And so the time has come my friends where the NBA season is about to start, so why not do a sweepstakes?

I'll start the draw with the Eastern Conference and move my way through the timezones or different districts (Atlantic) for instance.

:good:

EASTERN CONFERENCE

ATLANTIC;

Toronto Rapters - Grimandi's Perm



New Jersey Nets - Black Magic



Philadelphia 76ers - Mr.Brighterside



New Yorks Knicks - Red and White Xmas



Boston Celtics - Injury Time

CENTRAL;

Detriot Pistons - Little Miss Gooner



Cleveland Cavaliars - Yossarian



Chicago Bulls - Maori



Indiana Pacers - WMUG



Milwaukee Bucks - TEG

SOUTHEAST;

Maimi Heat - Tiger



Washington Wizards - Letters



Orlando Magic - Milla



Charlotte Bobcats - BSbertsilde



Atlanta Hawks - 364 Days of Red

WESTERN CONFERENCE

NORTHWEST;

Utah Jazz - Jens' Face



Denver Nuggets - Toure De Emirates



Minnesota Timberwolves - Bergstar



Portland TrailBlazers - Warning_



Seattle Supersonics - Gary the Gooner

Heat are good, but I wanted Lakers :sulk:

PACIFIC;

Pheonix Suns - Cripps



LA Lakers - Flavs



Golden State Warriors - Total Football



LA Clippers - Gooner Do It



Sacramento Kings - 1886

SOUTHWEST;

Dallas Mavericks - ABC



San Antonio Spurs - Coca Kolo/Maccy - Joint Venture.



Housten Rockets - KaiserKolo



New Orleans Hornets - BoarderDave



Memphis Grizzlers - Tiny

New orleans hornets huh? Could be worse i suppose. Thanks CK. I see we are in the same league again CK like the NHL sweeps. Look forward to beating you again then :D

I'm appointing Jens' Face, Flavs and Black Magic to be the official news keepers and distributors for us uneducated ruffians.

hey dude no-one beats the Spurs (well the B'Ball one).

:redcard:

how comes i dont get i a sweepstakes team

my friend, you had to put your name in the hat in General Chat. :good:

(if no-one replies or notices they've got a team within a week or two, i'll give that team to you, deal?)

actually, I think you might have missed the point of you taking over this sweepstakes entirely.

I wish there to be nothing official about my involvement except making posts praising Deron Williams and secretly supporting BM's team.

I'll add a few snippets here and there, but we do need an American perspective which = some poster called Jens' Face. Anyway i don't really know enough about the sport to run the sweeps.

yeah sure mate

i dodnt really go on general chat, only now and then

cheers for explaining how it works, is it this way just for NBA or for every sweepstakes?

just about every sweeps. :good:

:doh:

In true CK style, i've just realised i've added 9 posters, not 7 so i think Maccy and another have missed out due to my calculations. Gosh how embarrassing, apologies to you Maccy and others who were due to have a team but didn't because of my botch job of a draw.

You fuckin c*nt. :good:

I was hoping for the Bulls or the Sonics, but the Nuggets will do.


Does Iversen (sp?) still play for them?

wrong logo, crapface

the Nets are too good for you

yup :good:

the Nuggets are a nice team to have (not as nice as the Nets, but hey)

We pwn :unsure:

one of the most boring teams in the league :good:

but you have an interesting and controversial rookie from China.

He was drafted by the bucks and initially was refusing to play for them. He and the Chinese govt (who pays close attention to these affairs) wanted him in a bigger media market than Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The team and the player's representatives eventually struck some deal keeping him in Milwaukee. I don't know the details -- I don't know if anyone outside the organization does -- but it's been mooted that it involved a promise from the Bucks to play the rookie a lot. Which might be a recipe for disaster.

Your best player is Michael Redd, an excellent shooting guard.

Memphis Grizzlies - Are they any good? Though i've just seen they lost on October 26th. Final Score: Pacers 140, Grizzlies 113!

Are they particularly tall?

you're in luck, Tiny, they are!

And their height is nationally diverse: Pau Gasol is a Spaniard (and a bit of a looker, if you ask me) and Darko Milicic is a Serbian. They are both over 7 feet tall. Not many teams have two 7-footers.

Pau Gasol next to a woman much taller than you



You also have a very young, very talented guy, Rudy Gay, who I think is 6'9". The Grizzlies are historically kind of crappy. But they have a good young team and will be exciting, I think. Don't pay any attention to preseason scorelines.

