Bloggolalia: Who are the Top 3 Sports Blog Commenters?

I've always hammered away at how comments make such a big difference for blogs. They increase the amount of time people spend at your site, and also can rescue a poor post. How many of you have ever skipped/skimmed a post on a sports blog and just went straight to the comments because that was more interesting? I have.

With that in mind, it seems like many previous commenting stars comment a lot less, because they eventually went on to start their own blogs. Given the loss in talent, who are the top commenters in sports blogland today? You can nominate someone who comments mainly at one or two sites, or you can nominate someone for all-around excellence. Nominate them for humor, nominate them for great analysis, or nominate them for general all-around craziness. Who's on your list? Is it Spencer096? Hef? Gourmet Spud? Big Man? Unsilent Majority? Sports-Pun? Camp Tiger Claw? Cobra? Suss? WWTSM? Big Daddy Drew? Sportsgal116? Temple 3? All right, enough of the question marks, but let me know.

Terry Porter's Attempt to Rescue the Sinking Suns

Before I start talking about the Suns, a little news about my favorite NBA team, the Cavaliers. One of the benefits of Thanksgiving break was some free time to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers, especially the Cavs-Warriors game. Mo Williams and Delonte West are making a huge difference to the Cavs. Having extra ball-handlers and shooters frees up Lebron in ways that Eric Snow and Larry Hughes never could. I was also impressed by their unselfishness. When reputed gunners like Wally and Mo are willing to give up nearly open 3's just to pass to Lebron and Danny, respectively, for completely open 3's, something different is going on!

Your random photo accompaniment for today: Shaq figurines/cut-outs and the people who pose with them. Yes, there's a joke about Shaq looking a little stiff nowadays in there somewhere...and yes, even Shaq's cut-out gets more ladies than sports bloggers do, ha.


But I doubt you came here to be drenched with my Cavs-centric drool. In the last five games, the Warriors have scored 100, 111, 97, 125, and 129 points. Those numbers resemble the glory days of the Phoenix Suns, and sound great...except that the Warriors have gone 0-5 during that time span. It was a little sad to see the Warriors players against the Cavs. It was one dribble and shoot, one dribble and shoot, over and over again. Their running game was completely shut down, and so they were unable to execute in the half-court.



Watching the game convinced me that Terry Porter is doing the right thing to go away from the running game in Phoenix. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudamire have been complaining and sighing in the press about the demise of the 7 seconds or less offense. But they are wrong, and Terry Porter is right.



The Suns lack the athletes to run the 7-second-or-less offense anymore. They used to have clear athletic advantages at most positions (Amare Stoudamire, Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, even Steve Nash is more athletic than you think) over the average NBA team. Those players could run and play major minutes without getting tired. But now, Steve Nash, Grant Hill, and Shaq are old, and the bench is young. The running game isn't a good fit for what this team does best. The team instead has to rely on its new advantage: the big-man pairing of Shaq and Amare.



Shaq has had a disturbing tendency to drift early in the season. But with Terry Porter making him more of a focus offensively, Shaq has been forced to get in shape quickly. He's even doing yoga, of all things. An unhappy Shaq can be a destructive force on any team--just ask the Lakers and Heat. By getting Shaq on board early, Terry Porter is giving himself a better chance at success.



Plus, the Suns will need Shaq's post-up game in the playoffs. The running game is less successful in the playoffs, when no team is coming to Phoenix on the second night of a back-to-back, and teams can focus their preparation on Phoenix. Oh, the Suns should still run when they can. But as I said above, their athletes no longer have the advantage over other teams as they once did.



I believe that Coach Porter will return to the running game more in the coming months. This will satisfy Steve and Amare and make it seem like he's an open-minded coach. But by forcing the Suns to include Shaq in the offense early, he's also made sure that he'll have a motivated, alert Shaq for the whole season. And come play-off time, when the Suns need to get baskets in the half-court, they can go to Shaq in the post. Or, if the Suns are really lucky, Robin Lopez will rapidly improve, leading to the Suns being able to run when Robin is in the game and then going more to a half-court offense when Shaq is in the game. That would be a difficult team to stop. Although I have no idea if Robin will become a decent NBA player, the pairing of Amare and Robin, with Robin playing the hard-working Robin to Amare's high-scoring Batman (sorry, couldn't resist), has a lot of potential.



