To read more thoughts from Jason on the Knicks, continue to check here or on his site, http://www.malajas.com/knicks.
Let us take a quick look at this past week. I did not get much sleep
and fell asleep while watching a few games but got a good sense of how
everything is playing out.
A quick rundown of where I am at in my predictions:
San Antonio defeats LA Clippers 4-0, my prediction was SAS in 5
San Antonio is on an amazing 8 game run with Tim Duncan averaging
17.6 points a game and 9 rebounds with a 54% field goal percentage. I
cannot believe he is 36 years old. I am turning 35 this year and I
know I am not a professional athlete, but I can certainly feel the
years. I cannot imagine what his body must be like, especially playing
at the power forward position all these years. More on Tim Duncan
later, but I was astounded to find out that he lost 20 pounds this past
offseason so that he could be lighter and not put so much weight on his
bad knees. San Antonio played a great series and became fun to watch.
I understand the prevailing thought that San Antonio is a boring team,
and I was even one of those people in the past, but they are playing
superb basketball that anyone should be able to appreciate. They are so
good that I expected the 24 point comeback.
OKC leads LA Lakers 3-1, mine was LAL in 6
This series is a lot closer than the 3-1 score. It could easily be
2-2 or even 3-1 in the Lakers favor. However, Durant is playing out of
his mind. For someone who is considered a jump shooter, he is shooting
over 50% in this series, as well as providing clutch baskets down the
stretch. The crown for my favorite current NBA player is still up in
the air, but he may be taking at season end. I am sure he is happy to
hear that. But I really expected Lakers to close out games better,
given their experience and that they have Kobe. A stat that I saw
during one game that I never would have thought was that in clutch
situations, Michael Jordan was 50%+ in field goal percentage, LeBron is
high 30%, and Kobe is a measly 25%. Durant in this playoffs, is
somewhere in the 60% range...that is purely going from what I have seen
and feel.
MIA tied with IND 2-2, mine was MIA in 6
As expected, this is a battle. I thought Miami would give two away
by a few points because of a lapse in Miami's scoring, but Indiana has
proven to be the real deal. They are a complete team that plays
defense, rebounds and refuses to back down. They lack any form of star
power that I bet a casual fan would not have been able to tell you a
definitive starter on this team when this season started. With a little
experience, I could see them being like the Detroit Pistons that won
championships earlier this decade. I look forward to all of these
upcoming games.
BOS tied with PHI 2-2, mine was PHI in 7
I am most torn about this series. I live in Boston now and I adopted
this team during the Knicks era that shall not be named. However, I
have grown to appreciate Doug Collins. He was always a good commentator
and is a great coach. This has been a well played game on both sides,
except for the 18 point meltdown the Celtics had in game 4. What is
going on with all these teams surrendering huge leads anyway? I am
considering this as a post later if I can find all the data necessary. I
think either of these teams deserve to advance. They are playing well
and will pose an interesting matchup with Miami even though it will not
be as good as the current Miami-Indiana series.
OFFSEASON WORKOUTS
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines education and tries
to figure out why students in lower income areas are at such a
disadvantage and have such a low rate of graduation compared to those
with more money. What he found out was that it was not race, religion
or quality of teachers. He found those students were just as smart and
learned just as fast. The differentiator was how they spent their
summers. Lower income children did not go to camps or have group
activities, they simply sat around, and as the new school year rolled
around, they had lost more of what they learned then their stimulated
peers.
This made me think about the correlation between how hard an athlete
worked in the offseason and their greatness. Again, I was surprised to
hear that Tim Duncan had shed 20 pounds in order to manage the season
better. I have tried losing 10-15 pounds but it never took, so I tried
to find his offseason workout routine. Besides finding out that he used
to roll tractor tires up a hill and that he postponed the start of his
workout routine by a month because of the lockout, there was not much to
find. Still, the fact that he gave so much thought into when he should
start working out and how much weight he should lose in order to handle
the trials of a compacted season was interesting. If he managed all
his offseason workouts like this, it is no wonder that he will be in the
discussion of greatest power forward ever.
Other offseason routines I found that were worth mentioning are Blake
Griffin and Kobe Bryant. What I found interesting was that Blake found
"a mysterious trainer that is both radical and extreme in his approach towards fitness",
and part of his training was carrying a 60 pound sandbag up a hill. My
conclusion is that he found a fitness instructor and not a basketball
coach, or his game would have developed a little better than where it is
now. He is the new human highlight reel, but anyone that shoots barely
50% from the free throw line is definitely not working hard enough on
the basketball end. Kobe, on the other hand, has a sick workout. He
works out six hours a day for six days a week,
running in a variety of ways for two hours and then shoots 700-1000
shots per day. It's no wonder he will be one of the greatest.
Finally, this would not be a Knicks blog if I did not mention them at
least once. I did look up Carmelo Anthony's workout routine and ended
up on this site. It did
not seem like he had much of a workout besides medicine balls and
jumping exercises. I could not find anything that would contradict
anyone calling him Flab Melo. Still, I am holding out hope that he
refocuses this offseason and realizes what he has to do to bring the
Knicks into championship contention. He is currently my favorite for
pre-2012-2013 season MVP. I think this is it for him. His window is
closing to become truly great. Would you not be incorporating Kobe's
schedule if you were in his shoes? I do not understand what these
players are thinking. You only have 8 years or so for your prime, would
you not work out to be the best you could be?
Yeah...kobe shooting 25% in the clutch doesn't surprise me. There was an espn magazine article breaking down points per type of play - pick and roll, backdoor screen, etc...and the one that was rated the least efficient was iso plays. And ofcourse, because we want to see the stars take the shot, in the last two minutes, iso plays are run the most. Guess who's least efficient per play? Kobe. The best? Durant.
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