Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Why the Colts Need Manning

Photo: sportige.com

I know you all think that you are all experts and don’t think that the Colts need Peyton Manning anymore. They are, after all, most likely going to be drafting that one guy…what’s his name? Oh! Andrew Luck!

I know what you’re thinking! If they have Luck, why have Manning? Well…you’re in luck (no pun intended)! I am going to explain why the Colts need a little Manning AND a little Luck (oh dear…).

Peyton Manning has 14 years of experience in the NFL. He has been running the Colts spread offense system for as long as he has been in the league. Nobody knows this offense better than he does. Nobody knows the players in this offense better than he does.

With Manning’s personnel knowledge and offense knowledge, he will be able to tutor Luck on how to run the offense. He can teach Luck the tricks of the trade. In a sense, Manning will be the Jedi Master and Luck will be his Apprentice.

The only curveball to that plan is that the Colts have hired a new offensive coordinator, Bruce Arians. Arians was formerly the offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers, however, ran a more run emphasized offense than the Colts. Basically, Arians needs to just subtract a few run plays and add a few pass plays.

Let’s look towards the personnel. Manning has been playing with the same players for upwards of 12-14 years for a few of them. The bond that he and his teammates have built is unbreakable. With Manning around and tutoring Luck, he will help Luck to learn the tendencies of each and every player.

We can take that same principle and flip it.

The rest of the team looks up to Manning and regard him as high as, if not higher than, the head coach. His opinion carries a great amount of weight in that locker room. We all saw how absolutely crushed that team was without him on the field. Manning would be able to convince the rest of the guys in that locker room that they can trust in Luck.

Now, in order for the Colts to keep Manning, they have to pay him $28 million on March 8th. That is quite a sum to pay for a mentor.

By Brian Skinnell

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Humpday

It’s almost the end of Wednesday…enjoy a nice humpty dance on Humpday from all of us here at First Pick Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byIkY9qsTdU

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Oh Captain! My Captain!

Prior to the start of this season, former Washington Wizards head basketball coach Flip Saunders chose Andray Blatche to be the captain of his team.  Yes,  that Andray Blatche who’s name was used in a promotion for “Lap Dance Tuesdays” at a strip club in Miami.  The same Andray Blatche who was benched (albeit briefly) last season for insubordination.  The same Andray Blatche who had the honor of having his shoe defecated in by former teammate Gilbert Arenas (ok that last one’s more of a knock on Arenas than Blatche but you get the point).

Well, things didn’t turn out well for Saunders, as he was fired after the Wizards won only 2 of their first 17 games.  This came as a surprise to no one, except for maybe Wizards GM Ernie Grunfeld who, in 2010 signed Blatche to a 5 year, $35million contract extension.  For years Grunfeld and the rest of the Wizards brass have pointed to Blatche’s ability to finish the season strongly as an excuse to keep trotting him out there on a nightly basis.  In 2011 Blatche posted career bests in points (16.8/gm), rebounds (8.3) and assists (2.3).  This is a byproduct two things, the first one being that Blatche would come into the season out of shape, and started the season very slowly, eventually working his way into playing shape by the end.  But the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at Blatche’s stats is that he played on a team who’s roster could be beaten by Paul VI High School.  Aside from John Wall, there was no one else on the team who was a legitimate scoring threat, nor was there anyone who commanded the ball nearly as much as Blatche did.

The start to this season was no different than the others for Blatche.  After the first game, a 90-84 loss to the New Jersey Nets, “Dray” took to twitter to vent his frustrations, telling fans who were critical of him to “shut up.”  The next 20 games weren’t the nicest to Dray either, where the Wizards captain only had one game which he score more than 20 points, and only three games where he grabbed 10 or more rebounds.

Then, seemingly by the grace of God himself, Andray strained his calf, preventing him from playing for 3-5 weeks.  One would think that the loss of their leader would be such a burden on the Wizards that they would never play a competitive game, but in fact it was quite the opposite.  In the 22 games Blatche played, the Wizards’ winning percentage was 0.133%, whereas a Blatche-less Wizards team has now won 3 out of 8 games, resulting in a winning percentage of 0.385%.  In layman’s terms, the Wiz’ winning percentage has nearly tripled in Dray’s absence.

Normally I am not one to root for players to get injured, but in this case I can make an exception.

By Ricky Bassett

 

For supplemental reading check out http://www.andrayblatchesucks.com/

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

3-point Contest Shooters

Here are the six participants in this year’s NBA Three-point shootout.

Anthony Morrow

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan Anderson

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Love

 

 

 

 

 

Mario Chalmers

 

 

 

 

 

Defending Champ James Jones

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

American Idol Recap, also called No Good Games On..

