FilteringCraig

This season, Winslow proved just how great he can be as an offensive weapon for the Browns. Considering the fact that Cleveland QB’s were flat on their backs for a large portion of the 2006 NFL season, and Winslow’s achievements seem even more impressive. Also add in the fact that Winslow’s surgically repaired knee was tight and sore from the growth of scar tissue and it is absolutely mind-boggling how good Winslow can be for the Browns assuming he stays in Cleveland and the Browns are able to do something to improve their current woeful situation.

Also, if I was superstitious . . . (and I am not saying that I am or anything.)

• It just so happens that I bought Winslow’s jersey before the start of last season.

• What would happen if I bought another jersey of a different player next season?
• Will buying a new jersey make Winslow’s good performance disappear?
• What if we revisit the above questions after I buy a black cat and a Ouija board?

I am never going to be “that guy” who decides to write an article saying that a team is better without their superstar player. While that article has been written about other teams before, I am not going to write it about this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers team. At the same time, many of the problems with inconsistency this season have occurred as a result of the team looking sluggish on offensive sets. They have a tendency to move through one iteration of the offense, until the ball gets into Lebron James’ hands, and then shuffle a bit until James does something. This is why Lebron doesn’t have nearly as many highlight passes this season as he did last year. The movement away from the ball isn’t good enough for a streaking player to be open.

We saw something interesting happen last weekend in Philadelphia when Lebron sat down in street clothes with his toe injury. While the team looked lost in the first quarter on its way to a 25-38 deficit, their team offense progressed thereafter on the way to a 105-97 win. It wasn’t that they were better without Lebron, but the rest of the team seems to play a little bit differently when Lebron is on the court. They play a lazy style of offense, almost trying to stay out of Lebron’s way rather than trying to be his options streaking to the hoop, or around a pick.

They slowly realized in the Philly game that they didn’t have a bail-out option (Lebron) to throw it to with seven seconds left on the shot clock. Usually the team can count on Lebron to at least hit the rim no matter what low percentage shooting situation they put him in at the end of an offensive set.¹ In Philly the Cavs were doing the same thing in the first quarter, except when the clock ran down, the ball was thrown to Drew Gooden, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Eric Snow, Sasha Pavlovic, or Larry Hughes. They couldn’t handle it the way that Lebron does.

What ended up happening was that they started to execute their motion on offense. They ran the court with better spacing on the break. The energy on offense translated to energy on defense and they went out and scored 11 more points than the 76ers in the third quarter and 14 more points than the 76ers in the fourth quarter on the way to a 105-97 victory.

I think that the Cavaliers can play this well as a team like they did in the second half against the 76ers and they can do it with Lebron James in the lineup. But, they need some practice without Lebron so that they can remember how to play like that. They have lost the muscle memory of playing a team game because they got used to standing around and watching Lebron. They are hurting themselves, and they are taking away Lebron’s ability to throw great passes to his teammates in positions for high percentage shots.

If Lebron sits out the next two or three games and the rest of the Cavs’ players remember that they need to move on offense, it will pay huge dividends as this team heads toward the playoffs. It should improve the horrendous offensive (in)efficiency that the Cavaliers have shown so far this year. On top of that, it should translate into a more consistent team defense as the team is always more energized to play team defense when they are clicking on offense.

Don’t get me wrong. A team shouldn’t have to have their star player sit out of the lineup to get themselves to play the right way. That would (and should) normally occur under the tutelage of a coach in a practice situation. That is another story for another day. In the meantime, maybe something good can come from Lebron taking a few games off to let his toe heal.

1. Incidentally, I have heard a lot of complaints about Lebron “jacking up” shots this year. I think this is why and I don’t necessarily blame him for feeling the need to hoist shots at the end of the 24 second clock.

On more than one occasion over the last two weeks people have asked me what I predict will happen in the Super Bowl this Sunday when the Bears take on the Colts. More than any other Super Bowl in recent memory, I really don’t have much of a feeling as to which way this is going to turn out. After thinking about it for a while, the best I can do is narrow it down to two completely opposite outcomes.

No matter what, I think this game is going to be a blowout.

If the best Bears team shows up, then the Bears defense is capable of stopping Indy. The special teams, with Devin Hester, are capable of adding a touchdown, or at least giving Rex Grossman the kind of field position that could demoralize the Colts defense. Also, the Bears’ running attack of Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson is capable of blasting for 300 yards or more depending on which Colts defense shows up to play on Sunday.

