Big Trouble for WotN




Yeah, good luck with that, big guy.






















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Blogger BadDave said...
I approve this post.

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
chris, Sean Williams's voskuhl was a 6:1. Impressive lacktion nevertheless. It inspired me to rethink the Oden lacktion stat.

Anonymous Captain Ron said...
Alright, that's more like it, now you're talking. You can do it, mates. I've never seen such sailors. Not in all my born days, I ain't. Naturals. My God, everyone of you, naturals... We're gonna fucking die.

This is a little pick me up speech that Lawernce Frank likes me to give before each Nyet game.

Anonymous kazam92 said...
enough with references we dont get and therefore, become too annoying to read. Make Bawful Bawful and nothing more


FYI Dallas should get a mention for letting Radmonovic pull down 12 rebounds. I dont think he's pulled down more than 4 in the past 5 years

Blogger Basketbawful said...
kazam92 -- Ol' Jack Burton says if you haven't seen Big Trouble In Little China, your life ain't what it should be. Watch it, then come back and read this post again. I promise it'll be a life changing experience.

Blogger Dan B. said...
kazam92 -- Really? Really?? NetFlix, Blockbuster, download a torrent, do something, but watch it.

What's the next character post, Bawful? There are quite a few choices from just that mid 80s to early90s glory days of action movies for example. Chance Boudreaux from Hard Target? Bennett from Commando? Douglas Quaid from Total Recall?

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Dan B. -- Funny you should mention Arnie movies, because I've been considering doing a post where each entry is done by a different Arnie character. As for my other plans, I'll keep those hushed up for now. But I am open to ideas...

Blogger Dan B. said...
I'm a certified action movie junkie (I frequent the epic CommandoFans action movie forum, for God's sake). Needless to say, I am decidedly giddy at the thought of an Arnie movie based post. So, so, so many awesome one-liners...

Anonymous BW in Cleveland said...
A) Awesome, awesome movie
B) Where is the Wounded Tiger/partial Dead Coach Bounce blast in regards to the Mavs inexcusable loss to Golden State AT HOME?

No coach? Check.
8 players dress (6 actually get minutes)? Check.
Dallas building momentum on the 1st night of a back to back and start of a 3 game road swing? Check.
The Mavs cruising to a victory on the cusp of a 6 game winning streak against an undermanned bottom feeder in the West? EPIC FAIL.

Blogger Japes said...
Bawful, along with movie characters, you should consider doing a post as The Rock!


Blogger Basketbawful said...
Japes -- I'm not going to tell you that I'm considering doing a post as both the Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. I'm not telling you that. But the Rock is a great suggestion.

BW -- Yeah, see, ol' Jack Burton couldn't quite decide whether that game qualified as a dead coach bounce or a wounded tiger, so he just focused on the rest of the crap. But it was a pretty epic fail. Way to look past your opponents, Mavs. Mighta also been a trap game...

Anonymous Karc said...
Gotta give another honorable mention to the "best bench in the NBA," as the Lakers' bench let a 25 point lead drop to 8 in the fourth quarter, forcing Kobe Bryant to hit free throws late to finish the game. In the course of a single game, this may not matter, but this the third time this season the Lakers have done this, at home. They had a 25 point lead against the Pistons going into the fourth, and that one got down to 7 with two minutes to go. They had a 24 point lead against the Hawks early in the 4th, and that went down to 10 with 3 minutes to go, and the Lakers only won that game by 8.

Now, this is not an indictment on the starting five, but just the mere fact that they had to go back into the game shows that Jackson has no faith in his bench, and he shouldn't have any faith in the bench. Kobe Byrant played 40 minutes in those games when he only should have played 35 at most. And those mintues will rack up, especially if at this rate, they are going to be doing this every three games out of 13 for the season. And these aren't even good teams. Save Shannon Brown and Luke Walton, but I'd say everyone else is expendable.

Another solution might be to have Maria Sharapova and Khloe Kardasian withhold sex from "The Machine" until he gets double-digit scoring on single digit attempts, and Odom until he gets a double-double.

Speaking of Laker women I hate, Jeanie Buss, get of the stage. We know you're banging Phil. You don't have to go on ESPN radio and say it every week. I actually used to follow this witch on Twitter, until she started tweeting about all the hot girls that go to the Staples Center, as a not-so-subtle reminder to the rest of us that we have NO shot with any of them. Just cold.

