SBM Exclusive: The Worst Teams Of All Time

Here’s another feature from Sports Blog Movement. One of the things we love to do in sports is celebrate success, but in order to truly appreciate greatness, we must look at the other side of the coin.  This series, aptly enough called the Worst Teams of All Time, is dedicated to some of the worst teams in the history of sports.  Some were just truly bad, and some became bad at the wrong time.  Either way, all of them exemplify the opposite of greatness. Some had laughable regular seasons, and some had strong ones, only to die in the post-season. In any event, sit back and enjoy a good laugh or a good cry and celebrate the teams that were woeful so you can better appreciate the teams that weren’t.

Part 41: The Michigan Wolverines in the 1985 NCAA Tournament

Part 40:  The 1992 Seattle Seahawks

Part 39: The 1976 Montreal Expos

Part 38: The 2013 Winnipeg Blue Bombers

Part 37: The 1982-83 Houston Rockets

Part 36: The 1992-93 Ottawa Senators

Part 35: The 2002 Saudi Arabian World Cup Soccer Team

Part 34:  The 1989 Dallas Cowboys

Part 33: The 1998 Winnipeg Blue Bombers

Part 32: The 1982 Pittsburgh Pirates

Part 31: The 1986-87 Los Angeles Clippers

Part 30: The 1977-78 Minnesota North Stars

Part 29: The 1998 U.S. World Cup Soccer Team

Part 28: The 1996 New York Jets

Part 27:  The 2007 Toronto Argonauts

Part 26: The 1982 Minnesota Twins

Part 25: The 2007-08 Miami Heat

Part 24: The 1984-85 Toronto Maple Leafs

Part 23: The 1994 Greek World Cup Soccer Team

Part 22: The 2004 San Francisco 49ers

Part 21: The 1985 Calgary Stampeders

Part 2o: The 1987 Cleveland Indians

Part 19: The 2000-01 Chicago Bulls

Part 18: The 2000-01 New York Islanders   

Part 17: The 2001 XFL Birmingham Thunderbolts

Part 16: The 1990 United Arab Emirates World Cup Soccer Team

Part 15: The 1980 New Orleans Saints

Part 14: The 2003 Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Part 13: The 1998 Florida Marlins

Part 12: The 2009-2010 New Jersey Nets

Part 11: The 1989-90 Quebec Nordiques

Part 1o: The 1986 Canada World Cup Soccer Team

Part 9: The 1976 Tampa Bat Buccaneers

Part 8: The 2003 Detroit Tigers

Part 7: The 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks

Part 6: The 1980-81 Winnipeg Jets

Part 5: The 1982 El Salvador World Cup Soccer Team

Part 4: The 2008 Detroit Lions

Part 3: The 1993 New York Mets

Part 2: The 1982-83 Cleveland Cavaliers

Part 1: The 1974-75 Washington Capitals

Stay tuned, there’s more to come…

Sports Blog Movement NBA Preview: Southeast Division

With the NBA season right around the corner, we here at Sports Blog Movement are doing exactly what you would expect a bunch of sports bloggers to do; pretend like we know what the fuck we are talking about when it comes to what this campaign may bring us.  With that, here’s my rundown on the Southeast Division, complete with five good questions that may make or break each team’s year.

1) Miami Heat

Let’s be honest, the Heat should have a cake-walk through this division. They are the two-time defending champs, and they have have all the major components back in place for at least one more season. In other words, they should have this race more sewn up than the incumbent in a Guatemalan “election.” The only way the Heat don’t win this division is the same way that Guatemalan incumbent “loses.” That means Eric Spoelstra’s big job is to keep LeBron James out of slow-moving convertibles in Dallas in 1963.

In all seriousness. the Heat are going to face some salary-cap issues in the future, but in the present this is all about their chance to join the Kobe-led Lakers and the Jordan-led Bulls in three-peat territory.

