As I look around the basketball blogosphere, read journalist evaluations, and listen to fan opinions – it seems to me that we are really lacking an understanding of what it takes to win basketball games, and as a result we Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise focus of which stats we should really pay attention to.  As far as I’m concerned, basketball is a game of possessions and opportunity cost. I don’t care if a team scores 75 points or 125 points, of if it concedes 80 points or 120 points. We all know that different styles of play can be successful, from San Antonio’s grueling half court sets to Phoenix’s lightning paced tempo. But what is important is how efficient teams and players are with the amount of possessions they do have. Essentially, if you have more ‘successful possessions’ on offense than your opponent does, then you win the game. It doesn’t matter if you beat your opponent 4-2 or 133-131 right?

Therefore through offense and defense the key is to make the most of your possessions while denying your opponent of successful possessions. Today I will evaluate the offensive side of the game and rate the players according to their stats in the 06-07 season. To do this I have created a unique formula that will calculate in detail how each player uses up their respective possessions. Practically all statistics that we use today have some sort of contribution to the analysis of possessions – its just that they have never been put into the right formula before.

So before I reveal my findings, let me explain a bit more about this business of ‘possessions’.

In basketball the goal IS actually to have more points than your opponent, but while points is the end product we are looking for, it is possessions that is the scarce resource that makes it happen. In other words, possessions are what creates points. Since a team has a limited amount per game, then it makes every bit of sense that teams and players should try turn as many possessions into successful possessions. For example a player giving you 4/5 from three point land is far far better than another player shooting 6/13 from the field, because he gets you the same points in 8 less possessions. With the first player, those 8 extra possessions instead of missed shots, can be turned into more points. Therefore we should analyze a player’s possession use efficiency to determine his offensive worth to a team. To calculate the efficiency we simply need to consider potential possessions and successful possessions:

One made shot is one potential possession, turned into one successful possession. Similarly, a missed shot is 0 successful possessions out of 1 potential possession. With an assist you are responsible for half of the successful possession with half the potential. Free throws similarly count as 1/1 in terms of possession use when making both, 0.5/1 when making 1 of 2, and 0/1 when missing both. Turnovers count as 0/1 in terms of possession success obviously.

After adding some modifications to take into account: free-throws that come as a result of and 1’s, giving scoring players half the credit when they score off of assists, and giving 3 point baskets 1.5/1 in terms of possession success, we can calculate a players’ possession success percentage. This is calculated by dividing all the successful possessions by potential possessions. (It is important to understand that by possession we mean that the player in question did something that led to the change in possession of the ball to the other team – either good or bad).

This percentage tells us simply what percentage of the time the player in question will help create two points when he uses the teams’ possession. So if someone has 80% successful possession ratio, it means that 4 out of 5 times the player will help the team secure two points – this could be a made shot, an assist, or freethrows made, the important thing is that the team ends up with 2 points. It obviously would make sense for teams to highly value players with good possession success % because they make the most out of a teams’ limited possessions.

So after some complex calculations that I won’t bore you with at this moment, here are the top 50 most efficient offensive players for the 06-07 season (500 minutes had to be played in order to be eligible): 

TOP 50: MOST EFFICIENT OFFENSIVE PLAYERS

Now, we should be careful when looking at this table to not make quick conclusions. The ranking does not suggest that Brent Barry is a better scoring shooting guard than Kobe and Wade…absolutely not. However, it does statistically prove that he was more efficient with his possessions than those superstars. You can see on the list that Steve Nash is number 1, and this should be no surprise to most as he always seems to make good things happen on offense. We can also see through this list that role players that are valued highly in coaches minds such as Battier, Lee, Najera, Hermmann, Barry etc all justify their worth as they manage to be more efficient than their superstar counterparts.