But most important of all -- they are pretty tall folk.

For some reason basketball brings the philosopher-sports writers out of the woodwork. I don't know why. Football (soccer) ought to do that more than basketball, but it doesn't. Here's a fine example of the genre:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...osterman/071026

Basketball season hasn't even started, and the NBA is already in trouble. You know this. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows this because this is always true. The NBA is always in trouble.

When I started to watch pro basketball, in 1979, the NBA was bordering on cataclysmic collapse. Nobody cared. Most players were believed to be addicted to cocaine, except the ones who were getting their jaws broken during on-court brawls. The league was in trouble. It has become popular to celebrate the "saving" of basketball in the 1980s, but nobody decided that it was saved until later; nostalgic historians like to remember the Lakers and Celtics playing in the Finals every summer, but it happened only three times in the decade. Just as much attention was paid to debacles like the 1986 draft (the death of Len Bias, Roy Tarpley's and Chris Washburn's unstoppable addictions and William Bedford's stoppable career). Bird and Magic might have sold a lot of Converse, but the league was still in trouble. When the Pistons established Eastern dominance in the late 1980s, the style of play became stupidly physical and frequently unwatchable. The NBA remained in trouble. Then Michael Jordan became bigger than the league itself, making everything around him more fragile; each time he retired, the NBA faced more trouble. The new millennium offered innovative dilemmas. Players grew less adept at hitting jump shots but more adept at hitting ticket buyers in the face. There were allegations that a referee got in bed with the mob. An employee of the Knicks didn't get in bed with Isiah Thomas. Things change, but things don't change. American pro basketball continues to self-identify as forever facing doom, almost out of habit.

The reason for this is forever the same: The NBA is hopelessly, endlessly, incorrigibly narcissistic. It's a quality that defines every decision the league office makes and every direction it takes.

When people hear the word "narcissistic," they associate it with egotism, but that's not really accurate. The failing of the mythical Narcissus was not his obsession with himself; it was his obsession with his image. And this is what prompts the NBA to wrestle with itself. No other league is as preoccupied with how others feel about its product. At least twice a year, David Stern feels obligated to deliver a state of the union address that dissects the minutia of TV ratings and tries to manipulate whatever image problem the association happens to be consumed with at the moment. Because the league is 75% black, every controversy feels political (Stern's dress code is a socioeconomic indictment, Steve Nash's MVP awards suggest latent racial bias, etc., etc., etc.). And each one is a PR nightmare, regardless of its real-time impact. Pro football players execute dogs, rain cash on strippers and overpopulate the drunk tanks of metro Cincinnati, but the NFL's popularity remains totally unfazed. Meanwhile, the NBA continues to fret about whether it should use a different ball. Unlike other sports, pro hoops tries to actively reinterpret the meaning of everything it is; it wants to control the way fans think about it. But this can never work, because the NBA has three problems that are inherent to its modern existence. Stern can't spin them because they are not image-related. They are simply realities that need to be accepted.

Problem 1: Some games are going to be boring
NBA clubs play an 82-game schedule, the games are 48 minutes long and there's a 24-second shot clock. This means every team will be involved in a minimum of 9,840 possessions over the course of a season (the actual number is more like 25,000). It doesn't matter how much you like competition or how high your tolerance for repetition is; it's impossible to expect any activity so vast and so fragmented to be ceaselessly compelling. Even the most rabid hoops fan will find his mind wandering during the second quarter of any random game in February. And there's no way to fix that. On balance, baseball is both longer and duller than basketball, but baseball has the paradoxical advantage of rewarding the absence of action. Just about everyone believes a 2-0 game is better than a 13-9 game, because each pitch is significant. At Fenway Park, monotony leads to melodrama. That will never be the case at the Staples Center.

What the NBA cannot manufacture is meaning, and that has nothing to do with level of play. In their 1987 book, Forty-Eight Minutes, Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto make the case that pro basketball is profoundly superior to the college version because "in the course of the average NBA game, there are more spectacular shots, more artful passes, more man-size powerhouse rebounds and more dazzling hustle plays than in any 10 college games." This is mostly correct -- but misses the point entirely. Level of play is never as important as context. For most of the regular season, very little is at stake during any NBA contest, and fans intuitively know this. I love the NBA, but I would rather watch players miss shots during a Texas-Kansas game than make shots when the Bucks play the Jazz. Meaningful failure trumps meaningless achievement every time. This is something the NBA just needs to admit.

