Week 15 in Review: Game Re-Caps

In case you were only paying attention to your own game, you selfish prick.

Journal Entry: February 10, 2010; Day 112 of the Great Virginia Snow-In
Had the same dream last night. The one where I step out the front door and there it is, all around me: the ground. Grass. Pavement. Dirt. It's everywhere, starting at my feet and spreading outward, seemingly into infinity. I turn my gaze up to the sky, and in place of the bullet-gray expanse I know there is a deep sea of blue, illuminated by a glowing yellow orb. My god, I think, it's beautiful. I had forgotten how beautiful...

And then I awake to another day of the White Menace. When will this accursed winter end? When will the Big Yeti Upstairs lift his awful spell? Supplies are low. We are down to our last fifty frozen meatballs, and the scrapings of the WisPride jar are barely enough to cover a single Triscuit. When the actual physical nutrition has run out, at least I'll be able to nourish my soul, as ever, with fantasty basketball statistics. Here, your Week 15 Game-Caps:

Call em Bullets 4 (FG%, AST, ST, BLK); Bronxville BitchSmackers 4 (FT%, 3PM, PTS, REB)
Last year, this would have been a marquee match-up between the top two teams in the league. This year, Doit is back in that position, but Steffens has found himself near the bottom of the standings and struggling to break into the playoff picture. And yet... for a week, they found themselves back on equal footing. How did this happen? Does this rivalry, spawned on the Wiffle-Ball fields of Sagoponack, simply transcend yearly fluctuations? Perhaps. But it also could be the fact that Bardey went another week without big gun Carmelo Anthony and spent another roster spot on the injured (but soon-to-return) Mo Williams. Combine that limited roster with some exceptional performances from the BitchSmackers and we've got ourselves a contest. Kenyon Martin, in particular, had an outstanding week for the Smackers, leading Cluj in rebounds (47) and contributing enough points (65) above his average to help Kobe (82) and a potent Derrick Rose (89) to a win - and 2nd-best total in the league - in that category. The guard categories - well at least the ones that don't involve shooting - were saved for CeB by Rajon Rondo, whose 11 steals were second-best and 46 assists were tops in the league. Rondo will inexplicably be participating in the HORSE contest this weekend against Kevin Durant and Omri Casspi, and the only way I can see him winning is if he continually stumps Durantula and the Israeli Jordan with under-the-basket lay-ups followed by a tumble into the audience. Speaking of Casspi and Israel, the Kings' swingman is averaging over a steal per game in the past month, leading to his new nickname... the Gaza Strip!
You see, Casspi is from Israel, a land torn apart by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is centered on an area known as the Gaza Strip. Casspi is from Israel, and a steal in basketball is sometimes known as a strip. I vill be here all ze week.

Unfrozen Caveman Bogut 8 (everything); Noah's Ark 0 (nothing)
Woof. I don't want to take anything away from Beb's team here, because LeBron James is they are awesome, and would have beaten almost any team this week in the percentages, threes, assists, and steals. Sweeping any team is an accomplishment. But let's just say it's a little less of an accomplishment this week, because DeYoung's team was so repugnant that they sent me searching for descriptors I never use, like "repugnant." Last in the league in points. Last in the league in rebounds. Last in the league in assists. Last in the league in steals. Last in the league in blocks. This was Noah's Ark in Week 15. Seriously repugnant. Now some of this repugnance is a result of the absence of Brandon Roy and missed games by Joakim Noah and Gerald Wallace, but every team deals with injuries. Either somebody steps up to fill those gaps, or you make moves to fill them yourself. DeYoung has made four moves all season. If some of these injuries don't heal (and both Noah's and Roy's seem somewhat open-ended), I suspect he'll be making a lot more moves soon, or else continuing to plummet in the standings (he dropped two spots this week).
To give credit where it's due to the UCB players, I should note that LeBron led Cluj in points this week (105) and Jason Kidd, who nearly averaged an Octuplet for the week, led the league in steals (12). The Cavemen were also first in free throw percentage and third in field goal percentage, impressive in a pair of categories in which success is often mutually exclusive. And since I have nothing more to say on them, I'll simply post this:


Power Bottom & Jelly 5 (FG%, 3PM, AST, ST, BLK); Cowboys (FT%, PTS, REB)
Oh, Billy. You've got to love PB & J's dedication to overcoming their many deficiencies via free agent moves, and sometimes it even gets them somewhere, like last week's 7-1 victory. But sometimes it's all probably a lot of work with little result, as in this week's narrow victory over the worst team in the league. Although both teams suck, this truly was a study in contrasting managerial styles. Billy is so hands-on that he has nearly met the league maximum for moves, and Dev is so hands-off that he often doesn't set his line-up at all. And yet in performance they were almost equal. All of Power Bottom's wheelin' and dealin' paid off in a few categories: they were best in the league in threes and blocks, an odd combination that could only result from a team that used 19 players in a week. Many of the threes and blocks were provided by a PB&J mainstay, though: Andrea Bargnani, with 6 of each. Ñani was aided by a pair of former teammates, Steve Nash dropping six treys and the oft-added Shaquille O'Neal posting seven blocks. Personally, I don't ever want to see the revolving Shaq door spin to a stop, but Billy is only 10 transactions away from the league limit, which at his pace will take only another week or so. With this in mind, I did some commissionerly investigating into my options. I can raise the number of transactions allowed, but only for the whole league, and I have no desire to go back on the original number we set (and which most of us have paced ourselves for) just because it's entertaining to watch Billy shuffle his line-up every single day. But I do have the power to edit the number of transactions made by a team, meaning that if Billy wanted to trade one of his players plus a certain number of transactions to another team for an inferior player, I could make that happen. This is an opportunity for us all: you've got a chance to snatch up one of Billy's players, and he's got a chance to continue this glorious season of roster management. Let's make it happen!

