The OtherArena

2011/2012 LA Lakers Thread

JAG — Tue May 22, 2012 7:50 am

Author: JAG

Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 7:50 am

And back to the longest off-season ever (already in progress).

Magic and I were right 12 months ago and Jimmy and Mitch had the right idea in December. It was over for this group last year and this fucked up season was just a prolonging the agony.

A look at the roster and where to go:

Kobe: Still in the top tier in the league, but he's going to have to figure out how to maximize his time left without shooting 30 times a game.

Bynum: Gone for Dwight, otherwise he's a Laker. It's on him to figure out it with Kobe, because he wouldn't win that war.

Gasol: He gone and good riddance. I'd take a couple of young pieces and a lottery pick at this point.

Artest: I thought his amnesty was a lock, but not anymore. He was their third best player on most nights in the final six weeks he played and there is something to be said about having the baddest guy on the block.

Sessions: Played himself out of a nice contract by pissing down his leg most of these playoffs. Strikes me as a great third guard and mediocre starter. He would be much better with Dwight, but wouldn't we all?

Barnes: I love his toughness, but hate his lack of skills. Somebody will pay him.

Blake: I'd amnesty him.

Hill: I'd resign him, because if this is all there is, it isn't bad, and it his age, there might be more there.

Ebanks: Takes Barnes job next year and I thought Brown needlessly buried him this year, because he kowtowed to the vets. May have cost him key development, but there's still time.

McRoberts: What a fucking waste of money he was considering how much they slowed it down. Trade him, please.

Murphy: Gone.

Goudelock: Another silly burial by Brown that killed Kobe's legs. Will play in this league and I hope he figures out what they want, because I'd love a Dana Barros-type.

Morris: All about the summer league for him.

Let's what the management can accomplish over the next four months.

Jagdip

2012/2013 Futbol Thread (Next Season a/k/a Transfer Talk)

CFTV — Tue May 22, 2012 3:32 am

Author: CFTV

Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 3:32 am

jdw wrote:

Oliver is crackers.

Phil going to BeIn is a good sign. I suspect Ray will follow soon.

I still think GolTV is going to have to roll over and sell out.

John

Wow Tosh went to BigSoccer and treated Oliver like Kentaro Shiga using brainbusters, rolling koppo kicks, dangerous backdrops, and right now has him in a stretch plum. Lets see if Oliver tries to fight out of the submission hold or if he ignores Tosh and goes on and posts more of his nonsense. It seems like everytime Tosh shows up on BigSoccer Oliver never fights back by ignoring his posts.

That was as good a message board beatdown as I have seen in recent times! :)

2011/2012 NBA Thread

Rian — Mon May 21, 2012 9:35 pm

Author: Rian

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:35 pm

turnovers turnovers turnovers. If the Thunder can limit their turnovers, they have a very good chance of winning this series.

Spurs in 6 with only one game being more than a 10 point spread at the end.

2012 College Football Thread

jdw — Mon May 21, 2012 8:54 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:54 pm

From Awful Announcing, the folks who created the Pammies:

Pam Ward out of ESPN's college football coverage

John

Following the LA Clippers

jdw — Mon May 21, 2012 4:44 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 4:44 pm

Sounds like Mo Williams said after the game that he will pick up his Player Option.

John

The Knicks: 2011 and beyond

jdw — Mon May 21, 2012 4:39 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 4:39 pm

Here's a good look at Lin's contract status:

Finally, a Definitive Answer on Jeremy Lin�s Contract Status

Quote:

Where the Knicks luck out is the fact that both Lin and Fields, since they�re coming off their initial two-year contracts (while the Knicks did not gain Lin�s Early Bird Rights, they at least did inherit his original two-year contract), they are both restricted free agents this year. Not only that, but they are governed by the so-called �Gilbert Arenas Provision.� This limits the amount of money other teams can offer either Lin or Fields to a maximum starting salary of the average NBA salary (roughly $5 million).

He *is* overrated, but he is also a valuable marketing tool for some team out there (less so than in NY... but not a total zero elsewhere). Since he's a restricted FA, the game that other teams can play on the Knicks is two folds:

* offer him MLE level contract

Which would force the Knicks to burn their own MLE to resign him:

Quote:

So the good news is that the Knicks are guaranteed to be able to keep both Fields and Lin if they want to. The bad news is that if anyone makes an offer of over $2 million to Lin, the Knicks would have to dip into their mid-level exception to pay for it, therefore effectively nullifying the MLE as a tool to sign a good free agent (like, say, Steve Nash). So they might be in a situation where they would have to choose between Nash and Lin. Who would you choose?