However, I have to wonder if Terry Porter will have enough time to work his excellent plan of getting the young guys decent playing time and establishing Shaq. Come play-off time, those moves will pay off. But right now, Phoenix is coming off home losses to Miami and New Jersey. The perimeter players and Amare will complain. Shaq's passing will continue to need improvement, and Amare will struggle in the high post. I'm concerned that Terry Porter will be fired before he gets a chance to make his plan work. Is Steve Kerr willing to stand behind his choice? We'll see in the next two months.



By the way, the Suns are merely my team of choice to follow in the 2008-2009 season. For regular Suns content, see the following:
Bright Side of the Sun
Ben's Suns Blog

The Shaq figure pictures that didn't quite make the post.

NBA Videocast: Who can Beat Boston or Los Angeles?

I taped this two weeks ago. It's not that great, but since it's the day before vacation and your standards for content are low, I'll re-post it here. Hey, at least my shirt is kind of cool. More videos like this (ok, better than this) to come. Let me know what you think by e-mail or comment.

Shaq and Amare take on Oden, Shaq talks about Kobe

As most of you know, I'm a Cavs fan, but I always like to follow a team in the other conference. The Phoenix Suns are my adopted Western Conference team this year. Thus, you'll be seeing a fair amount of posts about them. With characters like Shaq, Amare, Nash, and Grant Hill, I think they'll stay an interesting team on and off the court.

First, check out this video of Greg Oden going up against Shaquille O'Neal and Amare Stoudamire. Much thanks to tommyhtc for putting this up on Youtube. Greg shows some occasional flashes of skill, but he obviously still has work to do. (Check out Shaq's nice moves toward the end of the video--Shaq's looking light on his feet this year).



Second, check out Shaq and Steve Nash being interviewed before the Suns game. Shaq makes an interesting choice of fingers to wipe off his face around 1:08. Also, hear Shaq claim that he and Kobe just like to keep the media guessing about their relationship (around 2:30). The one thing that bothers me about Steve Nash (around 5:00) is how tired he already looks. It's only November, Steve!


I probably won't be back posting until after Thanksgiving break. Hope you all have a good break, and don't forget, even in this messed-up economy, most of us have a lot to be thankful for.

The Lebron James 2010 Story Turns Ugly...in 2008.

Many of you have already seen the Deadspin story on Adrian Wojnarowski and Amar's argument. But I thought it was only fair to add some details that Deadspin wasn't able to cover. In the interests of full disclosure, yes, I am a Cavs fan, and yes, I have criticized Adrian before for his lack of integrity on covering the Lebron story. But no, I don't approve of the strong language Amar used, either.

First, as to the matter of Adrian's not being able to find Amar's e-mail address. I wanted to contact Amar this summer to ask him some questions about the Cavs. It's the first and last time I've talked to him. I was able to find his e-mail address via Google in 5 minutes. Apparently that makes me a better reporter than Adrian Wojnarowski! Seriously, Adrian gets paid to do reporting, and he can't find an e-mail address? The call to Amar's number was clearly meant to intimidate Amar right back. Did Adrian have a right to fight fire with fire? Sure. But don't pretend Adrian "couldn't find" Amar's e-mail address.

Second, Adrian has tried to twist every NBA trade story to be about Lebron. Please look at Adrian's archive. Since the start of the NBA season, he has written 13 NBA stories. Remember, Adrian's supposed to be a national columnist for Yahoo!, covering the NBA as a whole. How many of his stories do you think mention Lebron James leaving the Cavs? 5. That means that nearly 40% of Adrian Wojnarowski's stories on the NBA are devoted to suggesting that Lebron might leave the Cavaliers! No bias there, right? After losing his storyline that Lebron would surely go to the Nets, he now is plugging in any team with cap room as a possible destination for Lebron.

Now, I do believe the Knicks might be competitive for Lebron James. But Peter King had some good things to say about the future of the NBA in his column today:

"a. If I read one more story about where LeBron James might play two years from now, I'm going to puke.

b. Really: In what other sport are the next two seasons rendered totally meaningless for a cornerstone-of-the-league franchise like the New York Knickerbockers?"

