Week 4 NBA Power Rankings Served Up With A Side of "Boring"

Man, did I pick a terrible NBA season to do a reoccurring power ranking post. So far, this condensed schedule has produced a very top and bottom-heavy league. Consequently, there has been virtually no movement from week to week in my top and bottom 5’s. Through the 1st 3 weeks, both my top and bottom 5’s have alternated between 6 teams each, and the order of my top 3 has been exactly the same every week…boring! If I had time to rank teams 1-30, there would be a lot of movement in the middle, but 1 man can only do so much. A little heads-up: don’t look for that trend to change too much in week 4 either. However, we do have 1 new face in the game this week, so bear with me…on to the rankings!

1. Miami Heat (PR=1, 26-7)…Another week without a blemish, another week (4 for 4) atop the rankings. New additions and improved chemistry between The Big 3 aside, the real reason for the Heat’s dominance this year: LeBron and Wade’s shot selection. James and Wade are both on pace for career highs in FG% and career lows in 3-point attempts per game.

2. Oklahoma City (PR=2, 26-7)…Are tied with Miami for the best record in the league, and just finished another perfect week as well, but Sunday night’s OT thriller against Denver may have showcased why the title might run through OKC for the next 5 years or so. In an off shooting night for James Harden (2 for 12), KD netted 51, Westbrook 40, and Ibaka not only had a triple double but clinched the victory with a game-ending block as well.

3. Chicago Bulls (PR=3, 27-8)…Ho-hum, the Bulls finished another strong week and rounded out the top 3 for the 4th consecutive time. More important than any game results though, the Bulls got back a certain reigning MVP by the name of D-Rose, and he doesn’t seem to be showing any effects of those lingering back and toe issues.

4. San Antonio Spurs (PR=4, 23-10)…Let’s make it 3 weeks in a row for my top 4 while we’re at it. I wanted to drop the Spurs just out of spite for playing their JV squad and losing by 40 to Portland the other night, but just couldn’t do it in good faith after they had reeled off 11 straight W’s. Love it or hate it, Coach Popovich knows what he’s doing.

5. Orlando Magic (PR=Not Ranked, 22-12)…Lookout, everybody! We have some new blood! It’s still inconceivable to me that the Magic can challenge Miami or Chicago (or a young and hungry Indy or Philly team for that matter) in a 7 game series the way their roster is currently constructed, but facts are facts, and following that ugly 4 game losing streak in late January Orlando has won 10 of 13 to get to the 3rd best record in the East. Despite some truly awful free throw shooting and having 1 foot out the door already, Dwight Howard (averaging 20 and 15 a night) is putting together another All-NBA type season.

Not a bad core-4 to have.

26. Toronto Raptors (PR=27, 10-23)…Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming of “boring.” Once again, I really, really wanted to drop Toronto further down. They are responsible for nearly 20% of this year’s wins for the 3 Eastern Conference teams below them in these rankings.

27. New Orleans Hornets (PR=28, 8-25)…The Hornets climbed another spot in the right direction this past week. They have as many wins (4) in their past 6 games as they did in their 1st 27. The bottom of the East is clearly worse than the bottom of the West (as evidenced by who’s populating these rankings), but New Orleans recent stretch seems to support that notion too (4 of those last 6 opponents hail from the East).

28. New Jersey Nets (PR=29, 10-25)…I watched some of that Nets-Knicks game from this past week, and the Nets shouldn’t be this bad. They also beat a Rose-less Bulls team in Chicago, which is still no easy task. They have a top 3 point guard in the league (Deron Williams), a good shooter (Anthony Morrow), 1 of the steals of last year’s draft (Marshawn Brooks), and a guy who is a serviceable, professional starting NBA power forward (Kris Humphries). Other than Humphries, I guess they are pretty weak on the interior, but there is no reason these guys shouldn’t be a borderline 0.500 team in the East. They finally got Brook Lopez back last week, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens as he works his way back into shape, but I expect the Nets to crawl out of the bottom 5 in the coming weeks…just saying.

29. Washington Wizards (PR=26, 7-26)…After climbing to their highest ranking of the year so far last week, the Wizards showed they can’t handle any form of “success,” and promptly dropped to the lowest position in these rankings this week. This team just has so many people that would be not fun to play with. For example, Nick Young and Jordan Crawford played a combined 69 minutes in Wednesday’s loss to the Kings, took a combined 42 shots from the floor, and together they only had 3 assists. Crawford did score 32 off the bench, but I’m sure that will only encourage him to keep gunning when he’s already 4 for 19 from the floor in the 4th quarter in their next game.

30. Charlotte Bobcats (PR=30, 4-28)…Do I still have to keep writing about this team? At least they ended what was a 16 game losing streak, but they celebrated that win by losing 2 straight to the Pacers by an average of 24.5 points per game. Their average point differential this year is a staggering -14.3, and if you’ve watched them play, you might be surprised it’s not worse.