That's if the Knicks want Nash... or some other vet willing to take the MLE.

The other way to screw with the Knicks:

* Backload a contract

Quote:

One tricky aspect of the Gilbert Arenas Provision is that teams could still sign Lin to deals bigger than just the MLE times however many years (like 4 years/$20 million), they just can�t have the first two years be larger than the MLE so that the Knicks cannot be outbid. The first year has to be for $5 million. However, if a team is, say, $11 million under the cap, they can offer Lin a 4 year/$44 million contract (you have to be currently under the cap by whatever the average yearly figure of the deal is). The first two years would be for the MLE and then the last two years would be backloaded so that the entire deal would average out to $44 million (so the first two years would be $5 million a year and the last two years would basically have to be $16 million a year each). It is highly unlikely that a team would throw such backloaded payments into a deal, as it is not good for anyone�s salary cap, but I can imagine a team figuring that it would be especially bad for the Knicks, what with the increases in Melo and STAT and Chandler�s salaries in three years. Imagine the luxury tax that the Knicks would have to pay! So do not be surprised if a team tries to give Lin a deal for more than $5 million a year. Still, if Dolan is willing to pay the luxury tax, then the Knicks cannot be outbid.

So another team can only offer $5M or so in 2013 & 2014, but then zoom up the contract to backload it. The author tossed out this:

2013 - $5M
2014 - $5M
2015 - $17M
2016 - $17M

Which is extreme in going to $44M for four years rather than the $20M for 4 that the Knicks could offer. But how about something lower:

2013 - $5M
2014 - $5M
2015 - $10M
2016 - $10M

That's just $30M over 4 years, the Knicks can't match it, and really that's not a massive NBA contract.

Not suggesting that he's worth it, but that some team might do it.

John

2011/2012 Futbol Thread

jdw — Sun May 20, 2012 9:51 am

Author: jdw

Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 9:51 am

There's now talk of Chelsea entering the Hazzard chase with a still offer. I take that as likely floated by Hazzard's agents to get what they want out of City.

Also talk of Chelsea offering Drogba money to stay, which was something I'd been joking about at Simon earlier in the year.

Add in Luka almost certainly leaving Spurs now, and Chelsea being the place he wanted to go last year and the price for him being very high.

This is still a 6th place team, which should have been knocked out by Napoli and Barca... and probably even Bayern yesterday. They need a lot of pieces to improve. It's going to be expensive. They have yet another manager's contract on the books (AVB) which looking at Swiss Ramble write up of their finances has been a killer. I don't think there can get sentimental about Drogba as 200K to 250K is just a budget buster. Drogba has clearly said he wants to get paid huge money in what he sees as his last big contract, and that E'to money is sitting out there making his eyes water.

Spurs... lord this is going to be brutal to watch. :(

John

Box Office Thread 2012

jdw — Sun May 20, 2012 9:29 am

Author: jdw

Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 9:29 am

$55M Avengers
$25M Battleship

We can add Battleship to Dark Shadows as a US summer bomb.

Avengers beat TDK again, and hs pushed far enough infront that it sure looks like a lock to top it.

Hunger Games dropped down to $3M, but also pushed past $391M and was only -33.4% despite dropping to 2000 theaters. Down to 7th, so it will be losing screens quicker, but $400M looks like a lock given Memorial Day coming up pushing it even closer to the mark. A really amazing Phenom.

John

Springsteen tour thread...

guren — Fri May 18, 2012 3:58 pm

Author: guren

Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 3:58 pm

Hey Homer, thanks for posting the links. I watched Pt 1 last night, but at that time Pt 2 wasn't available.

