Empty the Bench

Point Guard

Of all the salty old veterans in the NBA, Allen Iverson still ranks as one of ETB’s favorites. Though we weren’t big fans of him ending up in Denver alongside Punch-and-Run Carmelo, it is what it is and we’d still like to see him succeed in the Mile High City. Unfortunately, it just ain’t happening yet for the Nugs, but they did put it together (sort of) tonight against the Memphis Grizzlies with a 111-107 win on the road. Iverson paired nicely with Carmelo Anthony—tonight’s Top Small Forward, below—scoring 25 points on 7-18 shooting with 9 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, 3 three-points, and 8-9 from the free-throw line. AI turned the ball over four times.

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New York Knicks 99, Miami Heat 93

Behind 28 fourth-quarter points from the backcourt duo of Stephon Marbury and Jamal Crawford, the New York Knicks held on at Madison Square Garden to beat the Miami Heat for the third time this season 99-93. The rejuvenated home crowd erupted during the Knicks’ suffocating run in the fourth, with Marbury getting into the paint at will, dropping a few huge buckets, and Crawford hitting clutch shots, including a big time 3-pointer from the corner with under 30 seconds to go in the game.

Are the Knicks still in the Eastern Conference playoff hunt? They came into tonight’s contest trailing the Nets by just two games for the 8th seed, and with Miami hurting (and the tiebreaker advantage over the Heat) and the Nets performing inconsistently, the short answer is yes. They’ll need to string together a few winning streaks—something they’ve had difficulty doing all season—and hope the Heat fall like everyone predicts they will, but they have just as good a chance as the three teams currently ahead of them (the other being the Orlando Magic).

Fantasy Player of the Game: Eddy Curry came up big against the aging tandem of Shaq and Alonzo Mourning. On the night, the Knicks’ lumbering 6-11 center had 28 points on 9-17 shooting, 11 rebounds, 1 assist, and shot 10-13 from the line. Amazing that a young guy like Curry is smart enough to practice his free throws and display a significant improvement at the line, but “the most dominant player in the NBA” still hasn’t figured it out.

Fantasy Dud of the Game: Channing Frye of 2005-2006, where have ye gone? Frye’s season continued on a downward spiral this evening, with the second-year F/C posting 6 points and 7 rebounds on 2-6 shooting. You’ve lost that loving feeling, Channing… you’ve lost that loving feeling.

Bench Player of the Game: Not many contributions of note off the bench tonight. I’d give it to Alonzo Mourning, but he disqualified himself for “pulling an Alonzo” in the second half by posing, preening, and flexing for the crowd whenever he got the opportunity (ya know, like when he did something spectacular like grab a rebound). So… um… well… we’ll give it to Michael Doleac for being such a good sport during his 4 minutes on the court. The Great White Wonder finished with 1 rebound.

Official Yahoo! Sports Box Score

Andre Miller (18 points, 6 assists, 6 rebounds, 3 steals, 8-10 FGs in tonight’s win over Sac town) has picked up his game recently for the Philadelphia 76ers. He is taking on more of the scoring responsibilities and learning to play with his new teammates (.69% FGs, 14.7 points, 7.7 assists and 1.7 steals in the last week). If you’re in need of traditional point guard stats and you don’t want to hurt your percentages, look no further. He’s ranked in the middle of the pack in most formats, but he can provide superior assist and steal totals when he’s on his game. The key thing is his shooting though. Miller has always been a guy who didn’t take shots he couldn’t make (.7 3-pointers attempted per game for his career) and knocked down his free throws. Somehow, he got into a massive slump in those categories over the last couple of seasons, but he appears to be back in his comfort zone.

The premier alley-oop tosser in the league has been posting those solid assist, steal and point totals, but it’s the shooting categories where the improvement has really taken place. In February he is scoring at a sizzling 55.3% from the field and 83% from the line (49% FGs and 79% FTs overall as a Sixer). It’s about time for Miller (a career 80% FT shooter who is coming off the two worst seasons of his career in the category, 72.8% and 73.9%) found his groove again. Andre will always be an assist specialist (441 total this year, fourth in the NBA), but he can also give you a boost in rebounds and FG% from the point guard position, and when his shot is falling there are very few point guards in the league I would rather have.