Rising: Indiana (after a 5 game skid, the schedule helped them out with games against NJ, NO, and twice against Charlotte, and they’ve won 4 in a row) and Houston (sneakily rising in the Western Conference standings)

Falling: Atlanta (usually fake their way to a good regular season record at least, but key injuries may be too much to overcome this year), Milwaukee (seriously, what’s good about this team?), Utah (2-8 in their last 10), and Denver (would be on the outside looking in if the playoffs started today)

My Guilty Pleasure: Going Streaking

Going for a personal record here: 8 posts in a month. And it’s a short month (February) to boot…not too shabby. So, I’ve written before that one of my guilty pleasures is ESPN’s Streak for Cash. Actually, it’s more than just a guilty pleasure…it’s a full blown addiction or sickness or whatever you want to call it at this point. Some people say that insanity is when a person repeats the same task over and over, but still expects a different outcome from that action every time. Well, a quick little look at my Streak for Cash history shows that I’ve been playing since August of 2008. That’s like 3 and a half years of the little monkey pushing the lever expecting to get a food pellet when he gets hit in the head with a mallet instead. My record is far from stellar. A quick little Excel spreadsheet shows that I am 796-701-40 all-time in Streak for Cash. That’s me picking the correct outcome only 53.2% of the time. If that was me betting with a bookie, 53% would be making me a lot of money, but when the object of the game is to pick as many correct games right in a row as you can, 53% isn’t going to get it done.

Now, you play Streak for Cash for free, so it’s not like I’m betting away our mortgage or anything, but it still seems like an exercise in futility most of the time. Whoever decides what games to put up on the site to allow you to pick from (much like the oddsmakers in Vegas) know what they’re doing. These games are legitimately hard to pick, and even if they weren’t hard it doesn’t matter…only 1 person wins every month (each month everyone’s streak gets reset, and the contest starts over). What the difficulty level does do though is weed out even more pretenders. To build a streak, you have to be lucky and knowledgeable (which I like to think I am), but just like in regular gambling you have to have restraint too (which I don’t have much of at all). Know when to fold ‘em, and all that good stuff…thankfully, I never really got into gambling or sports betting because I think I would be terrible at that aspect of it. Even if I get a streak going, I inevitably will try to pick some Euro-league soccer match that I know nothing about, and ka-blam-o…there goes the streak.

My all-time best streak was 14. I was pretty proud of it at the time, but realistically I wasn’t even close to winning. The average winner from month to month has a streak in the mid to high 20’s. Take my picks this month for example: 17-14-1 with a monthly best of 7 in a row. Not bad, but the current leader is already up to a streak of 22. That’s not even a third as long as this month’s current leader, and the eventually winner will probably have a streak even greater than that. And yet every morning (often multiple times a day) I point my browser or mobile device app to Streak for Cash and make a pick, alternating right and wrong picks on average. Sometimes I wonder if this is all just some elaborate psychological experiment, and we are all the willing participants. Think of all the free data some dorky guy in a lab coat would have for a study! Maybe one day this monkey will finally get his food pellet…or maybe he will just keep getting whacked in the head with that mallet…my guess is the latter though. Either way, I don’t see himself not pushing the lever anytime soon.

Straight To Week #3 of the Weekly NBA Power Rankings

No little intro/throw-away paragraph this week…let’s get right to the rankings!

1. Miami Heat (PR=1, 23-7)…I said this week would be an interesting test, as they played 2 good teams (Atlanta and Indy) and a team responsible for 2 of their 7 losses this year (Milwaukee). How does becoming the 1st team in 3+ decades to win 3 straight road games by 15 or more sound? They’ve won 7 of 8 overall since these rankings began, and they look to be on a mission as of right now.

2. Oklahoma City Thunder (PR=2, 22-7)…Only went 2-2 this week, and they seem to be in the process of figuring out how to play with a target on their backs every night. Still, they are helped by Chicago not making a move this week either. Doesn’t it just seem like they are on a collision course with Miami in the Finals this year?

3. Chicago Bulls (PR=3, 24-7)…You could make an argument for them at least leapfrogging OKC in the rankings. They went 2-1 this week, and finished a 9 game road trip at a very respectable 6-3, most of which they didn’t have the services of D-Rose…but that’s just the problem. It’s hard to rip them for being deep and resilient enough to chug along without their reigning MVP, but this team isn’t going anywhere long-term as long as Rose continues to be on the shelf.

4. San Antonio Spurs (PR=4, 21-9)…They might be doing it with smoke and mirrors, but hard to drop a team that has won 9 in a row overall and their 1st 5 games on a 9 game road trip. Tony Parker has been playing great and (along with LeBron) carrying my fantasy team, but we’ll find out more about the Spurs leading up to the All-Star break as they finish their road trip at the Clippers, Jazz, Blazers, and Nuggets.

5. LA Clippers (PR=5, 18-9)…How boring can I be? No movement at all among my top 5, but they went 3-1 this week to finish 4-2 on their road trip along the way. Losing Chauncey for the year was tough, but K-Mart (and possible J.R. Smith later on) should help shoulder that burden. The Clips look to be here for the long haul.

Oui, oui!

26. Washington Wizards (PR=28, 7-23)…Went a surprising 2-2 this week and have won 3 of 6 overall. In light of that coupled with a win over Detroit, I had a notion to move them ahead of the Pistons and out of the bottom 5, but that seemed a little premature. That was probably the right move, as Nick Young and Jordan Crawford followed a stellar combined 21 for 33 shooting night in Portland by shooting 10 for 33 the following night in LA.

