NBA Power Rankings and inevitable mockery of others

Apology: I understand this is a full day late. For that I apologize and offer a full refund.

Beginning of Actual Article: Given that next week marks the official start of the season it's probably an appropriate time to actually release a set of power rankings for the upcoming season. Every year it seems that the major sports media outlets release power rankings earlier and earlier in an effort to "scoop" the other sports outlets. The actual value of the "scoop" is dubious given that it is essentially a race to have an opinion that will almost surely be proven ridiculous by the end of the opening week of the season. This year ESPN released its set of power rankings on October 1, 2007 ... BEFORE the pre-season had even begun and we knew the health status of many key players on these teams. In an era where the 2008 Presidential race kicked off prior to the 2006 election this isn't stunning that NBA columnists would start jumping the gun too, but I'm sure ESPN regrets putting out their rankings so early after watching Memphis go 5-2 in the preseason thus far (ESPN ranked them 21st) and watching Miami go 0-7 (ESPN ranked them one slot above Memphis at 20th). Harpring Sucks is currently trying to contact Marc Stein's mistress to determine what else he finishes far too early. Who am I kidding, Marc Stein's picture indicates he's far more likely to be a pederast than have a mistress.

Another beef I have with the rankings is that they are nearly always ranked in descending order with the #1 team at the top. Clearly ESPN has no sense of suspense. With that in mind, we rank teams in ascending order.

#30. Philadelphia 76ers: I like that other AI as much as the next guy, but the reality is that this team has exactly four players that you look at and think "he might hurt us on any given night." Right now the team consists of Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller, Kyle Korver, Samuel Dalembert, and a group of guys who would challenge for playing time on Maccabi Tel Aviv. Plus they waived Derrick Byars this week before he could play a single regular season game. This means that unless he gets picked up by a team this season, Vanderbilt will have a 4th consecutive season without an alumnus in the NBA (the last one was the illustrious Dan Langhi). This angers Harpring Sucks, and thus they get the spiteful 30th ranking designation. Just remember, in a way its almost good to be the worst because if you're gonna be bad you shouldn't bother to make any pretension at being good. In that sense, they're the best at sucking. I'm sure their mothers are proud.

#29. Seattle Supersonics: Sadly Jerome James would actually make them better at this point. On the positive side they still have that Saer Sene guy. Thank god the Jazz dodged the bullet on that one.

#28. Minnesota Timberwolves: Although I'm awaiting the inevitable Bill Simmons "Ewing Theory" column with regards to the Wolves, I also realized they just traded two of the their top 7 players for Antoine Walker. Also, the year isn't 1998 and Antoine Walker hasn't been useful in two full seasons. Stunningly, Juwan Howard wasn't involved in this deal after trying to beg his way out of Minnesota all summer. At this point, he probably feels like a cheerleader trapped at a summer camp right before the slasher shows up.

#27. Los Angeles Clippers: Last year the team showed just how much it relied on Sam Cassell's "I have giant testicles" dance. This year they're without Elton Brand. Thankfully, they'll have more than their fair share of losses to make up for it.

#26. Sacramento Kings: Any time the loss of Bonzi Wells triggers a large swing in the win-loss column you know your team is walking a tightrope. Lucky for them, Ron Artest is promising stability and good behaviour for approximately the 27th year in a row.

#25. Charlotte Bobcats: No Adam Morrison and no Sean May means that you're going to see a lot of Walter Herrmann. While this is good for fans of sketchy looking german dudes (and boy am I ever) this is not good for fans of the Charlotte Bobcats.

#24. Miami Heat: They went 0-7 in the pre-season. Shaq is hurt, Wade is hurt, and they just traded for Ricky Davis. I may adopt this as a third team to follow because emotions are going to run high this season and that is sure to lead to someone getting shot or Shaq sitting on someone till they suffocate.

#23. Portland Trailblazers: No Oden, but LaMarcus Aldridge will play well and Brandon Roy is coming off a rookie of the year campaign. I just wish Zach Randolph was still there. For some reason watching some guy with Bell's Palsy inexplicably score points in bunches on perfectly healthy physical specimens just kills me. It won't be the same in New York where his magnificence will necessarily be muted by Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury.