Sports Blog Movement NBA Preview: Atlantic Division

1. Brooklyn Nets (58-24)

Key Additions: Paul Pierce (BOS), Kevin Garnett (BOS), Jason Terry (BOS), Andre Kirilenko (MIN)

Key Losses: Gerald Wallace, Kris Humphries, MarShon Brooks

Mikhail Prokhorov probably set the Nets back ten years with his moves this off-season. Prokhorov made the decision to take Pierce, Garnett and Terry off the Celtics hands, and as a result, the Nets will be expected to pay an estimated $82 million in luxury taxes. But that’s the future.For now, the Nets have given themselves about a two year window. They’re either going to win an NBA championship (which I highly doubt)– or we’ll look back on this trade as one of the worst personnel moves in NBA history. You have to admire the dude’s balls though.

As far as the roster is concerned, the Nets are stacked. Deron Williams will play most of the team’s minutes at the point. Joe Johnson will start at the two, with Jason Terry coming in to supply the occasional scoring punch off the bench. Paul Pierce is close to death but he’ll be able to give the Nets some solid minutes. His back up is Andre Kirilenko, who will serve as the team’s best perimeter defender. Kevin Garnett and Brook Lopez will start in the front court. The rebound master Reggie Evans will rotate in as well.

Overall, this team has depth. They have a chance to make a run in the playoffs but the biggest key will be injuries. Can Pierce, Garnett and Terry make it through an entire season without withering away into a pile of decomposing human dust? It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. For the Net’s sake, hopefully it’s not this season.

The NBA Draft: A Pessimist’s Take

The NBA Draft is a lot like a garage sale. Like garage sales, only a handful of items (if any) hold any value. If you’re lucky, you can end up with a sparsely used flat screen TV or some designer shirts that were too big for their owner. But those items move quickly. If you arrive too late, you’re left with few options. You might think, “Ahh what the hell, I guess I might use an automatic playing card shuffler one day. It’s only $0.75, screw it. Why not.” That’s the mindset of NBA teams picking in the late first through second round of the NBA draft. The only difference is that unlike a garage sale where you can walk away if you don’t find anything worth buying, NBA teams are forced to draft players. If given a choice, I’m sure some teams would rather forfeit their pick than have to go through the formality of drafting a guy who they know won’t play a minute for their team. In the NBA draft, once that one-of-a-kind antique bookshelf is gone in the early first round, teams have no choice but to drop $0.25 on that pair of Mickey Mouse oven-mitts.

This isn’t a product of a lack of young talent. It’s simply the nature of the sport. NBA teams are only allowed to have 15 players under contract, meaning there can only be 450 active NBA players total. Only 12 of those 15 players can suit up for a game. Even further, only seven or eight of those players will get any meaningful playing time. For those reasons, if you have two or three superstar players, you’re pretty much set. NBA teams don’t need a constant stream of young talent to be successful like NFL teams. If you’re able to get a few great players and lock them up for the future, the NBA draft doesn’t really matter to your team. This is the case with the Miami Heat. The Heat didn’t have any draft picks in last week’s draft and they’re still the best team in the NBA.

Most of the players drafted last week won’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. A third of them probably won’t play more than 50 games in the NBA. A few of them will toil away in the D-League or on some international team and won’t ever get a chance to don an NBA uniform. The majority will become just another replaceable role player. That’s really all the NBA draft does: it just adds a new crop of average players who will play minor roles on four or five different teams over their career, only to retire into anonymity. You may think your team drafted the next Tim Duncan or LeBron James but its more likely that they just drafted the next Nazr Mohammed or Mike Miller. It remains to be seen if this year’s NBA draft will produce any superstars. But if it doesn’t, then this draft didn’t really matter.

Below, I have included a list of this year’s lottery picks, along with their closest “average NBA player” comparison. These aren’t necessarily my predictions of how these picks will pan out. Rather, this is more of a “most average-case-scenario” for each player. I may overlook certain guys who will turn out to be superstars. But overall, I’ll be right more times than I’m wrong.