Maybe the trade deadline wasn’t completely worthless after all. Anthony Johnson started his run as an Atlanta Hawk in style on Sunday night, with 17 points, 5 assists, and 3 three-pointers on 7-12 FGs in 35 minutes. Johnson (11.1 points, 5 assists, 1 three-pointer, 1 steal on 45.5% FGs as a starter last season) is only worth a look in leagues of 10 teams or more at this point. As we’ve mentioned here before, the Hawks are pretty set at the SG, SF and PF spots, but they are sorely lacking at PG.

Tyronn Lue and Craig ‘Speedy’ Claxton have been injury prone this year (to say the least), so if AJ plays well he could be in line for a bunch of minutes. Johnson is a 10-year veteran who could bring much needed experience from the point to a young ATL lineup. Don’t get too excited, and don’t chase last game’s stats by making an add now. Put him on your watch list, and if he strings together another solid two games, consider a move. Don’t expect anything dramatic, but Johnson could potentially help your team in assists, steals and 3-pointers from the bottom of the roster.

You can always count on Major League Baseball to produce stats that are so obscure they require Stephen Hawking to do the formula. Today over at Yahoo! Sports, fantasy expert Matt Buser graced us with a fantasy-baseball related piece that looks at select player’s “BABIP” stats from the 2006 season, then takes the findings to help project their stats for the upcoming season. He also, um, explains what the hell BABIP is and why it’s important:

Batting average on balls put in play, or BABIP, is an interesting stat. One of the most interesting things about it is that it’s widely acknowledged that luck plays a part in each player’s BABIP. For hitters, there are three things that play a large part: skill, speed, and luck. To actually calculate BABIP for hitters, the following formula used is: (H-HR) / (AB-HR-SO). You’ll note that home runs are subtracted in the equation, since it is not possible to make a defensive play on a ball that is hit into the stands.

“It’s always funny until someone gets hurt, and then it’s just hilarious.” – Faith No More

At least Vladimir Radmanovic’s teammates are showing a sense of humor about his little ice patch slip snowboarding incident. After admitting last week that he lied about the cause of his shoulder injury sustained during All-Star weekend, Los Angeles Times writer Mike Bresnahan reports that the Lakers aren’t exactly thrilled with the whole situation:

The Lakers haven’t decided whether they will fine him for lost time since his confession that a separated right shoulder was caused by a snowboarding spill, not a fall on a slippery sheet of street ice in Park City, Utah, his initial explanation. He is banned from snowboarding in his contract and will miss seven more weeks.

Vladimir Radmanovic hasn’t yet formally apologized to teammates, but they’re aware of his admission of guilt. “They’re calling him ‘Slalom Vlade,’ ” Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said.

There you have it, folks: “Slalom Vlade,” one of our favorite new NBA player nicknames. Amazing!

Tom Kowalski reports for MLive.com that the Washington Redskins are set to make yet another pricey splash in free agency and will sign middle linebacker London Fletcher-Baker to a lucrative contract on or around Friday.

One of the biggest jokes in the league is that teams can’t “tamper” with players until the official start of the free agency period (which is Friday). However, at the scouting combine in Indianapolis, it’s tradition for teams to do a lot of preliminary negotiations with the agents.

The report today on profootballtalk.com is true — the Redskins appear to have a deal in place already with Fletcher. The Lions knew going in that signing Fletcher was going to be tough because of the high-spending Redskins.

Kowalski fails to point out, however, that it also would have been difficult for the Lions to sign Fletcher-Baker because their GM is a guy named Matt Millen, who once called former Lions wide receiver Johnnie Morton “a faggot” and accused an unnamed Lion of being a “devout coward.” Classy.

“Make it rain,” by the way, refers to the act of tossing around cash money like confetti, ideally in a strip club. Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones is an expert in “making it rain.”

The St. Paul Pioneer Press has reported that just before the NBA Draft took place this summer, the Chicago Bulls made an aggressive and highly competitive offer for All-Star power forward Kevin Garnett. The Chicago Bulls have been looking for a low-post scorer the last year or so to pair with the backcourt scoring of Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich, and the graduate of Farragut Academy in Chicago has been the apple of their eye all along. The Bulls thinking is that they have been in the rebuilding stages for a while now, and it is the time to pair the young talent with a veteran leader to make a run at an NBA Championship for the next few seasons. It was the same logic that went into all the Pau Gasol trade speculation and the signing of Ben Wallace this offseason.

