Are you stupid or am I?

Grog:

Made me wonder what it’s going to be like around Toronto in, say, 15 years?

Will Alvin Williams come back every now and then? How about Jerome Williams? If they ever get a WNBA team, would they hire Muggsy Bogues to coach it? How about Dell Curry coming back when his kids are out of college?

Not going to happen, I’m afraid.

Is Jerome Williams not an employee of the Raptors? Did that end? Even so, I could see any of those players returning, especially Williams. I mean, Bogues and Curry didn't play here for very long but Mo Pete? You couldn't picture him doing a halftime show on the Score in 6 years? You're a dumb dumb, Doug Smith. But I have no idea if Jerome Williams works for the Raptors so I guess I am too.

also known as english

Grog:

Q: It appears as if Nicolas Batum will be available when the Raptors select. My question (1) Why is he not projected to go higher? (2) Why am I not hearing his name as a possibility for Toronto? I just think it would be a huge mistake not to take this guy (aka similar to not taking Andre Iguodala few years back)

Kandeephan G, Markham

I think some player is aka good.

Willie Willie Willie Green

Okay this blog has become just a grog response platform:

Who would you rather have starting for your team: The all-star Joe Johnson and Josh Smith or Anthony Parker or Jamario Moon? Or, Andre Iguodala and Willie Green or Anthony Parker or Jamario Moon.

Willie Green is in a deathmatch with Andrea Bargnani for the worst rotational player in the NBA. Considering Iggy is probably going to get a max-type deal, I'd rather have Parker and Moon. Thanks.

In journalist math, Doug Smith > Peter Vescey

From the grog:

A work of fiction

Okay, so I don’t know Peter Vescey that well, maybe met him twice in my life and he’s become entirely irrelevant around the NBA, but what he did Sunday was absolutely unconscionable.

The drive-by on Sam Mitchell, you can read it here, was shocking not only because it’s wrong but because a purported responsible journalist cannot fabricate direct quotes and get away with it.

And that’s just what that was, an entire fabrication of a scene that never, ever took place. I spoke to half a dozen people yesterday who would have been in that room and it simply didn’t happen.

It’s funny to me, big shot columnist, who should know better, writes fiction and doesn’t seem to care. If I’m quoting somebody, I know they said the words. If I’m making an assertion like that – as bogus as it was – I’m checking first.

And I think we all know now that Mr. Vescey deals in fantasy rather than fact. And this one instance entirely diminishes every other single word he writes.

He's referring to this tasty tidbit:

Yesterday's La Gazzetta dello Sport claimed Mike D'Antoni could wind up in Toronto with former Suns exec Bryan Colangelo should Phoenix make him the designated scapegoat for its playoff failures and Sam Mitchell be fired by the Raptors. Both men have two years left on their deals. Money owed is a major concern or complication. Once alleged imperfections start to leak out in the local media, which is the case in both circumstances, time is about to expire. The whispering campaign regarding Mitchell is supposedly he's not a hard worker or on top of the league's current events. A few months ago, before the Raptors were to play the Lakers, he addressed the team by telling them, "We'll worry about the guy who got 81 in a second, but first I want to talk about Andrew Bynum and how he killed us last time." A hush engulfed the locker room. "Hey, coach," Chris Bosh interrupted. "Bynum's been out for weeks with an injury."

Petey, Douglas Alexander Merriweather Smith just called you a hack! But seriously... you just made this up. Making things up is for rip-off sports journalism blogs with readerships of 8, not fifth column of enlightenment, the exalted New York Post.

Par example:

Last night, sources report, Peter Vescey was spotted leaving a late night meeting of the Manhattan chapter of the NAMGLA, the National Association for Man/Goat Love Acceptance. When asked to confirm his membership in the group, the New York Post columnist replied "You'll never understand how passionate goat love can be until you've grabbed a doe by the horns until she yelled 'naaaay.'"

See? Fun. But made up.

Remember when Peter Vescey did the halftime show on the NBA on NBC? I don't even think Bill Walton would work with the guy these days and he's fucking nuts.