Anonymous kazam92 said...
I do have netflix. Maybe I'll give it a look. I didn't know blockbusters still existed

Blogger 49er16 said...
@Kazam92- Big Trouble in Little China come out before I was born and I have seen this movie. It's one of the best movies of the 80's!

OT: Has anyone else watched the Sonics Gate movie? It's both interesting and depressing at the same time.

Also you have to love how a big stiff like Jim McIlvaine was given a huge contract, was the beginning of the downfall of the Sonics in Seattle.

Blogger TK said...
kazam92, just sit tight, keep the home fires burning and if we're not back by dawn... call the president.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
"I can visualize a Clippers parade," he [Donald Sterling] says. "I'm telling you, I will win. I promise you that. I will find the combination."


Just bawful!

Blogger Wild Yams said...
Mr. Bawful - I'm supremely happy to see ol' Jack Burton get referenced like this. Big Trouble in Little China is one of the greatest movies ever, and almost absolves Kim Cattrall of all her latter day Sex and the City horridness.

Karc - You beat me to this. The end of the Laker bench is absolutely dreadful! My only issue with what you said was quoting that they're the "best bench in the NBA". Who the hell said that? Whoever it is needs to have their eyes checked. I know they used to get that last year when they had Odom and Ariza coming off the bench, and when Vujacic and Farmar were coming off a season in which they actually played well; but man oh man are those days long gone. I do think there are a couple serviceable players on their bench: Odom, obviously, Shannon Brown and Luke Walton (as you said) and Josh Powell, but the rest are garbage. In Farmar, Vujacic and Morrison the Lakers have a trio of shooters who can not shoot, and it's when those guys get in the game that everything goes to hell. They just insist on firing it up when they're wide open even though none of their shots fall. Anyway, last night's Laker bench (including Odom) went 4-22 from the field for only 9 total points. Truly bawful.

BTW, it should be noted that the end of the Laker bench also let both the Bulls and the Thunder close the gaps in those games fairly dramatically so the final scores didn't really reflect how bad the blowouts were. In the Bulls game the Lakers were up 24 with about 5 minutes to go when Phil put in the reserves, and from that point on the Bulls outscored LA 14-5 to make the final total a 15 point Laker win. Against OKC the Lakers were up 27 with about 9 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, and then were still up 24 with under 4 minutes to go, but with the reserves in the game the Thunder finished the game on a 12-4 run thus making the final spread only 16 points.

So you can see, this is now a regular occurrence. It's really to the point where Phil will wait till there's only 4-5 minutes left even if the Lakers are up more than 20 to put in the reserves, just because presumably that doesn't give them enough time to burn through that much of a lead. Last night you could see he wanted to see if the bench had righted the ship, as it were, and went to them a bit early. With the Lakers up 25 with 9 minutes to go, in came Adam Morrison for Kobe to join Sasha Vujacic, and you know what happened. The Lakers didn't score for the next 4 minutes as the Knicks cut the lead to 14, so back in came Kobe and Artest for the final 5 minutes of the game. So that's now four games in a row where the Lakers have won by 13, 15, 16 and 10 in which they held leads of at least 24 points in the 4th quarter. And of course the two games prior to those four were losses, so yeah, the Laker bench is god awful, and that definitely could take its toll on the starters as their minutes have to stay up there.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
One of my favorite Bawful posts ever. Great job staying in character with Jack all the way through it too!

Anonymous Karc said...
@Wild Yams - Yeah, I was mostly referencing last year and the year before, when the media noted how "deep" the Lakers bench was, only to get schooled by the Celtics reserves in Game 6 in 2008 and Bryant and Gasol had to play at least 41 minutes a game during the playoffs in 2009. It was mostly ESPN (Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson), which oddly enough was timed with the construction of their new LA studio 100 feet from Staples Center. And in case no one got the message that ESPN now owns the Lakers, they had Kobe Bryant in the LA studio this morning (may have been last night late, don't know), going through the top 10 plays. To a lesser extent it was TNT, specifically Reggie Miller and The Jet saying that 1-12, the Lakers are the best team. 1-6, they are definitely better than everyone else. 7-12, however, bottom 5 in the league.

In reference to the other games you mention, true that. I put those aside because the games were so out of reach at that point, the only people who would care are the people in the arena who wanted tacos, and gamblers worried about the spread. But seriously, if any of these teams were good, they might have come all of the way back and won the game.

