The most significant thing to come out of opening night....

beardage!

(a brief recap of last night's games...soon!)

11

Amigos' NBA Previews: Chicago Bulls

Recent Past They sucked for a little while post-Jordan, then they climbed to the dizzying heights of "halfway decent". Somewhere in there I think they were meant to become legitimately good, but it's never really happened, and so they seem to be stuck in the monotonous world of mediocrity. The VDN hiring doesn't seem to have helped in their quest to escape mediocrity.

Offseason Ben Gordon and Tim Thomas left, and they signed Jannero Pargo. So, yea. They obviously didn't really replace Gordon's production, but the Brit got overpaid but the rival Pistons, so even if this may hurt the Bulls short term, long term they ought to be better off not paying a good but not great scoring guard a fuckton of money. Assuming they can, at some point, actually spend money on a solid player that could theoretically put them over the top. Like we've sort of been hearing about for a while. But I digress.

Probable Lineup Derrick Rose, John Salmons, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, and Brad Miller. Hinrich, Pargo, Thomas, and probably one of James Johnson and Taj Gibson as key guys off the bench. Or, you know, whatever the fuck Vinny Del Negro decides to do.

General Outlook Look, let's get this out of the way. This team is probably going to get fucked over by Del Negro's coaching. It's basically a question of how much he messes up their chances. I mean...could the guy improve drastically this season? Sure. But he consistently fucked up the rotations last year, did very poorly with what ought to be a pretty damned good defensive team, and just sort of generally seemed somewhat clueless. The near-upset of the Celtics doesn't really change that.

Now that that's done, onto less grim matters. Well, how 'bout this: Derrick Rose? Yea, that guy's pretty good. And he's going to get better. This season, even. The reigning rookie of the year looks likely to be the first real great point guard to enter the league since Paul and Williams, and guys of such potential at that position tend to really improve over their second and third seasons. So, look out. As with most players, he really just have to become more consistent, work on limiting his turnovers, and improve his defense.

Also, I hear the Bulls have other players. Some of them are even good! Yes, Luol Deng is returning, which will be sort of like replacing Ben Gordon with a guy they already had. And he's British, too! Whoa. If he can get back to his 06-07 best, his intrinsic weirdness will give this team another dimension of awesome. Brad Miller and John Salmons stick around as remnants of the Nocioni trade from last season, both very solid veteran players that could help the team to a pretty damn good record over 82 games. Joakim Noah, well, who the fuck knows. Same with Tyrus Thomas. Not to get back on the Del Negro shit, but I pretty much guarantee that we'll collectively groan at his use of those two about 100 times this season. Give or take.

The two rookies, Gibson and Johnson, have both had pretty damn solid pre-seasons, and it's sort of a shame they seem to be competing for one spot, and a spot where they'll likely not get that much playing time. But who knows, one (or both, even) could really break out. Pargo's signing will mean most of Hinrich's minutes come at shooting guard, I'd imagine, but who knows. Del Negro sort of liked playing small lineups last season, so maybe we can look for some real weird shit this season. But,anyway, both Hinrich and Pargo are pretty nice players, bringing completely different things to the team, and that sort of variety is cool. Is it weird that I've become more positive about the Bulls' season while writing this? Because I have. But then I think about Del Negro. And then, well, sadface. But anyway.

If they were a hip hop act: Gravediggaz. Like the hip hop supergroup/novelty act...well, they're sort of this weird super group novelty act thing. I'm not sure how these pieces make sense, really, but they come together, and it works out. They're pretty good, but nobody's going to mistake it for some all-out awesomeness or anything.

Actually, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with Vinny Del Negro as Prince Paul. But oh well.

Guessing how they'll do I already predicted the Hawks for fourth, right? Alright, well, I'll say the Bulls will compete for that fourth spot, and fall just short. They'll be a real pain in the ass for whoever they face in the first round, and that series will go deep. I will not predict a winner. But I'll say that this is likely to save VDN's job. Again.

NBA Schedules released

Yay?

The season starts October 27th (isn't that earlier than normal?) and ends April 14th. During that time? Stuff. Lots of stuff. Now? Not so much.

PS: Here is the national television schedule, for those that haven't yet discovered the life-ruining powers of League Pass. You may notice that the Rockets don't have a single nationally televised game. Apparently, Luis Scola doesn't bring in the viewers. Who knew?

Eurobasket 2009 Final Qualifying Round

Ahead of Europe's continental basketball championship, which will begin September 7th, 6 teams will fight for the final spot in the tournament. Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Belgium will make up Group A, and Italy, France, and Finland will be in Group B of the qualifying mini-tournament. The group stage, beginning August 5th, will consist of each side meeting the others in their group twice. After that, the top team in each group will progress to the final.