With that said, this ranking doesn’t do justice to those superstars that have so much more responsibility and have to keep producing despite fatigue and double teams, and are expected to produce on a consistent basis. Therefore, we should also see which players create the most useful possessions per game:

TOP 50: USEFUL OFFENSIVE POSSESIONS PER GAME

This is essentially a Top 50 of who creates the most on offense for his team. It is no surprise that the list is made up of the top offensive players in the league. The top 23 in fact are all in different teams (if we ignore that Iverson went to Denver in the middle of the season). This list on the other hand discriminates against players who don’t ‘ballhog’ and don’t get as many minutes. Therefore a better representation of a player’s offensive worth would be if we calculate the offensive successful possession surplus. This means, how many successful possessions does the player create after we subtract his unsuccessful possessions. This is a much better representation since superstars are still rewarded for having that burden to consistently contribute, whilst efficient players are still rewarded over ‘ballhogs’ for their more efficient performance. Since every successful possession in our calculations translates into two points, here is the ranking of top 50 players who contribute the most NET points to his team.

TOP 50: Net Points Gained aka “The Oytun Offensive Efficiency Rating” (OOER)

We should make it clear when looking at these numbers that the league average % chance of creating a successful possession is 51%. For conveniences sake if we assume that it is 50%, then we can understand that that average point surplus of the league is 0. This means that an average player will use half his possessions to create two points, and the other half will lead to nothing. Our list shows how many NET points these elite players contribute to their teams. Keep in mind that even if a player averages 50 points and 20 assists per game, he won’t be more useful than an average player unless his efficiency is above that of an average player. Having said that the above is a good representation of how many points the team would Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise if that player was injured to be replaced by an average player. Of course there are flaws with this assumption, but it is still as good an understanding we will get of how much value a player has to his team on offense.  Therefore if the MVP chase was based solely on offensive contributions the above list should serve to rank them.

TOP 20: Ball Hogs

Which players are most ‘active’ on the offensive end of the floor? Below are the top 20 biggest Ballhogs. (most possessions used per minute played)

So those Kobe fans who keep hearing how much of a ballhog Kobe is, they can now respond by saying that there are three other players who are bigger ballhogs than him, and also less efficient at the same time.

It is also useful to know who you do not want on the floor when you crucially need a basket. Here are the top 10 players who harm their team the most on a per 40 minute basis:

So keeping Bonzi on the floor for 40 minutes will lead to 9 less points for your team per game than the average NBA player. Minnesota fans might be concerned to see two of their key players on this list. (Sorry ‘Toine!)

End of Part 1 

Well that wraps up the offensive side of things. We’ve seen that in the 06-07 season, while Kobe created the most ‘good’ for his team, he doesn’t do it nearly as efficiently as Steve Nash. In fact, the 2 time MVP is way ahead of the competition when it comes to offensive performance. Some might point to the fact that the Suns play a much higher tempo game, but Nash is not even in the top 15 in terms of possessions per game. Furthermore, any advantage that higher tempo teams might seem to receive gets negated when we consider that successful possession percentage is on average 50% meaning that it shouldn’t lead to more surplus possessions. For the players that are over 50%, then a slight advantage arises but this is no different than players who are ballhogs, or play more minutes. We assume that players who play a faster tempo deal with lower quality shots, and apparent ballhogs are in fact so, due to their teams reliance on them – therefore at the end of the day, more possessions come at a price, and we can safely discard these discrepancies while still retaining a true view of the top offensive players.  

As most of us know (well most of us outside of the Golden State Warriors), in basketball offense is only half of the game. Therefore defense will take center stage in part 2 as we similarly rank the top players who help prevent opponents from creating sucessful possessions.  

Where Amazing Doesn’t Happen is a regular section which parodies the official NBA ad campaign running at the moment.

Denied! is a regular special feature that will see me take an article/action/story and let the culprit in question know exactly why they are wrong.

This week I will be targeting all-mighty journalist Chris McCosky from the Detroit News and his recent elitist article condemning (practically) all bloggers around the world. Essentially what he says is annoying him is that bloggers are discrediting the media, but personally I believe his discontent runs deeper than that.

His opening argument criticizing the legitimacy of bloggers is as follows:

“Journalism employs trained professionals. We actually have to go to school for this stuff.”

Truth be told, I completely sympathize with this statement. Not because it’s a valid argument towards his case, but because I felt the exact same way as a Business graduate looking for a marketing job. I realized that anyone and everyone is encouraged to apply for these positions and that my Business degree with a focus on Marketing gave me no edge at all. At first I was bitter and ranted on and on just like Chris did here in his article. After stopping to think about it for a second, I realized that perhaps my degree didn’t really give me an edge and in fact there could be countless non ‘marketers’ that would be much better at the job than I. The first step to recovery in this situation of feeling a decline in the value of your degree and profession is admitting the problem.

