Empty the Bench

New York Yankees fans, especially, might recall that last year the Detroit Tigers came out of nowhere to handily win the American League behind clutch hitting, gutty managing, and perhaps even guttier pitching (Cardinals fans, shut your mouths). With almost the entire squad returning—relief pitcher Jamie Walker bolted for big Baltimore bucks—along with the addition of power hitter Gary Sheffield, the outlook is again very bright for the Tigers.

They’re playing in perhaps baseball’s toughest division (the Indians, White Sox, and Twins all figure to push for a playoff spot), but fans have to feel more than comfortable with the batting lineup, pitching staff, and coaching staff Detroit will field against their competition.

Tigers insider Danny Knobler says this spring training was the best one for the Tigers since 1981, at least record-wise. Beyond that, however, he has a few other positive signs sure to get Motown excited for Opening Day against Roy Halladay and the Toronto Blue Jays:

Tonight’s 7-5 win over the Braves gave the Tigers a 19-10-1 record this spring. It’s their most spring wins since they went 23-11 in 1981 (they were 18-15-1 last year). Now, what does that mean? Probably nothing. The ‘81 Tigers weren’t bad (in a strike year), but they didn’t win.

For what it’s worth, three different out-of-town writers told me tonight that they’re picking the Tigers to win the World Series. What does that mean? Only a little bit more. The fact is that the Tigers have had a great spring, and they look great. Then again, the biggest mistakes I’ve made in judging teams is when I change what I think based on how a team looks in the spring.

Read the rest of this article »

Anyone remember the Fresh Prince daydreaming about taking Isiah Thomas to school? We’re almost positive that after this was shot, Isiah turned to the film crew and said, “Y’all know I was letting him do that, right? He’s not really better than me. OK. Just making sure.”

Yahoo! Sports has been on an uncharacteristic roll these past two days. In the San Antonio Spurs – Golden State Warriors box score from Monday night, they listed “Old Age!” as the reason for Robert Horry’s DNP (it’s since been changed to “Injury,” so thanks to True Hoop for the screen shot). Now today (via Rotowire) they publish an update on Tennessee Titans running back Lendale White under the headline “Lendale White: Getting Fat.”

We like it. It’s to the point, it states the facts, and it’s honest to a T because according to that report, White is indeed packing on the pounds Big Daddy Wilkinson style:

White tipped the scales at more than 260 pounds earlier this month while working out in Tennessee’s offseason program, underscoring the physical conditioning concerns that in part caused him to fall to the second round of the 2006 draft, Yahoo Sports reports.

More than 260! Lendale, my man, listen up: when you consume (significantly) more calories than you burn, you gain weight. It’s a simple formula. Two boxes of Twinkies, one box of Ding-Dons, a chocolate-covered cheesecake, and four straight hours of Full House reruns? You gain weight. A healthy breakfast, sensible lunch, and modest dinner with a little weightlifting and running mixed in? Probably won’t gain weight. As a professional athlete, that’s all you have to do right now. Eat right and work out. Easy. Done. Next.

Y! Sports Charles Robinson has a little more on the White situation:

Now the Titans are looking at candidates to fill out their backfield and push White, who apparently left the team in shape after last season but gained around 30 pounds before returning for the offseason program. It was only one year ago that talent evaluators were opining that White’s weight would likely be a constant battle in his career, after he showed up to the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis at 238 pounds, and then USC’s pro day at 244. This after White admitted that he played in the national championship game against Texas at over 250 pounds.

“[LenDale] is no different than any other young player,” said Fisher, who would not expound on White’s reported heavy weigh-in. “He needs the competition. You don’t hand the job to him. The job has not been handed to him. Hopefully we’ll have somebody in there to compete with him. He’s a very competitive, tough, talented young running back. I think he’s got a chance to be very good.”

There’s also a chance he’ll eat his way out of the NFL. I’m a Vince Young fan, and the Titans have enjoyed more than their fair share of ignominy over the past season or so (Albert Haynesworth, Pacman, the Steve McNair situation), so I hope they catch a break some time soon and get their team headed back in the right direction. That starts with the highly touted White rededicating himself to his profession.

