Revisiting Georgia's Winning Streak

Another week, another criticism of one of my favorite blogger's optimism about what Georgia has proved this year.  Here is Blutarsky on Georgia's mindset for the SEC Championship Game:

What I mean is that this is a game in which Georgia shouldn’t be burdened by timidity and uncertainty.  There’s no reason to wave Logan Gray out there to fair catch punts.  Richt doesn’t have to send a message to his team that they have to be tougher on third-and-short if they don’t want him calling for a field goal early against a CUSA squad in a meaningless bowl game.  No, they’ve proved themselves by regrouping and clawing their way into the title game.  They’ve accomplished their primary preseason goal.  In a sense, they’re playing with house money now.  They can afford to be a little loose.

Given the weak opposition that has provided the list of victims for the ten-game winning streak, I don't think that there is a strong case to be made that Georgia is playing with house money, unless one simply expected improvement this year.  Georgia has clearly shown that, but they have not yet shown the ability to beat top teams.  They don't need to beat LSU on Saturday, but they do need to show that they can play on the same field.  (Alternatively, beating the Big Ten Championship Game loser, Michigan, or Nebraska in the bowl game would do the trick, although Nebraska not quite as much as the other two and with bowl games, there is the inevitable "how much do these teams really care?" question.) 

I don't think that it's unreasonable for Blutarsky and other Georgia fans to overvalue the ten-game winning streak.  Normally, you would think that a streak like that in the SEC would inevitably involve taking multiple quality scalps.  This is just a bizarre year, one in which the SEC is Morganna-style top heavy and Georgia missed the busty part of the conference.  Try this stat on for size: Georgia has not played a team ranked in the top 20 for ten straight games this year.  The last time this happened was 1981.  Moreover, none of the teams that Georgia beat in its ten-game winning streak are likely to finish in the top twenty of either the AP poll or the good computer polls.  (The highest-rated team of the ten right now is, surprisingly enough, Vandy, which is #27 in SRS and #33 in the Sagarin Predictor.  That close win in Nashville looks better and better.)  This is an unprecedented run for the Dawgs, and not necessarily in a good way.

Now, the counter would be that Georgia has put up excellent numbers, above and beyond 10-2.  One way to show this is my favorite measure: yards per play margin.  Georgia is +1.53, which is very good.  (For comparison, LSU is 1.96, although against a much tougher schedule.  Bama is an off-the-charts +3.34.)  Another way is this excellent chart, which accounts for strength-of-schedule by showing that Georgia has held its opponents well below their average production on offense.  These numbers are encouraging, but coming back to the original point, the Dawgs need a good performance on Saturday to validate the season.  If they get blown out, then the "what does it mean to beat a bunch of average opponents?" question will resurface.  

I'm Going with my Eight-Tentacled Friend

Nigel Powers’ Favorite Side

My friend Tom has two sports passions: Dutch soccer and Ohio State football. Needless to say, we see eye-to-eye on the former more than the latter. It occurred to me when I was talking to him on Friday afternoon that he should be familiar with the emotions that would be created by the Dutch winning the World Cup because this edition of the Oranje would become the 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes. The ’02 Bucks were by no means the best Ohio State team of recent years. They were not especially talented (by Ohio State standards, anyway, and I’m mainly thinking about the skill positions) or impressive, but because of their Ecksteinian grit/luck, they went 14-0 and won Ohio State their only national title in the past 42 seasons. Forget the Clockwork Orange team of ’74, this Netherlands side is not as talented as the Koeman-Gullit-Rijkaard-van Basten generation of the late 80s or the Bergkamp-Overmars-Stam-de Boer-de Boer-Davids-van der Sar teams of the 90s. This team has two great players - Sneijder and Robben - and a bunch of functional parts that defend well. In other words, this team would be the last team that a Dutch fan would expect would bring the country its first World Cup, and yet here they are in a semifinal against Uruguay.