Which leads me to step number two: doing something about the problem. Besides perhaps having a linguistic edge over us non-journalist, you must realize that your sole added value as a writer is as you point out, “We actually talk to, in person, the people we write about.” So that’s what you should stick to, and sleep safe knowing that us bloggers will probably never have access to these sources. Journalists provide factual data, and bloggers take it and play with it how they like. That’s how the game works, welcome to the 21st century. If people weren’t interested in sports enough to share their opinions and blog about them, there would certainly be a decrease in the amount of newspapers bought or sites visited. This would essentially lead to a decrease in revenue of media entities, and would lead to some fully trained journalists such as Chris to be out of work. It is in nobody’s interest to mess with the fragile ecosystem in place.

What ecosystem do I speak of? Let’s make it very clear that the majority of bloggers do not make a living out of blogging. I would say it’s on the other side of the spectrum if you consider ‘journalists’. Hence it is completely wrong to look at the two as rival products, in fact they are complementary to each other’s success. As I mentioned, bloggers rely on journalists to do all the ‘hard work’ for them. If there was no hard work for bloggers to ‘copy and paste’, it is then that the journalists should feel threatened. But to take the current situation and publicly belittle bloggers who just blog as hobby is very irresponsible. You are biting the hand that feeds you.

I don’t know what kind of insecurities has rattled Chris’ cage but it is clear that he would like professional journalists such as himself to be given much more credit – and this I can’t say I support. Since journalists rely on constant stories and a readerbase to make a living, their‘work’ ends up being far less reliable than Chris makes it out to be. As Chris brought up himself, ESPN and every other news company of some sort will generate story after story just to keep readers coming to their site. You will have: made up trade rumours, stories that are misleading, reporting news that should be left personal, over dramatizing events, and making more out of a story than what you must have been taught in ‘Journalism Ethics 101′. I think anyone who follows sports cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercisely will know what I am talking about. Furthermore, every story needs to have a catch or keep readers interested, which results in twisting the real story for their personal point. Imagine a tabloid magazine reporting dull news – this is a recipe for disaster. Sports media similarly needs to keep filling the headlines that will sell papers and make web surfers click the story. A blogger on the other hand has no quota to fill and no credentials to make up a story, so at least what he reports is what he genuinely feels. No bosses to worry about, no sportstars he has to keep happy to get more interviews, and no readerbase that he has to keep hooked. Yes, there will be instances where an irresponsible blogger will try to draw all eyes on him, but it is not the standard that should be applied to the other millions of bloggers out there. Much like there are bad journalists, there are bad bloggers.

You must also try to understand that just because you have a journalism degree, it doesn’t mean that you know more about sports than us bloggers sitting at home in the basement in their pijamas. In fact, those who end up blogging about sports for no revenue must be die-hard sports fans – wouldn’t you agree?

It is time to get off your high horse and accept bloggers and blogging, because it is not a phenomenon that will pass with time. People from the dawn of time have enjoyed communication, sharing thoughts and ideas and feeling part of a community. So get use to us, and if anything step up your journalism work so us bloggers won’t have a chance to ‘discredit’ your reporting – as I have just done here today.

The NBA season is right around the corner and every sports fan with a hint of basketball in their blood is eager for the season to finally get underway. Over the past couple months we ‘witnessed’ a very dull NBA final, we had some big trades that went through and some that didn’t, we’ve had scandals, many comeback considerations, and much much more. However all of that will clear the way on Wednesday night for the season openers and real basketball headlines. I don’t really mind NBA news being dominated by offcourt incidents during the offseason, especially as the alternative is no news at all, but it will be nice to finally see and talk some basketball which is the quite obviously the reason why all of us enjoy the NBA.To tell you the truth, initially the excitement of the new NBA season didn’t come naturally to me. As I wrote about earlier, the regular season can be a very long and tedious process where if you analyze the season on a game-to-game basis, it will be very difficult to derive any meaning or purpose from any one game.

