126 thoughts on “March 6, 2012: Jump On”

  1. I'm feeling for Blake. Four missed FTs and a late technical in a one point loss. At least he has a nice Kia to drive.

    1. I have a feeling ESPN might not be so generous with its player ranking of Blake next season.

  2. How bad was it under Rambis? In the last 114 games he coached, the Wolves won 20 games.

    1. Don't forget, Rambis started last season with Kevin Love and Pek! on the bench.

  3. Why is Martell Webster allowed to play in the final 30 seconds of a close game? That guy is more clueless than GoGo was.

  4. I have seen it elsewhere around the internet but I would also just like to point out that the nickname CP2 is just terrific.

  6. How about I pretend to be watching them, and then you pretend I've been pretending to watch them this whole time?

    1. When you're asked about Rubio's latest pass or Keb Lub's latest ice cold shot and you can't picture it, pretending just won't be enough, Phil.

      I typed your real name here first. That'll take some getting used to.

      2. Ah, they all look the same. And all I need to say is "ooooh!" I can totally pass.

  7. because the Saints need more attention: they bring in Randy Moss for a tryout today

    1. I'd say there's a pretty good chance they're doing it to make people forget about the actual bad thing by bringing in a guy who's been a fan's punching bag to steal focus.

      For Moss, it's a good deal. There's no safer place for a skill player than to be on the same team as the one that intentionally injures skill players.

        1. That seems so right, but in Mankato during training camp, I saw Moss at Boomtown quite often, and he just sat at the bar, relatively quietly, occasionally chatting with teammates but rarely for long. Meanwhile, Mitch Berger is a loud, wild, dangerous party animal. Go figure.

            2. I saw him there twice, and he fell and caught himself by grabbing me on the way down both times. The second time, he remembered me and said "Dude, I need you here all the time, alright?" Good save, I thought.

  8. I tend not to watch Spring Training, but Light Rail is pitching on MLBN right now.

  9. Who said it:

    I can't pretend to be offended by the Saints' bounty system because I believe that all defensive players are incentivized to brutalize offensive players. The Saints were just stupid enough to create a traceable system, and stupid enough to get caught.

    Spoiler SelectShow

    1. Not seen tweeted: "I can't pretend to be offended by Barry Bonds' use of steroids because all hitters are incentivized to hit home runs. Mr. Bonds was just stupid enough to get caught."

    2. Was really hoping it was Gregg Easterbrook.
      I haven't dug into his recent writings, but I think this makes him look like a naïve fool.
      I need to remember tonight to see what KSK and the Deadspin crew are writing about this.
      The only reason I can figure that Deadspin didn't break this because Daulerio took over Gawker.

      1. Easterbrook's pretty on top of it. See my link below.

        Wait, you wanted Easterbrook to be on the wrong side of this?

        1. I'm with AMR, I'd rather have Easterbrook on the wrong side. I refuse to read anything other than Drew Magary's "Gregg Easterbrook is a Haughty Dipsh*t" portion of the Thursday Jambaroo, though, so my opinion may be biased.

          1. Oh yeah, "haughty dipshit" covers it pretty well. But he's also right on a whole lot of things, writes intelligently about both football and things other than sports, does a good job of putting things in context, and often admits when he's wrong.

            Sometimes he's a bit much, but as far as national NFL coverage goes, he's easily one of my favorite writers.

            Seriously, go read his coverage on the bounty scandal and tell me he isn't right.

        2. Although I generally agree with the points he makes in the column that you linked, I still find Gregg Easterbrook to be an insufferably sanctimonious blowhard.

          1. I generally am more able to suffer him at the beginning of the season, and then less and less as it progresses.

            He's still right an awful lot of the time though, and he tends to criticize things I find fault with (though I don't know that I'd agree with him politically, there's enough overlap between him and myself in his columns that it works out ok for me). Agreement tends to help with the sanctimony.

            1. I've barely read him but doesn't he usually criticize coaches of being overconservative? It seems like he was siding with the sabermetric side of football.

              1. the average running play gains four yards. GO FOR IT ON FOURTH DOWN EVERY TIME!!!!!1111ONE1111!!!!

                    1. Yeah, he's prone to hyperbole. But I'm surprised at the hostility to his claims re: going for it on 4th down. Not the kind of open-minded analysis I expected here.

                    2. You're mistaking what I'm saying. My hostility in this case is aimed towards those who are characterizing Easterbrook's argument as "Teams should never, ever punt in any situation." I would be genuinely curious for someone to point me to a place where anyone has ever made that argument.

                    3. Sorry, yeah, I mistook it. Though he, too, is prone to hyperbole. Not so much in his actual football analysis as in his long-winded rhetoric. His analysis is generally well-qualified and well-supported (i.e., he advocates going for it on 4th in the "maroon" zone, not everywhere).

