The Basketball Prospectus blog ran its second annual Internet Basketball Awards, in which they invite readers of the blog to fill out a ballot for the awards the media votes on to see where the fans differ from (read: are smarter than) the media. The online ballot included lists of 15 to 20 eligible players where it was feasible to prevent voters from having to write-in their candidates manually. I was shocked to find that Kevin Love was omitted from the list of Most Improved Player candidates, particularly when he was included as eligible for MVP voting. In the article reporting the results of the poll, lead blogger Kevin Pelton offered this explanation:

So ... the actual winner of this award, Kevin Love, showed up only as a write-in option on the IBBA ballot. Blame that on me. I considered Love, but felt his "improvement" was largely a matter of playing time and role and didn't have a good feel for how the actual voting would go. In fairness to Love, he certainly developed his game with the addition of a three-point shot and improvement as a go-to scorer, but his Most Improved Player award is still largely a testament to the fact that people still don't trust per-minute statistics. Love got his name written in enough times to finish ahead of several players who were actually listed, but Rose--whose improvement was much clearer across the board--ends up winning a second IBBA. (Lucky him!)

As I've written before (and wrote again in this email), this is a load of crap. Love made some serious improvements irrespective of (in some case, in spite of) his increased playing time. I often sense anti-Minnesota sentiment among non-Minnesota NBA fans, bloggers, and media members, be it because we wasted KG's prime, prevented Rubio from coming over, employ David Kahn, have an unfit NBA city and climate, or just have generally sucked for 7 seasons now. It bothers me when this bias is extended beyond its reach, most recently to try to disparage Kevin Love for being recognized for his admirable production. When this bias has crossed into the normally level-headed stat community, it's time to take a stand. Below the fold is my open email sent to Kevin Pelton, challenging his assertion that Love isn't among the 10 most worthy Most Improved Player Award candidates.

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It's looking like no one else wants to do a game wrap, so I'll step to the plate. Depressing though it was, the Miami Heat come to town but once a year, and it ought to be commemorated somehow, even if it's just a bunch of half baked bullet points with no over-arching narrative, pictures, or formatting.  Now we have a place to put our Heat game notes, so that they won't interfere with our Kahn-bashing in the pseudo game wrap that Stop-n-Pop wrote.

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There are a lot of things to love about Michael Beasley, and nearly as many to hate. Really, the Wolves seem to collect these types of players, but with Darko having shored up many of his early-season offensive woes, Corey Brewer playing shockingly steady ball of late, and Kevin Love doing so much of the things we love that it's impossible to dwell on the things we hate, it's been Beasley who has drawn the ire of Canis Hoopus commenters, and not undeservedly so. A quick rundown of several of the most common complaints:

1. He often starts games in a great offensive rhythm, only to pick up two quick fouls and be forced to head to the bench, killing our offensive momentum in the process.
2.  He is a lazy defender, defending with his hands, not his feet.
3. He has been godawful in crunch time.
4. Any other player would get benched for the things he does, but we can't bench him for fear of killing his confidence.

What if I told you I had a simple solution to all these problems?  Is that something you might be interested in?

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In listening to the recent Bill Simmons podcast in which he and his buddy Joe House looked at win total over/unders for all 30 NBA teams, I found myself frustrated with their middling NBA knowledge, and feeling very confident that I could pick more over/unders correctly than they could. But rather than just pit myself against them, let's make it a contest. Which Canis Hoopus poster can guess the most lines correctly?

After the jump, I'll give the Vegas lines. My picks are in the comments section.

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Part One: The Stats You'll Expect

Kevin Love leads Team USA in rebounds, with 28 through 4 games. Behind him is Lamar Odom, with 27, and Kevin Durant, with 26. This means Love has the team's highest per game average, 7.0 rebounds/game.

Since he is playing far fewer minutes than either of those two, he has far and away the best rebound percentage on the team (and of anyone in the tournament, for that matter), with 35.4%, compared to 17.1 for Odom, who is next highest on the team.

As far as Love's rebounds are concerned, the most relevant comparison is to his fellow Team USA big men, Lamar Odom and Tyson Chandler.

• Love: 8.3 points/game, 7.0 rebounds/game
  
• Chandler: 2.8 points/game, 2.5 rebounds/game
  
• Odom: 5.3 points/game, 6.5 points/game

Give Love a slight advantage versus Odom, and a major one versus Chandler. We should probably also look at minutes played. Love and Chandler have totals of 42 and 38, respectively, so there's no great discrepancy there. But Odom has played a whopping 81 minutes, nearly double the amount of either of the other two. Adjusting Love's averages from 10.5 minutes/game to Odom's 20.25 minutes/game, and they rocket up to 15.9 points and 13.5 rebounds per Odomgame. Holy production!

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Unless you voted with the majority on all 20 of the Community Big Board's spots, this is your chance to post your personal big board for how the Wolves should draft. Use this space for whatever predictions you'd like to make about prospects as well. Go on record now, and you'll always have this to reference when it turns out you knew it all along.

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Draft Day is an exciting time. It's a time of year when every prospect is viewed through rose-colored glasses, evaluated as if they'll reach their full potential by fan bases eager to add a new star player to their roster. Many of these players will eventually disappoint their fans, but not on draft day. It takes a special type of franchise to disappoint its fans immediately, but that's what the Wolves have managed to do 3 out of the last 4 years, and look to do it again this year.

I thought it would be morbidly fun to get people's takes on which draft day disappointed them most. Bear in mind, we're talking about your immediate impressions. We knew Foye for Roy was bad right away, but we didn't know how bad until later. Vote based on your feelings on draft day. Feel free to rank them in the comments.

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With recent rumors causing the Al Jefferson trade ideas to go from occasional to constant, I've noticed the language used in advocating the trades becoming increasingly emphatic.  Lest it become accepted as universal fact that "We can never be contenders with Love and Jefferson," I submit my contrarian view, that keeping both Al Jefferson and Kevin Love, even after Love's salary must be upped to 8 figures, is a perfectly viable option and quite possibly the best one we've got.

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So it's 4 AM.  I've got an 8:00 AM final exam, and I crossed into all-nighter territory several hours ago.  I really only need an hour or two of studying, so I figured I'd kill some time over on the RealGM General Basketball boards.  I stumbled upon a thread claiming that big men's high scoring efficiency should be taken with a grain of salt, since so many of their points are dunks, layups, and gimmes set up by guards.  The poster asked for a list of which big men actually create the highest proportion of their own offense.  Well, we looked up the stats, and I think you know what's coming...

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Witness

the most egregious superstar call in the history of superstar calls.  (First 1:00 of the video should be all you need.)

How big of a deal is this?  Am I overreacting?  What is the best way for us, the fans of small-market, perpetually screwed over NBA franchises to respond to this? 

Free agency isn't fair (Shaq forces his way to LA, Malone, Payton, Artest take major discounts to come there), trades aren't fair (Kareem, Kobe, Pau traded in lopsided deals), the Playoffs aren't fair ('02 Kings screwed out of a Title), and neither are regular season games.

I would like to see some sort of major gesture made by fed-up fans.  Some proposals I've seen elsewhere were to wear paper bags or makeshift Marc Davis/Tim Donaughy/Kobe masks to games, converging en masse on the next LA Laker game and staging a synchronized walkout upon the first bogus Kobe call, boycotting NBA products, or looking to Bill Simmons or Mark Cuban for leadership in organizing a grassroots movement to fix this.  What else can we, as fans, do to demonstrate our disapproval?