27. Toronto Raptors (PR=27, 9-22)…I wanted to drop Toronto further down the list, but there are some truly bad basketball teams below them right now. However, even though the Raptors went 1-3 since last week’s rankings and are 2-8 in their last 10, they followed a win against Boston with back-to-back heartbreakers delivered by Kobe and Linsanity. I guess they get a pass for now.

28. New Orleans Hornets (PR=29, 6-23)…Hold everything, the Hornets won 2 in a row! We’ve had a Chris Kaman sighting, as Kaman averaged 22.5 ppg during those 2 games…just in time for nice road trip with stops in NY, OKC, Indy, and Chicago.

29. New Jersey Nets (PR=26, 8-22)…The Nets are definitely trending downwards. They have gone from not even being in the bottom 5 in week #1 of the power rankings to 26th in week 2 to 29th this week. They extended their losing streak to 7 and have lost 9 of 10. A new arena in Brooklyn and a Russian billionaire owner with access to G-5’s are nice, but it’s going to be hard to attract any big-time free agents to a team that stinks this bad.

30. Charlotte Bobcats (PR=30, 3-26)...They haven’t won a game since these weekly power rankings began. Need I say more? I’m not even going to mention the 16 game losing streak…oops, I just did. How do those Tyson Chandler and Gerald Wallace trades look now?

Rising: New York (have gone from a laughing stock to being in the playoff mix with 7 W’s in a row), Orlando (winners of 3 straight, but this team’s Jekyll and Hyde act is wearing thin), and Dallas (the champs might be hitting their stride)

Falling: Indiana (after getting a lot of love as one of the East’s up-and-coming teams, have lost 5 straight)

Some Linsanity To Cure Your February Doldrums

February has to be the dumbest month in the whole calendar year. 28 days, leap years (and this year is a leap year for the record)…seriously, where the hell does February get off having at least 1 but usually 2 less days than any other month? Also, if you’re living in a Mid-Atlantic state (like Maryland), the weather is garbage. There is just as much a possibility for snow as there is for it to be sunny and 70, but what you’re probably going to get is temps in the mid-40’s and rain. Cripes…wake me up when March is here. But let’s move on to the story de jour that Sportscenter is bludgeoning to death: Jeremy Lin.

Leave it to ESPN to turn a great story into something I can’t stand looking at or hearing about, but it’s undeniable that Lin is a great story. The guy was lightly recruited, played his college ball at Harvard, went undrafted, and has been cut by NBA teams multiple times in his 2-plus years since finishing his college career and spent time in the D-league…and he’s Taiwanese-American, AND he’s doing it all in the Mecca of all basketball to boot! It’s pretty incredible stuff. And it’s not just New York fans though…checkout the Toronto crowd’s reaction to him hitting the game-winner last night.

The reason Lin’s story is so compelling is because it basically follows the script of any sports movie (and even “bad” sports movies are usually pretty good): a guy or a team who has been overlooked because they’re too small/too slow/not skilled enough/a skin color we’re not used to comes from obscurity to make good. We all like rooting for the underdog deep down. We’re used to watching professional athletes with a sense of entitlement who have had nobody do anything but tell them how great they are from the time they’re in junior high. It’s refreshing to see someone succeed through hard work and perseverance against all odds. That’s basically the American Dream in a nutshell, isn’t it?

I’m hard-pressed to think of someone as unknown as Lin reaching his level of success right off the bat. Someone on TV mentioned Kurt Warner as being comparable to Lin in terms of coming from anonymity to immediate success, but aside from that it’s hard to come up with an example like it. Lin’s game does have flaws. He always wants to go right, and even if he does go left initially he will usually use a spin or some other move to get back to his dominant hand. He’s not a ballstopper or a black hole on offense, but he’s definitely more of a shoot 1st point guard who has the ability to pass than the other way around. He turns the ball over a little too much. He has somewhat of a hitch in his jumpshot that looks funny at times, but all of that almost seems to just further endear him to the fans at Madison Square Garden, as if to say, “Yeah, he doesn’t look like everyone else, he can only go right, and his jumper isn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but he’s ours.” Knicks fans seem to love that kind of stuff…which is why I always thought it was funny that they seemed so desperate to win the LeBron sweepstakes or land Melo the year after. Superstars just don’t look right in a Knicks jersey. Give them John Starks, fresh off the street from bagging groceries to D-up MJ. That’s what they want. So, Jeremy Lin and the foibles in his game should feel right at home playing at the garden. Oh, and did I mention his teammates seem to love him and have rallied around him as well?

Linsanity will probably face stiffer tests than D-Fish prior to season's end.

It’s likely that Lin will eventually level-out to being consistently good rather than spectacular on a nightly basis at some point. Defenses will begin to figure out the best ways to attack him, and he will have the opportunity to play against better defensive point guards than Derek Fisher, Ricky Rubio, and Jose Calderon as well. In his 5 starts, Lin is averaging 27 points and almost 9 assists per game though, and the Knicks have won 6 in a row overall…hard to argue too much with results like that. Even if by season’s end his averages dipped to, let’s say, 18 and 7 (and the Knicks continue winning), that would place him with some of the better point guards in the league. Either way, he doesn’t just seem like some flash in the pan. My main question is this: since he appears to be legitimately good, what the hell were coaches looking at when this guy couldn’t get on the court before? Even in Golden State where Curry and Ellis are going to get the bulk of the run, how can this guy barely crack the lineup? What’s Houston’s excuse? Even the Knicks, who had struggled with their point guard play all year, had this guy on their bench for 20-some games before playing him. You’re telling me he wasn’t killing Tony Douglas and Mike Bibby in practice every day? Makes you wonder sometimes…but for now, let’s all just sit back and enjoy. Linsanity is in full effect.