Pau Gasol was on the radio this morning, and buried the bench. He basically called them out saying that to have a 20-25 point lead only to see it go to single digits late with enough time for a comeback is "frustrating." And he's right. My belief is that if your second-stringers are not good enough to be first-stringers on a moment's notice, they should not be second-stringers. Certainly first string-enough to keep pace with the bottom 10 teams in the league.

Blogger Wild Yams said...
Karc - I definitely do remember all the talk about how great the Laker bench was, but like I said above, those days are definitely long gone. You're probably right that 7-12 the Lakers are "bottom 5 in the league". That may have something to do with the amount of money they're spending on those top 6 guys though.

I will say that I think Jordan Farmar probably could be a pretty good player if he played for a different team, and one that runs a more traditional offense. He'd be great in Phoenix's run-n-gun system, because he needs the ball in his hands more, but he's just a really poor fit for the Laker triangle. LA didn't extend his contract this summer, so my guess is he'll be gone after this year along with Adam Morrison.

Also, I think a lot of other coaches probably wouldn't even play the end of their bench the way Phil Jackson does if they played as poorly as the Laker reserves have. But Phil always tries to get everyone minutes so they'll feel involved, and he'll continue throwing guys into situations when they wouldn't normally get in there just to test them and see how they respond.

Gasol is right to rip the reserves apart though, because it is really pathetic what they're doing out there. It's like, those guys come in and you just know that they're gonna get killed right away. If you look at the last 4 games, and you look at the +/- for Josh Powell, Shannon Brown, Jordan Farmar, DJ Mbenga, Sasha Vujacic and Adam Morrison, combined they are a -106. And keep in mind that some of these guys are getting minutes here and there throughout the game with the starters, so at those times the Lakers are probably doing well which is helping their +/- rating! Make no mistake about it, the Laker bench is dogshit right now.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Yams -- I figured you'd like today's post.

In all seriousness regarding the Lakers bench, you know, a lot of those guys have been solid contributors on and off the past two seasons. What happened?

Blogger joseph said...
Dear bawful,
Please tell me if you saw the interview with rafer alston after the nets loss last night. It was the greatest thing i have seen besides darko going all hulk on his jersey. rafer didnt say anything funny or dumb, but if you look in the background you can see brooke lopez hanging his head about to cry. he didnt move or blink for like 25 seconds. I hope you can find it and post it and cue the music good greif chalie brown.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
joseph -- I will kill myself to find it...and if anybody else can, please forward it along.

Anonymous Karc said...
The Machine and Odom got resigned and having those women on their arms has to be a distraction.

Morrison always stunk.

Brown is relatively new, but he's one of the pluses, he just needs more time in the triangle. He needs to stop looking for the highlight reel shot, though, and he'll be fine.

Walton's been hurt more than usual. I get the feeling that these blown leads go down a bit once he's back in the line-up to run the offense.

Yams nailed Farmar, when he's going up against Aaron Brooks, he can be good defensively because he can match his speed. Offensively, not so much, the system is too slow.

Mbenga just hasn't had the PT get the timing down, but it's not like they really need him unless Gasol and Bynum both go down.

Powell's the only one I don't get, he's had flashes of brilliance.

Anonymous AK Dave said...
Was I the only one who found himself reading this post slowly and hearing Jack Burton in my mind's ear as I read?

Nicely done. And I'm all for a Schwarzenegger post. KOBE- GET IN THE CHOPPPA!!! LET OF SOME STEAM (CLAY) BENNETT!!!

The possibilities are endless...

Blogger Basketbawful said...

That's what ol' Jack Burton was going for...

Blogger zyth said...

good day to be a blazer.

Anonymous that brazilian guy said...
If "Under pressure" is their theme, then the Knicks' entrance song should be the one by Queen. That would make a lot of sense.

And by the way, Don Nelson wasn't coaching during one his team few, few wins... that is sad.

Blogger Wild Yams said...
Mr. Bawful - Years ago when I first looked to get a website, I immediately thought of two different URLs: threeorangewhips.com and porkchopexpress.com. Unfortunately both were taken (and still are) :( Needless to say though, I'm a huge fan of John Carpenter movies (The Thing and Prince of Darkness are two of my absolute favorite horror movies), Kurt Russell and of course, Big Trouble in Little China. And in a little anecdote to tie this all together, about maybe 7 or 8 years ago I went to the Benihana in Beverly Hills for dinner and Kurt Russell was sitting at the table next to me, while Derek Fisher was eating at a table across the restaurant. No, I didn't say anything to either of them, as I always leave celebrities alone when I see them.