Newton's Laws as shown by Douglas Smith

Grog:

Action: Kapono plays
Reaction: He’s got to play smart.

Action: I write a blog

Reaction: It's a really stupid blog

Which what way, Doug Smith?

Grog content:

Regression in progress

If that wasn’t the worst game Andrea Bargnani’s played in a long, long time, I can’t remember which was.

And by regression, we think he means Bargnani's performances not his own ability to construct a sentence.

Some more:

No, I’m not ready to trade him for Andrew Bogut or LaMarcus Aldridge or anyone but whatever funk the kid’s in took entire control of his body yesterday.

Bogut: 14 and 10 this year with almost 2 blocks, .505 eFG%., 15 win shares.
Aldridge: 18 and 7, .486 eFG%, 19 win shares

Bargnani: 10 with under 4 rebounds a game, .451 eFG%, 4 win shares. He's a scoring (read: no defence) centre who can't hit shots more efficiently than Damon Jones' worst season in the league. How funky is that? Make your case, Smith.

Judge Smith

Mail brog:

Let’s get into the mail for one:

Q: Something I've wondered for a while: You're a professional journalist, and covering this team is your job, but do you also consider yourself a fan? Do you get excited when the team is doing well? Are you disappointed when they lose? Or do you have to maintain an emotional distance in order to do your job properly?

Ken H, Toronto

A: You can’t be a fan, it clouds your judgement and impartiality and that can’t happen.

What would Doug Smith do without his judgment?

Doug Smith circa 2005: "The Raptors should sign Travis Best!"

Cathal Kelly looks to Sal Fasano for clarity: scribbling to the choir?

Here:

As long as he and Ryan both continue to make strides, the Jays will be left with a tough decision once camp breaks. It leaves even a wise old vet like Fasano shaking his head.

"(Janssen's) role, considering what he did he last year?" Fasano said, wincing at the thought of it. "That's not for me to decide. But he was so good in the bullpen, I wouldn't mess with it."

Wincing? Head shaking? 3rd string catcher providing unnecessary context? Cathal Kelly is one awkward sonofabitch.

Gutless Gilbert

Not even worth cutting up:

To All You Jose Calderon Fans and Commenters
You know what, I’m sorry Canadian fans, I didn’t realize you guys do not have a sense of humor. I didn’t realize that you don’t like to laugh up in Canada. And Calderon isn’t even Canadian! I could see if I said something bad about Steve Nash, but Calderon is not a Canadian, he’s a Spaniard. All the comments I got from Spain, that’s OK, I can understand why you were mad at me. But Canada?

You’re loyal fans, but it’s not like I said anything bad, I just said he wasn’t an All-Star. I said he played great basketball. He’s playing great basketball while he’s filling in for T.J. Ford who is the starter. So he is the backup point guard. You know? He’s doing very well for himself, he’s going to get paid money this year.

At the end of the day, the Raptors might not even have him next year, so if I was a Toronto fan I wouldn’t get mad or upset right now. Calderon might be somewhere else.

He’s playing great. Over the years you can see his development as a player, and he’s really playing well. T.J. might lose that spot to him, but I don’t know. Who knows? As a backup or as a starter right now, he’s playing great basketball.

I watched Calderon last week and he had a really good game. You can take him out of being a backup. He’s a starter now, he’s a starter in this league. You know what? With Jason Kidd gone and if Calderon plays how he’s playing next year and they’re winning in Toronto and he’s still the starter? He might have a shot at being an All-Star, he might have a crack at it.

Let's ask a question and then bore ourselves before we can answer it

Too lofty for the grog, this one actually went to print:

Is the West too good?

What an original and insightful question, DS. Maybe you can blue sky on the All-Star game format next. No one's tackled that one yet.

As the balance of power in the NBA shifts even more to the West, it can be fun to play parlour games with the post-season.

It can be. But not in your parlour of inane columns.

Would the prospect of a 50-win team missing the playoffs in the West cause enough consternation to bring about a change in format? What about the chance of a 35-win team in the East qualifying as one of the 16 – ahem – "best" teams in the game?