Training Update

I feel like I’ve made some decent gains when training my chest over the past few months, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. Because the gym Krissy and I have belonged to didn’t originally have a standard flat bench, I didn’t really know how much I could bench. I knew that I’d been lifting heavier on the Smith machine and with dumbbells, but I never really knew what that translated to. Well, as I’ve mentioned on here before my gym added a few pieces of equipment several months back, and thankfully 2 of those pieces were real bench press stations (a regular flat bench and a power rack). Having not benched in a few years, the 1st few times I trained chest on those stations were definitely a shock to the system. Keeping decent form and trying to balance the weight was a challenge in and of itself, but a few months later I eventually worked myself up to a 1 rep max of 220 lb., which is probably laughable to many (NFL combiners bench 5 lb. more than that for seemingly zillions of reps), but it was 25-30 lb. more than my 1RM was at any other point in my life. I still haven’t been able to truly hit the mythical 225 lb. mark yet…I failed once, and had a really shitty spotter the 2nd time I attempted it. (I got the weight up, but my spotter probably touched the bar too early and assisted me in the bottom portion of the lift…so, I’m not sure if I really "got it" or not.) That was probably 3 or 4 months ago, and I haven’t tried again since. I may try again in a few weeks just to see where I’m at.

Anyway, what 1st made me think to write this is that I think I may be beginning to plateau for the 1st time since I started benching again. Last week in my progressive overload cycle, I was scheduled to bench 3 sets of 5 reps at 200 lb for a total of 15 reps. Instead, I could only do 1 set of 5, then 2 sets of 4, and a final set of 2 just to make 15 reps. (I actually tried it earlier in the week, and after my 1st set of 5 I felt really weak…weak enough that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to muster out 2 more sets of 5. Ironically, I thought I was just having an off day or something, so I pretty much bagged the rest of my workout, only to suffer the same fate at the end of the week as well. With a looming plateau on the horizon, I instinctively looked to the almighty Google for answers…only to be overloaded with information, per usual. My main takeaways are that I need to take lifting legs more seriously, and I need to incorporate some type of dynamic lifts or rack lockout lifts into my chest routine. I normally dread leg day, as I feel my 40-time and dunking potential has probably been reached at this point, but if working my legs will help strengthen other weak points in my body that could be the extra source of motivation I need. Apparently, given the fact that your legs make up basically half of the muscle mass in your body, training them naturally boosts your body’s testosterone levels, which in turn helps strengthen all of your other muscle groups as well. Specifically, squatting is an essential leg exercise because it shocks your entire central nervous system. As for dynamic lifting, it requires the use of chains or bands when you lift. They are supposedly great for working to break through a plateau, but I’m not sure I’m willing to pony-up for them just yet. Floor presses and rack lockouts may be the way to go because both can help you work on pushing past your sticking point, which seems to be my problem (as opposed to the lockout or upper portion of the lift). Anyway, that’s all for now…more progress updates to follow.

Those Damn Devils And Weekly NBA Power Rankings

If the Cowboys are the most hated team in my sports universe, Duke basketball is a close 2nd (or maybe even 1-A). Even as I write this, just thinking about Duke is making me angry. There is just something so smug and smarmy about the Blue Devils. Coach K, the refs constantly giving them every call, the “Cameron crazies,” Dickie V’s slobbering all over them until the end of time, the fact that they always have at least 1 really goofy, ugly, unathletic white guy (Jon Scheyer, Brian Zoubek, Ryan Kelly, etc.) that actually fits their system perfectly somehow and is essential to their team’s success…I’m not sure that their being white has anything to do with it, but they are in fact white. In reality, it’s mostly that they are just consistently really good every year. But besides the “hateable white guy,” their star player is usually pretty detestable for some reason or another too. Battier was just too squeaky clean. He was almost like “Tebow-lite” before there was even a Tebow…hitting the same pick-and-pop top of the key 3-pointer at least 3 times a game, becoming so good at taking charges that he got the benefit of the doubt from the refs anytime he flopped, being a great student, having a great work ethic…it was all just too much to take. Reddick was maybe the best pure shooter that I have ever seen in the college game, but he came off as such an arrogant prick on the court. (Strangely, I’ve kind of become a fan of Reddick now that he’s a pro…I think he turned me when he was on a Bill Simmons podcast once.) And now Austin Rivers…Rivers is everything you could hate about Duke rolled into 1 guy. He’s good, he’s mouthy to the refs and opposing players alike, he’s Doc River’s kid (nothing against Doc, but it just makes his son even more of a target), he called out LeBron when he was still in high school (if you want to call people out, you better be on their level, and Rivers doesn’t appear to be on LeBron’s), and he appears to have a very high opinion of himself in general judging on how he carries himself on and off the court. So, when he hit a buzzer-beating 3 to beat North Carolina last night, the only thing that would have soured my night more would have been if it came against Maryland. Anyway, let’s move on to my weekly NBA Power Rankings. (I can say “weekly” if I’ve done it 2 weeks in a row, right?)

