[Bill Simmons] "Almost Famous" NBA offseason Part 1

I was thinking more along the variety of dribble dribble dribble dribble dribble dribble crappy shot.....like Barkley right before that knee injury......old old Barkley.

 

I just tried to read "Part 2" of this article, owing to all the interesting Rockets info in part 1, and I remembered why I can't stand Bill Simmons.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090728

Just paragraphs and paragraphs of hyperbolic over-analysis of a decent but ultimately not hyper-memorable movie (unless you're him, obviously) with the smallest bits and pieces of NBA analysis tacked on in the end so that he has an excuse to call it NBA related. I feel like a prospector panning for gold but basically coming home with a bucket full of dirt.

 

Good lord, I'd forgotten what I don't like about Simmons. The guy can babble on forever. While I disagree with you, Sam, over the flick (can't help it... although I'm older than the kid in the film, there was a time when I was very much into the whole scene, and Cameron Crowe recreates it beautifully), has there ever been a guy to toss an entire movie's worth of dialogue into one ultra-long bizarre column? I mean, whatever happened to the spoiler tag? I've seen Almost Famous several times, and have Crowe's director's cut, but a lot of people haven't (it was far from a "mega-hit"). Simmons could have just played the film while doing a voice-over. In effect, he did.

(insert 3 or 4 "roll-eyes" here)

 

That's great, but what does it have to do with my post? I was replying to the statement that Artest helped improve Yao's FG%. You've already said "Yao's FG% with Artest is on is a bit lower". So you're in agreement that Yao's pct was worse with Artest. That's the entirety of what I was saying.

Are you now saying the Artest did indeed improve Yao's FG%? If so the very stats you quoted don't back that up. Since you already said that Yao's fg% with artest is a bit lower, I assume that you agree that Yao's numbers didn't go up with Artest on the floor.

The Rockets winning pct with or without Artest/Yao has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not Yao's FG% was better with Artest on the floor. You can debate Artest's value to the team and their success with him all you want, but it has nothing to do with my post. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anything you've said about winning pct. It's completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Artest's precense helped improve Yao's FGA%.

 

Yes aelliott, I said I stand corrected, therefore I have to agree with you. Yao shot less than 2% better in the 875 minutes (out of 2588) that Artest was not on the floor with him. The majority of his minutes, the other 1713 minutes with Ron-Ron on the floor he shot a solid 54.4%.

Maybe we should have played Head with Yao all the time. He shot 62.9% with Head on the floor, although it was only for 163 minutes.

What can I say...

Is there a stat that shows how many assists a player had to another player throughout the season? I would love to see that.