Out of The Loop

Allow me to reintroduce my girls, her name is Joan Smalls Rodriguez.  If you like'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Hatian, she's as blended as they get.  Victoria's secret?  The most beautifullest girls in the world, just like that.  This is not an around the way girl and you like won't see her hanging with Jenny from your block, so don't go brushing off your shoulders if you see her around the way.

They're not stopping because it doesn't look good, they're stopping because it doesn't help them in the new playoff system.

They think they can fool us but we read through their lies.

The odds of any player that signed their name on the dotted line today going on to play in the NFL are significantly better than the odds of you winning the lottery.  

215 of these kids will make an NFL roster and 310 of them will be invited to the combine; so there is a chance.

There is a chance that many of them will go on to make real money playing football BUT (and there's always a but) it's guaranteed that the institutions that present them this opportunity will make money off of them.

Ole Miss won the day but the NCAA and the system win every day, I guess the kids win some too?

Daryl Morey writes in The Economist about Jeremy Lin (3 months before he signs him and many moons after he cut him)

Predicting performance in basketball

The elephant on the court

The invited guest author is the general manager of the Houston Rockets. He can be reached on Twitter at @dmorey.

COMMENTARY

Taking a spin on point guard wheel

Rockets most active participants

By John Hollinger | ESPN.com

At the center of it all are the Rockets, who have divested themselves of two quality point guards (Dragic and Lowry), may be reuniting with a third (Brooks), and have an offer sheet out to a fourth (Lin). It's a bit odd that they let Dragic walk when his four-year, $30 million deal with Phoenix seems completely reasonable for a youngish, productive starter who engineered some of the Rockets' best basketball last season; that they are offering Lin the same money speaks volumes about how they value each of them.

It's less odd to see Lowry walk, if only because of how much he clashed with coach Kevin McHale, but on pure talent this unquestionably is a major setback for Houston. To offset it, they effectively bet that even with Lowry, the Raptors will screw things up enough to miss out on the playoffs at least once in the next half-decade, and perhaps will screw them up royally enough to end up in the top five.

Houston did this thanks to a clever piece of "reverse lottery protection" -- Houston rolls the pick over to the next year if it isn't in the lottery. (Toronto gets a bit of protection on the high side as well; top-3 next year, top-2 the next two years, and top-1 the two years after that, according to the Houston Chronicle).

Nonetheless, they seem to be rapidly dismantling their not-quite-an-8-seed roster of seasons yore. Dragic and Lowry are gone, and Courtney Lee's qualifying offer was revoked. At the same time, Houston is set to give Omer Asik a generous offer sheet and perhaps do the same with Lin.

The ultimate goal here still seems to be a rental of Dwight Howard, but with a Plan B of having assets to obtain another superstar and a mix of short-term thinking mixed in; the Rockets seem uninterested in anything that will tie up their cap space too long if it's not for a star player, and want as many assets as possible to help a potential trade partner rebuild. But at the same time, they would like a rim protector and a dynamic point guard.

Perhaps they thought Dragic just wasn't the guy, but the Rockets have also kept for themselves a ton of flexibility. Even after bowling over Asik and potentially Lin with big offers, they'll still be several million dollars under the salary cap, which affords the ability to take a bad contract or two off the Magic's hands while also relieving them of Howard. They can also instantly blast another $9.4 million hole in their cap by amnestying Luis Scola.

And of course, Houston now has trade assets aplenty -- six No. 1 picks from the past three seasons, all of whom are on rookie contracts, plus the guaranteed lottery pick from Toronto, plus a future first from Dallas, plus four non-guaranteed contracts and a fifth (Shaun Livingston) that only has $1 million in salary protection, plus a huge expiring deal (Kevin Martin's $12.4 million) to use as cap ballast.

This can work for Howard, but it can just as easily work at the trade deadline for some other unnamed star, or for next summer when the Rockets will have even more cap space. But at some point, it does need to work.

What the Rockets have essentially done is build a house on spec; they're hoping like hell somebody buys it and maybe somebody will, but they didn't have a contract when they put the shovel in the ground. Right now they're probably the league's most alluring trade partner, and you have to think that at some point somebody will spring a star loose in return for the Rockets' assets.

This week on Out of the Loop, we discuss: 

The Rhetoric around the Heat's championship

NBA Free Agency, and the Houston Rockets

The Nets open the Barclays Center September 28 with a series of concerts by Nets’ part-owner Jay-Z. Barclays is paying $200 million over 20 years for naming rights, which is the richest arena rights deal in the U.S. The 18,000 seat arena (19,000 for concerts) will include 100 luxury suites, including 11 priced at $550,000 annually. The $1 billion building will hold 225 events annually including basketball, boxing, the circus, concerts, hockey and more. The Nets will keep all of the building’s revenues, unlike at their past arenas.

With a new hometown, arena and roster, the Nets are ready for the big-time. 

OOTLoop Salute July 1, 2012

Talk about a kid who struggles with his confidence or didn't like being put on the box.

From NBA TV:

Perry Jones III averages 21 points and 12 boards in games with a made 3 (let him float), he averages 12 points and 6 boards in games without a 3 (put him on the box).

Is it confidence or positioning?

Anthony Davis. PF (Kentucky)

Harrison Barnes. SF (North Carolina)

Thomas Robinson. PF (Kansas)

Terrence Ross. SG (Washington)

Andre Drummond. C (Connecticut) 

Terrence Jones. PF (Kentucky)

Bradley Beal. SG (Florida)

Meyers Leonard. C (Illinois)

Kendall Marshall. PG (North Carolina)

Damian Lillard. PG (Weber State)

Dion Waiters. SG (Syracuse)

Jeremy Lamb. SG (Connecticut)

Michael Kidd Gilchrist. SF (Kentucky)

Austin Rivers. SG (Duke)

Tyler Zeller. C (North Carolina)

Quincy Miller. SF (Baylor)

Perry Jones III. PF (Baylor)

Jared Sullinger. PF (Ohio State)

Royce White. PF (Iowa State)

Marquis Teague. PG (Kentucky)

Arnett Moultrie. PF (Mississippi State)

John Henson. PF (North Carolina)

Fab Melo. C (Syracuse)

Jeff Taylor. SF (Vanderbilt)

John Jenkins. SG (Vanderbilt)

OOTLoop Salute June 24, 2012

Shout out this week to Huntington Beach, California for producing this weeks salute; Jasmine Tookes.  She's next in a long line of models brought to you by Victoria's Secret and I implore them to keep that line coming.

Interesting Note:

What’s a fun fact that nobody knows about you?

Louisville vs. Kentucky: Smackdown - 2011 McDonald's All American Game

OOTLoop Salute June 17, 2012

This years NBA Finals match-up takes us back to the days of Magic vs Bird and Jordan taking on any other great.  We've been given what we've been asking for and it's all we could hope it would be.

 vs 

Two games in they've split the series at one game a piece and it looks like there'll be plenty more drama to come.  We head back to Miami where the Thunder and the Heat try to prove that they're to best basketball team in the world, while the winner of the series gets to laud they're MVP as the best player in the world.