#22. Milwaukee Bucks: Injuries were devastating last season, but the reality is that guaranteeing playing time to Yi (whom the Milwaukee fans already are unimpressed with) and getting back guys of the Bobby Simmons ilk don't exactly make a team a championship contender. On the positive side, their Coach should fit in nicely with the Polish population.

#21. Indiana Pacers: This team is going to be better than people think. They've been winning games in the pre-season without Jermaine O'Neal and they have had more time to integrate Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy onto the squad. Those guys were always trapped on the wrong team in Golden State (do you really think Moses wanted to pass to the dorky white guys who went to Notre Dame and Duke) and should be better this season.

#20. Atlanta Hawks: The Young Hawks will have lots of talent and young draft picks and fail to win many games. Just another orbit around the globe for Atlanta fans who are presumably unimpressed they have turned into the Eastern versions of the the late 90's Clippers teams. What they really need is to this guy as an assistant coach to "make them big." Then they could win games.

#19. Los Angeles Lakers: They brought in Derek Fisher to help them win games. Given his shooting percentages last season I'm thinking his daughter has better depth perception at this point.

#18. New York Knicks: Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry have to win some games together. Especially in the east.

#17. Memphis Grizzlies: Another team that will be better than people think. Pau Gasol is back, Jaun Carlos Navarro will play major minutes, and the Isaac Hayes Experience is just down the street from the arena. Sounds like a team in need of love to me.

#16. Golden State Warriors: I love 'em but I'm inclined to believe last season's run was more fluke than foundation to a good team. Considering Don Nelson fought with the team all offseason because he wanted his playoff bonus guaranteed instead of earning it I'm guessing he agrees with me.

#15. New Orleans Hornets: Chris Paul's stats remain gaudy, except for in the "games played" category. That being said, I just don't see it working out for the Hornets this season. Basketball Karma will continue to screw with George Shinn until he sells the team as punishment for taking the team away from Charlotte.

#14. Toronto Raptors: The smart money thinks this team is in for a regression. Remember that this team also made Mike James look like a top-10 player in the NBA and well know how that turned out. I'm thinking Calderon is bound to return to earth and this team is one injury away from a total collapse. Besides, I think the playoffs showed this team really wasn't as good as the Nets last season. That being said, the Mueller family are sure to be Raptors fans because one of the best players is named Andrea (more on this below).

#13. New Jersey Nets: I may end up regretting saying they'll do this well now that Vince Carter got paid. He's got the most famous on-off switch in the NBA and with no prospects for another large long-term contract for his career I'm frankly stunned he didn't show up to training camp weighing 400 pounds.

#12. Denver Nuggets: The Bench looks real thin, they're relying on Chucky Atkins for far too long, Carmelo Anthony has a painting of himself as Jesus, AI doesn't like to practice, and Kenyon Martin is sure to break another bone this year. This team has built something shiny that looks pretty on paper, but unfortunately it's a house of cards.

#11. Gilbert Arenas: Not the Washington Wizards. Gilbert by himself. As he reveals, he's already taken to shooting the rookies with paintball guns as part of orientation. In my mind that makes him larger than the team. Also, this team had serious injury issues last year and still made the playoffs. I'm thinking they'll only be better this season.

#10. Cleveland Cavaliers: Frankly, this ranking is probably too high. Coming off their trip to the NBA finals they've got two key players holding out (which means that a guy named Boobie will be playing major minutes) and have gone 1-5 in the preseason. Not good signs for a team that relies on making things as easy for Lebron as possible.

#9. Detroit Pistons: I think this is the year the bottom falls out and we start hearing about how the team is no longer contending. After hearing all season that they might blow the team up if they didn't make the finals they decided to keep the band together and trumpet Amir Johnson as being the guy who was going to bring them out of it. And yes, you just read that last sentence correctly. Joe Dumars is banking on Amir Johnson as the future. And yes, he's also won an Executive of the Year award before.

#8. Houston Rockets: John Hollinger thinks they'll win the championship. That's a good enough reason for me to bury them at around the 70th percentile. Besides the Hollinger damnation, it's somewhat mystifying that people think they got tons better. The major free agent acquisition (Steve Francis) is a guy that Portland paid $30 million NOT to play on the team this season, the prized rookie (Scola) hasn't shown he can be a complementary piece on the international level, and Rafer Alston is likely to do something insane this season. Also, Rick Adelman is prominently involved so you know there's going to be a couple painful meltdowns this year.