With Linsanity not on TV, Wizards playing at 10:30, and terrible college basketball matchups on I guess I have to resort to a running diary of 2 hours of American Idol…Yea that one hurt me too…

8:00-Is there a more overrated show than the Big Bang Theory? Answer: Yes, Two and a Half Men. Also, can a show be too hyped that I don’t even want to watch it? That new Smash show with Katherine McPhee is too damn confusing with its advertising. Is it a play? a musical? a reality show? This is what happens when I can’t watch Lin…

8:01-Jesus Idol, you’re one minute behind, I blame LeBron. I’m greeted with a montage of last week’s drama. Apparently there was a lot of puking and people stating, “This is all I ever wanted, singing is all I have.”

8:05-First group of the night: The Bettys. Or as Steven Tyler slyly quips with a blank response from J-Lo, “Couldn’t it have just been Betty and the Boobs?” Score 1 for ST. All I have written down in my notes is: Bettys Bomb+more shots of people puking.

8:11-First of many commercial breaks after a group named Groovesauce hits one out of the park and receive a bunch of “Wooo’s” from Randy. Gotta love the guy though, the only judge to make it this far.

8:13-So the plot of The Vow is that Rachel McAdams gets in a crash, loses her memory, and Channing Tatum has to convince her they were in love before? Hell if I found out Rachel McAdams had amnesia I would claim we were in love too. Btw if “Smash” totally sucks they should change the name to “Crash”….anybody…anybody…?

8:16-The 6,7,9 Group is next. Led apparently by some chick named Brielle and her mother. Also, apparently bitchiness runs in the family. Everyone makes it except frat-boy crooner Kyle Crews, much to the happiness of Brielle’s mama, “We love Kyle, he has a pretty good voice.” Ouch…

8:23-Holy crap, i’m barely a 1/4th of the way through…wait did that girl just fall? First casualty of the night! They promoted it at the top of the show, and Jackie is down! The Ref is above her counting off! One…two…the group is planning on going on without her…three…four….Jackie’s pulling a Willis Reed! Too bad her group can’t rally, Dustin and Tentgirl (she’s the girl who lives in a tent, come on people keep up) both forget the words.

8:25-Scientology commercial……wow I can’t even think of a pun to go along with that

8:30-More montages of people forgetting the lyrics…btw wasn’t/isn’t there a show called “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” with Mark McGrath?

8:34-Coming up…more fainting?? Ryan, what cologne are you wearing today???

8:37-Commerical for something called Dream Nude Airfoam by Maybelline. I could get behind that product. Apparently it is 100% Nude Perfect.

8:39-I’m sorry but aren’t there certain actors who you just can’t see in anything else. Kiefer Sutherland falls in this list. I know he has this new show where his mute son holds the key to the universe but I keep expecting him to kick down a door and scream, “WE NEED MORE TIME!” Other actors I can’t watch in anything else: The Napoleon Dynamite guy (I have no idea what his real name is) and the guy from Monk (Tony Shaloub I think is his name). See!! I don’t even know their freaking names!

8:45-Ryan Seacrest tells us for the 28th time that Group Round is “Heating up!” I would be impressed if one time Ryan was just honest and said, “Yea..group week is boring as hell.”

8:50-Faint Watch! Imani (Iman Shumpert’s sister, no not really) is down!

8:55-Imani tries to rejoin her group again, but falls again! No Imani! Don’t go a third time!

9:00-…Imani faints again, this time on stage to be sure all the cameras catch her. Ryan: “The Unthinkable just happened!” Really dude…she just fainted twice in the past half-hour, the unthinkable?…

9:01-Question: Are the judges A-Holes if they send Imani home?

9:02-Answer: Yes, and they do

9:05-My two favorites (god someone shoot me) are two dudes by the name of Phillip Phillips and Heejun Hun who i’m calling from now on: Jeremy Lin. They both make it through, Linsanity lives on!!

9:09-Apparently the second half of the show is individual performances, which is what people want to watch. Group Round is worse than the Pro-Bowl.

9:11-PP and J-Lin do me proud, both advance.

9:23-Reed, not understanding the whole idea of playing with the AI band, suddenly has 30 minutes to figure out how to change his previously arranged acapella. In those 30 minutes he somehow manages to meet with a vocal coach, call his mom (he actually calls her i’m not lying), and figures out the entire arrangement. 2 minutes before he goes on he changes his mind and decides to play drums and sing. Could this be the biggest botch since Detroit signing Iverson??

9:24-Darn…he totally kills it.

9:30-I’m beginning to lose my mind…as more people sing “Georgia is on my mind”.

9:45-Everybody is split into 4 groups in 4 different rooms. I mean, isn’t it obvious if you’re in a room with someone who totally kicked ass that you are in the right room? If I turned around and saw someone who totally sucked I would know its all over.

9:50-PP and J-Lin are still in it! 3 rooms make and 1 room doesn’t.