Problem 2: We are an unshared society
One of the complaints leveled against NBA players is that fans can't relate to them, but I think the opposite is more true; I think it's impossible for NBA players to relate to us. Do you recognize the name Rasual Butler? Unless you play fantasy basketball or live in New Orleans, you probably don't. Last season, Butler averaged 10 points a game for the Hornets. He is not famous. Yet if you ran into Butler at a bar, you'd recognize him immediately: He'd be the 6'7" black guy with $3.3 million in his wallet. Except when he's around other NBA players, Butler is likely the tallest, richest, blackest person in almost any room in America, a nexus of physical, financial and racial minorities. You have almost nothing in common with Rasual Butler, and Rasual is probably more aware of that than you are.

More than all other athletes, basketball players are separate from society. When LeBron James wore a Yankees cap to an Indians playoff game in Cleveland, normal people reacted as if he'd tried to poison Travis Hafner with a radioactive isotope. Fans in northeast Ohio used the word "treason" in casual conversation. Now, I must be honest, I thought LeBron was extremely cool for doing this. I don't support the Yankees -- and I used to live in Akron -- but wearing that cap seemed like the first authentically individual act of LeBron's public life. But it also served to illustrate how psychologically disconnected NBA players are from the rest of the civilized world. James looked to be completely oblivious to how this move would go over.

NBA players live in a cultural vacuum of their own design. They become friends as teenage AAU players, shoot Nike commercials in the same airplane hangars and exist in an insular, rarefied monosphere. One suspects Vince Carter and Kobe Bryant wouldn't even notice if fans ceased to exist -- and that will always feel weird (and sometimes infuriating) to the segment of their audience that believes that athletes are alive only to serve as entertainment.

Problem 3: Potentiality destroys happiness
Confirmed genius and art critic Dave Hickey once wrote an essay titled "The Heresy of Zone Defense," which analyzed Julius Erving's now-famous reverse layup against the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals. After comparing Erving to artist Jackson Pollock, Hickey went on to write: "Basketball has been supreme in recognizing this moment of portending government and in deflecting it, by changing the rules when they threaten to make the game less beautiful and less visible." He ultimately concludes that basketball is better than religion. Whether or not these sentiments are true is irrelevant; what matters more is that a guy like Hickey could see basketball in such philosophical, metaphorical terms. This, it seems, is the NBA's deepest and strangest problem: What the sport actually is cannot compete with the theoretical game people imagine inside their own skulls.

When we think about pro basketball in the abstract, it seems so amazingly free: 10 fluid men in perpetual, unrehearsed motion, unencumbered by equipment and emancipated from their coaching staff, creating action extemporaneously. And every so often, that utopian vision becomes real (particularly when the Suns play the Warriors). But this is rare. This is the exception. Most of the time, NBA games let us down. The pace always seem slower than we remember, and the intensity is sporadic, sometimes nonexistent. Weak-side players stand around doing nothing, while offensive black holes pound the ball and back people down the lane. Unlike Hickey's recollection of Dr. J's hanging reversal, most routine moments in a typical NBA game don't seem artful at all. Somehow, though, the perceived freedom makes people misremember what the game really looks like.

What results is a disenchantment cocktail: The NBA seems worse than we think it should be because we unconsciously believe it should be better than it is. At the same time, the NBA machine keeps insisting that what we're seeing on TV is better than it really is and that all the league's problems are strengths. It's a dichotomy that permeates pro basketball in totality, and it makes people think and say, "Man, I think the NBA is in trouble." And they're right. But the NBA is always in trouble. Always.

And that means something else entirely.

It means that problems are normal.

NBA Predictions

The San Antonio Spurs will win the championship because

1. They are TH14's favorite team.
2. Some team named the Spurs has to win something.
3. They are just the best darn team in the land

Other views:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writ...icks/index.html

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writ...ions/index.html

And for Tiny Gooner, two photo galleries

* All-time greatest players TALLER THAN 6'6" (how exciting!)
* [url=]All-time greatest players SMALLER THAN 6'6" (how reassuring!)[/url]*

*can't actually get the link to work. Looks like small folk aren't that important after all. :(

:cafelatte:

here are the NBA power rankings, going into the season. How does your team stack up?

