The On Deck Circle

The New York Knicks signed Mike D’Antoni. You know this already. You also know that D’Antoni has coached the run-and-gun Phoenix Suns for the past six years, four and a half as the Head Coach. D’Antoni is credited with fine-tuning the high octane offense that Bryan Colangelo envisioned when he created a roster with players like Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion. The knock against D’Antoni is that the Suns never won a Championship, falling in the first round once, the second round once, and the conference finals twice, even though he posted a 253-136 regular season record.

Rest assured, the New York Knicks are not the Phoenix Suns. Donnie Walsh and Isaih Thomas are not Bryan Colangelo. Stephon Marbury is not Steve Nash. And so on. The skeptics have come out in droves questioning D’Antoni’s decision to join the lowly Knicks instead of the up-and-coming Chicago Bulls, but the Knicks organization and Coach Mike himself seem to think the future is bright in New York.

The key word there is future. With Donnie Walsh now at the helm and a new coach (and hopefully, philosophy) in place, we should probably expect wholesale changes in the next few years. As it is right now, D’Antoni and Walsh are handcuffed by bad contracts and a bad roster. The Knicks already have nearly $90M in salary committed to 13 players. The Knicks could also have a top-5 draft pick to add to the mix, and there are a few good options in the mix at that point to add to a D’Antoni team. On yet another bright side, in the summer of 2010 the Knicks have just $45M committed to seven players, and that may be an even brighter situation if Walsh can move some of those albatross contracts (see: Eddy Curry, Zach Randolph) between now and then.

But what about the 2008-09 Knicks? Do they have a chance? The 8th seed in the East usually goes to a near .500 team, so if the Knicks have a goal of 40 wins, they should find themselves in a playoff race. Can D’Antoni turn the squad around that quickly with an inability to make many roster moves?

That’s what I set out to decide. The results were inconclusive, since the Knicks have always had some decent players but been a bad team, and it’s therefore tough to be optimistic. Some players fit, others don’t, and there are some huge question marks. What follows is a player-by-player breakdown of how D’Antoni’s style could affect the careers of each Knick.
More after the jump!

I have a new Hoops Addict article up. It takes a look at the Hornets/Spurs series so far and how big a factor home court has been playing in the playoffs, throughout the league.

Check it out!

Go Hornets! Go Jazz!

Alright, it’s about time I finally get this down on bandwidth. I’ve only had this conversation a dozen times now. Yes, it’s about time I admit it.
I have two favorite baseball teams.

Before you get up in my grill about how I’m not a true fan of either then, or how I’m breaking one of the cardinal rules of being a male or being a sports fan, allow me to explain.

First, the sport we’re talking about here is baseball. I could never cheer for anyone but the Raptors in basketball and the Jaguars in football (unless, of course, there were huge fantasy implications). (And, I guess, the Leafs in hockey.)

But baseball? The Toronto Blue Jays? Is it really so wrong to have a second favorite team?
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To me, hip-hop and sports are tightly intertwined. I’ve never really been able to put a finger on why, exactly, I have trouble separating my love for hip-hop from my love for sports at times. It’s not a race thing, either – I associate hip hop with sports, period, not just with basketball or football (oh, and I’m white…so, so white). From thinking of which song I’d come out to if I were a fighter or batter to which songs I would play during breaks in play at NBA or NHL games, this less than obvious duo has stumped me for a long time.

But it’s not just me, apparently. And 1 Mixtapes are set to hip hop music. Fighters and boxers come out to hip hop songs. I drafted Warrick Dunn in a fantasy league once because ESPN did a feature on him to the song “Fireman” by Lil’ Wayne. And on it goes. The basketball-hip-hop tag team combination may make sense on the surface, but it’s my opinion that sports and hip-hop are intertwined regardless of a game’s prominence in urban areas.

What makes me think this? Other than my own glaring self-serving bias, I have a body of evidence on the part of rappers and athletes alike supporting my claim. So, what follows is a collection of my favorite hip hop lyrics that are related to sports, whether they mention athletes, teams, or just sports in a topical manner.

The list is by no means a ranking and is by no means exhaustive. When it comes to hip-hop music, I like what I like and don’t listen to the rest, as I’m sure most people do. Thus, I’m imploring all of you to contribute to this list in the comments. I probably missed a lot, anyways. There’s a good chance I’ll re-release this piece down the line as a more comprehensive piece that includes your inputs (hence the ‘First Edition’ in the title). For now, have a chuckle at some of these gems and duds, and please play homage to the sport-lyric awesomeness that is Lil’ Wayne.
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Trev Smith is back at it again over on Hoops Addict, this time throwing his fandom to the wall and admitting the Lakers may have a problem.

Check it out!

This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.