1. Anthony Bennett, UNLV- Jason Maxiell
2. Victor Oladipo, Indiana- Ronnie Brewer
3. Otto Porter, Georgetown- Travis Outlaw
4. Cody Zeller, Indiana- Joel Przybilla
5. Alex Len, Maryland- Zydrunas Ilgauskas
6. Nerlens Noel, Kentucky- Nazr Mohammed
7. Ben McLemore, Kansas- Mario Chalmers
8. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Georgia- Danny Green
9. Trey Burke, Michigan- Ben Gordan
10. C.J. McCollum, Lehigh- Delonte West
11. Michael Carter-Williams, Syracuse- Josh Childress
12. Steven Adams, Pittsburg- Byron Mullens
13. Kelly Olynyk, Gonzaga- Anderson Varejao
14. Shabazz Muhammad, UCLA- Rashard Lewis

Before We Get Carried Away…The Miami Heat Are Not The NBA’s Newest Dynasty

I know you are going to be shocked by this, but here comes another Dubsism rant that flies in the face of popular opinion and the bilge being pumped out by ESPN.

First, let’s be magnanimous. The Heat won their second straight NBA Championship last night, and for that, I only have one word. Congratulations. Winning a title in any professional league is tough enough; winning consecutive championships is tougher than getting through an afternoon with your in-laws while simultaneously battling a toothache and hemorrhoidal flare-up.

Click to continue reading…

And the Oscar goes too..

“It happens…We would have no NBA possibly if they got rid of all the flopping.”

Such a ridiculous comment was made by none other than Dwayne Wade. Finals MVP. 9x All-Star. 2x Champion. Scoring champion and 3x all NBA defensive team. Yea…that Dwayne Wade.

Defending flopping as an essential and integral part of the NBA. So much so that eliminating it would mean the end of the league.

And he said this with a straight face. He was totally serious.

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MEEHAN’S NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS PREVIEW

by Ryan Meehan

While not as glamorous as those in the Western Conference, the Eastern Conference Semis still have some great storylines that are full of wholesome family entertainment. And since it’s my job to take such entertainment and turn it into what essentially amounts to material that’s unsafe for your work computer, let’s take a look at what you can expect to see in the second round.

Miami Heat vs. Chicago Bulls

Joakim Noah and Lebron James will get the opposite of cuddly starting this week

What happened last round:

Proving once again my theory that sub .500 teams should never make the playoffs in any sport, the Miami Heat wiped the Milwaukee Bucks off the face of the earth. I don’t have nearly enough euphemisms to describe what happened in that round, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it a shot. Basically LeBron James heard that Brandon Jennings predicted the Bucks to win in six games, and after he stopped laughing he realized something had to be done about that. So James showed up at Jennings’ farm in the middle of the night, opened the barn door, and then it got really quiet for a few seconds. After that, the clucking started and what happened next was one of the most grisly displays of chicken sexploitation in American history. As my buddy DJ KFC would say “That shit was mad fowl”. Of course, none of that actually happened but if it did would it have been any less embarrassing than the series itself? Not bloody likely, and my version gave you a better visual didn’t it? Don’t you just hate it when somebody ends three sentences in a row with question marks?

NBA Playoff Preview & Predictions

 

I know I’m not the first person to say it, but this year’s NBA playoffs will be extremely entertaining. As you can see from my predictions above, I have the Miami Heat winning back-to-back championships. The competition level has increased a lot since last year but I don’t think any team has reached the Heat’s level.

NBA 2013 Regular Season Awards

With the 2013 NBA season winding down, I’ve decided to give out my regular season awards and nominations. This year was pretty standard as far as NBA seasons go. Like every year, you had your great teams, your bad teams… and your Charlotte Bobcats. You had your good players, your scrubs… and Luke Walton.

But why only give awards to the “best” players? Why not give players awards for being a scrub, having stupid hair or acting like a knuckle-head? That is exactly what this article will set out to do. Disagree with me? Think I’m an idiot? Comment below to state your case.

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SBM Exclusive Feature: Sports Doppelgangers, Volume 19

In our ongoing pursuit of look-alikes in the sports world, we’ve now crossed over the species boundary, because there’s no way you can’t tell us that Miami Heat forward Chris Andersen doesn’t resemble an iguana.