And later:

"What if LeBron James rips up his knee before then? What if Dwyane Wade, another prospective free-agent who turns 29 in the 2010-11 season, continues to have knee trouble? Here's my question for the NBA: Do you mean to tell me it's good for your game that a team is going to play the next 164 games with an eye not on the present, but on the future? And what about the Cavaliers? Why would their fans show any loyalty to James as he drops all these hints about playing out the string in Cleveland? It's an ugly, stupid, fan-abusing situation. Fans should rebel, not kneel and bow to Knick management and say, "Oh, we are not worthy!''"

If things are so ugly in 2008, what will the atmosphere be like in 2010? Please, just let me enjoy two more years of Lebron in peace, ok? After that, if he wants to leave, I am ok with that. He's a grown man, and I thank him for so many great years. But I've had enough with the biased coverage from so many columnists just looking to stir up their home fans. Again, I don't condone Amar's words, but I hope this post helped you understand why some of us Cleveland fans are angry at the Lebron 2010 coverage.

EDIT TO ORIGINAL at 3:15 EST: Just to make my views absolutely clear, physical threats against sports writers are always wrong. I think Amar went too far in that area. Perhaps he meant to joke, but it certainly didn't come across that way in the original post. END EDIT.

Love is a Game: Help, I'm Losing to a Girl!

This is the first in an occasional series about the intersection of love and sports.

I once had a second date at a basketball court. She made the mistake of mentioning her previous basketball career to me, and thus somehow we decided that our second meeting should involve some hoops. She was my height (about six feet tall), but lighter than I am.

We started by playing some shooting games like Around the World, and I lost pretty badly. I wasn't too worried about that, though. I've never been that great of a jump shooter. Then...I asked her if she wanted to play a game of 1-1. She agreed, but said she was kind of tired, so I agreed to play only to 7 by 1's and 2's.
I started the game by giving her a fair amount of room, and she took and nailed a jump shot. 1-0.

I missed a jump shot, and after some length of time she hit another jump shot over my sort of outstretched arms. It was lazy defense. No big deal, though--I knew already she could shoot jump shots. 2-0.

I somehow blew a lay-up. Knowing she could shoot outside jumpers, I forced her to dribble inside...and she made a lay-up. 3-0!

Now at this point, I was getting a little nervous. The game was only to 7, after all. So I pressed a little, missed another jump shot. She got the ball, and I guarded her a little harder than before, forcing her to make an adjustment to her game. She then executes a mini-fadeaway jump shot. Swish!

It's 4-0, and I am in huge trouble. I had no idea she had a fadeaway in her arsenal! I can block that move, but it'll be harder because she's my height. Playing lazy defense will no longer be good enough.

Here's the deal. If this was a skinny but talented guy my height, there would be no question what strategy I would use. I would body him up when I was on defense, attack his dribble, and jump as high and as close to him as I could to block those jumpers. On offense, I would take every shot to the lane, and try to score off put-backs even if the initial post-up would fail. But this was a girl who wasn't talking trash and who I was trying to earn another date with. Plus, she deserves to win this game, and will win unless I start playing physical and blocking her jump shots.

So what would you do? What's more important, the game or the girl? And by the way, it's even more complicated because some girls would love it if the game got more physical. Other girls would hate a more physical game and think that it was a creepy jerk move by a win-at-all-costs malcontent. At this point, I had only met her once before, and have no idea which way she would react.

I'll post what I decided in the comments after I get your opinions on what I should have done. And yes, this does somewhat parallel That 70's Show episode where Donna keeps beating Eric in basketball.

The Bias is Back

Hello everyone. I've decided to resume posting here. I enjoyed my full-time experience at Sports on My Mind. But I realized that I really didn't have the time anymore to do the lengthy, content-rich articles that Sports On My Mind is known for. So I'll still be posting over there on occasion when I have longer articles, but mcbias.blogspot.com is my regular blog for now.

That said, I'm excited to be back! In the next few weeks, I'll be importing some of my articles over from SOMM that I previously neglected to cross-post. You'll also be seeing more video and audio on here than before. Hopefully the two or three of you who are still subscribed will return, and we can have our usual fun talking about the weird and wonderful world of sports. Happy blog-reading, MCBias.