The extended version of Prove It is definitely one of his great concert songs. I can't count the number of times I've watched the Houston '78 version from the Darkness box set.

glenn

UFC Thread

jdw — Thu May 17, 2012 10:40 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 10:40 pm

And this appears to be Dave writing more:

Quote:

I don’t want to go too much into this one, because this Dave Meltzer vs. Dana White stuff has gotten silly, particularly since we are, as funny as this sounds if you saw his video blog, in pretty regular contact and on good terms. Not that there wasn’t an issue, but that’s likely to happen again. He’s a promoter and that’s his job. The FOX rating was down, but he focused on the idea that they delivered they won the night in the key demographic, which is true compared to the other network shows, but it was also not the highest rated show that day in those key demos. And they were also way down in the key demos from the prior shows. But everything going in knew that would be the case, between the competition and the weaker lineup from a marquee standpoint.

The 1.5 rating and 2.418 million viewers were both the lowest marks for MMA on network television . It was below that of a 2008 Elite XC show headlined by Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith . That show did a 1.75 rating and 2.6 million viewers. And that show had head-to-head competition from a UFC show on Spike with the first TV airing of Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva fight from the previous December, which at the time was a monster fight. That replay did a 1.23 rating and 1.6 million viewers. That CBS show did not do well with Males 18-34, doing a 1.0, but did a 1.6 in Males 35-49. The UFC show last week did a 1.6 and 1.8 in those respective demos. MMA is on network television more to target Males 18-49, the idea of super serving a unique clientele than draw the largest total viewing numbers. It’s already accepted that older people and younger people aren’t going to watch MMA in great numbers on television. But for advertisers, the idea is for people looking for males with disposable income of a certain age group, UFC can be a strong target buy. At least, that’s the theory behind it.

The other low rated MMA show on prime time network, the disastrous April 17, 2010, Strikeforce show from Nashville, headlined by Jake Shields vs. Dan Henderson fight, did a 1.76 rating and 2.86 million viewers. Once again, it had to compete with UFC ran counter programming on Spike, a tape of a PPV show headlined by Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Cain Velasquez that did a 1.0 rating and 1.37 million viewers. That CBS show did a 1.3 in Males 18-34 and 1.7 in Males 35-49. Still, CBS was in first place that night among every adult male demo that night, the point White made about the FOX show on 5/5, but it wasn’t enough. CBS never ran another Strikeforce show. The primary reason given was the brawl at the end involving the Diaz Brothers, Gilbert Melendez and others beating down Jason Miller when he got in the ring to challenge Shields to a rematch. However, if the show had done better ratings, it would have been saved. The reaction at CBS was very negative to the rating. There were those at the time against the programming to begin with, but the first show with Fedor Emelianenko on top did well. When the rating dropped big, even though it was the brawl as the reason, there were plenty of people saying CBS needed to get out of this because it does weak ratings as well. Those ratings were comparable, a little higher in most demos but lower in Males 18-34, than what the UFC FOX show did on 5/5.

White did note the reasons, and in our article last week, we noted almost every one of them as well. The point about the number of homes watching television that night being down 10% from a usual Saturday night is valid. The opening of “The Avengers” absolutely hurt the rating. All the other factors are also not a secret. Even throwing them out, this show wasn’t doing close to what the other two shows did. But the Mayweather fight was bucking all the same things, the holiday, the movie, prom night, the other sports, and did great, the second biggest non-heavyweight fight in history and the biggest boxing PPV show in five years. But that was a must-see event for a lot of sports fans and the UFC event was not.

FOX also didn’t market the show well.

One point that needs to be brought up is the marketing of the event during sports broadcasts were built around “four fights,” as noted last week, never saying UFC, never saying MMA. If you heard the commercial and didn’t know better, you would assume it was a bunch of no-name boxers except put in prime time. The argument was that Jim Miller and Nate Diaz weren’t big names to the public is true, but how do you become big names? A big part of it is being marketed as big names. Who, really, was Junior Dos Santos to anyone but a UFC fan in August of last year? But they promoted the hell out of Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez, and the night of the show, they were big enough stars to have 9.5 million people watching that one minute fight.

I’m not saying if FOX promoted the hell out of Nate Diaz, they’d have gotten a similar rating, because that wasn’t going to happen on that night. The heavyweight title meant something. Two big knockout artists mean something. It wasn’t the right night. And Jim Miller as an opponent, God bless him, but he’s not a guy who is going to draw you big money on top. Football season shows have an advantage because such a huge male audience watches the NFL and they can directly hit people who at least may have the proclivity to be MMA fans. But if FOX promoted the hell out of Nate Diaz on all their sports properties for a month, all of a sudden, as sports fans keep hearing his name as the main eventer of a major fight card, it becomes a recognizable name.