9:55-The remaining contestants head to Vegas for more…oh dear god please no…group singing!

10:00-I just wasted two hours of my life, and you just wasted 10 minutes of yours reading this…

 

By Ben Simpson

 

 

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

The Kim Kardashian Curse………or Treasure ??

Reggie Bush and Kris Humphries, what do these gentlemen have in common ?

They have both dated the goddess that is Kim Kardashian and yes, I said Goddess because that’s what she is. I think its safe to say that all sports and women-loving men out there know who Kim Kardashian is. Many people have come to the conclusion that Kim’s relationships are cursed but I beg to differ, her relationships might even be magical. Now I know you’re looking at me wondering how I could say such a thing with confidence. Well lets look at the facts and statistics folks. We’ll start with her first Athlete beau Señor Reggie Bush, yes he was a College star but the addition of Kardashian to his life led to more accomplishments. They initially started their Relationship in July 2007 and ended it on July 2009 now you ask why this is so important to notice ? Well in those two years that Kim and Reggie were together Bush managed to do the following; Get named to the All Pro team (2008), be named Sport Illustrated’s “Hunk of the Year”, oh and he won some little thing called the Super Bowl. Not too shabby of a list when you consider it was only two years. Now you might consider that a coincidence but also consider the fact that after they split Bush not only got traded but he also got his 2005 Heisman Trophy taken away………. Yea it got that Bad.

Kris Humphries Kim Kardashian and boyfriend Kris Humphries get close at an NBA All-Star Game after party hosted by her sister Kloe at Club Nokia.

 

(Take 5 minutes and let Kim’s beauty Sink into your Brains)

Next we have the stud by the name of Kris Humphries, now if any of ya’ll reading this tell me you guys knew of Humphries before this relationship I would tell you that you were lying. This guy was not doing much to get recognized in the NBA and I’m not ashamed to say that. I do give him props for marrying the Angel that is Kim Kardashian even though that did last a few hours. However not everything turned out on the negative side for our good pal Kris. He’s having a career season with the New Jersey Nets, not only did he earn the starting Power Forward position but he went the extra mile and also managed to get a career high in points (13.0) and Rebounds(10.4), yea you read that right big man is averaging a Double-double. Just in case you readers aren’t big NBA fans that’s really hard to do in the NBA. So for these two gentlemen I wouldn’t say their relationships with Kim were failures, They were with a goddess for a while and seemed to be motivated with her being their Sidekick. Now I’m not saying I need anything to kick-start my career but if this Kim Kardashian “Curse” is the real deal, then Kim I would like to let you know that I’m Waiting.

 

by Mujtaba Elgoodah

 

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

A Sign of Things to Come?

Last night the Washington Wizards defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 124-109. This improved the Wizards to 7-22 on the year and gives them a mere 3 wins on the road. While this win may seem like just another game for a team that has fans more excited for the NBA Lottery rather than the playoffs, there may be some hope. Not only did the Wizards beat Portland by 15, but they did it to a team that had only lost 3 home game prior to losing to the Wizards.

The Wizards came out looking like a team that could compete with anyone. Led by a career-high 35 from the ever so smooth Nick Young, the Wizards shot 60 percent from the field. The Great Wall, aka John Wall, added 29 points and 9 dimes. The Wizards also received solid play from JaVale McGee who added 18 and 11. Another positive to take from last night is the production from the bench. Jordan Crawford poured in 21 and Jan Vesley had a career-high 9 rebounds. If the Wizards can play at this level night in and nigh out, they have a shot to compete. We will find out if this was a sign of things to come or if it was a one hit wonder. The Wizards take on Lob City, aka the LA Clippers, tonight on the road. Tip off is set for 10:30 EST. Check back later for recap from the game.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPgV0ArMyGQ

Check out this video of Highlights from the win

 

By Ian Holleran

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

The 2011-2012 NBA All-Underrated Team

With the NBA all-star festivities looming, I think it’s time to recognize some of the least-recognized contributors in the NBA. These guys aren’t All-Stars, but they are consistent and among the leaders in a few key stats in this lockout-shortened season.

These five players are to the NBA what “Hey Hey What Can I Do” was to Led Zeppelin. I present to you my 2011-2012 NBA all-underrated team.

 

PG: Jose Calderon

 

 

 

 

 

This has been the year of the point guards, starting with the Chris Paul trade fiasco before the season began. Then it was Rubio fever as he finally arrived from overseas and gave the Timberwolves life with his flashy passing. Now, it’s Linsanity, a term which will probably be in the dictionary by the end of the week, when he becomes mayor of New York City. Even 38-year-old Steve Nash leads the league in assists per game. But underneath all the hype and ridiculous ESPN coverage, there has been Calderon, steadily performing at an NBA level. Calderon is fourth in the league in assists per game, with 8.7. Stop and think, who does he even pass it to? He has singlehandedly kept the awful Raptors in plenty of games. He’s finally started to take over games, too, putting up 30 against Kobe and the Lakers and then 25 and a near triple double when matched up with Lin, shooting better than him with half the turnovers.

