG-7
(Again, any reordering you like can be done; this group is jammed together; I went with youth).
22. Kevin Garnett PF-6
23. Carmelo Anthony SF-3
24. Josh Smith SF-4
25. Andre Iguodala SG-5
(KG is hard to slot given the injury, the mileage, and the ability to reduce his usage with both Sheed and Big Baby on the Boston bench; I've got JSmooth on both fantasy teams and the only AI left on this list on one; Smith's the only Hawk in the top 50, both Johnson and Horford are close.
26. Danny Granger SF-5
27. Devin Harris PG-8
28. Andres Biedrins C4
(GSW!)
29. Blake Griffin PF-7
(the only rookie on the list; no others would be close)(oops)
30. Marcus Camby C-5
(back to back Clips; that's me getting cute like I do)
31. Brook Lopez C-6
32. Jason Kidd PG-9
(hasn't retained all of his value, like crazy Duncan, but still enough to go here)
33. Gerald Wallace SF-6
34. David Lee PF-8
(only Knick; Nate's close)
35. Emeka Okafor C7
36. LaMarcus Aldridge PF9
37. Vince Carter SG6
38. Kevin Martin SG-7
39. Kevin Love C-8
(Love's out a month and a half with the hand, I'm factoring that in; I was a huge Love fan in college; thinking that the deal swapping him for my guy Mayo was error; I was right, Mayo had a good rookie year but is overrated while Love really came on late; I'd like to see Rubio wind up in Minnesota with Love and Jefferson on the frontline.  Superfun.)
40. Greg Oden C-9
(Oden's not Durant, but he's pretty good, no matter what Bill Simmons says). 
41. Paul Pierce SF-7
42. Ramon Sessions PG-10
43. Jameer Nelson PG-11
44. Shaquille O'Neal C-10
45. Paul Millsap PF 10
46. Carlos Boozer PF11
47. David West PF12
48. Antawn Jamison SF 8
49. Gilbert Arenas PG12
50. Anthony Randolph PF13
(GSW!  If he ever gets to play.  I hate Don Nelson.  And Brian Sabean.  Which is how everything I write until he gets fired should end; even if I'm in the middle of some lefty screed, I should conclude with my dislike for Brian Sabean, as pronounced as his dislike for on base percentage.)

The Weekly 10 - Week 8 College Football Picks

Overall: 47-23
Locks: 7-0

Lines are tight this week; last week I mentioned I was picking nearly 20 games despite only releasing the 10 for the blog (went fine, thanks).  I indicated I might enlarge this from ten to a higher number, but that will not happen with these lines.  This is one of those weeks where if I can go 5-5 and win my lock, I'll feel successful.

Northern Illinois -11 Miami (loss)
Purdue -10 Illinois (push - the first one of the year, which is weird)
Idaho +15.5 Nevada (loss)
Arizona -7.5 UCLA (win)
Cincinnati -18 Louisville (win)
Iowa +1.5 Michigan St. (win)
Boise St. -24 Hawaii (win)
North Texas +21 Troy (loss)
Miami -4.5 Clemson (loss)
Lock: TCU -2.5 BYU (win)

Week: 5-4-1
Overall: 52-27-1
Locks: 8-0

I Pick Every NFL Game - Week 7 (and World Series Pick)

Overall: 44-46

I'm going to split the championship series', just like last year I apparently underestimate the Phils - I had the Dodgers winning the NL last season and blew it again this year.  The Yanks have been head and shoulders baseball's best team this year; ARod has (like Kobe earlier in the year) changed the Sports Media Complex narrative from "his inner most being won't let him be a winner" to "hey, he's a new man, all growns up" - Sports Media just makes up stuff - Eli Manning loses, that means he doesn't care - look how detached and emotionless and blank he is - Eli Manning wins and he's the coolest under pressure a man could be.  All of it is entirely made up, writers' constructs that don't correspond to truth.  Some of them are good stories, some are dopey, but the idea that Alex Rodriguez, who entered this post-season as the 27th greatest major league baseball player who ever lived, somehow wasn't a "winner" because of a psychological hangup was stupid.  You wonder why athletes treat us as if we're children - tell outrageous lies, speak in the most ridiculous ways - its because the media with which they deal demand it. 