Here are the rosters for the six teams in the final qualifying round, which will start August 5th:

Portugal:

Jorge Coelho
Nuno Cortez
Jose Costa
Paulo Cunha
Filipe da Silva
Fernando José Da Silva Sousa
Elvis Evora
Mário-Gil Fernandes
João Figueiredo
David Gomes
Joao Gomes
Marco Goncalves
Mário Gonçalves
Fábio Lima
Diogo Matos Carreira
Miguel Minhava
Miguel Miranda
Rui Mota
Joao Reveles
Joao Santos
José Silva

Bosnia:
Kenan Bajramovic
Edin Bavcic
Nihad Dedovic
Henry Domercant
Bremer Ernest Lenell
Nemanja Gordic
Miralem Halilovic
Jasmin Hukic
Goran Ikonic
Ermin Jazvin
Zlatko Jovanovic
Elmedin Kikanovic
Milan Milosevic
Aleksej Nesovic
Ivan Opacak
Vedran Princ
Esmir Rizvic
Oliver Stevic
Mirza Teletovic
Mujo Tuljkovic
Sasa Vasiljevic

Belgium:
Christophe Beghin
Sébastien Bellin
Lionel Bosco
Piet Hubert De Bel
Maxime De Zeeuw
Thomas Dreesen
Yannick Driesen
Axel Hervelle
Dimitri Lauwers
Aleksander Lichodzijewski
Domien Loubry
Sacha Massot
Ilunga Mbenga
Roel Moors
Guy Muya
Kristof Cecile A. Ongenaet
Randy Oveneke
Thomas Van Den Spiegel
Jef Van Der Jonckheyd
Sam Van Rossom

France:
Alexis Ajinca
Nicolas Batum
Rodrigue Beaubois
Yannick Bokolo
Aldo Curti
Nando De Colo
Mamoutou Diarra
Boris Diaw
Yakhouba Diawara
Antoine Diot
Laurent Foirest
Mickael Gelabale
Joseph Gomis
Dounia Issa
Alain Koffi
Claude Marquis
Adrien Moerman
Tony Parker
Johan Petro
Florent Pietrus
Mickael Pietrus
Ali Traore
Ronny Turiaf
Ludovic Vaty

Italy:
Valerio Amoroso
Pietro Aradori
Andrea Bargnani
Marco Belinelli
Massimo Bulleri
Daniele Cinciarini
Alessandro Cittadini
Andrea Crosariol
Marco Cusin
Luigi Da Tome
Giacomo Galanda
Luca Garri
Jacopo Giachetti
Angelo Gigli
Daniel Lorenzo Hackett
Stefano Mancinelli
Marco Mordente
Giuseppe Poeta
Tomas Ress
Matteo Soragna
Valerio Spinelli
Luca Vitali

Finland:
Samuel Haanpää
Shawn Huff
Tuomas Iisalo
Mikko Koivisto
Petteri Koponen
Tuukka Kotti
Gerald Lee
Sami Lehtoranta
Ville Mäkäläinen
Vesa Mäkäläinen
Jukka Matinen
Hanno Möttölä
Kimmo Muurinen
Antti Nikkilä
Teemu Rannikko
Juha Sten
Petri Virtanen
Ilkka Vuori

Clearly...er, probably clearly, France and Italy have the most star-laden squads from this round. France are likely the favorites, but then they were never supposed to have to take this route, as most would have considered them locks to get through the previous qualifying round. With so few games to play, there is little margin for error.

Odom and Boozer and Sessions and stuff

Still available. Just throwing it out there. NBA GMs, make something interesting happen with these players. Please? I don't even care about Boozer, but Sessions and Odom...come on!

(/posting so this thing doesn't die even though nothing is happening. Only two weeks to Eurobasket qualifiers, though. Yay!)

Revisiting Beijing

(not that I've been to Beijing before, but, you know)

So, because the NBA is charging $15 to watch the Summer League coverage, I decided to watch the USA-Spain final from last summer again instead. You'd think that I would take this as a hint from the basketball gods to take a fucking break and perhaps get a life, but no. That was never really an option.

Anyway, the USA-Spain game was pretty much as awesome as I remembered. The standard of play, and offensive efficiency, was fucking ridiculous. I mean, I guess it had to be for both teams to get well into the 100s in a 40 minute game, but it was still somewhat stunning. Nobody on either team had a particularly poor game, and Dwyane Wade was ridiculously good (especially) early on. I have to admit that rewatching the performances of Rubio, Paul, and Rudy was probably the most fun, as all three had brilliant stretches (of greatly varying lengths, of course). Ultimately, in case you forgot, Spain kept it close throughout, but the US was able to finally pull away a little bit in the last couple minutes, and won 118-107.

Oh, and that Usain Bolt guy also did stuff in Beijing. Rewatching that 9.68? Still awesome (as well as the 19.31). But Tyson Gay managed a 9.77 the other day in Rome, to make things slightly more interesting as we inch towards this year's IAAF World Championships, in Berlin.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, nothing is fucking happening right now. I am not going to write about Paul Millsap, Brandon Bass, and Jarrett Jack. Today, anyway.