| 31 March 2009
And that brings us to our first topic of observation for today:
Kevin Garnett is being shut down for the next four games (but not the last three?) so that he can rest his ailing knee.
Personally, I think that this is a smart move for the Celtics. If they don't have a chance at winning home court advantage throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs then what is the point of keeping KG on the court when he could be resting up and healing for the title run? But I have to wonder if this should have been done all along. Clearly, Garnett's knee injury has been more serious than they ever let one. It feels like he's been day to day for about two months now.
It makes me wonder if he should have some kind of corrective surgery for whatever the actual problem is during the season so that he could have healed up and been ready to go by round one or two. But if that had been the case, maybe he doesn't heal properly and you miss him for the entire playoff run. You can't have him Lance Harbor himself all season long by getting cortisone injections constantly so that he can try to get Coach Kilmer his 23rd division title. It just doesn't make since in the grand scheme of things. And if KG ends up blowing out his knee then you're relying on Leon Powe to pull a Jonathan Moxon and we just don't know whether or not he's capable of juggling the starting power forward position for a title team AND a relationship with Amy Smart before she got hot. And Big Baby is clearly Billy Bob with the weight issues, random acts of crying, and love of teachers who moonlight as strippers.
Okay, I've actually lost my train of thought while I continue to try to relate this KG injury situation to Varsity Blues and now I just want to watch Varsity Blues the rest of the day. The point is that KG sitting out for the next four games to heal is a smart move. To possibly bring him back for the last three games of the regular season doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. KG is not a player that will need to work off the rust. He isn't the offensive focal point. He just needs to play quarterback on defense, rebound, and clap in the face of Derrick Rose in the first round. I say to sit him the rest of the regular season and work off any alleged rust in the first round.
Alonzo Mourning had his jersey retired by the Miami Heat.
The Miami Heat retired their first jersey number of the franchise's history last night when they hung Zo's #33 from the rafters. Well, it wasn't necessarily the first retired number. They've also retired Michael Jordan's 23 (who never played for the franchise) and Dan Marino's 13 (who starred in many playoff losses and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective). So after 20 years of pretending to have some history, they finally added a little to their media guide by honoring Alonzo Mourning who gave his all to make the Heat successful.
Now, some people think that Alonzo Mourning didn't do enough to have his jersey retired. Personally, I think that's misguided and wrong. Is Alonzo Mourning a sure-fire Hall of Fame player? Probably not. Is he a Hall of Fame player? Well, that's something that we'll have to leave for another day. But as far as Zo deserving to get his number retired by the Heat? That's a no-brainer.
Alonzo Mourning's career with the Miami Heat left numbers like this:
15.9 points per game, 8.1 rebounds per game, 2.74 blocks per game, 53.7% FGAlonzo Mourning is the all-time leader in Heat history in games played, minutes played, free throw attempts, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, and blocked shots. He's second in Heat history in scoring behind Dwyane Wade. He was a five-time All Star with the Heat, which is tied for first in franchise history with Dwyane Wade. He was one of the toughest people and the best community people that the city will ever know. His philanthropy has been historic amongst Miami athletes. So to say that he didn't deserve to be recognized by this organization is just wrong.
Someday (and probably very soon), Dwyane Wade will be statistically and undeniably the most important player in franchise history. But for more than a decade, this team was fueled by Alonzo Mourning and his ceremony was well-deserved.
Dwight Howard is the youngest to reach 5,000 rebounds.
Now, my accomplice in the epic email exchange Jared Wade from Both Teams Played Hard made a comment on Twitter last night about Dwight Howard becoming the youngest to 20,000 rebounds some day. I'm pretty sure he was mostly kidding but the topic came up of what it would take for him to reach a statistical anomaly that only Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell have accomplished. It seems absolutely absurd (even more absurd than Gene Hackman's mustache in The Replacements) that Dwight Howard could be the third man to reach those impossible numbers.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played for 20 seasons and only snatched 17,440 career rebounds. After Kareem's first five seasons in the NBA, he had 6,249 total rebounds. Dwight Howard is on pace to finish this season with 5,161 rebounds after five years of play in the NBA. So not only does it seem like Howard won't reach 20,000 rebounds but it also looks like he won't even make it to the 17,000 that Kareem attained. But let's look a little bit closer.
You have to remember that Dwight Howard is only 23 years old. He's already rebounding at a rate of 14 boards per game and looks to be a shoe-in to grab that many for at least the next 10 years. So on top of the supposed 5,161 that he'll finish this season with let's tack on 14 rebounds per game for the next 10 seasons. We'll suppose that he averages 78 games played during the next 10 seasons. That would give him 10,920 rebounds over those 10 seasons. Add that to the 5,161 rebounds that he'll already have and he'll enter his 16th season in the NBA with 16,081 rebounds. And the kicker is that he'll only be 33 years old. If he plays another five years on top of that, he'll need to average only 10 rebounds per game over those five years to eventually reach 20,000 rebounds.
Keep in mind that these are all conservative numbers for him, assuming that he never has a huge injury that keeps him out for an extended period of time. But with the way he keeps his body in shape, it's not THAT improbable that he stays relatively healthy during his entire career. So while it may have just been a half-joking comment, the numbers actually look attainable for Dwight Howard. Sometime during the year 2024, we may be welcoming Dwight Howard to one of the most exclusive clubs in NBA history.
| Next > |
|---|