Before he became enthralled with acquiring small forwards with high salaries and similar talents, New York Knicks head coach/GM Isiah Thomas was the ballsy point man who led the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles in 1989 and 1990. And according to the Beacon Journal, Thomas recently dropped this juicy nugget at the feet of Lebron James as to what it took to push his team over the top:

Isiah Thomas once felt the pressure to lead his Detroit Pistons to a championship, the sort that is building on James with the Cavs now. The New York Knicks coach had one piece of advice for James before the game Friday:

“Do you want to be loved or do you want to win a championship?” Thomas told FSN-Ohio’s Fred McLeod. “I don’t know of any great players that were loved in the locker room who won a championship. Guys I played with might love me now, but they didn’t love me then.”

Very interesting, both the advice and the fact that Isiah willingly volunteered something semi-negative about himself. Of course, he couldn’t help but slip in the part about how his old teammates “might love [him] now,” but for Isiah, this basically amounts to a confessional with the Pope.

He makes a great point though: one of the few aspects lacking (at times, Cavs fans, settle down) in Lebron’s game still is his killer instinct and ability to push his teammates to overachieve. Currently surrounded by capable-yet-inconsistent guys like Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Big Z, and Donyell Marshall, it’s going to take just that for ‘Bron to will his team past the second round of the playoffs. Lebron, himself, is going to be a bitch to deal with, I can already tell. The rest of his team? That remains to be seen.

You already know we have mad love for Amir Johnson. After we found out that the uber-talented young man is actually enjoying his time playing in the D-League for the Sioux Falls Skyforce, well, we like him that much more. How often do you read about guys like Johnson actually turning down a chance to rejoin his NBA team? The answer, friends, is never.

The Argus Leader reports that Detroit Pistons team president Joe Dumars, along with the team’s vice-president of basketball operations, John Hammond, approached Johnson about what he preferred to do for the rest of the season. Showing maturity and admirable loyalty to his fellow D-League teammates, Johnson said ‘thanks, but no thanks’, which was just fine with Hammond and the Pistons:

The Pistons called early last week and gave him the option of returning to the NBA or staying in Sioux Falls for the rest of the D-League season – including a run at the title.
“I told them I wanted to stay,” says the 2005 second-round draft pick, relaxing in a booth at a local pancake house. “In Detroit, I kind of got depressed not playing, because I’m a young guy and I want to show what I can do.

I’m having a blast right here, and we’ve got a chance to finish with a championship.”

Of course, Johnson is still the property of the Pistons, who can summon him at any time to fill a need. But the kid’s devotion to the D-League impressed team president Joe Dumars. “Joe’s thinking was, ‘Let’s have Amir vested in this decision,’ ” says John Hammond, Detroit’s vice president of basketball operations. “And it shows you an awful lot about Amir Johnson that he’s committed to helping (the Skyforce) win. There are a lot of players who feel like, ‘If I’m in the D-League, get me out of there and back to the NBA as soon as possible.’ But Amir wants to keep playing – and keep winning.”

Johnson has also made quite an impression on Skyforce head coach Mo McHone:

“He just wants to be in the game, and it means something for him to win,” says McHone of the former California Mr. Basketball, who played in 17 D-League games as a rookie with the Fayetteville (N.C.) Patriots.

As for Johnson’s dunking skills – he thrilled Arena fans with several windmill jams during the weekend sweep of Tulsa – McHone and assistant Nate Tibbetts admit to being in awe. “When it comes to that stuff,” says McHone, “he’s definitely the best that I’ve ever coached. He was going in for the slam, and I was worried that the defender would run into him and maybe they’d collide,” says McHone. “Amir came back to the bench and said, ‘If that was going to happen, Coach, I would have jumped over him.’ And I believe that he would have.”

Clearly there’s a lot to like about Amir Johnson and his potential to develop into a quality NBA player. He still has a loooooong way to go, but we’re certainly not the only ones who think Johnson’s future is very, very bright.

As ETB whiles away the time until the NBA postseason and MLB opening day, we continue our series of grocery-list inspired NBA pieces. Today, we take a look at the the most overpaid players in the Association. The players’ 2006-07 salary is the standard of measurement. Additional or previous years on the contract are taken into account, but this is a list of who is most overpaid this season. It would have been too facile to load the list with players who have missed the entire year due to injury, so I’ve tried to stay away from them when I can. Some are mentioned, but we’re primarily interested in the guys who fans expected to see on the court this season.

In selecting these players, I also didn’t want to make the obvious choices. It’s no fun if everybody knows exactly who is on this list and why before they read it. It’s even less fun when everybody agrees, so there are some very controversial selections.