                    6. What SBG said.

                      The average NFL offensive play gains about five yards. Yet game in, game out, coaches boom the punt away on short yardage, handing the most precious article in football -- possession of the ball -- to the other side.

                      What happens on the "average" NFL offensive play is very nearly irrelevant to what to do on 4th and short in a given situation.

                      to my mind, Easterbrook is on pretty solid ground yelling about "preposterous punts" inside the opponent's territory, particularly early in the game. But he's not content to make the solid point.

                    7. Easterbrook argues that no fourth-and-4s or less should be punted. I don't know if I agree, but I'm not convinced he's wrong with the evidence of "This is stupid". Easterbrook overstates by citing the average of all plays, but he also says that specifically 4th-and-1s succeed about 3/4s of the time, and that 4th-and-2s and 4th-and-3s have similar success rates. I don't know if those numbers are correct, but if they are, I'd be interested to hear a real, supported counterargument.

                    8. The average play gains almost five yards a play. -- Gregg Easterbrook

                      Some knowledge of variation can be useful. -- W. Edwards Deming

                    9. If it were true (again, I don't know if these are correct rates) that going for it on 4th-and-3 or less succeeds at something approaching a 75% rate, what's the argument against punting less in those situations? Does that 25% rate of failure increase the opponent's expected rate of scoring substantially compared to their expected rate coming off of receiving punts (minus the rate of turnovers on punt returns) from those conceded possessions?

                    10. Yea, well

                      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv0noFRyiQ

                      But seriously. DK, you are of course correct. In the article, he leans heavily on the work of David Romer (subsequently published in JPE -- link to the full text here).

                      I think there are some non-trivial problems with the data that he glosses over to some extent, the most significant of which is that he treats every offense/defense matchup as identical in order to minimize the number of parameters he needs to estimate with the data. We do a similar thing with baseball data to calculate the expected runs from a given baserunners-and-outs circumstance, but we have way, way, way more data in the baseball case and we (generally) aren't trying to use the expected runs tables to inform strategic choices on the field. It just seems to me that a good offense/bad defense pairing is strategically different than an average offense/average defense pairing. Likewise, one would want to know about the opponent's offense and one's own defense in making decisions about going for it on fourth down in many circumstances.

                      That's not to say that his conclusions are wrong, just that I'm not very confident about them.

                    11. This is what I was hoping someone would say. Thanks, man.

                      I gotta be a fly in the ointment sometimes. Like whomever called me out way back when I said "RsBI are totally meaningless" (I mean, I still don't think they tell you much about any individual that is projectable, but they do tell you something) I figured this one could use some pushback.

                    12. DK, I think you missed the key point of my response. HIPPO BUTT EXPLOSION!!!!111one111!!!!

                      Yes, I am a 10-year-old boy.

                    13. My hostility in this case is aimed towards those who are characterizing Easterbrook's argument as "Teams should never, ever punt in any situation." I would be genuinely curious for someone to point me to a place where anyone has ever made that argument.

                      There is this guy.

                      I stopped reading Easterbrook because his column was too long and pretty much the same thing every week. That was about 8 years ago. Jesus, I'm getting old.

              2. It's this "sabermetric" analysis of his that I like the most. He's challenging the prevailing football logic, and uses numbers and logic to do so. It doesn't have the depth of true sabermetrics, but the principles are largely the same. And he keeps trotting out the same points, but until they get listened to, there's not much else to say.

              3. I feel like he makes some interesting points using what data are available in football, but I do feel that sometimes he's a little bit prone to overstating his case and oversimplifying at times. (Not a mortal sin, for sure.) He's been the only person I ever semi-regularly read who writes about football. (Unless you count Posnanski, I guess.)

                1. I feel like he makes some interesting points using what data are available in football, but I do feel that sometimes he's a little bit prone to overstating his case and oversimplifying at times.

                  This.

                  1. But, overstating his case and simplifying his arguments to make fun of him is apparently not cool around here.

  10. The Wolves have 15 wins against the West this year. Over the previous two seasons, they went 15-89 against the West.

  12. Buffalo, I don't think it's meant to be. Dr. Chop is on her way home, and we're feeling a move to New Orleans is in our future.

    1. Hope you got my email yesterday and hope to see you at the party. You'll have plenty of people to ask about neighborhoods there because I know Sheenie's sister has invited about 150 of her friends.

    2. This is good news! I hope you and the Dr. enjoy living in a NBA city.

    1. Are they going to try out different memes because it's spring or is this is for the year? Because as I recall they just get the one.

