Doing pre-game for a change, to see if we can maybe avoid the Raptors terrible 1-14 record in games I do post-game coverage for. Still, I’m thinking the frontcourt dominance of the Jazz is too much for the Raptors to handle, even with Bargnani back.
Raptors Republic Article – Raptors @ Jazz January 25 Pre-Game
Posted: 25th January 2012 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Outside Writing0
Raptors Republic Article – Raps Lose to Kings as Cousins Goes Beast
Posted: 12th January 2012 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Outside WritingThe Raptors are now 1-14 when I’m covering games for Raptors Republic. If they ever get competitive, I should probably quit, in the best interest of the team. Anyway, the post-game report is there.
Raptors Republic Article – (The Other) José and the Raptors
Posted: 10th January 2012 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Outside WritingI got a puppy, named José. He is awesome but frustrating. Much to the chagrin of commenter John, I used his training as an analogy for this young, inexperienced, and frustrating Raptors team following an embarrassing loss to the Nets.
Lengthy Email Discussion on the NBA, Part 2
Posted: 3rd December 2011 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Trev Smith
So Trev and I got talking when the NBA announced that an agreement had been reached on a tentative deal. It started to get detailed, so we formalized it a bit and decided to turn it into a piece for the site. 7500 words later, we thought it was time to split it into two pieces and post it. Check it out below, and click here to jump back to Part 1.
Blake: Sorry for the delay in response brotherman…got caught in the Leafs game last night and a busy morning at work today. Such is life, when you can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger on a commitment to writing full-time (take the leap, Blake). Allow me to quickly hit on a few of your points before I send the discussion back your way for some on-court back-and-forth.
*Salient points on Stern/Hunter, and I definitely see the need to qualify the impact on their legacies. My dismissal of it was probably more about being tired of that narrative and wanting to focus on the good stuff, so to speak. To summate quickly, I see no way Hunter sticks around long enough to see a verdict rendered on his third CBA, either due to exhaustion or a push for a change from the membership. I’m curious as to where all of this has left D-Fish, too, as he’s come off well to me personally, but I wonder if the media ploys calling him, in nicer terms, an Uncle Tom, convinced the players it was true. Thoughts on D-Fish’s future?
More after the jump!
Lengthy Email Discussion on the NBA
Posted: 3rd December 2011 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Trev SmithSo Trev and I got talking when the NBA announced that an agreement had been reached on a tentative deal. It started to get detailed, so we formalized it a bit and decided to turn it into a piece for the site. 7500 words later, we thought it was time to split it into two pieces and post it. Check it out below, and click here to jump to Part 2.
Blake: So, the NBA’s nuclear winter ended up being more bar fight than Cold War. We can get into the finer points of the deal and the 2011-12 (2012?) season repercussions shortly, but the thing that has been on my mind foremost has been the reaction to the end of the lockout. It seems the die-hards have completely forgiven the NBA immediately, and just recalibrated their internal basketball calendars to begin on Christmas Day, while there seems to be no reaction whatsoever from the casual fan base.
My question to you is this – is this a reaction the NBA should be concerned about, or is this how the NBA always operates? That is, are we among a group of die-hard loyalists and merely flanked by observers once their attention has turned from the NFL and college football? Or has this short but highly-publicized (read: annoying) lockout driven away some of the more casual fans, similar to the NHL’s lockout from 2004-05?
More after the jump!
Raptors Republic Article – 3-on-3 On The Raptors and the Lockout
Posted: 16th November 2011 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, NBA Ball, Outside WritingComments Off
I participated in a brief discussion about the Raptors and the lockout today over at Raptors Republic. Check it out!
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This is a guest post by Joe M., Founder of SportsBlogNet.com
Over at JaysJournal they have a post about David Ortiz going to the BlueJays because Buster Olney mentioned it in he tweet. I guess Ortiz is very close to Bautista and a great mentor to him. Personally, I think this would be a great idea as it gives Toronto some really good veteran leadership. Now if their pitchers can put it together on the hill, the Blue Jays could do big things. The only problem is that would be a big IF.