But, if the Colts team that beat the Pats shows up, I think the Colts could win by a 10 point margin. I think the Colts could execute a pretty balanced offensive attack, between the two headed monster of Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai, and the passing attack with Harrison, Wayne and Dallas Clark. The Colts should be able to win the field position game despite Devin Hester’s abilities as a returner. I think that kicker Adam Vinatierri and punter Hunter Smith should be able to keep Devin Hester in check by not giving him the kinds of opportunities he needs to break one long. If the Colts defense that drove New England crazy last week decides to show up on Sunday, I think they can handle Rex Grossman and company.

But those are a lot of “ifs.”

We are talking about a Colts team that made Ron Dayne look like Jerome Bettis in his 20’s, running for 153 yards and two touchdowns. We are talking about a Colts team that gave up 375 rushing yards (and a hefty 8.9 yards-per-carry average) in a single week to Jacksonville running backs.

Are we going to see that team, or the one that manhandled Cincinnatti 34-16 in week 15? Are we going to see the team that manned up against the never-to-be-counted-out Patriots in the AFC Championship game?

Nobody can know for sure.

So, my prediction is that one team won’t show up and we will be looking at a blowout. At this point I am guessing that the Colts are more likely to be the team that shows up to play on Super Sunday. I give it a 70% chance that we see a Colts blowout and a 30% chance that the Bears show up and the Colts don’t.

But if I am wrong and both teams show up, we could be in for one hell of a game on Sunday.

If you ever doubted my domestication before, you certainly will not ever again. This weekend Jen and I put up curtains in two of our rooms. (Two down, about seven to go. Blech!) By the way, the source of the title is this. I don’t care how many times people use the phrase “Window Treatments” I am going to leave that level of prestige for interior decorators who charge fees for their services. Maybe I was just ignorant of the term “window treatments” but it sounds like a snooty way to say curtains and/or blinds. So, I will say that this weekend Jen and I put up some curtains in two rooms.

We went to Target to buy the curtain rods, and curtains because we wanted to do the first round on a reasonable budget. We got curtains to cover our sliding glass door in the family room so when Jen is sitting on the couch using her laptop, nobody will be able to see her in all her geeky geekdom playing games. We also got curtains for our dining room so that we can eat in there without our neighbors being able to watch us without even trying.

Although Jen didn’t tell me to put up all the curtain rods, I assumed the duty after we got home. I grabbed some screw drivers, including a Black and Decker power screw driver and Jen’s Black and Decker drill, and away I went. I had a relatively easy time with the first set of brackets that holds up the curtain rod, and then I ran into trouble.

I was putting 1.5 inch wood screws into the frames of the windows so that the bracket rose about an inch above the window frame. The 1.5 inch screws worked fine on the first window, but on the second, I couldn’t get them to go in the last quarter of an inch. Alright, no problem. Time for the drill. I grabbed the drill, plugged the driver bit in place, and pulled the trigger.

Imagine the sound that the Millenium Falcon made when Han Solo was trying to make the jump to light speed and couldn’t.

I look at the drill to find that it is a whopping 6 volt drill. It might as well just be a power screw driver. So, what was going to be an easy job turned out to be an exercise in elbow grease and determination.

Oh and a bit of cheating. I went back down into the basement to find some shorter wood screws.

I am awful around the house fixing and installing things, but this time I think I was successful. But who knows? Maybe the curtain rod will come crashing down today while I am at work.

Before we move on to room three, I will be sure to invest in a real drill.

This weekend Jen and I went to Dave and Buster’s with four friends for dinner and games. Dinner was good and whatever, but that isn’t the important part of the night. The important thing is that I forgot how much fun you can have playing skee ball. So there I was with about $40 bucks on a Dave and Buster’s funny money card that just screams, “Swipe me in any of the gaming hall’s 300,000 electronic money-stealer slots, but make sure you do it in as rapid a fashion as possible because it isn’t like these “credits” represent real money anyway!”

So, I did. First, we played some skee ball for big points and big amounts of tickets. I learned how to play skee ball from my dad a long time ago at Midway Park at Chautauqua lake. Always bank the ball off of the left side. You can really maximize your efficiency by nailing lots and lots of 40’s, with the occasional 30’s and 50’s. While going for the 100’s in the corners is tempting, it is usually not worth the effort as we have never mastered a 100 point roll. I did spend a couple of games trying out a spinning technique where I would give the ball a right to left spin and roll it down the center. I was able to nail the 100 a few times, but I couldn’t do it with any consistency. Everyone (except me) was tired of skee ball, so we decided to move around to the other areas of this adult version of Chuck E. Cheese.

