It just seems like yesterday that we all were enjoying the NBA lockout and all of the sudden - poof - we are already a quarter of the way through the NBA season. To mark the occasion, The Hoops Manifesto has gathered together the best basketball minds at Bloguin to vote on the early season leaders for MVP, Rookie of the Year and All-NBA honors. The envelopes, please.
Voting Panel: Jeff Fox from The Hoops Manifesto, Lives from Knicks Fanatics, College Wolf and Bonk from TWolves Blog, Andre from The Fantasy Dudes, Mookie Schiralli from A Stern Warning, Philip Rossman-Reich from Orlando Magic Daily, Don from With Malice, Sean François from Hoops Head North, Keith Petrower from Sons of Roto, and Ezra Poe from The Purple and Gold Blog.
Every other Sunday The Hoops Manifesto and our esteemed voting panel come together to vote on the four teams with the inside track to play in the building pictured above next March, our Fabulous Four, plus the best team from a non-BCS conference. We present to you the Fab Four Plus One - because who has time to read a list of 25 teams.
Voters: Jeff Fox from The Hoops Manifesto, Perry Missner & Ryan Curi from College Fantasy Hoops Insider, Adam Francis from Raptors HQ, Raphielle Johnson from CollegeHoops.net, Cub Buenning from SLAM and Ray Bala who writes The Can Ball Report on Raptors HQ.
(Who doesn't belong here? Hint - it's NOT Mario Chalmers)
I iintroduced my Real Big Three Rankings last season to determine whether Miami's much ballyhooed trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh really was the NBA's top threesome. The math behind it was fairly simple - I took the three top Win Share (yes, I'm a fan of that advanced stat) earners of each team, added them up and saw which NBA threesome "won" the most games for their team. And in the end, the Miami Three were the league's best last year. But here we are: new year, new season - is Miami still tops? You'll see in our first update (below) that the answer is yes, but it's not the three Heat players who you'd expect.
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This compressed, lockout-shortened NBA season was supposed to be discriminatory against one group of players in particular - the aged. The theory was that the NBA's equivalent of that bald, hairy-backed, smelly, goggle-wearer old guy you play pickup against and who fouls too often were going to have a hard time with this brutal, 66-game schedule, what with the back-to-back-to-back games and whatnot.
And, for the most part, this reasoning has proven to be true - veterans around the league are struggling this season, at least in these early stages. But not all of the graybeards are succumbing to Father Time and the NBA's scheduling Gods. These five players, all among the NBA's top 20 in career minutes played by active players, are excelling this wacky season.
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Another NCAA basketball season, another crop of highly touted freshman. Much was expected of this year's class of 18-year-olds, but have they delivered in the early going? Here are updates of the consensus top 10 freshman this season.
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