Corn Rows n Tats 4 (FG%, REB, ST, BLK); WWTMD (FT%, 3PM, PTS, AST)
Early in the season, a potential rivalry was born when Elliott barged into the league with complaints about the rules and Wil(l) took offense to the spelling of his name. Was there also a hint of envy between two men who had both (somewhat inexplicably for both gentlemen) dated Laura Snodgrass? Methinks maybe. Whatever the source of their enmity, this was a week in which their bitter hatred once again reared its ugly head, with Smack Talk such as "Hey toobin" (Will) and "[crickets chirping]" (Elliott). Okay, the smack-talk isn't what it was last year with the Randomly Generated Rivals, and I don't even think Elliott knows how to access that part of the site or knows about this blog. But it was quite a match nonetheless, with several categories coming down to the wire. Their field goal percentages were separated by a mere six thousandths (hundredths?) of a point; Elliott was out-swatted by only four blocks; Shoaf was out-assisted by only six dimes; and only a single rebound separated the teams. Who could have gotten that single, decisive rebound for the Corn Rows? Most likely it was Zach Randolph (42) or Pau Gasol (37), but I prefer to think that it was Tony Parker, who grabbed one rebound all week. Also helping the Tats was recent pick-up Carlos Delfino, who contributed plenty of rebounds himself (29) on top of co-leading the league in steals (12). That's some nice D, Carlos.
The standout player for WWTMD this week was Chauncey Billups, who led the league in threes (13) and led his team in points (73). That's not a lot of points for a top-scorer (for example, E's was Monta Ellis with 95), but even though the What Woulds were seventh overall in scoring this week, they were lucky to be taking on the near-worst Corn Rows. This mediocre performance leaves Will at the top of a sudden logjam behind the top two teams, with WWTMD, the Black Prezodents, and Noah's Ark all within a game of each other. Exciting!

Black Prezodents 6 (FT%, 3PM, PTS, REB, AST, ST); Teen Wolf (FG%, BLK)
It's funny, in all the scenes where Scott Howard plays basketball as the Wolf, the one thing I can't remember seeing him do is block a shot. And yet that is the one category in which Dekker totally decimated me this week, with the Black Prez pretty much dominating the other stats. This is no discredit to Dekker; the BPs would have taken any team in the league in points, rebounds, and steals. It was just that kind of week. Our usual gunners (Durant, Johnson, Jackson, Gay) did their thing, with additional help from LaMarcus Aldridge (88), who's become the primary Blazers scorer in the absence of B-Roy. LMA crashed the boards as well (38), and his teammate Andre Miller served up 30 assists, for which Brandon Roy is probably also "responsible" (see: comments here). Teen Wolf, of course, won blocks for the eleventh time this season thanks to league leader Dwight Howard (10). In fact, the trio of Howard, Al Jefferson (6), and Brendan Haywood (4) out-blocked my whole team. So much for adding the Birdman. Not surprisingly, considering all those big men, the Wolves also led the league in field goal percentage (1), but the focus on bigs and inside shooting cost Dekker threes, which I won for only the third time this year. For those of you involved in multiple leagues, this now means that I have beaten Dekker in the regular season of both BIFL and the Uberleague, the BIFL championship game, and twice in the regular season of Cluj. Then again, Dekker lives with his beautiful fiancee in a nice apartment in Chicago, makes a bunch of money, and takes frequent vacations to exotic locales like Jamaica and Argentina, whereas I live with my parents, have no job, and my only "vacation" in the past year was sleeping on Trost's air mattress during last weekend's snowstorm. So I guess what I'm saying is... we're about even.

Finally, here are your Best and Worst from Week 15:
Field Goal Percentage: .500, Teen Wolf; .439, Bronxville BitchSmackers
Free Throw Percentage: .851, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut; .709, Call em Bullets
Three-Pointers Made: 44, WWTMD and Power Bottom & Jelly; 24, Teen Wolf
Points: 738, Black Prezodents; 434, Noah's Ark
Rebounds: 256, Black Prezodents; 153, Noah's Ark
Assists: 162, Call em Bullets; 80, Noah's Ark
Steals: 57, Black Prezodents; 22, Noah's Ark
Blocks: 37, Power Bottom & Jelly; 11, Noah's Ark

Man that's a lot of Noah's Ark in purple.
Good luck to everybody in Week 16, which, by the time most of you read this, will probably be just about over thanks to the All-Star break. Don't forget to tear yourself away from Ice Dancing at the Olympics to catch the Slam Dunk contest and Skills competition and all that.