Wipe that smug look off your face, Reddick!

1. Miami Heat (PR=1, 19-7)…Went 3-1 since last week’s rankings, and they got walloped by Orlando last night, but maybe they deserve a little slack given that it was their 3rd game in 4 nights. However, they finish up a 6 game road trip next Friday with potentially tough stops in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Indiana, and Cleveland.

2. Oklahoma City Thunder (PR=2, 20-5)…They continue to quietly chug along with the league’s best record, and Durant, Westbrook, and company look poised to take over the #1 spot should the Heatles slip up on their current road trip.

3. Chicago Bulls (PR=3, 22-6)…No movement among the top 3, but Chicago went 3-0 since last week’s rankings while the Heat and OKC each suffered 1 loss apiece. If they beat the Celtics in Boston on Sunday, it will be tough to keep them out of the top 2 next week though.

4. San Antonio Spurs (PR=Not Ranked, 18-9)…A 6 game win streak has given San Antonio the 2nd best record in the West all of the sudden. The Spurs continue to find good young role players (Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, James Anderson) who fit their system and compliment their core. With a favorable road schedule this upcoming week (Nets, Pistons, and Raptors) and the return of Manu looming while other key Western Conference contenders are losing key players (Billups, Gallinari), the Spurs are poised to hold on to a top 5 spot for the foreseeable future.

5. LA Clippers (PR=5, 15-8)…This upcoming week may tell us a lot about how Lob City fairs the rest of the season. They started off the week by throttling the Wizards in DC and beating the Magic in Orlando in double overtime. Not bad…but that win proved costly, as they lost Chauncey Billups for the year with a torn achilles. Fortunately for the Clips, they have plenty of backcourt depth (CP3, Mo Williams, Randy Foye, Tough Juice) and frontcourt reinforcements on the way (Kenyon Martin), but it may be close to impossible to replace Billups’ toughness, leadership, and clutchness.

Lob City might be all flash without Mr. Big Shot.

26. New Jersey Nets (PR=Not Ranked, 8-19)…Were just outside of the bottom 5 last week, but the combination of Detroit winning 3 straight and the Nets’ 4 game slide (which included losses to the depleted Knicks and the Pistons themselves) caused them to join the ranks of the bottom-feeders. Their Deron Williams gamble doesn’t appear that it will pay off, as it’s harder and harder to envision him re-upping with New Jersey or soon-to-be Brooklyn with every passing loss. The Nets could maybe at least flip-flop in the rankings with Detroit again, as they play again tomorrow.

27. Toronto Raptors (PR=26, 8-19)…In what had to be 2 of the most painful television minutes of my life, I flipped to the Wizards-Raptors game the other night, and Toronto’s 5 on the floor were Amir Johnson, James Johnson, DeMar DeRozan, Jerryd Bayless, and Anthony Carter…blech.

28. Washington Wizards (PR=27, 5-21)…Hard to drop in the rankings with the other teams in the bottom 5, but that’s what the Wiz did this week. They still seem to be going for the title of “the best of the worst,” as they are a combined 4-1 this year against Toronto and Charlotte. Their games within the next week though: home for the Heat, at Detroit, at Portland, and at the Clippers…good luck.

29. New Orleans Hornets (PR=28, 4-22)…As I was glancing over the standings, I had the Hornets all but penciled into the last spot, as they are owner’s of the worst record in the West and a 7 game losing streak. Until…

30. Charlotte Bobcats (PR=30, 3-22)…How could I forget about the Bobcats? The losses are at 12 in a row and counting, and their next 4 games are against teams who are 0.500 or better, so it’s not going to get better anytime soon.

Rising: Boston (winners of 5 in a row and 9 of 10), New York (in terms of talent, less is apparently more), and Detroit (3 W’s in a row has them out of the bottom 5)

Falling: Denver (lost Gallinari and 4 straight)

MFS: Most Frustrating Season

Being from New Jersey, Krissy is a diehard Giants fan. If she had happened to be a fan of almost any other team, I probably would have been able to adopt her team as my 2nd favorite team without a peep, but the Giants are like public enemy number 2 for Redskins fans (behind the Cowboys of course). So, learning to be supportive of the New York Football Giants has been a work in progress for me. Someone I’ve developed a way to compartmentalize hating them and rooting for them (because seeing them win makes my wife happy) at the same time, but after last night’s game it was almost too much to take. When Tom Brady’s last second desperation Hail Mary attempt fell harmlessly to the turf, smiles, high fives, and hugs soon followed, but once the excitement of the game died down my mood inexplicably became more sullen. I couldn’t really put my finger on why exactly that was the case until Krissy, decked out in her Ahmad Bradshaw Jersey and Giants pajama pants, said something to the effect of, “Don’t worry, babe. Your team will win again someday too”…

Sure, they took care of the Niners, Packers, and Pats, but not the juggernaut known as the Redskins.