Speaking of Dutch teams of the past, I highly recommend Rafael Honigstein’s description of the myth of Total Football:

Claims that the Netherlands has now changed beyond recognition into a negative, cynical side are made only by those who wrongly bought into the opposite extreme of the Dutch as some sort of European Brazilians and eternal purveyors of the beautiful game before. In truth, they're no more defensive than 30 years ago; they've just found it very hard to break down opponents who have so far resisted from attacking them, unlike France and Italy in 2008.

"Beautiful football is difficult against teams who don't give you an inch of space," Wesley Sneijder said this week.

The fact that the Dutch have mostly grinded out victories does not reflect a diminished ambition or change of direction at all. It's merely been a function of coming up against deep-lying teams, difficult conditions (the heavy pitch in Port Elizabeth made it impossible for Robben to accelerate against Brazil in the quarterfinals) and not quite clicking up front.

There's every chance that all the obituary writers will quickly turn around to celebrate the resurrection of Total Football if a few well-executed attacking moves come off against limited Uruguay on Tuesday. Then we'll read that van Marwijk has given the team it's "true identity" back, and other nonsense. It's high time the old stereotypes were ditched, regardless of the result. Dutch soccer itself already did it a while back. Maybe the rest of the world should follow suit.

Leave it to a German to nail the Dutch just so.

The Brazil-Netherlands match was especially interesting to me because Brazil played against their reputation. Dunga’s teams are supposed to be athletic, sound defensively, impregnable in the air, and imbued by a winning mentality transmitted by their coach. Against Holland, Brazil were undone by a pair of crosses into the box, after which they panicked and turned into a bitching, unlikeable team. Was Brazil never as stout as we thought? Should we not read too much into what happens in 45 minutes of football, no matter how big the stage? I lean towards the latter. I love the World Cup as a sporting event, but I have to admit that a lot is made of very small sample sizes.

The Condor Legion Flies Again

I’m probably engaged in a bit of wishful thinking here to support Spain (my analysis is often at its worst when my rooting interests and my predictions dovetail), but I feel pretty good about Spain’s chances. Germany cannot possibly have another gear. They have played as well as possible for the past two matches, save for a ten minute spell when they lost the plot against England. However, they’ve been up against two teams that suited their style. England are more name than merit and Argentina, while individually talented, played a disjointed style that Alexi Lalas correctly derided as “sandlot.” (Never have I agreed so vigorously with Mr. Lalas.) Argentina was a perfect mark for an organized German team, especially with Javier Mascherano cutting a lonely figure as the only central midfielder on the pitch. Yes, I wish that I would have figured this out before the match, but if I would have trusted my gut from before the tournament when I took every opportunity to mock Maradona, the warnings were present.

Spain, on the other hand, have not gotten out of third gear. Moreover, there is an obvious solution for them: remove the restrictor plate that is Fernando Torres. Vicente del Bosque has been doing his best Bobby Cox impression in this tournament, sticking with Torres despite the facts that: (1) Spain obviously play better with one striker because the players they put on in place of the second striker give them width; and (2) Torres is hurt, bereft of confidence, or both. Over a long season, sticking with Torres makes sense. In a short knock-out tournament, Spain can’t wait for Fernando to come good, especially when he doesn’t have the greatest scoring record as an international to begin with. Spain could afford to piss away an hour against Portugal and Paraguay because those teams were not very threatening; they cannot do the same against Germany. I know this. Everyone covering Spain knows this. Paul the Octopus knows this. Will Spain’s manager figure this out? I’m guessing that he will.

So, imagine that Spain deploy their 4-2-3-1 with Xavi, Iniesta, and one of Pedro/Navas/Silva behind Villa. Now, you have a fast striker running at Germany’s slow-ish centerbacks. You have a proper winger to stretch the Germans horizontally. (Look at how much better Spain played when Pedro came on against the bunkering Paraguayans.) And then you have the in-form Iniesta on the left, attacking a centerback playing left back. Del Bosque has taken a lot of criticism for playing two defensive midfielders, but his system is just what the doctor ordered for dealing with Oezil and Schweinsteiger. And in the middle of the pitch, you have Xavi.

So yes, I’m doubling down on Spain. A team that has never won the World Cup or even played in a final. Against three-time champions and six-time finalists Germany. I never said that I made sense.