We went over to the networked driving game to see who the best video game racer was. This is the cool video game racing where the four people sitting next to each other are in the same race. This is when I decided that a joke isn’t funny unless you execute it wire to wire. So, I decided to choose the automatic shifting option, which everyone scoffed at at first. Then I hit the start button, grabbed my beer and drove the entire race with a beer in my left hand, drinking on all the straight-aways to come in second out of four drivers. Nobody appreciated the maneuver as much as I thought they should have, but I guess I can’t complain because it is only perfect if you are able to come in first place.

Then, we decided to grab some replica movie rifles to take out some Aliens in the game named after the movie. Shooting games aren’t quite as fun as they used to be. I think the pinnacle of video game shooting was a game like Operation Wolf with the two machine guns and the grenade buttons. These newer games move around so much that they could give anyone motion sickness, and they are so hard that they just chew up money, no matter how good you are. As a side note, I am curious how our wars would go if we could arm our soldiers with guns that had built-in napalm and built-in grenade launchers. I think they would do well, but somehow, even with that firepower, in video game world we weren’t able to get that far.

More importantly, the allure of racking up high scores in exchange for meaningless tickets at skee ball was again calling our names. So, we went back over to skee ball where the machines were starting to malfunction. One machine malfunctioned to the point that it started me off with 1000 points. I started knocking down numbers and tickets just kept pouring out of the machine. Trust me when I say that all the little kids were extremely jealous.

It was almost time to go, so we took all our tickets, stuffed them into a bucket and gave them to some 5 year-old looking kid and his mom. It was kind of funny to see the kid’s face when his mouth turned into a giant letter O.

On the way out, Jen wanted to play one last game. They had the horse racing thing where usually you control a squirt gun and squirt into a target and the horses fly across the board until someone squirts their way to victory. Unfortunately for a disappointed Jen, they changed the game so that you have to roll a single pool cue ball up a board and into holes. Depending on which hole you put the ball; the horse will walk, trot or run. I won the first game. Some kid won the second game. On the third game my friend and I decided to corrupt the Dave and Buster’s universe. When the game started, I gave my friend my cue ball, so he was rolling two at a time. Believe it or not, he was somehow able to pull out victory. Before we could feel too badly about cheating all the kids sitting at the game, we were out the front door and on the way home.

And I think I found a use for that extra bedroom that Jen and I have in our house.

The Cavaliers are a frustrating team. They have the third best record in the east, but they are just painful to watch on a lot of nights. I know that they just finished a brutal road trip out west, but this team lost in double overtime to a listless Philadelphia 76ers team that recently traded Allen Iverson to the Nuggets. Obviously all fans hate to watch their team lose. This isn’t anything new. So why is it so frustrating?

Look at the game stats in the loss to Philadelphia. The Cavs attempted more free throws 34 to 27. They out-rebounded the Sixers 46 to 38. They had one more assist 22 to 21 and two more steals 6 to 4. Finally - and most importantly - the Cavs had fewer turnovers - 13 to 17 - than the 76ers.

With advantages in all these categories, how did the Cavs lose? The Cavs lost the game on offense. Now, when I say that they lost on offense, I am sure a lot of people are thinking, “Duh. If you don’t score more than your opponent, then you obviously lose.” My point is that with advantages in all those other statistical categories, there is no reason why a team should lose.

I break it down like this.

• Shooting - the Cavs shot only 39.4% in this game, including 8 for 21 from 3-point. This isn’t an isolated incident either. On the season, the Cavs are shooting 43.71% while opponents are shooting 44.87% against them.
• Free Throws - the Cavs shot a dismal 25 of 34 from the free throw line last night for 73.5%. On the season the Cavs are shooting a mere 68.54%. They are only one of two teams in the east that aren’t above 70% for the year.

Another problem could be Mike Brown’s inconsistent player rotation. This could be contributing to the collective inconsistency of the team. Maybe I am missing something and the Cavs are showcasing certain players as we approach the trade deadline, but the best examples of inconsistent playing time would be Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic.

• Daniel Gibson didn’t play last night against the Sixers. In the last month he has played in most games including 16 minutes against Phoenix, 33 minutes against Portland, and 26 minutes against Denver. In December, he averaged 19.3 minutes per game. So far in January, his playing time has been more erratic and the average is down to 10.1 minutes per game.

