This weekend the NBA All-Stars will compete for inter-conference
dominance in Phoenix, AZ. The night before that, the world’s highest
flyers will compete in the Sprite Slam-Dunk contest. The day before
that, wedged between a celebrity game and Rookie-Sophomore showdown,
the D-Leaguers will battle in an All-Star Game of their own.

You
don’t need to know the TV ratings to know that the D-League game won’t
be watched by many people. Why would people watch it, anyway? They
don’t know the players, they hardly respect the talent, and they don’t
subscribe to NBA TV. The list goes on.

Which leads me to something I read on The TrueHoop Network the other day. Mike Kurylo of Knickerblogger made a bold suggestion.
He suggested that the NBA powers-that-be set up a game between the
D-League All-Stars and NBA rookies. It was a very bold suggestion, to
say the least, but it got me thinking: Why not just give it a try?

I
then went around to my teammates, three of which will be competing in
this years D-League ASG, and briefly asked them what they thought. They
made kind of the same face that I did. It was a thoughtful, kind of
smirky face that read something like "what if?"  I don’t think anybody
was terribly overconfident, like they would give the rookies the
beating of a lifetime, but I think they saw the same opportunity to
compete and showcase their talent in a better forum. I think they
thought they could make a game of it and in the process earn a little
respect.

Some people will say that this idea is silly and that
the rookies would dominate a roster full of minor leaguers. I imagine
that some of you reading this right now would consider a rookie vs.
D-League game to be as competitive as an episode of American Gladiators
— Joe Schmoe tries to take down Laser and ends up with two broken legs.
I get it. But, I believe, as my teammate Richard Hendrix does, that
beyond the first few guys on every NBA team, the talent level of the
7th-to-15th man is very similar and that talent spills over into the
D-League. I am on a team right now with three guys who have already had
NBA experience, and two of them are All-Stars. They were victims of a
numbers game, not of lacking talent.

Here are some of the reasons why I think this game should go down in the future:

Ratings would be increased for the D-Leaguers and the rookies. Not many people even watch the Rookie-Soph game.

If the game is close, the D-League earns legitimacy, maybe more sponsorships, and thus, more revenue.

D-League players get their best chance to showcase their talent.

It
gives both teams a little more to play for, making the game more
exciting. D-Leaguers trying to earn a spot, and rookies trying to prove
that they belong equals a game played with a lot of intensity.

Give D-Leaguers faces, names, and stories, increasing their fan base and following when they do get called up.

Scouts get their best chance to see what these guys can do against big money players.

So,
I ask you, if the D-League played a game against the rookies, would you
be more inclined to watch that, would you prefer to just watch the
Rookie-Soph game, or would you not watch either anyway?

Rod Benson
is a Cal grad who plays for the D-League’s Dakota Wizards. When he’s
not busy betting, he blogs one or two times a week on Ball
Don’t Lie. Read his archive, pay a visit to TooMuchRodBenson.com and always support the Boom Tho movement.

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We’re a day late on this, mainly because I went from having
zero working computers on Thursday to one fabulous working computer on Friday
morning (really have to encourage anyone currently yelling at their box to pony
up for a memory upgrade. Whoa.), but it’s worth the embarrassment just to get
this up. 

Bill Russell turned 75 on Thursday, and NBA TV put together
a nice little package:

"You have to be tough to get old." Nice.

H/T: PHXeets.

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Ball Don’t Lie’s Two-on-Two All-Star Tournament can see the light. (No idea what I’m talking about? Click here.) Only eight — count ‘em, eight — teams remain as we begin round three. Here we go ...

Match-up: Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett vs. Joe Johnson and Josh Smith.

How the Celtics got here: Defeated The Basketball Jones (50.1%) and Nets’ Harris and VC (63%).
Last game’s
play-by-play,
courtesy
of "greg_oden_is_my_grandpa": "Carter vs. Pierce is a wash and Garnett spends the whole game guarding Harris on all fours. Pierce has the secret move (up, A, up, up, B) of using a wheelchair the whole game. Celtics 11, Nets 5."

How the Hawks got here: Defeated the Grizzlies’ Mayo and Gay (82%) and the Pistons’ Iverson and Sheed (57%).
Game
play-by-play,
courtesy
of "kiwi": "Iverson gets a few steals, but while trying to change his image as a me first guy, he keeps passing to Sheed for twos. Sheed misses of course and leaves the court to find a ref to yell at. Kwame Brown is subbed in and the hawks win since AI can’t guard either Hawk in the post."

Hypothetical rules: Half-court, offense calls the
fouls, "winners out" to eleven (by ones and twos, natch), and you’ve
got to win by two. Also, no jeans allowed.

And if you’re in
a creative mood, leave us a short description of how you see this game
unfolding. Who jumps out to the early lead? Who nails the game winner? Break it down, Marv.

Voting will remain open until late Friday night, MST.

POLLS CLOSED / WINNER: Pierce and KG with 56% of the vote.

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The opening comment salvo in response to anything that’s
first reported on by Peter Vecsey usually runs along the lines of, "Vecsey wrote it … ‘nuf said."

Well, no. That’s not enough. Vecsey isn’t even in the top
three of the worst of the NBA scribe maker-uppers (a solid fourth!), and while
he’s wrong a lot, he’s still right often enough to pay attention to. With that
huge grain of salt.