#7. Orlando Magic: They're 6-1 in the preseason and just upgraded from Grant Hill to Rashard Lewis. Although Lewis has an insane salary that will prevent them from getting better in the future, right now they're looking good. Of course this is Orlando so the odds that one of their best players leaves for another town or goes down with career crippling injuries is high. Basketball Karma clearly hates the Disney corporation.

#6. Utah Jazz: Harpring Sucks.

#5. Chicago Bulls: This team is the new version of those 90s Knicks teams. They'll play good defense, be sort of slow, beat teams down, have a bunch of good players but no truly GREAT players, and never win a championship. It was, of course, the Bulls that was always the foil for those 90s Knicks teams. Basketball Karma is a bitch.

#4. Dallas Mavericks: You just can't win a championship when your coach sounds like a cross between a munchkin and a gummy bear.

#3. Boston Celtics: This team won't be quite as good as some people think, especially towards the end of the season when Garnett, Allen, and Pierce's legs start to give out from playing 40 minutes a night. That being said they're undoubtedly an Eastern Conference contender.

#2. Phoenix Suns: They'll always score slightly more points than they give up...until they play the Spurs.

#1. San Antonio Spurs: Defending champs and nothing has changed. Presumptive #1.

Parent-Teacher Conferences will be painful this year: Karen Chatterton's sixth grade class contributed their ideas on how their lives would be different if their fathers were NBA players. Shockingly, all of them essentially acknowledged they'd prefer it if their father was a professional basketball player. I can't wait until Parent-Teacher Conference time when Ms. Chatterton has to explain to parents why she's reinforcing the idea that her students would be happier if they had someone else as parents. That should be fun.

My personal favorite comment reveals a lot about the social status of this particular class

"We would be able to get another boat and my dad probably would not have the
friends from work. I would be able to go to all of the games.”

Another boat! Another boat?! Why? So Mom can pilot one (badly because she's a woman) while dad smugly drives his faster and more competently?

Graduation!: I have an annoucement that will shock and awe all of you. I'm proud of our own little Laurie Nyland. After several consecutive weeks of making fun of her writing style for being sophomoric she didn't begin her blog post this week with either a definition or a quote. It was a stunning tour de force that honestly floored me when it happened. It was just as stunning as Bernadette Peters pulling out the trumpet to finish a love song on the Beach in the Jerk. If I could fit my arms around her (she looks large in her 10 pixel by 10 pixel photo so I use the conditional) I would give her a giant hug. Congratulations Laurie Nyland, you may score decently on the writing portion of the SAT now.

As long as we're being positive I'm announcing that Alan Hinckley gets a pass this week because he's admitted to going to a Dio Concert, and, as discussed on this very website during the playoffs, Dio Rules!

I wonder who they're taking about?: The Mueller family chose to call out "critics" of jazzbots in a post this week. Gee, who would possibly be critical of the high quality of posts that the Muellers come up with? Certainly not innocent little us.

Unfortunately their sole argument justifying the existence of the blog is that because there are so many people at amateur hour on their website they occasionally come up with inane questions such as "Why does Deron Williams have so many tattoos." Besides the fact that this is essentially a variation on the "million monkeys with typewriters producing Hamlet" scenario, the example she chose was terrible. That topic is literally their best defense as to how they come up with interesting things to talk about? That one? Really? Most of his tattoos are self explanatory. Stuff like a basketball in the state he's from, his initials, and "no guts no glory." What's to explain? This would be like justifying a political blog by saying "we ask questions like 'why do politicians wear suits?'"

Predictably the comments to the post are all supportive...and all by other jazzbots posters who apparently also don't like their shit show being exposed for what it is. Harpring Sucks tried to comment, but it was removed by jazzbots censors. Harpring Sucks has never removed any comments to our blog posts because we play fair and actually are a place for fans to talk about the team and basketball. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about a website that doesn't permit criticism of their bloggers. Interestingly that was the same media policy employed by Stalin.