So, I'll take the Yanks.  Probably I won't like the price, but I'll take the Yanks. 

I'm 2 under .500 after a bad week 6, lets get back to level here.  I assume there are some of you investing in my college picks (feel free to kick a taste back; my advice has outperformed Charles Schwab in a hard way) they'll be up by day's end.  I'm going to see Seinfeld tomorrow night; so I'm even more jammed than usual this weekend. 

Chiefs +5 SD (loss)
Colts -13.5 Rams (win)
Vikes +4 Steelers (loss)
Pats -15 TB (win)
Texans -3 Niners (push)
Jets -6 Raiders (win)
Bills +7 Panthers (win)
Bears +1.5 Bengals (loss)
Saints -6.5 Dolphins (win)
Falcons +4 Cowboys (loss)
NYG -7 Cards (loss)
Eagles -7 Skins (win)
GB -7 Cleve (win)

7-5-1
Overall: 51-51-1

Do You Hear What I Am Saying?: 2009-10 NBA Predictions (w/ win totals)

Last year, I gave you Lakers/Cavs in my pre-season picks for the NBA finals. 

I'm doing it again this year.  And I'll take King James to win the chip.  But I like Magic/Spurs as an alternate universe matchup; if you'll give me those 4 teams as your next NBA Champ I'll give you the field.

In the parentheticals are the Vegas win totals next to my projections, do with them as you will.  I think my math is right on my totals, but admittedly I didn't (and won't) check.  I'm freeballing it!  Occasionally I misuse popular terminology.  For example, it would be error if, after watching last week's South Park, I referred to my girlfriend as my "bottom bitch."  It would be funny.  But it would be error.  This is a concession I've made to my advanced age ( I turned 39 a couple of weeks ago; over the weekend my brother said he was starting to get freaked out by my next birthday - here's how you know a birthday is a big deal, when someone else doesn't want it to happen) there was a day when I would have said funny conquers all - that anything could be excused if the joke was funny enough.  Not anymore.  Nope.  There are some roads down which I will not travel. 

I killed it in the college picks again this week.  47-23 against the number this year.  7-0 in my locks.  Toppermost of the poppermost.  I'm my own bottom bitch.

2009-10 NBA Win totals

Atlantic


Boston Celtics          52 (56.5)

New Jersey Nets      26 (28.5)

New York Knicks    32 (31.5)

Philadelphia 76ers     42 (40.5)

Toronto Raptors       34 (41.5)

Central

Chicago Bulls           36  (40.5)

Cleveland Cavaliers  61 (61.5)

Detroit Pistons         35  (41.5)

Indiana Pacers         29  (34.5)

Milwaukee Bucks    29  (25.5)

Southeast

Atlanta Hawks        43  (44.5)

Charlotte Bobcats   29  (37.5)

Miami Heat             38  (40.5)

Orlando Magic       60   (57.5)

Washington Wizards 38  (41.5)

Pacific

Golden State Warriors  38  (35.5)

Los Angeles Clippers    38  (34.5)

Los Angeles Lakers      61  (62.5)

Phoenix Suns                41  (41.5)

Sacramento Kings        22   (24.5)

Southwest

Dallas Mavericks          49  (48.5)

Houston Rockets          36  (35.5)

Memphis Grizzlies        36   (27.5)

New Orleans Hornets  51   (46.5)

San Antonio Spurs        53  (54.5)

Northwest

Denver Nuggets         51    (52.5)

Minnesota Timberwolves    30  (25.5)

Oklahoma City Thunder   37  (35.5)

Portland Trail Blazers     53   (52.5)

Utah Jazz                   50     (49.5)

Rushing to Limbaugh's Defense

I have a soft spot for Rush Limbaugh.