Now, to answer your question about why the Laker reserves are so awful, we'll need to go one by one with them. First, Odom isn't awful, even if his marriage is, and this season he's been coming off the bench for exactly three games. We'll move on. IMO Luke Walton, Josh Powell and Shannon Brown are the only guys who are giving the Lakers anything this year, though none of them are fantastic subs by any stretch. Powell rarely plays now that the Lakers have the Bynum, Gasol, Odom triumvirate going, Luke Walton's out for another month plus with a bad back, and Shannon Brown is decent. After that though the Laker reserves are pure crap.

Sasha Vujacic has been total shit his whole career except, of course, for the one year when his contract was set to expire (funny how that works). LA's stuck with him for this season and next season and then he'll be gone. Jordan Farmar, as I said above, I think is just a poor fit for the Lakers' triangle offense. He'll be gone after this summer (barring a miracle), and he may very well go on to flourish elsewhere. In the meantime he'll continue to fire up bricks from beyond the arc for the purple and gold. Adam Morrison I guess was once a good player, till he blew out his knee, and has never been the same since. I get the feeling that he might be able to contribute something if he got regular minutes, but that's not gonna happen with Artest and Kobe starting at the wing spots for the Lakers, so instead he gets brought in occasionally and shoots like someone who is ice cold (which he is). He'll be gone next summer when his contract expires. DJ Mbenga had never even seen a basketball till he was 19, and after narrowly escaping from certain death in the Congo, he made his way to Europe where someone noticed he was seven feet tall, and thus figured he should play basketball. He has his moments, and actually is a decent defensive player, but he's rather surprisingly a black hole on offense and shoots (and misses) almost every time he touches the ball. Like Powell though, with Gasol back, he doesn't see many minutes anymore.

I've said this before, but the horrid Laker bench probably won't hurt the Lakers in any way other than forcing some of the starters to play a couple more minutes per game unless there are major injuries or something. Once Luke Walton comes back, the Laker bench will basically be Odom, Walton, Farmar and Brown, and the other guys will only be getting pure garbage time minutes. It's not a fatal flaw, provided the main guys stay healthy, but it can certainly provide a lot for various lacktion reports. However, if any of the main guys were injured (as Gasol was to start the year), then suddenly these horrendous players will be pressed into playing minutes that matter, and that can spell a lot of trouble for my beloved Lakers :(

Blogger BadDave said...
that brazilian guy - You could fake under pressure and then blend it right into "Ice, Ice, Baby." Oh so fitting. Question for you: are brazilian women by and large as hot as they're reputed to be?

AK Dave - You son of a bitch! Law skool gotchu pushing too many penzils?!

Where's AnacondaHL in this conversation?

He had to SPLIT!

Yams - Ah make you eat Vujacic's contract. Butchu bettah save room vor my fist, cause I'm gunna punch you in da goddamn stomach and rip out your damn spiiiiiinerrraarrrrgh!

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
BadDave: See, mine is different. It goes "dun dun dun doodoodun dun, DUN dun dun dun doodoodun dun". See, the extra DUN.

Anonymous that brazilian guy said...
BadDave: Well, there is some true to this statement, we have a LOT of beautiful and hot women here, but our society, being much more unequal than that of yours, places an even larger interest in money and, all in all, one thing leads to another and the most insane hot chicks are married to soccer players, actors, etc, thus it really isn`t all that different.

But, if there is one difference, I could say that women here tend to have a type of body unlikely to that of an european/american woman, that is to say that girls usually have a lot of ass (a lot of curves) and not as big tits.

I should enfasize our cultural diversity - we have here all types of heritage, european, african, asiatic, so the mix is very interesting. If you wanna see some example, give a look at Juliana Paes. She`s trully a brazilian beauty - but that doesn`t neglect the fact that we produce some Gisele Bundchens also.

Anonymous gravedohl said...
Awesomely funny post, no horseshit Jack!! That's my #1 popcorn-flick of all-time and way ahead of it's time, with the martial arts and supernatural elements and Kurt Russel just simply rocks in it...too bad Kim Cattrall is a total "Maggie"

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