So it doesn’t just apply to the players and NBA staff when we say “work yourself back into ‘shape’”. For me, what got me back into regular season form was a combination of internet reading, media watching, and advertisement absorbing. So below I list my offseason regimen and training camp that has helped me cut that off-season fat, and gotten myself fully pumped and ready to go for the 2007-2008 regular season..

Working my way back

-NBA Previews: Any self respecting sports-reporting media outlet will have their annual season previews packed with exciting things to look forward to, predictions, and the latest developments since the end of last season. Even if you have shut basketball out of your life since a Cavs-Spurs Final had been decided, you will quickly be up-to-date on everything you need to know about. Furthermore, besides giving you the latest information it serves as a great hyping tool because there are always things to look forward to including how teams respond post-playoffs, new and exciting trades that have reshaped teams, and rookies that are sure to bring a whole new level of excitement to struggling franchises. Make sure you check out your favorite magazine/newspaper/website’s NBA season and/or team previews.

-New NBA ad campaign: The NBA has adopted a new advertising campaign this year with the slogan ‘Where Amazing Happens’. It is essentially a slide show of interesting NBA pictures that define what the league is about and conveys a powerful message when combined with the inspirational music and the slogan “Where … Happens”. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case that statement wouldn’t do the pictures justice because they communicate a feeling that words simply can not. This will surely send chills down the spine of any NBA fan. If you really are having doubts whether you want to invest ample of your time on watching basketball this season, your reaction to these ads will be the answer you’re looking for.

-2006-2007 All-Access NBA DVD: What better way to get ready for the upcoming season than to relive some of last season’s most memorable events with exclusive access to the stars, locker rooms, and every other aspect of the NBA that you just don’t get the opportunity to see everyday. While that last sentence sounded awfully like a sales pitch, watching this DVD instantly flicked on my game-face for the season. Seeing the work, tears, heart, and commitment these guys put in everyday just to be able to be out there in what I have previously called ‘meaningless regular season games’ is gut wrenching. A look into the less glamorous and more real side of the NBA, will be sure to make you appreciate more every ounce of NBA you consume.-NBA Fantasy Games: If you think that NBA fantasy games are strictly for jocks, and the super-involved then you are mistaken. Not all games require you to have perfect knowledge of the NBA, enter a live draft, constantly make trades, and generally waste a lot of your time. Some salary cap games such as the one provided by http://www.sportingnews.com/ is easy, not time consuming, and extremely fun. Make sure you get a bunch of your friends, make small bets, engage in ‘friendly’ trashtalk and just have a good time. At best you get the chance to make fun of your friends, have a shot at the countless prizes on offer, and have bragging rights for the rest of the year. At worst, you have an emotional attachment to players, and have a genuine rush of excitement everytime you wake up and check out those box scores. There’s nothing like that feeling when that relatively unknown player on your team that your friends have ridiculed you about finally pulls through and fills up that boxscore like “The Godfather 4” would fill up the boxoffice.

-Betting: Once upon a time a very controversial issue, betting has now become acceptable in most parts of the world. Even David Stern himself overlooked the fact that everyone of his refs had broken a league rule not to gamble. In that regards, it might not seem terribly unethical to suggest that betting on NBA games is another source of fun that can motivate you towards the season. I have already announced that I will be taking on the role to beat the ‘market’ by announcing my bets and predictions, and a cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise following of the NBA is crucial if I am to have a shot. Also, it has been practically proven that having some money on the line when watching sports greatly increases the excitement level. The golden rule is to make sure you don’t bet any amount that will make you more unhappy than when you started in the event of a loss.

NBA works for You

There are many other methods to work yourself into the right zone to accommodate another marathon of a season back into your life. Some play 2008 versions of NBA branded video games, some follow the offseason and preseason religiously, some enter heated debates with others on what their thoughts are about the upcoming season, some blog, some commit by purchasing season tickets or satellite packages and others simply tune in randomly to a game one night and have all those feelings rushing back to them automatically. No matter what, if you love this game it will have a way of working you back into shape – that’s the beauty of being a spectator over a player. It’s FANtastic, its where amazing happens, it’s a game we love, its everything anything and nothing – it’s the NBA and it starts on October 30th at 8pm ET.

NBA China: Good Basketball in China finally here

Disclaimer: This is the first time I attend a pro NBA basketball match in China.

