While We’re Waiting…Who Wants Antawn, Sleeveless in Buffalo, OSU Decade of Dominance

While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.

What could the Cavs get for ‘Tawn?  “Most good teams don’t have $10 million worth of talent they’re willing to give up. And if they do, they’re the type of players the Cavs have little to no interest in acquiring. A Jamison deal would then require a third (or fourth) team to make the math work, with the likeliest candidates being sad-sack teams with a lot of cap room and a willingness to rent it out if they can grab a draft pick and/or cash in the process. There’s also a chance that Cleveland, which has about $5.5 million in cap room, could work its way into a supporting role in a Carmelo Anthony trade, in which case almost anything is possible.  So we came up with a list of potential suitors for Jamison, just for the heck of it. Unfortunately for the Cavs, most contenders/playoff teams have little need for a player in Jamison’s mold.” [Zach Lowe/Sports Illustrated]

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Prepping for the weather today in Buffalo: “Offensive linemen can not, will not, wear anything on their arms.  ‘You might cheat and wear a couple of shirts with the sleeves cut off but you have to leave the arms exposed,’ guard Eric Steinbach(notes) said. ‘No sleeve rule.  Isn’t that a little harsh?  ‘No rule, it’s just an unwritten code,’ Thomas said. ‘You will be shunned by the offensive line if you break it. That’s throughout the league, too. You don’t want to be branded as a sleeve guy.'” [Tom Withers/AP]

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Looking at Ohio State’s “decade of dominance” against Michigan: “Tressel would go 4-1 in his first five Michigan games, all against the Lloyd Carr. Being who he is, he naturally topped that by going 5-0 over the next five to boost his career record to 9-1 against the Wolverines.  Today, we’ll take a look at those games, two of which were against Carr, while the last three came against Rich Rodriguez. Coaches changed, but the results stayed the same. Yes they did.”  [Jason/Eleven Warriors]

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Looking back and catching up with Gark: “Ryan Garko, the Indians most valuable draft pick from 8 years of drafts,  is not going to play baseball in America next year. He’s going to play in Korea, in what’s apparently the equivalent of a AAA league. If you think about it like that, it make it clear exactly how incredible Cleveland had to be in every other aspect of minor league player acquisition in order to compete in 2005 and 2007. And, of course, it makes it clear exactly how predictable the current state of the franchise was….For a brief period of time, Garko seemed like everything right about the Shapiro era: a young, hard-working player who was on his way up, using high character and intelligence to contribute to Shapiro’s plan. In retrospect, he seems more like much of what was wrong with the Shapiro era: a guy who contributed to an epedemic of not getting offensive production out of classically offensive positions, a player forced to do things he wasn’t good at because of a manager run amok, and a terrifically mediocre performer who represented the best of multiple Indians drafts.” [Let’s Go Tribe]

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Forbes loves releasing sports stories like this: “Forbes released figures this week showing James was the most underpaid player in the NBA last year, making $15.8 million a year. In the report, Forbes used players’ salaries from 2009-10 and juxtaposed individual statistics alongside how many wins the team produced in the season. Specifically factoring into the report was sports economist David Berri’s statistical formula that uses the following for each player: points, rebounds, turnovers, steals, assists and shooting percentages per team possessions in a game.  The report determined NBA teams spend an average of $1.7 million per victory on a player; after all the number crunching was over, Forbes reported that James brought 27.2 wins to the Cavaliers, worth a total of $46.5 million — giving Gilbert and the Cavaliers a net gain of $30.7 million on King James, above any other player in the NBA.”  [Hal Spivack/Fanhouse]

(AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)