Thursday, October 25, 2012

Seahawks Specialize in Nailbiters

In every Seahawks game so far this year, minus the Dallas Cowboys game, one of the two teams playing has had the chance to tie or win the game with under 2 minutes left in the fourth quarter. So far in these tense, drama filled games the Seahawks have won three times (Green Bay, New England and Carolina) and lost three times (Arizona, St Louis and San Fransisco). I think it is now safe to say that these Seahawks specialize in nail biters.

The team is built to be a hard hitting, tough old school team. It is no secret that the main focuses by the front office and coaches have been on defense. The have brought in new player, who have been an upgrade, at almost every position on the field. Only Brandon Mebane, Leroy Hill and Marcus Trufant were on the Seahawks before Pete Carroll. The largest strength of the D is their secondary. In a pass happy league Brandon Browner, Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas have been able to regularly shut down top receivers. This combination of philosphy and personnel has resulted in opponents averaging only 15.1 ppg, third lowest in the league. The excellent secondary and all around quality play should continue to keep opponents scores low.

The Legion of Boom
The front office's one sided obsession with perfection at preventing points has lead to a deficit of talent on the offensive side of the ball. The little offense the team does produce is almost all generated from Marshawn Lynch and the rest of the running game, which is a power attack. However, the runningbacks generate yards in small consistent bunches 3-6 yards at a time. Rarely do they break open big game changing runs. This works great for controlling the tempo of the game, but doesnt generate high scores. The lack of a quality passing offense also limits the teams score. The WR have struggled often this season and QB Russell Wilson has looked exactly like the rookie he is. The below bad offense is evident by the teams 16.6 ppg, second lowest in the league.

The Legion of Gloom

The combination of a great defense and a bad offense has meant that the team limits the oppositions points and struggles to score their own. All of this translates into low scoring tightly contested games. Games that raise your heart rate and get you on the edge of your seats. Games that are 100% worth investing your time in and watching.

Sources: Yahoo Sports

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

NBA Preview: Detroit is Sad

This man was give $35 million
to be made fun of by Kevin Garnett.
There are some NBA teams that are just a lot of fun to be involved with in any way.  Just writing about the Nuggets, for instance, gets me all hot and bothered.  Which is a pretty strange saying, as it is the middle of October and I haven't spent enough time with Andre Iguodala for his quirks to bother me.  In short, there are some teams that can just make the NBA worth following, regardless of whether your city has a team or happens to have lost it due to illegal practices of an overly-powerful figurehead.  Even so, the NBA can be fun to write about.

The Detroit Pistons are not fun to write about.  Even the Bobcats are hilarious about being bad, so that gives at least a glimpse of interest.  The Pistons don't have that.  Perhaps nothing defines their entire organization better than Tayshaun Prince, a small forward who everyone is aware of but nobody can actually collaborate his story that he does, in fact, exist.  Prince, like the Pistons, used to be good, but at this point its better we all pretend that they don't exist to spare us the boredom that has become Pistons basketball.  

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

NBA Preview: Denver, Everybody's Second Favorite

A standard George Karl practice session.
Basketball is a lot more fun to watch when the team's are scoring.  Not just scoring with the efficiency of Nate McMillan's Trailblazers, but recklessly throwing themselves up and down the court, piling in the points. The famous Run TMC Warriors and the ridiculousness of Steve Nash's Suns hold a fond spot in the memory of anyone who watched basketball at the time.  Frankly, nobody hates an NBA team that runs and guns, with the possible exception of anything involving Stephen Jackson.

The Denver Nuggets have always understood this, or at least have always appeared that they have.  David Thompson poured in points as well as anyone ever has during Denver's last ABA years and into the NBA, while Alex English stuck around with such exalted scorers as Dan Issel, Calvin Natt, Kiki Vandeweghe, and even an aging Walter Davis.  Never has there been an NBA team who has so consistently ran up and down the floor and stayed in the NBA's top few teams in scoring.

Monday, October 1, 2012

NBA Preview: MC Dirk and the Cuban Crew

Dahntay Jones plays HOW much!?
Owners like Mark Cuban don't come around much.  Certainly, there are plenty of owners that are willing to spend money recklessly to be competitive and make fans happy (Paul Allen, the Busses), but rarely is their an owner that connects with fans so closely when they really don't need to.  The Mavericks are a popular enough team in a solid market that could pretty easily ignore their fans and still do alright.  Hell, even if they started losing fans, Cuban has enough money ($2.3 billion to be exact) to weather such a storm.

This is what makes the Mavs the unique franchise they are, not just in the NBA but in all of the big four sports.  The Mavericks actively listen to and interact with their fans, from the owner on down to the players, and continue to be competitive and lovable despite a roster of horribly overpaid old people.  At the center of all these oddities is one of the most entertaining men in basketball: Dirk Nowitzki.

Every year, Dirk gets older and older and rebounds less and less, and yet it never matters.  As long as Dirk can stand, he can scored as well as anyone, thanks to the stupidest looking turn-around jumper that has ever been.  It may not even qualify as a jumper, as Dirk seems to just spin around and fall to the floor, all while throwing the ball wildly at the rim and then, what do you know, it goes in ten times a game.  Even with Dirk's full-season career low in FG% last year, at a still-very-good 46%, expect the exact same production as ever from the German: 20 PPG, enough rebounding and post defense to be considered a power forward, and tons of hilarity.