…which, in typical Krissy fashion, knowing me better than I know myself, encapsulated my mood perfectly. Yesterday’s Super Bowl officially marked the end of the 21st NFL season that I have been a fan of the Washington Redskins. The 1st of those years, 1991, the Redskins went 14-2 and cruised through the playoffs to the tune of their 3rd Super Bowl title. That team was one of the most dominant in NFL history. What normal 6 year old wouldn’t think this would be a regular occurrence for years to come? At the time, a 9-7 record in 1992 seemed unacceptable, but it’s tough for a 2nd grader to understand the intricacies of an aging roster and free agency. In the 20 seasons since that Super Bowl season, the Redskins have had a record of 0.500 or better 9 times, made the playoffs 4 times, and won the NFC East only once. They have finished last in the NFC East 5 times in the last 6 seasons, and in my time as a fan only in the Heath Shuler era has the team gone through a worse 3 year stretch than they are in the midst of right now. And yet, this sorry franchise, which boasted a 5-11 record in 2011, fielded a team that beat the Super Bowl champion Giants twice this year. And in those 2 games, they didn’t just beat them…they smacked them around with an aggregate score of 51-24. I wrote about this last month, but this doesn’t mean that the Redskins are actually the best team in the league or anything like that. That would be nonsensical. The Giants were beat-up, injured, and not the same team that reeled off 6 wins in a row on the way to being Super Bowl champs during those losses to the Skins. Besides, we should have enough evidence over the last few NFL postseasons to see that it isn’t necessarily the best team that walks away with the hardware but the team that gets the hottest at the right time of year. One thing that it does mean though (in my completely biased opinion) is that the Redskins are the most frustrating team to be a fan of in the entire NFL. So, because I seem to like doing lists and rankings lately, here’s my list of the 5 most frustrating Redskins seasons of the past 20 years.

5. 2011 (5-11)…Let’s start this list off with the most recent season, shall we? No one likes when their team stinks, but Redskins fans had gotten so tired over the years of the mindless spending on aging veterans that they welcomed a few years of stinkiness in order to do the whole “get really bad to get good” process. Well, be careful what you wish for sometimes because year 2 of the Shanahan era is what the “get really bad” part of that equation looks like. And yet they still beat the Giants twice. How…?

4. 2003 (5-11)…Hindsight will tell us that the Steve Spurrier experiment was a bad one, but it sure did seem like a good idea at the time. 2002 was Spurrier’s 1st year, and they finished 7-9 despite using good ol’ Gator boys Danny Wuerffel and Shane Mathews at quarterback. 2003 seemed much more promising with Spurrier’s system in place for a 2nd season and young stud Patrick Ramsey under center. They started off 3-1, even beating the Patriots at home in week 4. That game would prove to be an aberration though. The Patriots wouldn’t lose again the entire season, going 14-2 en route to their 2nd Super Bowl title in 3 years. He may have never amounted to a great quarterback anyway, but the combination of Spurrier’s “fun and gun” system and the Skins lack of offensive talent around him crushed Ramsey’s confidence and his body. Tim Hasselbeck finished the year at quarterback in what I remember being some truly unwatchable games, and Washington went 2-10 following the hot start.

Apparently, there's no "blocking" in "fun and gun."

3. 1996 (9-7)…Following their worst 3 year stretch in my years as a fan, the Skins finished the 1st half of the ’96 season 7-1 when they beat the Colts for their 7th straight win. A playoff berth, a division title, and even a 1st round bye all seemed within the realm of possibilities. Then, the Redskins gagged their way through the 2nd half of their schedule, losing 6 of 7 before winning a meaningless game at home against the Cowboys in week 17. (It almost goes without saying that, no, they did not make the playoffs.)

2. 1997 (8-7-1)…’96 and ’97 were not good years to be a Redskins fan. The Redskins finished with nearly an identical record to the year before, but instead of streaking to a great start and then collapsing at the end of the season the Skins went through the year basically alternating wins and losses in a mediocre fashion. The year can be summed up in 1 game though where the Redskins couldn’t get out of their own way: a Sunday night game at home against the Giants in week 13. The game included Gus Frerotte injuring himself by headbutting a wall following a 1st half touchdown run and Michael Westbrook getting called for a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for removing his helmet to argue an incomplete pass call late in overtime. Frerotte will never be remembered as Joe Montana, but the now infamous celebration caused the Redskins best offensive player to be removed from the game for little used backup Jeff Hostetler, and Westbrook’s temper tantrum added 15 yards to a potential game-winning field goal attempt. The Giants ended up winning the division and making the playoffs anyway, but the Skins finished a half game out of the wild card. (They would have made it based on tiebreakers if they had beaten the Giants that night.)