In 2011 Ortiz hit 29 homers, 40 doubles and drove in 96 runs. Amazingly he decreased his strikeouts from 145 to 83 while basically keeping his walks the same. For a guy who is getting older he is sure doing a great job not to show much decline. I think it would be safe to expect 25 homers and around the same doubles and RBIs next year. If Ortiz can come over and provide this offense and veteran leadership, this offense could be very dangerous and take a lot of pressure off the pitchers. Click Here if you want to bet them to win the division.
On J.P. Arencibia’s Rookie Season
Posted: 13th September 2011 by Blake Murphy in Baseball, Blake MurphyComments Off
If we’re being completely honest, the best rookie in the American League this season has been Brett Lawrie, followed closely by Desmond Jennings and Dustin Ackley. The Rookie of the Year race should be between these three future franchise cornerstones, but it seems grossly unlikely that voters will give the nod to players who played partial seasons only, even if their sabermetric stats like Wins Above Replacement (WAR) may dictate they were, in fact, the most valuable (and outstanding) AL rookies.
This is, of course, a shame, and an indictment on current CBA rules that more or less force budget-conscious teams to keep their top prospects in the minors to start the year, thus avoiding “Super Two” early-arbitration eligibility. By keeping Lawrie, Jennings, Ackley, and others in the minors until June, July, or later, teams can push their service time clocks far enough back to control the player for an additional year later on. While you can agree or disagree with this from a team management standpoint (after all, the Jays will likely lock up Lawrie to a long-term deal buying out his arbitration years anyway, and ditto for the other two), you can’t help but find the error from a moral standpoint – this is a system that hurts players, teams, and owners by keeping major league caliber talent off of rosters for a suboptimal amount of time. But I digress…
My point is that with these three (we’ll call them your MVRs or MORs for Most Valuable/Most Outstanding Rookies) will not be given the Rookie of the Year nod unless voters have a serious change in their standard views of the award. That makes the actual Rookie of the Year race relatively wide-open, and with that in mind I turn your attention to the candidacy of another Toronto Blue Jay, rookie catcher J.P. Arencibia.
More after the jump!
Intentional Grounding – Grounding Your Fantasy in Sunday’s Realities (Week 1)
Posted: 12th September 2011 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, FootballComments Off
Note: Updated Sep 13 for Monday Night games.
The hope is that this will be a weekly Monday column for me throughout the football season, analyzing the prior day’s NFL games with an eye towards the fantasy implications. Over the next couple of weeks I will probably toy with the format a great deal, and I’d love to get some feedback on the format and content. As it stands, I’ll briefly run through all the games from Sunday’s slate, noting significant performances and how the result compared to the spread and over/under. I’ll then hit up any injury notes, and any recommended fantasy action by position at the end.
So far for Week 1, I’m 10-6 in my picks but lost my survivor team (Week 1!!) in the Cleveland Browns. It looks like I’ll go 2-1 in fantasy match-ups, and come out down a small amount on the gambling front. All of that is, of course, a warning that any recommendations should be analyzed through your own, hopefully more successful, interpretation. Not that 10-6 and 2-1 isn’t good, I just mean….uhh, Cleveland. C’mon Son.
Week 1 NFL Picks and Other Bets
Posted: 10th September 2011 by Blake Murphy in Blake Murphy, FootballComments Off
For the first time, I’m going to try and post a weekly picks column on Friday or Saturday of each week. The lines will generally come from Bet365, my online sports book of choice, and will be pulled the day I write the column (I will make note if I jumped on an exceptionally juicy line earlier in the week and saw it move). For Week 1 in a post-lockout year, we’re all pretty clueless, but a decent track record the past two seasons and a plethora of pre-bet reading has me fairly confident in my first set of published picks. Take a look after the jump to see my picks against the spread (“ATS”) for each game, a brief explanation of my logic, and any other bets (over/under, money line, teasers, etc) I found to be particularly enticing this week.
2010 Record ATS: 139-117 (54.3%)
2009 Record ATS: 135-121 (52.7%)
Picks after the jump!