Working within the above criteria, a few types of players emerge. There are the talented, but chronically injured. Players who can help their teams win, but they just can’t stay on the court enough to earn their pay. There are underachievers: players who aren’t bad at all, but they’re just not as good as they should be and they don’t improve their teams enough to warrant the money they’re making. There are guys who were once worth what they’re getting paid, but their skills have since degraded while their contracts have inflated. And then, of course, there are the guys who just plain suck.

Read the rest of this article »

Is there an official award for “The NBA’s Play of the Year?” If there is, close the ballot box, send the judges home, sign the checks: Rasheed Wallace just wrapped it up tonight, tout de suite.

Here’s how it happened: with the Detroit Pistons trailing by 3 points, Chauncey Billups missed a three-pointer and the rebound went out of bounds off Antonio McDyess with 1.5 seconds remaining in the game. Denver took the ball out on Detroit’s side of the court with the game seemingly over, but Rasheed Wallace swiped the inbounds pass, turned, and nailed a three-pointer from 3/4 court off the backboard as time expired! You won’t see a more clutch, more improbable shot all season. HOT.

‘Sheed wasn’t done yet though: he came back to hit another difficult three-pointer to tie the game at 106 with under a minute left in OT, then calmly sank two free throws that pretty much sealed the Pistons’ thrilling 113-109 comeback win over the Denver Nuggets. Wow. What a game. Give me a regular season NBA game like this one over any NCAA Tournament contest any day.

Here’s video:

This little nugget basically amounts to total speculation and 100% heresay, but a good idea is a good idea, and this trade scenario makes a lot of sense for both teams. Sekou K. Smith says in the Hawks Blog that Jarrett Jack might be moved this summer by Portland, and that his game solves one of the Hawks’ missing links:

The word is the Blazers love former Tech star Jarrett Jack, but think Brandon Roy is really a PG (and they have ample insurance in promising rookie Sergio Rodriguez), and might be willing to part with Jack for a much-needed small forward … can you think of a team loaded with small forwards that is in dire need of a young point guard? Jack is solid. His only real weakness right now is his outside stroke, which is streaky at best. But he can run a team, knows how to take charge late in games and is the ultimate facilitator for NBA teams because his ego is already in check (he’s not busy trying to show he’s the man all the time, which is the curse of some young PGs).

We’re big fans of Jack here at ETB, recently naming him to our Top 10 NBA Fantasy Surprises of ‘07 team. We already said this in that article, but in some ways he reminds us of Chauncey Billups (especially his build and rapidly developing floor-general mindset), except he’s much farther along now than Mr. Big Shot was at this stage of his career. He’s suffering through a bit of a slump at the moment, but this is still a young guy in just his second full NBA season, so a few ups and downs along the way can be expected.

Like Smith says, however, the Blazers are pretty stocked at the point guard position with young talent, which makes Jack expendable for the right price. Working a deal with the Hawks makes perfect sense: Atlanta has a surplus of ‘tweener guards/forwards and a shortage of star power at point guard, while Portland could use more stability on the wing, especially if Travis Outlaw leaves as a free agent this summer. Could these teams work out a Jack for, say, Josh Childress trade? Would the Hawks still be interested if the talented but troubled Zach Randolph had to be included, and they had to give up more of their young talent or a 1st-round pick?

We obviously have no idea if anything will ever come of this rumor, but we’d love to see Atlanta acquire a guard like Jack. Factor in a healthy Joe Johnson, along with the continued development of Josh Smith and Marvin Williams (and ZaZa Pachulia), and a guy like Jack might add just enough to push them into the playoffs next season.

A 41-point drubbing at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs yesterday wasn’t the only event to send Seattle SuperSonics’ fans to the edge of a cliff. They also have to reconcile the fact that their star shooting guard, Ray Allen, will be sidelined for the rest of the season with a bum ankle. With the Sonics’ record standing at 27-42, they now find themselves in the hunt for extra ping-pong balls in the upcoming draft lottery, and that’s about it. If they couldn’t win with Allen in the lineup, they certainly won’t fare any better with him decked out in a suit on the bench.

At this point, there are worse fates than “earning” a better chance at landing one of the top two or three prospects in the 2007 NBA Draft. The Sonics have the 6th-worst winning percentage in the Association, and there’s a good chance they’ll now slide into the top four for worst overall records. If Greg Oden or Kevin Durant become their reward for underachieving despite a solid core of young, talented players, then hey, maybe it was worth the pain.