So when he reports that Bulls GM John Paxson will
resign soon after Thursday’s trade deadline, and I know I’m falling into a
trap here, it kind of makes sense.

After all, Paxson was the man who didn’t want to stay an
assistant coach under Phil Jackson back in 1996, worried about the wear and
tear it would have on his psyche, to say nothing of the time spent away from
his family post-playing days. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that he may have
had enough of this racket.

And the guy … he doesn’t look all that hot. It’s been a
tumultuous nearly-six year reign for Pax, and he’s aged in President years in
his time as Bulls GM.

The idea that Doug Collins could swoop in as coach and GM
makes sense, as well. When Collins passed on taking the Bulls job last summer,
the outgoing message he sent the media regarding his appreciation for Bulls
owner Jerry Reinsdorf scanned pretty poorly. It was weird. It was fawning. It
seemed like there was some sort of agenda to it.

So to think that those sorts of mash notes could lead to
Reinsdorf eventually paying what Collins wanted, making up for the gulf in
money by handing him more responsibility as a GM as well, it makes sense. And
because it’d be the worst basketball move the Bulls have made since trading for
Jalen Rose, it makes sense, because Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t really want to put
that much effort into his basketball operations.

Losing John Paxson as GM would be the third-worst thing that
could happen to the Chicago Bulls at this point. Hiring a coach/GM to replace him
would be the second-worst.

Hiring Doug Collins, a man who has flamed out of three
different jobs while showcasing a pretty awful sense of who should be on the
court vs. who shouldn’t, while demanding his teams work at some of the slowest
paces in the NBA, would be the absolute worst. But, these are the Bulls. And
this is Reinsdorf.

I’m not going to go over Paxson’s history in this post. If
he does call it quits, then we’ll get into his up and down tenure in a more
exacting column. His biggest screwup was signing Ben Wallace, no doubt about
it, and his biggest perceived screwup was appearing to be in the running for
either Kevin Garnett, Pau Gasol, and Kobe Bryant at a time when the
Timberwolves, Grizzlies, and Lakers were all adamantly opposed to trading any
of those players. But because there was supposed smoke there, people assume he
had a chance on those guys, but passed.

That was wrong back then, and that’s wrong right now, but
you’ll hear that all over ESPN tonight.

So, be an informed reader, and don’t litter the comment
section with re-told fables. And we’ll see what happens to Paxson next week.

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By the slimmest of margins. It’s got to be Derrick Rose. By a hair.

It doesn’t mean I think he’ll end up as the best rookie, or that I believe he’ll be voted as the Rookie of the Year (as you’ve probably heard me state before, the media can be pretty flighty), but he’s been the best one so far. Barely.

With Memphis’ O.J. Mayo having tailed off a bit (shooting 42 percent from the floor and 36 from long range in January, down from 48 and 42 percent in November, with a six points per game drop off), the choice really comes down to four players: Rose, Mayo, Oklahoma City point man Russell Westbrook, and Minnesota forward Kevin Love.

Love has the best combined, pace-adjusted, per-minute stats (of the four; Marreese Speights has the best overall numbers, but his defense is pretty horrid, even by rookie standards, and he only plays 15.5 minutes per game). In all reality, he’s been the best rookie thus far, but Love’s 23.8 minutes per game mark just kills his chances.

The overwhelming majority of players see their per-minute stats go up as their minutes go up (they play more, they play better), but those with conditioning issues tend to buck that trend. And while Love is in the best shape of his life and looks completely different than the bigger fella we saw wearing that UCLA powder blue, I’m not convinced he could keep this pace up at this point at 35 minutes per game.

And once you factor defense in, Westbrook has been about even with Derrick Rose thus far. He didn’t start out that way, he was pretty awful for the first month of the season, but he’s also been out-playing Rose quite a bit in the months since, and has finally caught up. So why does Rose get the edge? Why not call it a tie?

Because Rose has done it for longer. He plays five more minutes per game. And while I usually don’t like to punish or reward players based on coach’s decisions, the fact of the matter is that Rose earned those 39 minutes per game he was playing in November, while Westbrook also earned his 27 minutes per game in November, when he shot 34.5 percent. This isn’t a case of a coaching staff screwing up the minutes allotment.

But the real point here is that this class is deep. So, so deep. I count 16 potential starters in this first round alone, and that’s not even counting guys (Courtney Lee, Nicholas Batum, Ryan Anderson) who, while you might not want to rely on them for starters minutes, have been playing damn well and starting for teams both good, average, and great.

As far as the rest of the season, and who gets the award in the end?

Mayo will get some noise sent his way because he’ll still likely lead all rookies in scoring (he’s at 19.3 points per game now), and that tends to be the only thing a lot of voters look at (in lieu of actually watching games). And he’ll also get some shots for doing his damage on a crummy team. As if that matters. What’s O.J. supposed to do, stop shooting the ball? If you’re the best, you’re the best, regardless of record. That said, I don’t think he’ll be the best.

There’s no reason why Westbrook won’t continue to improve month by month. Same goes with Rose, with less startling results. And due to Chicago’s possible playoff chase, and the minutes per game difference (voters do love them some per game stats), Rose will probably get the edge. But the difference between the two (and not Mayo, though O.J. has been amazing with that jump shot) will be pretty slim.

Same as it is now. Lucky us.

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