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.
“Many of these teams drafted poorly, but the ratio of “teams that built contenders from lottery scratch” to “teams that did not” is really lopsided. The lottery is a crap shoot, starting with the need to get your ping pong balls vacuumed out of glass sphere. Add that to projecting the future exploits of 19 year olds, and the result is pretty frequently continued mediocrity. Speaking of, there is another young NBA contender built through the draft.
The Chicago Bulls are not a “lottery success story” in any easily definable way. From 2000 – 2007, the Bulls picked #4, #9, #2, #4, #2, #7, #3, #7, #2 and #9. Where did that leave them? Back in the lottery, as a 33 – 49 team. Fate smiled on them and with a 1.7% chance to win the lottery, they were able to add Derrick Rose, who became the youngest MVP in league history. Besides the fact it took ten years, that’s pretty irreproducible. Luckily for Cleveland, Irving came with the first dip into the lottery.” [Hetrick/Cavs the Blog]
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“You will hear some people say that the way Varejao plays makes him more susceptible to injuries like the wrist injury he suffered on Friday. These people are being idiots. EVERY big man in the league is susceptible to injury. Every NBA big man of any consequence has suffered at least one injury that has cost him major chunks of a season, and guys like Dwight Howard and LaMarcus Aldridge who have avoided them in their first several season in the league will suffer one eventually.” [Curry/Cavs HQ]
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Good stuff on small market teams having to take risks. My one liner take-away? Try this, the last time anyone spent more than the Yankees on payroll for a season? Try 1998. Fourteen consecutive years of having the highest payroll in baseball. Think they are relinquishing that anytime soon? [Passan/Yahoo]
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Analyzing the Browns running game. “This means that, although their offensive line can best be described as “mediocre,” their backs can best be described as “pedestrian,” which isn’t ideal when you have the word “running” in your job title. The SLY and OFY figures were slightly better in 2010, when Peyton Hillis was healthy, happy and having a breakout year. But the differences are slight, and the Hillis ship almost certainly will be sailing out of Lake Erie this offseason.
If and when that happens, it will leave Montario Hardesty and Chris Ogbonnaya in the Browns’ backfield, along with a player to be named later. Although we prefer not to rank running backs with fewer than 100 carries, Ogbonnaya was clearly the more valuable of the two in their limited opportunities.” [Tuccitto/Football Outsiders] (ESPN Insider needed)