We're both fat guys (I know he's currently lost the weight, that's not what I mean - I mean...I remember watching Colin Quinn do stand up on Letterman in...like '96...he had been gone for a couple of years and he was significantly heavier than the last time we had seen him; he recognized this, clearly, as early in his act he made some sort of reference to his weight and said "I'm just passing through".  What he was saying is "I'm a thin guy; I know I'm fat today, but that's not who I am; I'm still the guy who nailed Kari Wuhrer; this is just a bad snapshot."  Rush and I are fat guys; today, he's down and I'm up - a year ago, it was reversed - but I know for me, and I assume for Limbaugh too, that inside, no matter what the scale says, we feel all double chinned and unlovable; I know at least some of the ways that sort of psychosis has infected the various areas of my life, and I don't think it's too much projection that every time I've ever heard one of his diabolical rants, my disgust has been mitigated by my seeing Rush largely as a sad fat kid, finding acceptance in any way possible, bathing in the dirty hate fueled love of his primordial fanbase) and we're childhood sports fans who compensated for a lack of motor skills by developing a facility with the spoken word.  Limbaugh worked in the Royals' PR department, I think after dropping out of college; which plays well with an audience that tends to distrust book learnin'.  I've never spent even a second reading biographical information about Rush, but I'm thinking he spent most of his young life wanting to be a sports announcer; he probably spent an unhealthy percentage of his childhood alone in his room with his baseball cards, broadcasting fictional games to an invisible audience.  Limbaugh and I agree on nothing politically, but I'd bet we would share a favorite baseball novel, a 40 year old Robert Coover book about a lonely man unable to escape his own head.  We would have been friends, I think; had we been the same age in the same place at the same time; and (and I recognize how this sounds, I do, but in the spirit of this blog, I'm going to sacrifice modesty for revelation) he would have looked up to me a little bit.  Because I was a brighter kid than Rush, and more successful too; I wasn't...it's twisty to untangle...but while it would be a mistake to call me, in any way, "popular" in high school - I knew even then, and see more clearly in hindsight, that there was a type of kid (an outsider, marginalized in some way, usually physically awkward, maybe emotionally stunted, with the desire to both be accepted but also keep hold of some degree of individuality) who saw me with a level of aspiration.  I don't think that's too much to say.  I wasn't the quarterback.  I wasn't a golden god.  I wasn't an untouchable cheerleader captain, but I had ideas that others did not, and I was willing to express those ideas even when they were disapproved by authority, and despite a not inconsiderable level of constant social anxiety, I was able to succeed at high levels in a handful of mainstream ways (and I had my own pirate radio station and was totally sleeping with Samantha Mathis while Concrete Blonde played in the background)  And there was a type of kid, and I've known that type of kid my whole life (even today as an increasingly distant college instructor, just beaten down by the painful weight of years of overly heavy course loads, I can still spot them in class) who sees a degree of kinship in me and looks for some sort of connection. 

Rush would have been one of those guys.

Or maybe not.  'Cause dude's got hundreds of millions of dollars and I've got literally nothing at all.

He's got that money because he sells a philosophy uncluttered by intellectual nuance.  A philosophy that regular, decent, hard working people are getting screwed by minorities and immigrants and gays and the godless.  A philosophy that America went wrong in the 1960s, when all the good and decent institutions of the US were buried under a cascade of long haired hippy love and that under the leadership of the glorious Reagan we've spent the past thirty years in a constant struggle between good (corporate America, Jesus, straight white men and women willing to rub their shoulders and make them pancakes) and evil (everyone else).

How much of it he believes and how much of it is just selling what people want to buy is irrelevant; the debate over "is Limbaugh actually a racist or is this just an act" - is foolish.  Limbaugh's got a record on race (and a high profile drug conviction) that makes his candidacy to own the St. Louis Rams a non-starter.