Hey, Gus! Watch out for that huge concrete wall! No biggie...your team's season just

1. 2000 (8-8)…2000 was a year full of promise for Redskins fans. 1999 was the 1st year the Skins won double digit games or the NFC East since their ’91 Super Bowl run, and it was the 1st year that they made the postseason (and won a playoff game) since ’92. Their season eventually ended in the divisional round of the playoffs with a 1 point loss to the Bucs, but the outlook for 2000 was bright. Perhaps with a few smart draft picks and free agent signings they could have bolstered their defense and added to an already potent offense that included Brad Johnson, Stephen Davis, and the aforementioned Westbrook (who seemed to finally be maturing). Instead, 2000 marked the season that owner Dan Snyder decided to begin using the Redskins as his own personal real-life fantasy football team. Washington went out and got aging, big name, expensive free agents Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, Deion Sanders, and Jeff George among others (sound familiar, 2011 Eagles fans?). With the modicum of success from the previous year combined with these additions, the phrase “Super Bowl or bust” was thrown around before the season even started. Unfortunately, the talent on the field didn’t match up with the price tag and name recognition of the players. The play of Johnson, who had been very steady in ’99, suffered thanks to losing his best big play threat, Westbrook, to a knee injury in week 2 of the season and constantly looking over his shoulder at Snyder’s newest toy with the big arm, George. (Johnson was eventually benched in favor of George amidst speculated pressure from Snyder.) The results of the season were underwhelming, yet following a week 14 home loss to the Giants the Redskins were still 7-6 with 3 games to go, good enough to at least still be in the playoff hunt. Inexplicably, Snyder fired coach Norv Turner that week, and the Skins responded by getting sha-lacked in Dallas and Pittsburgh the following 2 weeks. In another meaningless week 17 game, the Redskins inserted Johnson back into the starting lineup and beat Arizona easily…it would be the last game Johnson would play in a Skins uni, and it ushered in the era of “psycho Dan” as we know it in D.C., thus concluding the single most frustrating Redskins season of the past 20 years.

Show Me The Savings And Weekly NBA Power Rankings

Saving money stinks. Well, the act of saving money isn’t so bad. Krissy and I aren’t the most “elaborate” people, so it’s not like we have had to make some huge lifestyle changes to stash away extra doe, but saving up with a specific goal in mind sucks. We have been trying to save up for a down payment on a house, but the process is painfully slow. And it’s not like we’re a couple of hobos! We both have good jobs and make a decent amount of money. And we’re not asking for a McMansion either…just a nice house in a decent neighborhood, preferably with other houses not built directly on top of said house. I mean, is that too much to ask? Anyway, it’s the 1st week in February…time for some NBA power rankings. I will try to make this a weekly thing, but who knows…this could wind up being the 1st and only edition of the Postell Power Rankings. Get ‘em while they’re hot! (For simplicity, I will just do the top 5 and the bottom 5 in the league.)

Love it or hate it, as long as they stay on the court they are the prohibitive favorites.

1. Miami Heat (16-6)…Technically, they are tied for the 3rd best record in the league, but it’s tough to argue that they aren’t the team to beat when they are firing on all cylinders. As long as LeBron continues to be indestructible and Wade can stay healthy (relatively), it’s going to take a lot for someone to knock them off of the top spot.

2. Oklahoma City Thunder (17-4)…Have rattled off 12 out of 14 to gain ownership of the league’s best winning percentage (and 1 of those losses in that stretch was inexplicably to Washington). This team has taken a step forward each year with its current core, so it only makes sense that they have quietly risen to conference favorites this season.

3. Chicago Bulls (19-6)…As the Bulls and Thunder have shown, it pays to be both young and good in this condensed season. Those young legs have proven especially useful for Chicago, as the schedule has not been kind (they have played the most games in the league), and yet they still have the East’s best record. As if they haven’t been tested enough, they finish out a brutal 9 game road trip next Sunday in Boston.

4. Denver Nuggets (15-7)…You have to root for a team that’s built like the Nuggets. Deep and talented, but no star power…somewhat reminiscent of the Pistons championship team made up of Chauncey, the Wallace brothers, Rip, and company a few years back. George Karl’s got to be the top candidate for coach of the year so far.

5. LA Clippers (13-7)…This team is definitely flawed and has been helped by a very home-heavy schedule so far (and 1 “road” game at Staples Center), but I’m not quite sold on any of the other top 5 candidates so far either. They ran into a buzzsaw against Denver last night playing their 4th game in 5 nights, but they have also shown they can be a problem for other top teams like Miami, Oklahoma City, and the Lakers (not to mention beating said Nuggets earlier this week) among others.

26. Toronto Raptors (7-16)…When I’ve watched them play, Bargnani has played better, but I’m not exactly sure what else this team has going for it. They also boast losses to the woeful Wizards and Nets…yikes.

27. Washington Wizards (4-18)…Seem to be playing harder for Randy Wittman than they were for Flip Saunders at least, who was never the right fit as a coach for this young immature roster. I also wonder if that change in effort has to do with 1 of their knuckleheads (Blatche) being out of the lineup. Nick Young’s nightly assist totals (or lack thereof) have become a constant source of entertainment thanks to Tony Kornheiser though.

28. New Orleans Hornets (4-19)…Poor New Orleans...they get taken over by David Stern, then Chris Paul is traded to both LA teams, they end up getting the worse of the 2 deals, and the best player they got back in the trade (Eric Gordon) hasn’t even played since the 2nd game of the year.

29. Detroit Pistons (4-20)…My apologies to my boy, Mac, but I have wondered for years what Joe Dumars has been doing with this roster. Frankly, outside of Greg Monroe it seems like a mess. At least the name “Jonas Jerebko” is fun to say, right?

30. Charlotte Bobcats (3-20)…A few weeks ago, I wondered if this year’s Wizards team was the worst team ever assembled…until they beat the Bobcats twice in a week. Charlotte has the worst record in the league, has a starting frontcourt of Boris Diaw, DeSagana Diop, and Tyrus Thomas, and their leading scorer (Gerald Henderson) just got shelved for a 2-4 weeks with a pulled hammy…is MJ even trying?