      1. I have to say, I haven't caught a "Bert doesn't like Baker" comment yet. It's Bert's spring training too, apparently. After he builds up some confidence, I'm sure he'll be throwing those barbs out just like last year.

    2. I could see an actual meme being created out of it. It's not quite "cut off for the cut off man" weak, but it's pretty bad.

    3. another meme is that Ryan Doumit is the power hitter the Twins need. Heard them say it last night and today.

  15. Many of you have probably already done so, but if you haven't you should read Joe Posnanski on the bounty issue. Dick Vitale was great on it on Mike and Mike today, too.

    1. As usual, a good take from Posnanski. Once you start comparing this to just about any other scandal in sports, it looks worse and worse.

      It's pretty easy to spot the apologists in the comments section, basically anyone saying "football is violent, what do you expect?" If distinguishing physical play from dirty play is so hard, why not go back to allowing clothesline tackles and horse-collar tackles? Let's make chop blocks legal. How about clipping? Let's make that legal, too.

      I think the only football I watched last year was the second half of the Super Bowl, so it should be pretty easy to stop watching altogether.

    1. if it wasn't so blasted expensive, i would totally pull the trigger on one of these for the boy:

      somehow, a pek! jersey seems most appropriate for him.

      1. think about amortizing the cost over the number of times he wears it. That should bring the cost down to what, a third of the list price?

    3. the Twins were pretty serious about winning since they brought out Phil Dumatrait for the save

  19. Aannnnnnnnnnnnnnd it's official. The good Dr. has signed the paperwork and we are New Orleans bound. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm thrilled to be leaving W. Tejas! /sorrybuffalo

      1. My hatred for everything football is only further cemented by moving to a city with a (hopefully) disgraced NFL franchise.

        1. My hatred for the Saints is ridiculous considering how apathetic I was towards the franchise until about 4 years ago. I am pretty ambivalent to the NFL (and the Vikes - I truly wasn't bothered at all in 2010 when the Vikes lost, only that the Saints won), so it is easily my most passionate feeling about anything in the league.

    4. congrats, meat and Dr. Chop!

      and to DPWY's comment, pork goes really well with seafood!!!!11111one1111!!!!

      1. jambalaya with shrimp and andouille sausage was divine until Target down the road stopped carrying the spicy Zatarain's and only sold the super mild.

          2. Hey, Sheenie makes it and she's a local. If it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me.

    5. Congrats to you and the Dr. Having never been to west Texas, I can only begin to imagine how awesome it will be to get out.

  20. I love curling part 2: I brought some homebrews to the spiel I played in this past weekend. As thanks, today I stopped by the club and was given another bomber of this, a bomber of this, a 2010 bottle of this, was offered a bottle of this while chatting and also given four 2-ish ounce bricks of various hops from Indie Hops out of Oregon. All this is on top of formally accepting the new job offer and submitting my resignation for my current job effective at the end of this month.

    It was a good day.

      1. I could probably pull some strings and allow you to join our team for this spiel next year, if you don't mind lots of curling and drinking and good times.

        1. i could probably deal with it. however, i'm not curling this year, and unsure about next year. if i'm not well practiced, i don't particularly feel like embarrassing myself. gimme a heads up regardless.

          1. There are lots of teams that participate in this spiel that utilize the efforts of people who have never curled before, so you would most definitely not be embarrassing yourself. Also, you'd be playing with a skip who plays for one of the National teams, so he can cover up a lot of problems.

    2. I've only had the Gnarlywine out of that set. Umm, yumm!

      I recently purchased a bottle of this to save for a special occasion.

      1. I think whatever occasion you bust that out for will become special.

        The Hoptimus was pretty good, although the bottle made the "100 IBU's" claim, whereas it tastes much more balanced than that, maybe even tipping towards being malty. It did have a nice, dry finish, though.

    1. I used to care deeply about things like this, but as long as it doesn't change the on-field product, I'm not sure I mind. Still, I'd prefer backboard and floor ads to jersey ads.

    1. does Rob Parker even watch basketball? 'When was the last time there was a meaningful game played in Minnesota?' well, when was the last time there was a meaning game played by the Clippers

    2. I can't believe I watched the entire video. That was so painful. And Awful. Ugh.

      1. I was going to yesterday, but when I clicked on the link I saw "...and Skip Blayless..." and vomited a little, but then didn't click play.

  23. Minnesota is probably not going to the NCAA tournament, but South Dakota is....sounds about right

    1. South Dakota State, that is. South Dakota is ineligible for another year or two during the transition to Division 1. (Sorry, I'm an alumni of SDSU, while USD is our despised southern rival.)

    2. wow, I thought I typed State

      anyway, it was a slog of a game from what I watched. Big Ten worthy

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