RANK (LAST WK) TEAM REC. COMMENT
1 (1) Spurs 58-24 Is the committee (of one) somewhat alarmed that we came to the same conclusion as Simmons about the best case you can muster against the Spurs repeating is that they've never done it? Not in the slightest.
2 (3) Suns 61-21 How did they move up a spot already? Marion's September trade demand was quickly overshadowed by Grant Hill's promising start in orange and yet another impressive comeback from a knee surgery by Amare.
3 (2) Celtics 24-58 Every vet free agent or buyout recipient (like Juwan Howard) has interest in joining the Celts because they have an opening or two in their rotation. So you watch: Boston's bench won't look so bad by season's end.
4 (6) Mavericks 67-15 We even got a call from a colleague in San Antonio insisting that our pre-camp ranking of No. 6 was too low for the Mavs, in spite of Dallas' playoff unravelings in each of the last two springs. So we bumped them up a bit.
5 (4) Rockets 52-30 The Rockets' official team marketing slogan this season: 'It's Time.' After 10 seasons without winning a playoff series -- for Houston as a franchise and T-Mac individually -- I'd say it's a unanimous sentiment.
6 (5) Pistons 53-29 Boston is just getting started with an all-new team, Chicago is still growing up, Miami is aging and Cleveland is not exactly getting deeper around LeBron James. So here's our advice, Pistons: Capitalize while you can.
7 (8) Jazz 51-31 The Cinderella feel of Utah's playoff run didn't quite make it to training camp, but there's still plenty of talent here to offset any turbulence. Even in the face of expectations that some fear are too high now.
8 (10) Bulls 49-33 Think Deng will feel extra pressure if Kobe doesn't wind up in the Windy City? Good news: Kobe chatter shouldn't distract Chicago's kids as much as you'd expect; they've been playing through trade rumors for years.
9 (9) Warriors 42-40 Can Golden State play at last spring's high level for an entire season? Can't wait to evaluate the Dubyas' counter claim that they'd have been seeded higher than eighth if they were healthy for the entire season.
10 (7) Cavaliers 50-32 The committee likes this Bucher line, so we're stealing it: Cleveland will miss that red-carpet bracket path it had to the Finals even more than Varejao or Pavlovic, since you figure one (or both) will re-sign eventually.
11 (13) Magic 40-42 No one should get carried away with the Magic's 6-1 record in the preseason, especially given Rashard's ankle trouble. But I have a nagging feeling 'Shard and SVG will help Dwight win their division in Year 1.
12 (11) Nuggets 45-37 Allen Iverson says his Nuggets are capable of winning 60 games. I can't go that high, but the only record that really matters is significantly sprucing up their 3-12 playoff mark in the George Karl era.
13 (20) Heat 44-38 Wade and Shaq can still be a playoff factor if they're ever healthy again at the same time. But Miami has to get to the playoffs first and that looked dicey until Riles manufactured last week's clutch trade boost.
14 (12) Raptors 47-35 Bosh is one of the committee's favorites -- surely not a shocker since we're talking about a lefty franchise player -- but I'm afraid we're officially panicky about his knee, knowing that our Raps have a slim margin for error.
15 (14) Nets 41-41 Good enough to climb back into the East's elite? Hard question to answer when we don't even know if the Nets -- with Krstic and Jefferson on the comeback trail and Kidd missing camp time -- will be healthy enough.
16 (16) Hornets 39-43 Remember when they were rookies and D-Will watched CP3 get all the good pub? Entering Year 3, I can't wait to see Paul's response and what that means for the Hornets, because last season was Deron's turn.
17 (15) Wizards 41-41 Our pal Sam Smith of the Chicago Trib lists the Wiz as a dark-horse threat in the Kobe Sweepstakes with an Arenas-for-Kobe offer. Is it too soon to wonder if the nation's capital is big enough for No. 24 and the president?
18 (17) Bucks 28-54 At least a dozen teams have legit hope of securing an East playoff spot. How they hold up health-wise and up front with Bogut, Yi and Villanueva will determine whether the Bucks finish closer to No. 8 or No. 12.
19 (21) Grizzlies 22-60 So what's it like sharing divisional space with the Texas trio? It's like this: Memphis might have a promising new look . . . but might also have a better shot making the playoffs than avoiding last place in the Southwest.
20 (19) Lakers 42-40 The sad reality, after all the chaos of the summer and October, is that this team is in for a real drop if Kobe leaves and a ride of countless bumps and ceaseless speculation just to grab a playoff spot if he stays.
21 (24) Knicks 33-49 Even if we ignore all the off-court sideshows, plenty of on-court uncertainty remains. Chemistry, leadership and defense are all in question, as well as the compatibility of Curry, Randolph and fan-favorite D-Lee.
22 (26) Hawks 30-52 No misprint: Atlanta is your preseason champion after going 7-1 in exhibition play. What does that mean in real life? Losing has become such a habit here that, sorry, we are still required to advise extreme caution.
23 (29) Pacers 35-47 The Pacers, last season's worst-shooting team, made minimal personnel changes and hired a coach who has always relied heavily on shooters. So we'll need to see more than a 6-2 preseason for a lasting jump.
24 (28) Clippers 40-42 Losing Elton in the summer theoretically ended the season before it started, which is why the Clips were so low in the camp edition. But there could actually be a handful of West teams in worse shape roster-wise.
25 (18) Bobcats 33-49 Our growing reservations about the Bobs are only partly tied to the double blow of losing May and Morrison. Even with those guys healthy and its offseason upgrades, Charlotte lacks size and experience.
26 (23) Trail Blazers 32-50 Even with Aldridge and Roy playing through early injury scares, we can't shake this recent Sam Bowie quote about curses: 'I've never been one to believe in things of that nature . . . [but Oden's injury] might convert me.'
27 (22) SuperSonics 31-51 We repeat: Forget wins and losses. This season? You need only keep track of two things when it comes to the Sonics: Durant's health/status in the rookie of the year race and where the team plans to play next season.
28 (27) 76ers 35-47 You can make the case, in Philly's first full season AAI (After Allen Iverson), that this is the only team in the East with zero hope of reaching the playoffs. Even if Larry Brown ends up taking this job back from Mo Cheeks.
29 (25) Kings 33-49 Artest is suspended for the first seven games. Bibby is out for up to 10 weeks after thumb surgery. Theus? The only relief for the rookie coach is that he needn't worry now about living up to high expectations.
30 (30) Timberwolves 32-50 Jefferson had a nice preseason, but let's be real. If the first Wolves team without KG since 1994-95 would have stayed in Turkey for another month or two, would anyone back in Minneapolis have minded?