The pairing of Garnett on the block with Ben Wallace should be enough to make any NBA fan drool. Wallace would provide the interior defense, hustle and rebounding he always does and would complement KG’s jump-shooting offensive game very well. The two would likely constitute the best defensive frontcourt in the NBA, and in tandem with Hinrich and Gordon up top and Andres Nocioni on the wing the Bulls would be very scary.

People who know say just before last summer’s NBA draft, the Timberwolves could have traded Kevin Garnett, who turns 31 this spring, to the Chicago Bulls for 7-foot-1, 235-pound Tyson Chandler, 24; 6-9, 220-pound Luol Deng, 21; the Bulls’ 2006 first-round draft pick (No. 2 overall) that ended up being 6-9, 215 Tyrus Thomas, 20, and the Bulls’ first-round pick they are to receive from the Knicks in next June’s draft, which is expected to be a lottery pick.

Another in a long line of coulda’, woulda’, shoulda’ moves to add to Minnesota General Manager Kevin McHale’s resume for worst GM in the league (Hey, at least the Knicks are fun to watch and have some prospects in Channing Frye, David Lee and Eddy Curry). With the rapid development of Luol Deng, it’s unlikely the Wolves could get an offer of that caliber again. Bulls fans would have had reason to be excited, and Minnesota fans would have had reason for hope again.

It’s time to face facts in Timberwolves country: they aren’t going to compete for a title in KG’s prime, which will only be another three or four years. If the trade had gone down, Minnesota would have had a young and exciting starting lineup that could have looked like this: rebounding machine Tyson Chandler at the five, emerging star Luol Deng at the three, Rashad McCants either at the two or coming off the bench, and two of the following rookies manning the other positions: Rudy Gay/Tyrus Thomas/Randy Foye/Brandon Roy/Adam Morrison/LaMarcus Aldridge. They would also have the Knicks lottery pick still to come next season. Alas, it wasn’t to be, and the Wolves now stand with little hope for the future, only two young prospects, and no first-round picks for the next two seasons. If you’ll excuse me, I have the sudden urge to blow my brains out.

New York Knicks guard Steve Francis stumped the United States of America this afternoon when comparing his balky right knee to a color on the terrorist-threat rainbow, which ETB confirmed was established by the previously-thought-to-be-mythical Department of Homeland Security.

Speaking with the New York Post’s Marc Berman, the former franchise “cornerstone” of the Houston Rockets and Orlando Magic had this to say about the possibility of his season ending prematurely:

“I don’t know. I don’t want to say something that isn’t there but I’m not sure. You just got to be smart. You know a terrorist alert, when a security alert is orange? That’s my frustration level.”

Many Americans were confused with Francis’ comparison: what is this “security alert,” and what do you mean “when it’s orange?” Wasn’t that “terrorist color alert” thing just a joke on Letterman? At time of publication, it was unclear if Francis was trying to say he’s a terrorist, or if he just wants a contract buyout.

We just love corporate speak that says absolutely nothing here at Empty the Bench, especially when it comes from Mr. David Stern. Today the NBA announced a partnership with YouTube wherein b-ball fans are encouraged to upload videos of their “best basketball moves.” According to the riveting press release, “the top ‘Post Up the NBA’ videos submitted will be selected and compiled into a special weekly highlight reel “NBA Top 10 on YouTube” that will be featured on the “NBA Channel.”

Sayeth Squarepants Stern:

“NBA fans will be able to interact and share their passion for the game by posting their ‘best moves.’ YouTube’s popularity and wide-reaching community of users provides the NBA with another unique way to reach our fans.”

Cheers, David. I’m pretty sure that’s the most generic statement you could possibly make on the matter, and boy, it sure gets me pumped up to finally show the world my killer crossover! You can keep tabs on and vote for your favorite fan-submitted videos here, and please do drop us a line if you find any especially good clips that we should post at ETB.