 

SG: Mario Chalmers

 

 

 

 

 

Just imagine what Chalmers could do if he was allowed to play the 2-guard on a team that didn’t have LeBron, D-Wade, and Chris Bosh. Instead, Chalmers runs an awkward point in which the Big Three just try to take the ball from him. Despite that, he averages 11.0 points per game in 28 minutes, while shooting 51% from the field. As long as he is with the Heat, he will never get the attention he deserves unless he kills LeBron and hides his body in his locker. As much as I hate his alma mater (Eat more Jayhawk), I love Chalmers in a 2-guard role as a catch-and-shoot player, taking advantage of his 46% 3-point shooting this season. If I had to choose a player on the Heat to take a big shot in the 4th quarter, I’m not choosing Wade or LeBron, I’m choosing Chalmers.

 

SF: Thaddeus Young

 

 

 

 

 

*This spot should probably belong to Danilo Gallinari, but with the season he was having before his injury, too many people realized how good of a player he is for him to be on this list.

The Sixers are off to a 20-9 start without any true stars, though Andre Iguodala is an All-Star. The team uses role and niche players to win games, and Thaddeus Young is one of the most important ones. Young can play the 3 or the 4 off the bench for Philadelphia, though he could start almost anywhere, and is averaging 12.8 point per game in just 28 minutes, including a few 20-point games. Young has owned the shot from the elbow since Spencer Hawes’ injury and is 12th in the League in shooting percentage with 52%. He also turns the ball over less than once a game. Look for his stats to rise with more playing time.

 

PF: Anderson Varejao

 

 

 

 

 

The 6’11” Brazilian is one of two silver linings of the Cavaliers, the other being Kyrie Irving’s impressive rookie season. Varejao was averaging 10.8 points and 11.5 rebounds per game before he fractured his wrist against the Bucks on Feb. 10. He was fifth in the league in rebounding average, ninth with 14 double-doubles, and one of only five players this year to have a 20-point, 20-rebound game. The other four are All-Stars. I’d make the case that Varejao deserved the reserve center position for the East All-Stars over Roy Hibbert, though Varejao’s injury would have kept him out anyways.

 

C: Marcin Gortat

 

 

 

 

 

After coming over from Orlando in the Hedo Turkoglu trade last season, Gortat has established himself as a solid starting center in the NBA and he’s one of the main reasons Steve Nash leads the league in assists. He also owns the undisputed title for the largest nose in the NBA, nearly reaching Nigel Thornberry status. All joking aside, however, Gortat is averaging 15.3 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, and is fifth in double-doubles with 17, including a stretch where he had a double-double in 14 of 15 games and only Kevin Love has had a longer double-double streak this season. Gortat has capitalized on his first chance to start, averaging 33 minutes a game this season, compared to 18 in his career. He is also very good at defending without fouling, averaging only 2 fouls per game.

 

 

By Adam Pope

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Crazy Original Voice on “The Voice”

Check out Erin Martin, weird pony-mohawk included, with her performance of “Hey There Delilah.” Knowing America, she won’t last too long. Still, I’d buy an album she put out any day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkSWOj5RLSM

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Haynesworth Back on the Market!

Photo: pageblip.com

Rich Tandler of CSN Washington reported today that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have released defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth. The move will save the franchise $7 million in cap space.

Does this really come as a surprise to anybody? Haynesworth was not even good enough for the Redskins. Then the Patriots picked him up and Bill Belichick, the GREAT Bill Belichick, could not change his attitude. Personally, I think that the Buccaneers wasted their money in signing him.

Haynesworth was once a great and feared defensive lineman when he played for the Titans. In 2005, he totaled 52 total tackles. The year before he signed with the Redskins for $100 million he racked up 51 tackles with 8.5 sacks. That is absolutely ridiculous…in a good way.

When he joined the Redskins he was supposed to be the one to save the Redskins defensive line. In two forgetful  seasons in Washington, Haynesworth recorded just 53 tackles with 6.5 sacks…not quite the guy Danny Snyder paid $100 million for. Haynesworth also only managed to appear in just 20 games over those two seasons.

Since then, Haynesworth has appeared in 13 games and totaled 23 tackles with no sacks. He is certainly not the player he used to be. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that Haynesworth, before coming to the Redskins, had already had a history of injury trouble. Only once did he play a full 16 game season with the Titans (his rookie year).

It’s time for (Fat) Albert Haynesworth to hang up the cleats. His athleticism is diminishing and his stamina does not exist anymore. A once feared defensive lineman is only feared by one thing now…his couch.

By Brian Skinnell

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