That was Awesome (After 26 Outs)

So what was the best aspect of the Braves' improbable 4-3 win over the Phillies last night? The Baseball Messiah homering to tie the game in the ninth? Much-maligned Troy Glaus hitting a two-run homer to keep hope alive? Much-maligned Nate McLouth hitting a bomb in the tenth for the win? The Braves' novel idea of dashing into the clubhouse after a walk-off home run as an upgraded version of the silent treatment? The mental image of the Barfing Bandit having to watch his Phils blow a game to a division rival?

Mark Bradley, who is often one to get carried away, gets carried away:

Before the game, Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel was asked if a transcendent young player — like the Phillies’ Howard was back in 2005, or like Heyward is today — can energize an entire franchise. “A guy like that can bring excitement and bring energy,” Manuel said. “He can bring a whole lot to a team and to a clubhouse.”

We Atlantans are seeing it on a daily basis. Barely two weeks on the job, Jason Heyward hasn’t just stamped himself as the Next Big Thing. He’s making a big thing out of the team around him. He’s making us think it’s 1991 all over again. And maybe it is.

I'll put my irrational exuberance about the mystical powers of Mssr. Heyward up against anyone, but having this burgeoning superstar in the Braves' dugout hasn't made McLouth, Glaus, or Melky hit. Maybe last night is the start of something and the weak spots in the order will get better, but years of watching Bobby Cox succeed based on a mantra that a team should never read too much into any one game make me skeptical.

Five Thoughts on the Braves at the Outset of 2010

1. In thinking about Jason Heyward the other day and how fortunate we are to have him, I was reminded of the Baseball Prospectus's chapter about the Braves several years ago. At the height of the Moneyball craze, the Prospectus argued that the Braves weren't cutting edge in the Billy Beane sense, but they had figured out how to exploit a market inefficiency of their own. Most baseball teams struggle to know much about the players in the draft pool because the pool is so big. The Braves made the decision to know their local area very, very well so they would know more about their draftees than other teams would about theirs. Now, cue the stories about Heyward that other scouts didn't see as much in him because he never saw a strike, so they never got to see him swing, but the Braves saw him enough and had enough good input from coaches in the area that they swiped him.

2. I'm hard-pressed to think of a weakness for this team going into the season. Last year, we wondered whether we would get anything from the outfield and we knew that we were going to get below-average production at first base. This year, we have a first baseman who is one year removed from being a five-win player and every outfield spot is manned by a player who can at least be described as decent. I'd feel better with Javy Vazquez in the rotation, but right now, I feel good about this team.

3. Outside of Heyward, the Brave whom I am most excited to see this year is Yunel. There is a tendency to get excited about the new shiny addition, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that our shortstop has improved in each of his three season as a major leaguer. He was a seven-win player last year, which put him in the top tier of shortstops in baseball. If he didn't have a reputation of being a bit difficult or if this town didn't have a sense of ennui about the Braves, Yunel would be a star. Maybe the combination of Bobby's last year and Heyward's emergence will cause people to pay more attention this year and they'll realize that we have a great shortstop in Atlanta. See, Jason Heyward can solve anything!

4. How much of this season comes down to Chipper? The Braves are a more balanced team than they have been in recent years, but they lack a true marquee hitter, unlike the rival Phillies with Utley and Howard. Chipper can be that guy, but he showed the signs of age for the first time last year, as his numbers dipped into mere mortal territory. If I could ask the Fates one question to determine whether this team will be playing in October, it would be whether Chipper is going to be a 1.000 OPS player or an .800 version.

5. I know it's not Bobby's style, but I kinda wish that Tommy Hanson were getting the start today. In my mind, he's the ace of the staff already. But then again, I've always been distracted by new, shiny things.

And now, rest of the NL, you will die.

450 feet at a time.

It's Official

Jason Heyward isn't going to make an out all year. I think that would be a record of some sort.

Someone Stop Me...

