While most parts of this blog should be Cavaliers related, some times we all just need to branch out and make fun of lot of other things.  But before we begin, I just want to make something clear about the PER rankings.  I don't think they're a perfect predictor, I just think they're fun to talk about.  In-season PERs are much more useful and interesting, but since the season hasn't started yet, this is what I have to talk about.

Hollinger admitted as much in his chat yesterday, which you can find here.  A clip:

 John Hollinger: I'm getting a lot of question along the lines of "how do you rate so-and-so ahead of so-and-so", so I think it's time to backtrack here.

 John Hollinger: What you're seeing in the ratings are the projection for his Player Efficiency Rating for this season. PER, as I've discussed in here many teams, is a summary of a player's per-minute statistical effectiveness, but that still leaves some things out -- defense, durability, etc.

 John Hollinger: A lot of people are looking at this like I'm saying Player X is better than Player Y, which isn't necessarily the case.

And his summary of the rankings: 

Matt Castaldi: I don't have time to read all your player rankings. I'm busy. Can you just summarize them here?

 John Hollinger: Sure. I'm an idiot because I have [player 1] ranked ahead of [player 2] even though [player 1] has crazy skills and is ready to take the league by storm, and why do I have to be such a hater.

At least he has a sense of humor about it. 


-  The Cavs won yesterday, 93-67 over the Maccabi Elite.  Drew Gooden had 21 points, and James almost had a triple-double with 13-8-8, and Donyell Marshal had 19 points on 8-12 shooting to go with 10 rebounds.  Yeah, they had a lot of turnovers (19), but on the whole things went pretty well.

- You heard it here first, but I'm worried about the Cavs free throw shooting, particularly LeBron.  He was not reliable in the World Championships, and he's shooting 60% after going 5-8 last night.  It's still early, and they don't count, but everyone knows that the greats have to shoot 80% from the line.  It's the only way to make the opposition really pay for sending them to the line.  Michael Jordan was a career .835 free throw shooter. 

-  The biggest reason I'm worried about this: On Letterman, Dave asked LeBron what his free throw percentage was last season.  Lebron said "I don't know, around 78%."  His real percentage was 73.8%.  I know it doesn't seem like much, but that's 33 points over the course of the season, and many more if he could get that FT% to 80 or 85%.  I'm sure he will be fine, but it sure doesn't seem like he worked too hard on his free throws this offseason.  Just something to keep an eye on.

- I did catch part of Kevin Keane's awful post-game call-in show again, and it was, again, awful.  I can't wait for Mike Snyder to get back to doing the Alltel Postgame Show.  Keane was whining about the Cavaliers scheduling the Maccabi Elite, to which I respond "It's the preseason!  What difference does it make who they're playing!  LeBron hasn't even played in all of these games!!!"

- My biggest fear is that if they replace Keane, they'll replace him with the worse Mark Schwab.  Please WTAM, please give Paul Rado a full time gig.  He makes more sense in 15 minutes than these other guys do in 3 hours.

-  The Cavs are in Rochester to play the Raptors tonight.  I think the Raptors are going to be a fun team to watch this year.  I think that Bryan Colangelo is going to be able to bring a Phoenix Suns-style offense to that team, with T.J. Ford as a Steve Nash and Chris Bosh as Amare Stoudamire.  I think it could work.

- LeBron's on the cover of SI, with Carmelo and DWade.  If all three go down, then they should just stop selling SI altogether.  At least LeBron can't be on Madden.

- Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY NBA LIVE 07!!  Buy NBA 2K7, it's great, but stay away from the Tracy McGrady-covered game.  It's so bad that it might make you start to hate basketball.

-  Scrubs Season Four is probably the best season of the show, and has been in a pretty solid rotation in my DVD player since it came out last week.  Obviously I love this show, and think it's the best sitcom since...Spin City probably, another Bill Lawrence-produced masterpiece (until Michael J. Fox had to leave the show).  The best episode?  My Cake, the one where J.D.'s dad (John Ritter) dies.  It's a wonderful episode, and probably the most fitting tribute to Ritter, because it's a nice, good sitcom episode that doesn't forget to bring the funny even when it's talking about serious matters.  Buy this set, buy all the seasons.  They're worth every penny, and you can watch it instead of Deal or No Deal.

- I also think that Scrubs has shown more guest stars in their underwear than any sitcom ever.  In Season 4 it's Heather Graham (woooo), Juliana Margolis (I'm not complaining), and Chrystee Pharris (ok, so I'm not sure she strips down, but she's smokin').  Food for thought.  And for the ladies, there's Colin Farrell ( but fully clothed).

-  The CavsHQ Blog fully endorses Paul Lukas' UniWatch Blog, a regular continuation of his Page 2 articles.  Normally his stuff is just nice little miscellanea, but today he made a great point.  We all know there's a new ball in the NBA, but has anyone stopped to think about the effect on the logos that feature the old ball?  Case in point, the Cavaliers logo:

Notice the, um, huge basketball in the background?  It's the old model.  As Lukas points out, the teams that have the ball in their logos are:

"The Hawks, Celtics, Cavs, Mavs, Pistons, Warriors, Pacers, Clippers, Heat, Nets, Knicks, Hornets, Magic, Sixers, Suns, Sonics, Raptors, Jazz, and Wizards (the only logo where the ball appears twice) -- plus the Eastern and Western Conference logos! Many teams have the ball depicted on their uniforms, too."

So, this begs the question, will teams change their logos, wait until their next logo change, or just wait for the NBA to go back to the old ball?  Time will tell, but my money is on the second choice.

That seems like enough for this week.  Have a good one everybody.

Go Cavs (Vote for the Cavalier Girls)

Mike