:woohoo:

Lets go Raptors!

:unsure:

Are they any good?

kind of, yeah. definitely a young team of up-and-comers. they were worst in the league two years ago and then last year surprised everybody by making the playoffs.

Trail Blazers 26 23 28 20 97
Spurs 29 30 22 25 106

Jazz 28 34 24 31 117
Warriors 30 21 21 24 96

Rockets 16 27 27 25 95
Lakers 25 18 19 31 93

go jazz!

STARTERS MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A OREB DREB REB AST STL BLK TO PF PTS
Andrei Kirilenko, F 40 3-10 0-0 3-4 5 4 9 8 1 5 3 1 9
Carlos Boozer, FC 36 12-21 0-0 8-9 3 12 15 1 0 0 2 4 32
Mehmet Okur, FC 16 0-3 0-1 0-0 1 2 3 1 0 0 3 3 0
Ronnie Brewer, GF 28 8-14 0-0 2-2 1 1 2 2 4 0 1 3 18
Deron Williams, PG 32 8-15 3-4 5-6 0 4 4 8 0 0 3 3 24

Deron Williams is one of my favorite players. :D

Tonight's games are

Chicago at New Jersey is a good statement game for both teams.
Dallas at Cleveland is a real championship contender vs. LeBron James, one of the two or three best players in the world.
Seattle at Denver sees the likely rookie of the year and next Big Thing, Kevin Durant, play his first game against a very good and exciting Denver team.

Denver by 30+ points

the knicks didn't get a very good write up so i won't be counting my chickens.

And speaking of chickens, they've got a player called "curry".

mmmmm.... chicken curry....

:spicy:

you know that might actually be his best use :good:

Congrats CK you managed to give me the tea,m i hate the most out of the whole NBA

:rolleyes:

have to say that that statement shows a level of judgment I hadn't expected from a knicks fan.

I'm pleasantly surprised. :good:

yeah wel at least i stick with one team eh bulls/nets man....

Lakers beat Suns 119-98. :jumpnana:

Heat lose 87-85 against Pacers :threaten: