Point Blank – April 12, 2017
A primer for the NBA Play-Ins to the Playoffs (spoiler alert - it won’t be pretty, as the league “Got Lost” this season; let the J Geils tribute begin)…Is it time to begin liking Kyle Freeland…A bad defense should ignite the Rockets to blast off…
The NBA brings all of the prospects of being a real mess tonight, in what would otherwise be a showdown evening for playoff seeding – hence all of those games starting in just two time blocks, except for the late adjustment to San Antonio/Utah. Will this be a night of big excitement and high-level play? Don’t get your hopes up.
To set up the evening on the hardwoods, as well as some takes on the MLB diamonds, the jukebox will be plugged in not only today but throughout the rest of the week, a tribute more than proper after the passing of John Warren Geils Jr. yesterday. You’ll know him better as J. Geils, and the timing is particularly bitterwsweet, coming on the heels of Friday’s Rock and Roll hall of Fame inductions. It now means that should the day come in which the band gets their proper due from that organization the founding member will not be there to celebrate it, and one of the true mysteries of the Rock and Roll era is why they have been nominated multiple times, yet not granted the honor that is so deserved. If I had to begin a list of the best that have been left out, they go near the top, and one could easily make the case that Peter Wolf could go in for his own body of work.
I am going to do things a little differently this week, a series of double-shots of the J. Geils Band in both early and late stages, capping it with some of the last shows in which Geils himself was on stage (they have occasionally toured using the name without him, which has caused some awkwardness and legal skirmishing). And for those not familiar with them it won’t take long to appreciate what made the grouping so special – there were only a precious handful that were even in their league when it came to performing live. For today it will be “Must of Got Lost”, from 1977 at Winterland, and from the House of Blues in Boston in 2009, the mastery of Wolf in full evidence. They were brilliant in the early stages, and then only got better -
Challenge to anyone – name five better live bands from the Rock and Roll era…
Item: Is this NBA board worthy of a deep dive, or best avoided entirely
As the morning began I looked at the screen and about half of tonight’s NBA board did not show bettable lines, and some of those on the board are only available for reduced limits. Here is the problem – on a season that has been a jumbled mess across the association, something that has been written about here often, the final evening may turn out to be a nightmare.
There are indeed some must-win games out there. Both Boston and Cleveland are alive for the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference; Indiana/Chicago/Miami bring a triangle for the #7-#8 in the East of which only two will make the playoffs; and in the Western Conference Utah/LAC go to the final whistle to decide which of them gets the home court when they face each other in the first round. But…
Despite having need for a win, Cleveland will be mostly a no-show tonight, LeBron James sitting out, and others likely to. And as for those other games, are any of the opponents going to show up?
@BOSTON – Milwaukee will not play Giannis Antetoumnpko, Kris Middleton, Matthew Dellavedova or Tony Snell.
@INDIANA – No formal announcements yet, but having clinched the #5 seed the Hawks are expected to play a skeleton crew of reserves, hence the Pacers showing at -12.5 in the early markets.
@MIAMI – The Wizards are not expected to have John Wall or Otto Porter, and Scott Brooks may hold out several of the other key cogs as well.
@CHICAGO – No Brook Lopez, Trevor Booker, Jeremy Lin or Sean Kilpatrick for the Nets.
@UTAH – No word from Pops yet, but the Spurs have long been locked into the #2 seed and even if any of the key players are out there the Over/Under count for minutes from any of them is likely 24:00.
@LA CLIPPERS – The Kings are the Kings.
Now if you think these games are bad, consider the rest of the board. While many folks would dream of being a ticket broker at Madison Square Garden, just imagine the best you could get for 76ers/Knicks tonight, a setting so hideous that we are offered the unique option of betting a 28-53 team as a road favorite.
Is there somewhere to go with this stuff? Yes, for those that have particular team insights, and have a feel for the player rotations. You can be looking for things like this, from Toronto’s Dwane Casey, when asked about the preparation for the Raptors game at Cleveland –
“We’re preparing like we do the other 81. It’s one of 82 games and we’ve got to win and work on our habits, offensively and defensively, and go into the weekend with some momentum. Everyone is going to play. We’ve got a lot of issue to work out, combos that haven’t been together, different things we want to do with those combos. Whether it’s 15, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, we got to get a little work in.”
And admittedly I will be doing some of that digging, because this board may offer some significant edges along those lines. But will I be diving into every game? Neither time management, nor sanity, allows for that.
There is one important aspect to keep in mind – as always, “must win” only means that, and nothing more. There is nothing motivating tonight’s “need” teams to get a big margin, and in fact there is something genuinely working against it – if they have command of the proceedings in the fourth quarter, the optimal thing to do is shut the game down, and try to get off the court with the key players as fresh as possible. Especially those teams battling at the bottom of the East, because they will all be on the road to open a playoff series in a couple of days.
Part of my own NBA studying today will come while watching a young left-hander pitching for Colorado this afternoon that brings some intrigue, and hopefully some profit…
Item: It may be time to begin liking Kyle Freeland
Having a home mound at Coors Field can absolutely be hazardous to a pitcher’s career, and while there have been a few that have held their own, no one has truly conquered the effects of the altitude and dry air. But now the 2017 Rockies have the best collective group of prospects the franchise has ever had, and in particular I believe there may be something to see from the young lefty Freeland.
There are the usual things to like from Freeland’s resume – he was the #8 overall pick in the 2014 draft, and after surgery to remove some bone chips in his elbow derailed most his 2015 campaign he showed that he was at full health last year, working to a 3.87 across 14 AA starts and a 3.91 over 12 at AAA. That was enough for him to get a long look in Spring Training, and he was good enough to make the rotation.
Freeland’s MLB debut was a sharp one, six strong innings against the Dodgers in which he only allowed one run. Yes, controlling an LAD outfit that struggles vs. left-handers must get taken with a grain of salt, but there was the genuine positive of a 3:1 ratio of strikeouts to walks, and a nifty 66.7 GB%. Freeland was confident and in command, despite the pressure of the setting (there were 49,169 in the seats on Friday). It was the classic “home-grown boy makes good” for a young guy that was born in Denver, and was a local high school star. The key now is to think about what that means.
Adjusting to pitching at Denver is a challenge that few can master because for most pitchers it does literally mean adjusting. Breaking balls have less movement and there are all kinds of perils of pitching to contact, Coors Field offering so many square feet of Front Range in which a ball can fall for a hit. But what if someone grew up pitching at this altitude, and that is all he knows? Might Freeland be a step ahead in development because his arsenal has been built around pitching through just such conditions?
I am going to be in play today with #902 Colorado Run Line (3:10 Eastern) at +115 or better, banking Freeland to be effective against a limited San Diego offense getting a first look at him, and with the Rockies bullpen well-set for the latter stages. Meanwhile Coors Field may be a truly unfriendly place for Zach Lee, who has had just one MLB appearance, that coming back in July of 2015, and is only here because Luis Perdomo and Trevor Cahill are on the DL.
Baseball Being Baseball
I will try to limit this to one item per day, which will mean sometimes reaching back a day or two for something worthy, but let’s consider Koji Uehara’s stint out of the bullpen for the Cubs on Monday.
Uehara came in to a tough setting, with Dodgers on first and second with one out, and did what he was called on for, inducing a ground ball off the bat of Chase Utley that could have been a double play. Instead it was a force out at second, with Logan Forsythe coming around to score on a throwing error by Addison Russell. Uehara then proceeded to strike out Yasiel Puig to end the inning.
It was terrific pitching, with seven of 10 offerings in the strike zone, and two easy outs. Yet what does Baseball charge Uehara with? A blown save. That is nonsensical, but also why post mortems are done each day, instead of relying on the official stat compilations. Will I track Uehara as having the negative tag of a “blown save” for that performance? Of course not.
In the Sights…
For as hazardous as the final night of the NBA can be I will have at least one position, #702 Houston Team Total Over (8:05 Eastern) at 118 or less. In this instance I believe the Minnesota defense is simply shot.
There will be time in the off-season spent digesting whether or not Tom Thibodeau did the right thing with Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, who are #1 and #2 in the league in minutes played, while Gorgui Dieng checks in at #19. Only five players across the league that have played in every one of their teams games, and that trio is 60 percent of the list. The issue with Wiggins and Towns is that they are still younger than some of the North Carolina players that cut down the NCAA Championship nets last week, and their bodies may not have been fully ready for this yet. In some ways tonight’s ending could not be worse.
Because of that make-up game vs. Portland that was rescheduled for last Monday, Minnesota closes on the awful schedule cycle of seven games in 10 days, all court changes. It is a cycle that the Players Association does not allow for, but in this instance there had to be a waiver because the game mattered for the Trail Blazers in the playoff chase. That takes a tired team and simply gasses them out, and nowhere is that more evident than on defense. How bad have they fallen off?
NBA Defense PP100, Last 15 games
30. Minnesota 116.7
29. LA Lakers 112.2
28. Denver 111.6
27. Orlando 111.2
26. Charlotte 111.1
The T’Wolves have not just been bad at making stops, they have been awful, a wide gap between them and the rest of the league. And while defenses fading late is a common NBA issue, note that if we track the last 15 games of each of the past five seasons, no team was within two points of the current Minnesota allowance. But now it may get even worse – they really did go all out to win that final home game vs. OKC last night, rallying from 22 down to hold the lead in the final minute, and to not hang on may be the final nail in the coffin.
I believe the Rockets will put on an offensive show here because that is both what they do in general, and have some small needs in particular. First they will be looking to get at least five assists before shutting down James Harden’s night, since it would make him the first player in NBA history to have 2,000 points, 900 assists and 600 rebounds in a season. And as for backing off to get fresh for the playoffs, they already did that in Monday’s dismal 125-96 loss to the Clippers.
Mike D’Antoni used that game as a practice session ("We just played a lot of guys, a lot of different guys, a lot of different combinations that we've never played before. Obviously, we didn't have any kind of rhythm.”) which he could not be faulted for, but does he want his team going into the playoffs with two straight sloppy sessions? I don’t believe that will be the case.
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