Still, one has to believe that all this losing is taking a toll on the Sonics’ other superstar, Rashard Lewis. He has already let his frustration boil over once recently, and with more losses staring him straight in the face for another month, we wonder if he’ll even bother negotiating with Seattle once he becomes a free agent this summer. If he doesn’t believe the team has a plan for the future, why would he waste his prime years toiling away in misery? Locking up Lewis must be a priority for the Sonics, but even if they pull out all the stops, we’re not sure if Lewis will head for greener pastures no matter what.

Let’s quickly get back to Ray Allen and what his loss means to fantasy owners. This couldn’t come at a worse time with most head-to-head formats starting the playoffs this week. There isn’t a magic answer for replacing Allen’s monster per-game averages: 26.4 points, 3 three-pointers, 4.5 boards, 4.2 assists, 1.5 steals, 43.8 FG PCT, and over 90% FT. The waiver wire has already been scrubbed and scoured hundreds of times by desperate owners, so Allen’s departure pretty much leaves folks shit out of luck. Damien Wilkins figures to see more touches and shots now, so he’s an option, but don’t expect the world from him. Our advice is to drop Allen immediately (obviously) and just take the best player available, regardless of position. Best of luck with that.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette News has a nice piece about Michael Olowokandi, the 1st overall pick in the 1998 NBA Draft (has it really been that long?). He talks about his role as a benchwarmer with the Boston Celtics this season, about what he thinks of the franchise’s immediate future, and perhaps most interestingly the fact that despite chronic injuries and a serious lack of production and playing time, he’s not ready to retire—in fact, he’d be thrilled to find a team that will bring him aboard as a third-stringer:

“I really would like to finish up [my NBA career] on a strong note,” he said, “play with a team in a situation if one player goes down and another player goes down there’s enough experience in the locker room where you can still sustain some degree of success before your key players get back in. I would like to have it happen here.”

So there you have it, GMs of the NBA: Olowokandi is setting his goals high for next season, and is interested in signing on with your team in case one guy and then another guy succumbs to injury. At least he’s honest.

That Latrell Sprewell just oozes with class, doesn’t he? Get Untracked pointed out yesterday that Spree has put his 13-room house in Westchester County, NY, on the block for about $5 million. Seems like a great deal: not only does it include seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms, but also, apparently, his ex-girlfriend. That’s right—she hasn’t moved out yet.

But if you’re in the market for a new crib, don’t let the fact that someone is still living there dissuade you from bidding. I’m sure she’d be totally amicable to sharing the space with you. Of course, you’d also be helping Latrell feed his family, and maybe you could squeeze an autograph or two out of him to seal the deal. Sports memorabilia emblazoned with Spree’s insignia are selling like hot cakes at card shows around the States. Promise.

The NBA playoffs are just around the bend, and there’s still a lot to be settled as far as who gets in and where they’re seeded, especially at the bottom of both conferences. In the East, New Jersey, New York, Orlando, and Indiana are virtually neck-and-neck for the 7th and 8th seeds, while out West the Golden State Warriors and, to a degree, the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets are sweating the mostly moribund LA Clippers for the 8th seed. After getting beaten by them three times in a row, you think the Mavericks are thrilled about the prospects of drawing Golden State in the first round?

With so many big games on the docket, Empty the Bench has highlighted 10 games of interest this week to help guide your NBA viewing. Please bookmark EmptytheBench.com and check back every Sunday to check out our NBA Viewing Guide for the week; it’s something to be read over and over, and praised, and quoted to death… kinda like the Bible. All times are listed in EST.

- Denver Nuggets at Detroit Pistons, Monday, 7:30pm

Going into Sunday night’s contest against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Nuggs had taken a step back with a two-game losing streak that included an ugly, ugly 27-point defeat at the hands of the Toronto Raptors on Friday night. Believe me, the final score does not reflect just how badly Denver played. Still, the team is finally above .500, healthy, and clicking, and it looks like they’re a shoo-in to make the Western Conference playoffs either as a 6 or 7 seed. There’s no question they will be a dangerous draw.

BUT

Though they may have one of the weakest remaining schedules in the NBA, this is not a team that can put it on cruise control and waltz in. The Warriors are coming on strong, and for whatever reason it looks like the Clippers aren’t going anywhere either. Tonight’s game against the Eastern Conference-leading Pistons is the second game of a very tough back-to-back, and the last game of a disappointing five-game road trip. We don’t like their chances in Detroit, which makes games against Seattle (twice) and Phoenix this week all that much more important for George “Why do bad things always happen to good people like me?” Karl’s squad in their mission to lock down that playoff spot.

Read the rest of this article »