Oh, maybe you hadn't heard - Rush Limbaugh was (past tense) part of a group looking into buying the St. Louis Rams.

He won't be buying the Rams; not any chance in the world; and it's not because, as he claimed this week:

 This is not about the NFL, it's not about the St. Louis Rams, it's not about me. This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative.

It's not the media or the Democrats or...er...wherever who determines who gets to own a team in the NFL - its a few dozen white dudes, whose conservative political leanings are also part of public record (the Chargers, who have never won a Super Bowl, have given more money to the Republicans by a significant factor than any other team has given to either party; the team which, by percentage, has given the most to Democrats - the Rams, coincidentally enough).  They don't have an ideological axe to grind with Limbaugh; they just don't want the hassle.

Which is really all it is.  They all share a money tree.  If you had a money tree, your goal would be to make tomorrow look a lot like today.  'Cause today was a day when you had yourself a money tree. It's not ideology or even a specific cost/benefit analysis that they've done - me, as mentioned, I dislike the entire corporate ethos of the No Fun League - the penalties for celebrations, the uniform police dispatched to each game, the personal conduct suspensions - all part of a systematized policy designed to weed out as much individuality from the NFL as possible while still allowing for video game sales; "respecting the shield", to use the language from the pregame shows, means deifying the logo, the corporate brand name above all.  Anything that might in any way pull focus from the league is no good - and that's what Rush Limbaugh does. 

Now, me, I'd like to see him own the Rams.  Hell, he can be the starting quarterback as far as I'm concerned; they can remake Heaven Can Wait with Limbaugh in the Warren Beatty role.  Member a couple of weeks ago when he talked about the thing on the school bus and said something to the effect of - in Obama's America, white kids get beaten up on the school bus and black kids cheer - Limbaugh as quarterback would be sort of the ultimate expression of that. 

I'd like to see him own the Rams because I don't give a damn about the shield.  I like noise.  I'd like to see which ballplayers would (as a handful admirably said ) refuse to play for a Limbaugh owned team.  Notice that Rush didn't go after the black players who came out early this week to slap down the idea of working for him.  It wasn't the media who said "I wouldn't play for him."  It was Bart Scott.  It wasn't the Democrats who said "I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of" it was Mathias Kiwanuka.  It wasn't...wherever...who said "I won't be in St. Louis anytime soon."  It was Donovan McNabb. 

I'd love to see politically engaged athletes, using their power to vote with their feet.  African-americans are hugely disproportionate supporters of the Democratic Party; and big time professional athletes (70% of the players in the NFL) are hugely disproportionately African American.  I'd love a sports landscape where athletes used their not inconsiderable leverage to push for social changes both within the leagues in which they compete and the communities whose names are on their jerseys.  I'd love to see Rush Limbaugh join the NFL because it would be an issue (sort of like the way abortion is for the right) that would just keep on giving; the athlete mobilization wouldn't end with "I don't want to play in St Louis" - it would manifest itself in all manner of ways which I would find both productive and entertaining.

And I'm a Niner fan.  Our biggest historical rival is the Rams.  Their move east and our collective crappiness has really taken all the steam out of that rivalry.  But I could really get behind a hatred for the DittoRams.

But I don't live under a money tree.  What I want, for each Sunday to be an ideological discussion about the ways in which the black athlete can engender social change, is not what the handful of white guys who own NFL teams and largely contribute to the Republican party wants.  They want still waters and blue skies.  Calm, quiet, non-political athletes who just work the soil to cultivate that tree.

They don't want you Rush. And it's not the left.  Not Obama.  It's the jocks.  They still don't want you, all these years later.   But it's okay. You don't need to eat cream cheese frosting in a shame spiral.  You aren't a lonely fat kid playing with your baseball cards anymore.  You're good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like you.  Not good people.  Not the people you want.  But people.  And at least that's something.

(you want an example of big, evil government intruding on our lives - it's right here)