Basketball from a fan perspective

The game from a fan’s perspective

Sometimes your past reputation proceeds you

Draymon Green was ejected from the Warriors game on Thursday night versus the Knicks, although it is not uncommon for the volatile Green to be ejected from a game this time it was not his fault, it belongs to an official’s oversight.  On the other hand, sometimes, your past reputation proceeds you, Dennis Rodman and Rasheed Wallace can provide a response to that statement. 

This is how it played out, Draymon was being his usual emotional self only this time it wasn’t aimed at a game official.  His ire was intended for rookie center James Wiseman, the official believing Green was criticizing him ejected the Warriors power forward/center.  Green had picked up a technical foul earlier and this one caused him to be ejected.  Warriors coach Steve Kerr indicated the official admitted his mistake, late Friday afternoon came word the second technical was rescinded for Green.        

On top of the heap

My friend Alex pointed out the conference strength of the Big 12 in our discussion the other day.  I’m looking at teams (Kansas-Mizzou) rather than conferences, but I decided to conduct specific research, sure enough he was correct it appears at least to the middle of January the Big 12 is the strongest overall conference in the nation.  Are you curious about other conferences, I sure was, I used teamranking.com/ncaa-basketball to resolve the question?  The Big 12 Conference is number one in the nation as Alex affirmed, following them is the American Conference in second place. 

In third is the SEC followed by the ACC and Big 10, my how the mighty have fallen.  To date ACC and Big 10 dynamo conferences are certainly not competing to date as they have in years past.  I hope you find this information as interesting as I did especially the evidence regarding the top two conferences in the land.  If you click on the link below you can check on several others across the nation if you care.  If you are unfamiliar with the American Conference several familiar schools might be Wichita State, Memphis, Houston, and Cincinnati. 

 https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf

The 30,000-point club

The NBA has an exclusive club belonging to just a few athletes, it’s those who scored 30,000-points over the course of their NBA careers.  Several great players over time have failed to reach that figure in fact once we considered 20,000 points an insurmountable number.  Who are they, we’ll all are retired except one…LeBron James?  James might one day pass the current leader Kareem Abdul Jabbar, he leads the way with 38,387 points. 

Just missing the cut is the late Moses Malone with 27,409, a total of 29,580 with his American Basketball Association numbers.  Karl Malone is second with 36,928, LeBron James is third with 34,597, next the late Kobe Bryant at 33,643.  Michael Jordan 33,292 followed by Dirk Nowitzki with 31,560 and we conclude with Wilt Chamberlain and his 31,419 points scored. As you can see the 30,000-point club is exclusive with only 7 members.  Other than James there are no other active players even close to the figure.  Carmelo Anthony might be the nearest and he’s at 26,604 points scored. 

He needs to lose weight

Karl Malone stood 6 feet 9 inches tall and 250 pounds, he personified the term “Power Forward.”  When he addresses an issue of play by a power forward it causes our ears to perk up and that’s just what he did.  The Mailman says the Pelicans Zion Williamson needs to lose weight, early in the season we discussed the fact Williamson appeared to be somewhat slimer.  Despite the photo we all saw Williamson has not loss as much weight as Malone and others appear to believe. 

The Pelicans roster list the young man as 6 foot 6 inches and 284 pounds.  Malone claims Williamson “needs to lose some weight.”  The Mailman went on to state carrying that much weight on his frame could be damaging to his knees and shorten his NBA future.  In this instance the words of Malone could possibly ring true, perhaps Williamson should heed the words of Karl Malone based on the length of time he spent in the NBA.