White even argued that Diaz came out of the show a bigger star. And he got a decisive win in a main event that 2.9 million people saw. It probably does help the eventual Diaz challenge to either Frankie Edgar or Benson Henderson. White said coming off this that the Diaz Brothers can be one of the hottest commodities in UFC. And the show was good, although I’ve seen plenty of awesome exciting sports events from leagues that aren’t in existence today. This isn’t saying UFC is going down, just that it’s great to have a good show, but a company can’t hang its hat on good shows and that being enough. It needs to constantly make big stars, because star power trumps exciting fights every time, and Mayweather Jr.’s numbers prove it since he’s a superstar, but he rarely has exciting fights (the last one being an exception). And if anything, UFC’s has clearly proven for years that it can be a successful sports franchise without prime time network television.

On 5/12, as part of FOX’s new Saturday night sports experiment, a NASCAR race from Darlington Speedway did 5.716 million viewers, well over double the UFC audience, and beat the UFC number by 50% in the targeted 18-49 demo. Granted, it was an easier night. No Mayweather. The Avengers did “only” $42.9 million on that night as opposed to the $69.6 million it did the prior Saturday. But there were still NBA and NHL playoffs. The baseball numbers are going to be important as well this summer. In the end, UFC in prime time is going to be judged by how well it produces in the ratings with the other sports in FOX’s Saturday night lineup, baseball in the summer, college football in the fall and winter, and NASCAR. Strikeforce got canceled winning the target demographics of Males 18-34 against shows the equivalent of Crimetime Saturday and 48 Hours Mystery on other networks that everyone knows mainly hit a lot older viewers. UFC does have an advantage Strikeforce and Elite XC don’t have. UFC is a key sports franchise under the company’s umbrella and having big shows on the big network adds prestige to the franchise as a whole. They have a long-term deal and the franchise is key prime time programming on FX, and the entire Fuel station is being built around UFC as its key programming. But at the end of the day, nobody stays on network prime time without delivering.

The card was the No. 1 show on network television in both Males 18-34 and Males 18-49. But three NBA games and one episode of Sports Center that day on cable beat them in Males 18-49. Four NBA games beat them in Males 18-34, including a Memphis vs. Los Angeles Clippers game that aired at 5 p.m. Eastern, outside of prime time, that did a 3.45 rating in the Male 18-34 demo as compared to the 1.6 the UFC show did in prime time.

ESPN General Bad Stuff Thread

Yakuza Rich — Thu May 17, 2012 5:42 pm

Author: Yakuza Rich

Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 5:42 pm

jdw wrote:

It did certainly sound like she was saying she thought Bernie was gay.

My read between the lines is that they were both banging Davis. The only question is whether he was over the age. I think we both agree that it's unlikely Bernie was doing it as long as Davis claims: just doesn't fit the traditional profile of doing it both as young and as old.

John

I got the impression that she felt that Bernie was attracted to Davis sexually, but she never inferred anything about Bernie having sex of any kind with Bernie. It sounded like the 'we screwed you up a bit' came from alleged sexual attraction to Davis and Laurie allegedly banging Davis. When Davis talks in the phone conversations trying to hint towards Bernie molesting Davis, Laurie kinda deflects away from it...in the sense that she doesn't agree that is what happened, but that she did have some relations with Davis.

I never really thought of it as being unlikely Bernie did it as long as he did because Davis went from a young boy to an adult. I just looked at it like if Bernie molested 1 kid, he molested a bunch more because like Sandusky, he had access to probably over 100,000 boys in his career. Bernie essentially ran Boeheim's summer basketball camp which I think took boys starting at age 7 (I went there from ages 10-13). Bernie ran the show and Boeheim wouldn't show up until about the last couple of days.

Anyway, I just had a hard time believing that Bernie would molest 1 kid and that was it. Like Sandusky, he would have been at least in double digits.

YR

Donna Summer Passes Away

jdw — Thu May 17, 2012 1:45 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 1:45 pm

:(

The Avengers (spoilers)

jdw — Tue May 15, 2012 4:59 pm

Author: jdw

Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 4:59 pm

Black Widow Spins Webs Around THE AVENGERS

That article really nails why I think Black Widow was the heart of the movie, and Joss really put a lot of what he's best at as a writer into the character.

JOhn