I don’t like the Lakers, mostly because I just flat-out don’t like Kobe Bryant’s game. My attitude towards him has flip-flopped more than a Democrat trying to appeal to NASCAR dads, but right now I’m not a big fan of all the whining and wincing that comes along with his 35 points per game every night. Despite my disdain for Kobe, however, I’ve become a big fan of a couple of his teammates (or saboteurs, if you believe Phil Jackson). Ronny Turiaf and D.J. Mbenga are both awesome, and Pau will be in my good graces forever thanks to his nasty YouTube moment against Kevin Garnett, but my favorite member of the Lakers is Derek Fisher.

Fisher, given the moniker D-Fish by the NBA’s army of uncreative fans, is a perfect role player. He doesn’t have the game of a quick, slashing point guard – I rarely see him creating shots for other players off of a “draw and kick” type of play. In fact, he only averaged 2.9 assists per game this year and has never averaged more than 4.4 in his whole career. Don’t let those numbers fool you though. D-Fish is a great point guard for a team like the Lakers to start.
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I was going to put off writing a series review yet again because of John Gibbons’ impending firing, but it appears that it won’t be coming today, so here we are. My series review can be summed up in a number and a word:

31 innings.

31 innings is how long the Jays went without scoring a single run from Friday night’s 6th inning to Monday’s 19th inning. Granted, the Indians have strong pitching and all four Indian starters looked great in their respective outings, but scoring 4 runs in a four game series is completely unacceptable.

On a game by game basis, my series review doesn’t get much deeper:

Friday: Cleveland 6, Toronto 1 – Halladay and the bullpen not strong, 9 LOB
Saturday: Cleveland 12, Toronto 0 – Whole team eats it, McGowan is human
Monday I: Cleveland 3, Toronto 0 – New height of batting ineptitude, Burnett robbed (again)
Monday II: Toronto 3, Cleveland 0 (10 innings) – Thank God Marcum is God
More after the jump!

So one tournament is in the books already and the Jet League season starts this week. What the heck am I talking about? Well, to quote Lil’ Wayne and Mannie Fresh:
“Hoes. Let’s just talk about Hoes. Can we talk about Hoes? These Hoes? I love ‘em.”

The Slo Pitch team I play for is called Slammin’ Hoes. Charming, I know. It’s the best team name you can find and has stuck with the team for four seasons now, despite wholesale roster changes in the team’s first three years. Now a relatively steady beast, Slammin’ Hoes play in a Cambridge, Ontario weekday league at a pretty competitive level (henceforth known as Jet League) and in Slo Pitch Ontario’s Super Series C on weekends. This means that not only are we pretty good, we also play a tonne and take it fairly seriously (as far as Slo Pitch is concerned, I mean).

Sure, the real point of playing is to have fun with the boys and get weekends away that are really excuses to drink, but beneath that there is baseball. Like I said, the guys take it seriously…seriously enough that I actually coach the Super Series weekend team when we’re not short guys. Yes, a coach for Slo Pitch. Coach Scissors, to be precise.

So why do you care? Well, besides us being a good looking squad and an entertaining one to follow, you’ll probably hear a good deal about the team throughout the summer, either on purpose or inadvertently. To prime you for this season and to give you a buffer before I unleash the Slammin’ Hoes page on The ODC, I give you a player-by-player season preview, after the jump. As for the team as a whole? Well, ye aint know a better Hoe (or group of Hoes), so expect big things.
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This article has been submitted by Chris Pope.

As The Rock would say, finally the Belleville Bulls have come back….to reality.

The Bulls battled back from a three games to none deficit to force a game seven in Kitchener on Monday night.

Game seven began with both teams playing it safe and both looking almost scared to make a mistake. Six minutes into the first period and both teams having only tallied four shots a piece, the Rangers showed why they were the number one ranked team in the country when they turned the shots into 21-3 and the score 1-0 for the blue shirts.
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Baseball is an incredible game. The serenity of being at the ballpark or being able to relax in a high-emotion environment is something that only baseball can provide. The live experience, for true baseball fans, is unlike any other sports experience and, unlike other sports, a baseball game is a baseball game is a baseball game.

It was with those thoughts in mind that last summer, I decided I needed to take my baseball fandom to another level. Sure, I have been to a tonne of Toronto Blue Jays games, but the Rogers Centre wears on you and the Jays are, well, the Jays, especially right now. So last summer, I hatched an idea with close friend and fellow baseball aficionado B.J. O’Brien (aka Bossman Junior).

We decided we should go on a baseball road trip and experience a few other ballparks. Specifically, I wanted to see Yankee Stadium before it was retired and Bossman wanted to see Fenway Park, since he’s a soulless Red Sox fan. A quick look at the schedules of both teams during my week off in July showed that seeing both in one weekend was indeed a possibility. To make a full weekend of it, we added Pittsburgh to the mix. Why Pittsburgh? It worked out for the driving, and that’s about it.

So we approached two other friends (Sean and Adam aka Macker and Pierre/Woody, respectively) about coming with us and we booked the tickets. In July, it went down. It was as fantastic as we expected.
More after the jump!