KG gets dissed by ESPN

Yesterday ESPN issued a list of the ten top power forwards in the NBA which did NOT include KG. Are they crazy?

Speaking of dissed, Kobe's wife put in her ten years of marriage to qualify for California's 50-50 division of marital assets and has filed for divorce against Kobe. I guess even that $5 million diamond ring wasn't enough to wipe away her hard feelings after Kobe's Colorado tryst. Sorry TJ. I don't expect Kobe to have his best year as a result.

And to add to Kobe's woes

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- The Los Angeles Lakers could be short-handed when they look for payback against the Los Angeles Clippers in both teams' preseason finale on Wednesday.


Kobe Bryant has a sprained right wrist from falling down in the second half of the Lakers 114-95 loss to the Clippers on Monday. He is expected to play on Wednesday, however.


More on the Lakers
For more news, notes and analysis of the Lakers, check out the Land O' Lakers blog from the Kamenetzky Brothers. Blog


"He practiced," said coach Mike Brown. "He went through the contact part of practice and then, eventually I just had him sit down. I think he's fine."


Devin Ebanks did not practice and instead underwent a MRI to evaluate his sore right foot. The MRI came back negative and the second-year forward, who is in the middle of a positional battle with Matt Barnes to determine who will start come Christmas Day, is listed as day to day.


"I got to see how significant that injury is, but I was going to start Devin at the small forward spot tomorrow," Brown said. "If he can't go, I'll probably start Matt."


The Lakers could also be thin at point guard as Steve Blake has a sore right knee from bumping into Chris Paul on Monday and Brown has not decided whether he will hold out Derek Fisher from the lineup again or not.


"There's a chance I might play him (Wednesday)," Brown said of Fisher. "I put him out on the floor for some contact stuff (Tuesday) for the first time, so I might throw him out there (Wednesday) for a little bit based on how he feels after shootaround."

Dave McMenamin covers the Lakers for ESPNLosAngeles.com.

Follow Dave McMenamin on Twitter: @mcten

worcester wrote:Yesterday ESPN issued a list of the ten top power forwards in the NBA which did NOT include KG. Are they crazy?

Worcester,

Can you provide a link? I looked for it but couldn't find it. Or is it part of their "In" (subscriber) coverage?

Thanks.

Outside

I saw it on their TV show - Channel 29 on Comcast in Florida.

Outside wrote:

worcester wrote:Yesterday ESPN issued a list of the ten top power forwards in the NBA which did NOT include KG. Are they crazy?

Worcester,

Can you provide a link? I looked for it but couldn't find it. Or is it part of their "In" (subscriber) coverage?

Thanks.

Outside

ESPN Fantasy basketball Power forward rankings:

http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/basketball/fba/story?page=nbadk2k12_PFranks

KG = 23rd?

W,

Good.

It'll tick him off; just the way we want him.

Regards

Just what I thought. More incentive for KG this year.

I looked at the link and it appears to be a fantasy basketball ranking.

I don't play any fantasy leagues, but from my understanding of how they work his rank is about right. I've heard it's based on various offensive stats.

Hopefully he sees it and it p*sses him off anyway!

This just falls in line with what all the Boston announcers are talking about on
their daily ......shows. All of a sudden in in vogue to dis the Celtics, sell them down the river, saying they are too old to even be considered a threat On Comcast, Gary Tanquay, who follows the winners, has been ripping the Celtics apart on a daily basis. He seems to be afraid to go out on a limb and say that we should just "wait and see".. all of a sudden he is an expert. Last night he had Bob Ryan of the Globe on his show, you could tell from he way Ryan was talking that he was a little disgusted with the way the so called "experts" were dumping on the Celtics.

Remember 1968-69? There were some pretty old players on that team too.
I know, I know, one was Russell, who could motivate himself to to almost anything. Well, maybe another talk with KG will motivate him! I
refuse to give up this early in the season.

As gyso and NYCelt noted, the ranking in the link is for fantasy leagues. I wouldn't get too worked up about it. In Yahoo's fantasy leagues (which I play in), KG is the 11th ranked power forward, which seems much more reasonable than ESPN's list.

In any event, there are several reasons why KG is ranked so low in fantasy leagues:

-- Fantasy rankings skew heavily toward offensive production, so that guys like Amare Stoudemire and Al Horford get pushed above KG.

-- Fantasy league rankings reward durability. KG played in only 71 of 82 games last season and is likely to sit a significant number of games this year (or have his minutes overall reduced) to compensate for all the back-to-backs. As a result, his overall playing time, and fantasy stats, will also be reduced.

-- Some players are given nonsensical positions, like LeBron, who is listed on Yahoo as a small forward/power forward when he's a small forward, period.

-- Realistically, KG just doesn't do what he used to do. For example, in 2007-08, he had 135 offensive rebounds and 89 blocks in 71 games, while last season he had 83 offensive boards and 57 blocks, also in 71 games.

Now, when you talk about the best power forwards in the game, you have to include KG in the discussion. His defense, leadership, and intangibles put him way above guys like Amare and Josh Smith and in the mix with anyone you can name. But for fantasy league purposes, he's going to rank lower compared to guys who score a lot more and sometimes even get more rebounds and blocks than he does. That's just a fantasy league reality (there's an oxymoron for you).

Outside

The last statistical grouping shows Garnett isn't what he was even in the championship year of '07-'08. This doesn't mean he can't still contribute something to the Celtic cause. However, to expect the KG of even 5 years ago is not realistic.His value for the duration probably is going to be more of a mentor to the younger players. We may get KG flashes occasionally, but I would suspect not on a regular basis.