It's just so true!:

Blogoetry fails to inspire class-based revolution: Josh Leavitt submitted another poem that appears to assert that the reason he's a Jazz fan is because the Jazz play for the working man and teams like L.A. play for the bourgeoisie. In particular, he writes: "Every victory a battle won for the lower classes. Those with callused hands and seen as living 'backwards'. "

Apparently he Mr. Leavitt hasn't seen the Jazz ticket prices recently. Either that or he thinks he's writing about an independant baseball league team. Considering he attempts to rhyme "dessert" with "unheard" I'm not putting reality altering drugs beyond the scope of possibility.

Strained Analogies: An actual paragraph from a Tammy Rasmussen post in which she compares a jazz game to a hunting trip where she slaughtered a deer.

Now, comes the fun part of the hunt (game). Like any hunt (game) there is more
than just shooting the prey (basket). You still have to pack it in (finish the
game). Well now what, we were in my Trailblazer (ESC) and it was packed with
kids (fans). How were we going to bring it home (win the game)? That is when
everyone (the team) pitched in and brought it up the hill (home stretch) and
loaded it in the car (won the game). Well, the hunt (game) is over and it was
another successful year (season). I realized that it wasn’t something that I
could have done on my own as hunting (basketball) takes more than one person to
make it a success.

Wow (and) I (thought I) used a lot of (paren)thetica(l) statements. I'd say that she really sacrificed readability but I don't think anyone was interested in what she had to say anyways.

Give that man some tapioca: JR Stewart talks about the old days when the Jazz sucked and no one went to the games. One gets the impression he actually preferred those days to winning games. Given that he's jazzbots oldest blogger, maybe this explains the existence of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

David Stern's wet dream: If there was ever any doubt that jazzbots is just another cog in the NBA's marketing machine Herr Stern has made sure that the Mueller family posted an extensive ad for the WNBA. You remember the WNBA right? That league that shows their games on Lifetime? On second thought I don't think any lesbians read this blog so it's likely no one has any idea what I'm talking about.

The title of her post is also unfortunate (WNBA vs. NBA) because it places the two leagues in opposition to each other and that's a contest the women's league can never win. She might as well have described World War II as "Poland vs. Germany."

Unfortunate colloquialism: Tammy Rasmussen reports that her evening activities include "picking up girls and dropping them off." Harpring Sucks crack legal team reports solicitation of sexual activity is still illegal in the state of Utah.

Boozer wishes he could do this on defense: Although Japan's crime rate is actually declining, the New York Times has reported that Japan's citizens fear crime more than ever. As a result, fashion designers have begun capitalizing on this fear by designing clothing that is designed to camouflage the wearer in an urban environment by allowing them to blend in with their surroundings. While camouflaging yourself in the wild involves wearing patterns that look cool enough that people wear them around anyway as a fashion statement, lets just say that blending in to the average street corner makes you look a little silly.

It's official. Japan is an old-school Warner Brother's cartoon.

Follow your dreams: Karen Chatterton reports one of her students wants to work in the ESA's food court. As least he knows what kind of an education he's getting.

Equal time female genital-based dinosaur: The Madame is a Title IX fiend (an interest that is apparently only shared by Bob Ley on "Outside The Lines) and noted that my penisaurus rex costume idea was really only a costume suitable for use by a male and that as a result my last column favored males. While I would debate the point (word is that penisaurus rex LOVES the ladies) I will acknowledge that I could have provided equivalent female based dinosaurs. With that in mind I suggest three more genital-based dinosaur costumes to bring the total up to two each for male and female readers.

For the ladies: Vaginaraptor and the Bruised Cervixsaurus (The latter would make a great tandem costume with a male dressed as a penissaus).

For the boys: Cockateratops. I'll give you one guess what the horns should be.

Format change: You hated us once a week before, and now you’ll get a double dose. You may have noticed that this blog entry has been absurdly long each of the last two weeks. Sorry. I understand that the standard for how long an entry should be should roughly correlate to the length of one poop so that you feel comfortable bringing your laptop into the bathroom. I have far exceeded that and I apologize. Well you no longer have to hold that deuce until Thursday, we’re going for the jazzbots blog roundup (and more) semi-weekly with entries on Monday and Thursday from here on out. We’ll also be expanding the number of blogs covered because, get this, jazzbots isn’t the only completely absurd jazz blog out there. I’m sure you’re stunned.
See you Monday.