Other notes…Upstarts Philly and Indy were just on the outside of the top 5. The Sixers have relied on outworking their opponents and beating up on lesser teams for the most part so far. A win tonight against Miami will almost assure them of a top 5 spot next week. And if the Knicks don’t start improving, they might be in the bottom 5 next week just out of spite.

Henderson getting hurt was just adding insult to injury (or injury to insult, maybe).

The iPhone: Sometimes It Doesn't Pay To Be Contrarian

Like I wrote in the post about Facebook, there are times where I like to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Part of the fun for me in not having Facebook is that just about everyone else that I know has a Facebook account. But also in the case of Facebook, I actually have substantiated reasons for not wanting many of these things in my life as well, which brings me to the iPhone. iPhone users have no qualms about telling anybody and everybody that the iPhone is the greatest creation that man has ever conceived. There is a certain snootiness that all iPhone users have when it comes to their phones, and the ability to look down at owners of all other phone types is apparently part of any iPhone service plan. I know this because I am related to people both by blood and by marriage who have the iPhone and said accompanied snootiness. The iPhone is the perfect thing for a natural born contrarian like me to rail against. It’s trendy, it’s the “it” thing that everyone must have, and its users are generally really annoying when it comes to proclaiming their devotion to it. Most of the time, I treat overzealous iPhone enthusiasts in the same way that I treat pompous soccer fanatics. Their points of view regarding their greatest love are completely one-sided, and they aren’t even interested in opposing opinions at all…thus, it’s better to just ignore them all together (or hit them in the head with a snow shovel, as Tony Kornheiser would suggest).

All of you, just get out.

There’s also a part of me that just likes things to be simple, and sometimes I wish that my phone was just “a phone.” Being able to use the Internet anywhere is great, but paying for a data package is not, and I often wonder if my quality of life would suffer all that much if I just went back to an old-school regular cell phone. Maybe I’m at the point of no return already, but I truly like my trusty ol’ Blackberry. I like having a keyboard as opposed to a touch screen. I like the organizational and file storing features of it much better than my wife’s/brother’s/wife’s brothers’ iPhones. I guess it’s nice to have everything synced, but I don’t like the iPhone’s overreliance on iTunes to configure updates and organize different kinds of files. The iPhone also has a zillion apps that I can’t imagine ever using. When Krissy and her brothers all got the iPhone (her oldest brother had had it for a while), the “in” thing to do was to use one of the video chatting apps whenever they wanted to call one another. This wasn’t appealing to me because I am not a big phone-talker in the 1st place…why would I want someone to be able to look at me while they are talking to me too? The video chatting phase lasted for about a month (if that), but like most of those things that seem really awesome at 1st it died out pretty quickly. I don’t know that Krissy even has the app on her phone anymore at all. I realized though that in effect I had started to become the snooty one when it came to this stupid phone stuff. My holier than thou viewpoint had made me look down at iPhone users in a way not that different than iPhone users probably look at me. I had had an iPod Touch for a few years, but had never really used it all that much other than for music. For whatever reason (maybe I had secretly started to think some of Krissy’s iPhone apps were pretty cool), I started downloading and using some apps on there in addition to some of the features in comes with: games, fantasy sports trackers, email. The problem is that at some point I started to develop a liking for my enemy…like Stockholm Syndrome or something.

Sweet! Angry Birds!

My iPod isn’t exactly like an iPhone (you need WiFi to be able to use anything that requires an Internet connection for one), but it can do a lot of the things that an iPhone can do, so it at least gives me an idea of what it would be like to use one. First, the screen size blows my Blackberry out of the water, and the touch screen isn’t all that bad for typing, which I originally thought I would never get used to. Obviously, the touch screen makes gaming, viewing things online, and the use of most other apps easier. For the most part, Internet browsing seems faster than on my Blackberry, and maybe most importantly of all, getting an iPhone would consolidate some of my current devices. More and more often lately, I have found myself double-fisting my electronics when I get home from work: phone at my side in case anyone calls, iPod in my hand whenever I want to do anything else. It’s just so damn cool! What the hell do you want from me? My Blackberry looks like a dinosaur next to it. And iPhone and Android are killing Blackberry so much that Blackberry (much like dinosaurs) could become extinct. Blackberry's App World has become a barren wasteland on the same wavelength as MySpace, filled with sad little apps that no one could possibly ever want. Other people must have realized the same things I'm realizing. I used to have a decent amount of contacts for Blackberry Messenger...as of today, I have 3 (of which I'm not sure if any still have active BBM accounts, as I haven't used BBM in over a year). I could also trade-in/sell my iPod Touch and iPod Classic (which is sitting in a drawer somewhere), and just use my iPhone for my listening enjoyment as well. Krissy has a smaller iPod Nano for working out, and her reasoning for that is that she doesn’t like the clunkiness of the iPhone when she’s running and training, but if an iPod Touch doesn’t bother me I don’t see why an iPhone would. Anyway, what used to be utter defiance has now turned into resigned acceptance. It’s probably only a matter of time now before I join the rank and file now.