04/19/24
December 23, 2013
SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
posted by yerfatma at 06:08 PM on December 23, 2013
Well, it's the end of one of their seasons, so... Paging BornIcon to the white courtesy phone.
Verdict? Rivers is at least still fighting for a playoff spot.
posted by Etrigan at 08:14 PM on December 23, 2013
The NBA's possible solution to tanking: The Wheel.
I was expecting it to be the Wheel of Morality.
While it's an interesting proposal to dealing with the tanking problem, I'm not sure that most of the NBA ownership views the tanking as a problem (the prospect of gaining an elite-and thus highly marketable-player via the lottery makes it probably worthwhile overall, even if you're going to suck for a year).
As it has been noted in other discussions, in America, it doesn't hurt you to have a bad season as an owner for a professional sports franchise, since even bad seasons still will make money (as long as you are cheap enough), thus there usually isn't a great incentive to change things too much to punish bad behavior.
posted by Bonkers at 09:49 PM on December 23, 2013
The Wheel.
It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but I think it could use some tinkering. How about adjustment of draft position for signing a free agent from another team? MLB attaches the forfeiture of draft picks for signing free agents that have received a qualifying offer. Perhaps the NBA could do the same thing. The problem is that teams that have low picks would be encouraged to sign free agents, and the team losing the free agent would be stuck with little return. I've never been in favor of a team being able to "tank", and the ping-pong balls were not the solution. I always felt that the league commissioner was able somehow to rig the balls to penalize certain teams. Something like the wheel would put a premium on the ability to find worthwhile players in the middle and late rounds.
posted by Howard_T at 11:18 PM on December 23, 2013
It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but I think it could use some tinkering.
I like it as well, but (believe it or not) there's a good point in the comments: how do you prevent can't-miss prospects from biding their time in school to wait for a favorable team to get the first pick?
Well, it's the end of one of their seasons, so... Paging BornIcon to the white courtesy phone.
Well that's just cruel. Which is what I like about it.
posted by yerfatma at 09:59 AM on December 24, 2013
I think the risk of the next LeBron timing his exit year is overstated. Players who are the no-brainer first pick are going to have trouble resisting that. What if next LeBron waits a year or two to be on the most desirable team -- let's call them the Dallas Mavericks -- and gets hurt in the meantime?
posted by rcade at 10:21 AM on December 24, 2013
Well, it's the end of one of their seasons, so... Paging BornIcon to the white courtesy phone.
/picks up phone
Hello...? Hey what up?! Of course I'm still here!!
When you look at both of their stats with 15 games under their belts, they're surprisingly similar and both teams are 8-7.
Romo: 3828 yards 31 TD 10 Int 63.9 Comp %
Rivers: 4249 yards 29 TD 10 Int 69.7 Comp %
Verdict? Rivers is at least still fighting for a playoff spot.
And so are the Cowboys.
As for Romo, he has a slight (or slim) chance of playing after getting an epidural shot to the back today but the effects of the shot won't be known until about 2-3 days. He could also play depending on if the disc is hitting the motor nerve or just extremely painful. If it's hitting the motor nerve then he is definitely out.
posted by BornIcon at 11:38 AM on December 24, 2013
All of which shows that "Romo is by far a better QB than Rivers" is unsupportable by any metric.
posted by Etrigan at 09:04 PM on December 24, 2013
The NBA's possible solution to tanking: The Wheel. I expected to hate this but the more I think about it the more I like it.