The highly anticipated game between the Cavaliers and the Magic in Shanghai was due to start at 8pm in Qizhong Arena. I didn’t have a ticket to the game, but this was China in the end so I thought the black market was as or even more reliable than any ticketing agency that I would have gone to. As expected, scalpers were in the hundreds (I kid you not), and after being ambushed by a large group of them 100 meters from the arena, I finally decided to buy a ticket. The 1000rmb ticket (130$) I was able to haggle down to 500rmb (65$) in a matter of seconds and even was even able to bring the scalper all the way to the entrance to check if the ticket was a fake. After avoiding the hectic promotional campaigns by the big multinational companies set up all around the stadium, I went ahead and found the way to my seat. It ended up being surprisingly above court level as a result of what I can only imagine to be bad stadium architecture (and of course bad ticket).

As I sat down and looked around me, I saw a wide array of jerseys being worn by the young crowd ranging from USA national team ones to Cleveland throwback ones, to even a Ray Allen Boston jersey. I suspected them to be fakes as a real throwback costs more than what an average Chinese makes in a month, but regardless the young Chinese basketball fans came ‘adequately’ dressed. Anyways after a brief message from Dwight and Lebron to the fans, the game was ready to get underway. Didn’t bring a pen/paper, so these are straight from memory.

Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise: bold; font-size: 130%”>FIRST HALF

-Damon Jones got the most love in the player introductions, after of course King James.

-Just before tipoff, Lebron and Damon had an interesting handshake sequence that ended up with them bowing to each other.

-Starting Lineups: Cavs- Damon Jones, Larry Hughes, LeBron James, Drew Gooden. Orlando- Jameer Nelson, JJ Redick, Keith Bogans, Hedo Turkoglu, Dwight Howard.

-First 5 possessions or so saw the Cavs go down low to Big Z. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Chinese spent their life savings to see.

-Orlando tried to go down low to Howard early on as well, but Z managed to block, smother, or bother most of his attempts in the first half.

-There was a lot of driving and dishing to the outside on Orlando’s part, which is quite logical with a squad packed with shooters.

-Is it just me or does Keith Bogans move, play AND look awfully like Ray Allen.

-First timeout sees the Orlando ‘dance team’ come out, and immediately receives the highest crowd noise I’ve heard all night.

-JJ Redick’s hesitating a lot on the threes. He needs to put that on automatic if he wants a shot at being good.

-Damon Jones keeps sticking his shoulder into Jameer Nelson to create space as he tries to run the offense – ala Gary Payton.

-Midway through the first quarter and Lebron gets his first proper touch on offense. The crowd starts cheering intensely, but Lebron disappoints with just a pass.

-In fact, in the first half LeBron was highly anti-climatic with barely any shot attempts and a mere couple of points stemming from dubious calls. I guess LeBron felt the pressure after numerous stories proclaiming what an icon he is in China.

-Second Timeout and again it’s the Orlando dance team providing the entertainment again. I discuss with a friend whether the Magic actually brought their full dance team. Moments later, I witness each and everyone of them jumping on the trampoline and landing crazy dunks. The crowd is impressed, and so am I.

-First Quarter ends 23-20 in the Cavaliers’ favor.

-Hedo Turkoglu has guarded everyone from Hughes, to Lebron, to Drew Gooden…I guess he’s more versatile than he seems.

-Shannon Brown checks in and wastes no time lighting it up. After consecutive tough step-back fadeaway jumpers he holds his follow through and has the ‘who’s the man!’ face on. Too bad it’s a preseason game in Shanghai and not the NBA finals huh.

-Some fat Orlando center performs what would have to be called a skyhook. I find out soon later its none other than Adonal Foyle.

-Jameer Nelson is particularly good at going straight through double teams, he’s done it about 8 times already. Perhaps Damon Jones and Ira Newble aren’t the best defenders..that might be it

-Damon Jones checks out to be replaced by another notorious PG; Devin Brown. I’d say he’s 50 pounds overLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise..and that’s just to be a small forward..

-First half ends 46-42 in favour of the Cavs. Truth be told they’ve kept the Magic at arm’s length the whole half and look in total control.

Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise: bold; font-size: 130%”>SECOND HALF

-Same starting lineups begin the second half .

