Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Blogathon Countdown #9: Twitter and Cleveland the Mad

Good evening, beloved readers. I hope you all enjoyed your double dose of Power Hour yesterday. I'm happy to report that we'll be going back to the recommended serving size of blogging today. First, I'm proud to announce that I am officially on Twitter. You can follow me here, @Huntersaurus. It's great for the short observations I have from day to day that are too brief for the blog, but too long to mass text to my homies.

In honor of the upcoming NBA Draft, I'm going to list the Top Five Reasons why Cleveland is Insane for Drafting Kyrie Irving #1 Overall (Probably).

5. The Body of Work

First of all, let's consider that this guy has played in less regular season college games than you have fingers (barring some sort of horrific birth defect or industrial accident). Now, in that brief period of time, Duke played two Top Ten teams and six cream puffs, including famous weaklings such as Princeton and Colgate. In fairness, Colgate did lead the NCAA in Cavities Fought, but that contributes little to the result of the game. In that stretch, Irving averaged 17.4 points a game, which is very good but not exactly Future Face of the Franchise (or Triple F) material.

Then he suffered a freak injury and missed most of the year. Sure, it may have been a freak injury, but with less than a dozen collegiate games under his belt, I don't feel confident that he couldn't have a repeat incident. After all, Greg Oden was a can't miss prospect who only had a freak injury during his brief one year stint at Ohio State. And in the three years since turning pro, he's played exactly one year's worth of games. And he averaged less than 24 minutes a game in those appearances, so really it's more like he played half a year's worth of games.

4. Irving vs. Williams Already Happened.

And Williams won. Big time. In almost every way you can win a basketball battle. Points, rebounds, assists (I argue 2 assists from a power forward is more impressive than 3 assists from a point guard), and the game itself. I just can't explain this one. It's a testament to overthinking, hype, and ignoring the obvious that the entirety of the NBA journalism community has overlooked this pretty substantial bit of information. And you can't pin it on Irving's teammates because, without Irving, Duke was still a top 5 basketball program for virtually the entire season.

3. Irving is the next Allen Iverson

And that is not a compliment. Sure, Allen Iverson piled some impressive stats (and an equally impressive criminal record) but what did he really accomplish? He wins one game in the NBA Finals, then the Sixers fade back into obscurity. Sure they had some winning seasons, but they never really contended. Eventually, Iverson's egomania poisoned the team and he was traded away to Denver (whom he promptly poisoned) and then again to Detroit (who he poisoned and then dragged into a black hole from which there is no escape). Then he wasted everyone's time with two consecutive failed comeback bids with the Grizzlies & Sixers (again).

What does this have to do with Irving?

Let's go back to the humiliating defeat Duke suffered at the hands of Arizona. Irving had an impressive 28 points and it looks like he was the solitary bright spot for Duke. But if you actually watched the game, you'd realize that Irving completely destroyed the chemistry that Duke had built up the entire year. Seth Curry, long distance shooter extraordinaire, was relegated to the bench entirely. Nolan Smith, who had led the team in scoring in Irving's considerable absence, was completely out of sync. Also, it's worth mentioning that this point guard only averaged 4.3 assists per game in his brief career and never reached double digits in assists. He practically has the NBA's "Give and Go" tattooed on his forehead (i.e. "Give me the ball and go to Hell"). He might make a bad team good, but he'll never make a team great.

2. There's tons of depth at Point Guard.

I can't believe the experts aren't mentioning this more often. It's simple economics. Scarcity determines value just as much as quality. There are three point guards you can legitimately consider to be centerpieces to whatever team drafts them: Kyrie Irving, Brandon Knight, and Kemba Walker. There's only one power forward that's held on similarly high regards: Derrick Williams. The Cavaliers have the 1st and 4th pick in this year's draft. If they draft Williams #1, there will be at least one of the three great point guards in this draft left for them to take. If they take Irving, they'll have their pick of household names like Jan Vessely, Enes Kanter, and Bismack Biyombo to fill the gaping void in the post.

1. His name should be pronounced "KEER-EE-AY, not CHI-REE".

Jeesh, doesn't anyone care about Ancient Greek anymore? This is your fault, Servilius Casca! You began the marginalization of Greek two thousand years ago. Did you even think that you'd be assassinating the Greek language as well as Julius Caesar?!

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