Because I'm feeling very optimistic about the Hawks. The local professional basketball collective is off to an excellent start, as they are 6-2 despite having played only three home games and having already gone on a West Coast swing. Josh Smith is showing inklings of making the jump. With the standard caveats about sample size, Smith is shooting 59% from the floor and is averaging 4.4 assists per game. The Hawks could potentially have six players average double digits in points, with the one limiting factor being that the team has a much better bench this year that will keep the starters' minutes down.

Mike Woodson has far more viable mix-and-match options this year among the reserves. I can't even begin to say how much happier I am with the idea of Joe Smith getting minutes as opposed to Solomon Jones. Jamal Crawford is a better version of Flip Murray. (Let the Vinnie Johnson analogies commence!) Jeff Teague is miles better than Acie Law ever was as he has, you know, athleticism. The Hawks should do better in the second and third quarters this year with quality bench guys. Woodson must have moments where he looks down the bench and thinks to himself "yes, this is the life." For all the stick that Atlanta Spirit gets, they spent the money to assemble a very good roster and their decision to stick with Woodson looks wise.

So here's the question: is the Hawks' ceiling fourth in the East? Before the season, I thought that the answer was yes. Now, I'm not so sure. Boston looks great, but they have an old roster that might again end up missing a key part by the end of the season. Cleveland looks underwhelming right now (last night's solid win over the Magic notwithstanding) because Shaq is not a good fit with LeBron in a basketball sense. I could see that team struggling with the "will LeBron stay?" distraction that will be amplified by the Northeast-based national media, which is quivering with anticipation like a teenage girl on opening night of a Twilight movie about the notion of LeBron in the Big Apple. (Please, G-d, don't let this happen.) That leaves Orlando, a team that is a tough draw for the Hawks because Atlanta doesn't have an obvious defensive option to handle Dwight Howard. Could the Hawks be one team away from the Finals? This team that has never played in the Eastern Finals? I think I have a tag for moments like this...

A Guy Can Dream, Can't He?

How about Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Ty Lue and the No. 11 pick for Kobe and Radmanovic? The Hawks then grab Mike Conley with the #3 pick (although I'm not sure that he's the right point guard to play with Kobe because the primary attribute that a Kobe sidekick needs is dead-eye shooting ability to make opponents pay for double-teams) and have the following starting lineup: Conley, Kobe, Childress, J-Smoove, Zaza. Or how about this: the Hawks use the #3 pick on Al Horford because they're admitting a mistake on Shelden Williams and then give Salim a greater role now that that they don't need a true point guard with the ball going through Kobe on most possessions, thus giving them a starting five of Salim, Kobe, J-Smoove, Horford, Zaza with Childress in the sixth man role. Either of those teams is a playoff contender in the East. If Lebron can get the Cavs close to the Finals with his crap-tastic supporting cast, then couldn't Kobe get the Hawks close with a supporting cast that isn't great now, but is getting better and might be dynamite in two years? A few other thoughts on the fantasy that will never happen:

1. The 800-pound elephant in the room is whether Billy Knight has the authority to make an enormous deal for a player like Kobe, given the legal wrangling going on between Belkin and Atlanta Spirit. Is it possible, from a legal perspective, that Atlanta Spirit would want or need Belkin to sign off on this deal?

2. Notice how the two players taken after Josh Childress are the potential centerpieces for Philly or Chicago to use in acquiring Kobe? Oy. (And I say this as an unabashed fan of Childress's game.)

3. I have absolutely no problem with Kobe demanding a trade. Mitch Kupchak has been inept in his efforts to surround Kobe with talent. Kobe will turn 29 before next season starts and he knows that he is reaching the second half of his prime years. Why should he be forced to waste those years playing with Chris Mihm and Smush Parker? Bryant has leverage because he's a terrific player who always plays hard; why shouldn't he use that leverage? The counter to this defense of Kobe has always been that he forced Shaq's departure in the first place, but it's now looking that that might not be the case, but instead, the Lakers floated that rumor as cover for their real motivation, which was to get rid of Shaquille before paying a guy with a suspect work ethic and his prime years in the rearview mirror a max deal.