-LeBron wastes no time making up for his horrible performance in the first half. In a span of a minute he catches an alley hoop and throws it down..finally giving the crowd something basketball related to scream about, soon followed by a spin move in traffic with a finesse double clutch layup with the left hand. And One. Crowd is going nuts like one of those Bruce Lee scenes where he screams for no apparent reason.

-Speaking of Bruce Lee, we see his successor Jet Li on the large screen. He receives a standing ovation to my surprise. His two little kids with him have those SARS masks on their face. I guess they didn’t hear Drew Gooden’s neckhair virus had been exterminated.

-Jameer Nelson’s got game. Well you gotta have some game to relegate Arroyo to the bench, but this kid could get some All-Star consideration in the near future.

-Dwight Howard, having been locked down by Z most of the night and been forced to settle for 15 footers, finally decides its time to step up. His athleticism ends up being too much for Z and the Cavalier reserve big man to handle. He ends up with game highs of 31 points and 14 rebounds.

-The Cleveland reserve big men that I mentioned above is what I now find out to be A.Tulliver. He has no nba.com player profile page so I can’t really shed anymore light on him. But I think its safe to say that Cleveland must re-sign Anderson Varejao.

-Orlando is struggling to create any offense without Grant Hill. I hate to say this but Rashard Lewis is exactly the player they needed and actually probably deserved that max contract.

-Global Brands are all over this game, making sure the Chinese know their brand through timeout entertainment in the form of mini basketball games. What I remember from it is having to watch 10 successive airballs from beyond the arc in an Adidas sponsored hotspots contest.

-LeBron checks out towards the end of the 3rd with 17points. We won’t see anymore of him tonight.

-End of 3rd: Cleveland 72-64 Orlando

-I don’t want to bring up timeout entertainment again, but it really has been the most enjoyable part for the Chinese audience in attendance. In fact the loudest cheers of the night comes when free t-shirts are catapulted out towards the crowd. You wouldn’t think T-shirts made by the Chinese themselves wouldn’t get these people so excited..but I guess everyone loves free stuff.

-Beginning of the fourth it seems like Cleveland is going to run away with this one.

-The Orlando dance team is high up in the stands now giving out fliers with a picture of the whole team on it. Why these ladies want a billion Chinese men with half naked photos of them, is beyond me. However it sure is working. Everyone is going to take pictures with these cheerleaders and even autographs. I’m actually worried for their safety as they are just by themselves. The cheerleader that I see on my row is none other than the same cheerleader I voted to get in the All-Star cheerleader squad 8 months ago. (Well I don’t get the privilege of voting for MVP, so I get my voting fix where I can!) I’m tempted to go up to her and tell her this sad fact, but I decide I rather not look even more pathetic than the swarm of Chinese guys around her.

-Meanwhile, most of the crowd (including me) has missed Orlando’s comeback.

-Cleveland is playing exclusively with their bench while Orlando’s playing at full strength (minus Rashard Lewis).

-Lots of lead changes towards the end but baskets down the stretch by Nelson and Turkoglu give the Magic a 4 point lead with less than a minute to go. LeBron aka the Little Emperor stays on the bench seemingly content on biting his nails.

-About half of the 13,000 or so in attendance has already left hoping to avoid the mass crowd of people waiting for the bus and the crazy traffic that will ensue.

-Last second attempts by Marshall, Newble, Tolliver, Devin and Shannon Brown are futile as expected.

-Final Score: Orlando 90 – 86 Cleveland. Mike Brown had a chance to give the crowd their money’s worth and practice some crucial end game plays – but instead he decided go for players who will never see the light of crunch time again in the foreseeable future.

-These teams meet again in Macao (Las Vegas of China) in a couple of days, and I personally would rather spend my money on the Blackjack table than watch two mediocre Eastern Conference teams’ benches go at it.
-Orlando barely managed to beat the Cleveland bench and truth be told I don’t see them making the playoffs this year unless Rashard Lewis plays like an MVP. Cleveland on the other hand are really weak at the Point and Center positions even with Gibson and Varejao back. LeBron will need some sustained heroics to get past the first round this time around.

The basketball china experience was fun, but I will need some playoff atmosphere basketball to get me to come back.