• Sasha Pavlovic is also used inconsistently. In November Pavlovic averaged 19.2 minutes per game. True, he was filling in for Larry Hughes during part of that time, but he did some good things that should have warranted at least some time off of the bench. Then in December he lost his spot in the rotation and averaged 6.5 minutes per game and failed to appear in 6 out of the 14 games.

I would expect that this team would have hit its groove by this point in the season. The Cavaliers don’t have the greatest team in league history, but they have one legitimate superstar in Lebron James and a whole collection of pretty effective role players. It seems to me that they should be performing better, night in and night out, especially considering Mike Brown’s stated goal for this season was to improve the offense.

If they don’t figure it out soon, and if they don’t make it far into the playoffs, expect the conversation about Mike Brown’s future with the Cavs to carry on more consistently than the Cavs offense has been so far this season.

Jake Westbrook has been a solid number three starter in the Cleveland Indians rotation over the last few years. He is a workhorse type of a pitcher that doesn’t throw ridiculous heat or overly soft. He pitches under control, keeps his fielders involved, and generally works a lot of innings. And he tends to win more games than he loses.

These are the types of pitchers that historically get undervalued in the Majors because they lack the flash of a number one starter who can throw the heater. After seeing this year’s crop of free agent pitchers get their paydays, it appears like they are undervalued no more. To try and give Indians fans some perspective on Westbrook, it seemed apparent that Westbrook most resembles Dave Burba.

While Westbrook is a couple of years ahead of schedule on Burba, look at the similarity between their numbers.

They have similar amounts of games pitched and innings worked, which speaks to durability, and reliability. The only big difference is that Burba had more strikeouts than Westbrook.

Now, the question is how much is a player like Westbrook worth as he enters his 30’s? Consider the fact that while he pitches a lot of innings, that equates to miles on the odometer for a pitcher. Many pitchers maintain that consistency for a long time, and some hit the wall.

The most similar signing this off-season was probably when Gil Meche signed a 5-year $55 million deal to pitch for the Kansas City Royals in 2007.

Westbrook is set to make $6.1 million in 2007. Hopefully the Tribe can get some kind of discount by extending him starting this season. Even still, with market prices like those, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to see discussions from Westbrook’s camp for a contract in the neighborhood of 3-5 years with money in the $7 - $10 million dollar per year range.

Also keep in mind that CC Sabathia, the Indians ace, will make $8.75 million this season and is scheduled to make $9 million in 2008. As long as CC is the number one starter, it makes sense that the Indians would want to keep Westbrook’s salary underneath of Sabathia’s. If they get too high with Westbrook, it will set a bad precedent when it comes time to negotiate an extension with Sabathia.

I am sure GM Mark Shapiro and Assistant GM Chris Antonnetti will be keeping this in mind as they keep themselves busy negotiating deals with their young talent. The Indians also plan on talking about an extension with designated hitter Travis Hafner who is set to make $3.75 million in 2007. Cleveland has a $4.75 million option for 2008.

Let’s call it bittersweet for me.

One hand, I am extremely happy for my wife.
Other hand, unhappy that it isn’t my team.
One hand, happy to see a new Super Bowl matchup.
Other hand, can’t possibly imagine how many Peyton Manning commercials we are going to see over the next few weeks.
One hand, happy to have any kind of interest in the Super Bowl.
Other hand, sad because it isn’t my horrendous Browns.
The only good news? Pitchers and catchers report soon enough, and Jen doesn’t root for a baseball team!

I have recently started to dislike ESPN because of their unnecessarily melodramatic coverage of everything. Much like the news channels have gone to pot because of a 24/7 news cycle, it seems like ESPN also has succumbed to the temptation to shock in order to drive people to their programming. I know sports are a goofy world of games, stats, personalities, millionairres, and the second-class citizens that watch them on TV, but wouldn’t that be all the more reason that we need some straight-forward coverage?

So, what does this have to do with Serena Williams?

Not that this is the most glaring proof that ESPN is awful, it is yet another exhibit, which makes the case.

This is the picture that they posted of Serena Williams on the front page of the site. You will notice that it is extremely horrifying. I guess in some way it captures reality. But in many others, it is manipulative. Look at how dark the background is. Look at how closely the picture is cropped. Is there any doubt that they are trying to make her look awful?

And then this is the picture on the inside of the site.

So, how long until more people catch on to the anti-ESPN bandwagon?

Check out these two winners. I had headphones on, so I don’t know to what level of hysterics that Joe Buck dropped into in order to apologize for fans at home having to witness such a display.