4. It wouldn't be a Bill Simmons column without taking a shot at Atlanta as a "moribund NBA city," but look at his explanation that LA is a terrific destination for NBA free agents because of "the weather, the women, the wealth and the Hollywood scene." Insert the word "Black" in front of "Hollywood" and which city are we describing? Atlanta isn't a choice NBA destination right now because the team hasn't won since the Clinton Administration. (If I can figure out a way to blame George Bush for the Hawks, I surely will. Someone get Cindy Sheehan on the phone, stat!) Kobe would change that and he's smart enough to know that this will be a good NBA market with a winning team and a major star.

4a. After taking the obligatory shot at Simmons, I need to mention that his discussion of prior All-NBA players traded in their primes is very compelling. There's almost no way to overpay for Bryant, although the Joe Johnson-Josh Smith-#3 pick deal I saw somewhere yesterday comes close.

5. To throw more cold water on the possibility of Bryant coming to Atlanta, Chad Ford's suggestion that the more likely result is that Jerry Buss will fire Kupchak($) seems solid to me. The only way this wouldn't work is if Bryant sees the damage done by Kupchak as long-term and he feels impatient.

6. One positive thought: given the Hawks' (understandable) struggles in recent years to sell tickets, Kobe has more economic value to them than he does to just about any other NBA franchise.

7. Jeff Schultz's attempt to argue that the Hawks should not try to acquire Bryant are beyond weak:

In the culmination of a three-year franchise meltdown since Shaquille O’Neal was drop-kicked to Miami, the Los Angeles Lakers heard Bryant demand a trade on a radio talkshow.

On. A radio. Talkshow.

Now that’s class.

Yeah, that's a reason to decline to make an effort to acquire one of the top five players in basketball: he made a trade demand on a sports talk radio show. That has EVERYTHING to do with building a winning hoops team.

This isn’t about what kind of athlete Bryant is or what he could bring to a basketball team. It’s about what he has become. After three championships with the Lakers, he wanted to be The Show. Now he’s Sideshow Kobe.

Right, because most people would not react when they bust their rears for 80+ games every year, only to see their inept management base their plan for improving the team on the maturation of a 19-year old post project, all while declining every opportunity to bring in players who can help the team win now.

But there is also little question that the Bryant-O’Neal feud significantly played into the situation. Their relationship drove a wedge into a team that could’ve won more championships. It drove Phil Jackson to grab a candle and a harp and run for the hills. Bryant’s actions set the stage for O’Neal’s departure.

If you still don’t believe that, consider Jackson’s book, “The Last Season: A Team in Search of Its Soul.” He referred to his relationship with Bryant as “psychological war.”

Jackson also wrote that he became so frustrated with his star that he approached general manager Mitch Kupchak in January about trading him. The key passage: “I won’t coach this team next year if he is still here. He won’t listen to anyone. I’ve had it with this kid.”

And Jackson believed what he wrote so much that he came right back to coach the Lakers after a one-year hiatus. And who was the first person to call Kobe to talk him down off the ledge after he made his trade demand? Phil Jackson.

You think: “Bryant and Joe Johnson. Wow!” But any Lakers trade demands probably would start with Johnson and the third overall pick.

Don’t. Even. Think about it.

The Hawks have a chance to do something right (draft Mike Conley Jr.) and go up.

If Jeff Schultz was writing in Phoenix in 1992, he undoubtedly would have written about how Jeff Hornacek, Andrew Lang and Tim Perry were a good nucleus and if the Suns could just pair them with a good draft pick, they'd be on the road to success.

What annoys me most about Schultz's column is that he simply ignores Bryant's merits as a basketball player, namely that he scores 30+ per game and is one of the best on-the-ball defenders in the NBA to boot, not to mention the fact that no one has ever accused him of not playing hard. Schultz ignores the most important evidence and instead relies on the pop psychology factors that ought to be at the back of the bus when evaluating a potential Bryant trade. Unfortunately, that's where we are in modern mainstream sports journalism. The juicy bits from Phil Jackson's book and the choice of medium in announcing a trade demand are more important than 32.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.4 assists every game. Let's just have psychologists run teams instead of basketball pros.