MD!

MD,

I'd wouldn't relegate him to merely "mentor" status. In addition to being the defensive team captain and a valuable player in his own right (his numbers are diminished but still very good -- 14.9 pts and 8.9 reb), you're leaving out one of his most important assets -- playoff performer. While some guys put up impressive regular season stats and fade in the playoffs, KG typically steps up his game. Not only are his numbers better -- last season, his playoff scoring was the same at 14.9 even though team scoring dropped a bit, and he was a full two rebounds per game better at 10.9 -- but he also steps up in pressure situations. He's still very productive, just not at MVP levels.

I'd put Dirk above KG, but other than that, who else can you clearly say is a better power forward? Pau Gasol? LaMarcus Aldridge? An even more diminished Tim Duncan? Chris Bosh? Kevin Love, who's never been in a single playoff game? I'd say it's worth appreciating what you've got in KG.

Outside

So, just curious, how many of the 23 PF rated ahead of KG would U take ahead of him on your team?

mulcogiseng wrote:So, just curious, how many of the 23 PF rated ahead of KG would U take ahead of him on your team?

Do you play fantasy basketball? There are a LOT of variables, and it is all about the stats.

Leagues can be set up as head-to-head or rotisserie, and the number of players, player positions, and stats used vary from league to league. The league my son and I play is head-to-head, and six of the 11 stats tracked are FG%, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, total rebounds, blocks, and turnovers. With that setup, our strategy is to get a bunch of bigs who do well in those six categories. As long as we win six of 11 categories, we win every head-to-head matchup, and we won the league using this strategy last season.

To prepare for the draft we had last weekend, I put together a spreadsheet listing the top players and their stats from last season in our key categories and ranked them in three groups -- centers/power forwards, small forwards/shooting guards, and point guards. Based solely on his stats, which are good (not stellar, but good) in those categories except blocked shots, I'd put KG somewhere in the 15-20 range in the center/power forward group, but I downgraded him to 32nd overall in that group because I expect him to either miss a lot of games or have reduced minutes because of all the back-to-backs, which means lower fantasy productivity.

Here's the center/PF list we used for the draft.

Rank	Player	FG%	TRB	ORB	BLK	TOV
1	Dwight Howard	0.593	14.1	4.0	2.4	3.6
2	Zach Randolph	0.503	12.2	4.3	0.3	2.0
3	Kevin Love	0.470	15.2	4.5	0.4	2.1
4	Blake Griffin	0.506	12.1	3.3	0.5	2.7
5	Tyson Chandler	0.654	9.4	2.8	1.1	1.2
6	Andrew Bogut	0.495	11.1	3.1	2.6	1.9
7	Joakim Noah	0.525	10.4	3.8	1.5	1.9
8	Pau Gasol	0.529	10.2	3.3	1.6	1.7
9	Andrew Bynum	0.574	9.4	3.1	2.0	1.4
10	DeAndre Jordan	0.686	7.2	2.6	1.8	1.3
11	Marcin Gortat	0.563	9.3	2.0	1.3	1.2
12	JaVale McGee	0.550	8.0	2.8	2.4	1.3
13	Serge Ibaka	0.543	7.6	2.6	2.4	0.9
14	David Lee	0.507	9.8	3.0	0.4	2.3
15	Al Jefferson	0.496	9.7	2.9	1.9	1.3
16	Anderson Varejao	0.528	9.7	3.2	1.2	1.3
17	Emeka Okafor	0.573	9.5	3.2	1.8	1.7
18	Chris Bosh	0.496	8.3	1.8	0.6	1.8
19	Al Horford	0.557	9.3	2.4	1.0	1.5
20	Dirk Nowitzki	0.517	7.0	0.7	0.6	1.9
21	Nene Hilario	0.615	7.6	1.9	1.0	1.8
22	Paul Millsap	0.531	7.6	2.2	0.9	1.9
23	Luis Scola	0.504	8.2	2.0	0.6	2.0
24	Samuel Dalembert	0.473	8.2	2.7	1.5	1.7
25	Udonis Haslem	0.512	8.2	2.2	0.2	1.1
26	Marc Gasol	0.527	7.0	1.9	1.7	1.8
27	Tim Duncan	0.500	8.9	2.2	1.9	1.6
28	LaMarcus Aldridge	0.500	8.8	3.4	1.2	1.9
29	Elton Brand	0.512	8.3	2.9	1.3	1.2
30	Kendrick Perkins	0.515	8.0	2.1	0.9	1.9
31	Carlos Boozer	0.510	9.6	2.2	0.3	2.5
32	Kevin Garnett	0.528	8.9	1.2	0.8	1.6
33	Lamar Odom	0.530	8.7	2.1	0.7	1.7

We wound up drafting the guys in bold. With six of the top 13 on the list, we are in excellent position.

There's a lot of subjectivity to how we ranked players on the spreadsheet, but some things are just numbers. Guys like Gortat, McGee, and Ibaka have better numbers than KG in every key category, or almost every category. (So does a guy like Verajao, though my son passed on the opportunity to pick him because he didn't want a dirtbag on his team.) For cryin' out loud, we listed Dirk 20th. But for our strategy for this league, that's a reasonable assessment, as is KG at 32nd. But if we're talking actual teams, not fantasy league, KG is in my top 3 for power forwards.

Outside

thanx for the info Outside, guess this explains why I never did well in fantasy leagues LOL