No. And no.

Would a brilliantly written blog centred around exposing Doug Smith as a brainless hack actually help get Doug Smith fired?
What if he asked rhetorical questions and then redundantly answered them?

No. And no.

But that doesn't mean people aren't thinking about it, and talking about it.

The NBA isn't about to make a knee-jerk reaction to this regular season, even if the West seems stacked with all the good teams and many of the great players.

Right they're not. Here, Doug has engaged the age-old journalistic feat of lighting a match with angry grunt controversy and then putting it out with a fire hose of this-has-no-point.

Shaquille O'Neal moving from Miami to Phoenix and Jason Kidd going from New Jersey to Dallas are the two latest moves that have prompted concerns about the disparity between the two conferences.

Because Shaq was contributing so much to the landscape of dominance in the East lately.

"The West is the West, and as long as I've been in it, it's been like that," Boston's Kevin Garnett, a 12-year veteran of the western wars, was saying around the all-star break.

"Relieved can be an accurate word. It's fun to watch."

I think Kevin was asked if he felt relieved to be out of the West. Why does it feel like I'm writing Coles Notes for this piece of shit?

This year's difference between the two conferences has some thinking of how things could change in a dream world where the league messes around with its playoffs with frequency.

Having just the division winners qualify and then going by record without regard to seeding has been proposed. So has a "cross-over" when it gets down to two teams in each conference.

It's a debate that will rage as long as the West has so many good teams in comparison to the East, but it's also a debate that could have raged years ago.

"No one's remembering the '80s," says Raptor coach Sam Mitchell. "All those years of Boston and L.A. (in the finals)? Well, Boston has to go through Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago, Atlanta. Those were the best teams. The Lakers had a walk compared to them. No one wants to talk about those times."

Because no one remembers anything but the Finals unless you're talking about your home team.

This year's playoffs could be decidedly one-sided where records at concerned. There's a good chance a team like Denver could win 50 games and not qualify in the West while two or maybe three teams with more losses than wins could make it to the post-season in the East.

Sucks for Denver fans. Really does. Unfortunately the NBA feels they need regional representation in order to keep people watching and attending basketball games. Neither Doug Smith nor the NBA nor I know if that is meaningfully true.

Since the NBA changed to its current format of eight teams from each conference qualifying for the playoffs in 1983-84, the 2000-01 Houston Rockets lay claim to being the team to miss the playoffs with the best record. With Hakeem Olajuwon winding down his Rockets career and Rudy Tomjanovich coming to the end of his coaching tenure, Houston went 45-37 and didn't qualify.

I'm sure hardcore Rockets fans care about that perceived slight just as, as a Raptors fan, I know that we lost out on drafting Allen Iverson because of a lame expansion rule. Unfair. Maybe they should take the top 16 across the board. Hell, if all the good teams are in the West, then it's unfair that Portland has to play good teams more often than the Sixers. I'm starting to ramble, but you've yet to make a point, Doug.

Coaches like Mitchell and players like Garnett bristle at the suggestion the East is the junior varsity conference and a playoff system that's been tweaked just once since '83-84 needs changing.

The league knows that things go in cycles – even if they are slow cycles – and Garnett said the depth of talent out West doesn't mean there are teams full of stiffs in the East.

"You don't have the big names or the big international names but there's teams in the East that can give some of the teams in the West the bang for the buck," said Garnett. "I mean, taking it off the top of my head, Toronto, Orlando, Washington, those teams are comparable teams.

Thanks for the mention, Kev. You left out Cleveland and Detroit. Detroit, with strength of schedule taken into account, may be the best team in the league.

"You can't just discount those teams because they don't have the records that are going on in the West. That's what it is."

The NBA is not baseball. There's no Yankee machine gobbling up free agents. There's no farm system developing prospects. There are complicated trades, complicated signings and the draft. Too many teams in the Eastern Conference have made those team-improving decisions terribly.

And it's not enough to change things, as much fun as it is to think about.

That was fun?