Derek Bodner’s Blog

Having shown consistent incremental improvements during his first three years at Alabama, JaMychal Green’s senior season was a step backwards in every regard. With an expected change of role at the next level, Green needed to come out and prove his improvement as a jump shooter was something he could carry over and that he could do the little things on the court to contribute. Instead, his combination of struggles on and off the court further clouds his status as a prospect.

At this stage, barring a miraculous NCAA tournament run, Green would likely be best off trying to get back in the good graces of NBA decision makers by going out and having an outstanding showing on and off the court at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament. Strong, transparent interviews with teams about his repeated suspensions could help quite a bit as well. Some NBA teams may have already written Green off as they aren’t looking to add distractions to their team from a player already considered just a marginal prospect, which will make the way he handles himself from now until June that much more important.

JaMychal Green scouting report [DraftExpress.com]

Mason Plumlee has taken a larger role in the Duke offense this year, which has made him a more consistent contributor than in years past. His continued success on the offensive and defensive glass provides a solid base as a useful rotational big man at the next level, and his soft hands, athleticism, and defensive potential should help him see court time as well.

Mason Plumlee scouting report [DraftExpress.com]

Facing many questions coming into the season, both about his ability to expand his offensive game and about how his twice surgically repaired ankle would hold up, Mike Scott has responded with a phenomenal season.

His scoring instincts appear to be his most dependable skill to translate to the next level, which combined with the improvements he’s made defensively and as a rebounder and his high work ethic and basketball IQ should be enough to get him some strong looks in the second round, despite his average physical tools and advanced age.

Mike Scott scouting report [DraftExpress.com]

Going to try to post a little bit more. Some of it will just be links (with quotes) from some of the various basketball publications I write for (DraftExpress, SBN Philly, LibertyBallers, NBAPlaybook), some of it will be random sports thoughts (mainly basketball and baseball) that don’t necessarily fit with the content on those sites, and some of it will be general thoughts about life, technology, family, and so forth.

No guarantees, but I’ll try.

If Johnson-Odom were 6’5” there would be no questions about his ability to contribute at the next level. His ability to make shots from the perimeter and create off the dribble are coveted skills, especially considering his winning pedigree and the intensity he brings on the defensive end.

Johnson-Odom’s size may give some teams room for pause, but fortunately for him there is a long list of undersized shooting guards currently seeing extensive playing time in the NBA today. As much as any prospect, the personnel around Darius Johnson-Odom could play a hand in whether a team is able to find a role he could be effective in at the next level.

Darius Johnson-Odom scouting report

I was an original owner of the Palm Pre, and have since become a fan of webOS. At the time it came out, there weren’t very many Android options on Sprint, and the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive, and I had no interest in changing carriers. The demos I had seen of the Pre looked intriguing, and I had previously used PalmOS in the past on their treo line, so I was interested in how their new OS would perform.

Over the time, I’ve grown to love it. I switched to Android a little over a year ago when my Pre died of a hardware failure, and since then there have been aspects of webOS I missed. I liked my Android, and its nearly flawless integration of Google Voice and gmail (two services I’ve become extremely reliant on) has made it an incredibly useful tool, and developers actually making apps for it was nice as well. But it feels rather non-intuitive to use compared to the Pre I was previously on. Powerful, configurable, but non-intuitive and clunky.

I’ve now used iOS, Blackberry, Android, and webOS for lengthy periods of time. I can honestly say that webOS was the one I enjoyed using the most, perhaps better stated as the one that frustrated me the least.

But this post isn’t so much about me waxing poetically about how elegant of a UI webOS has, although I could talk at length about this. I could go on and on about how intuitive the multitasking was, about how great and unique of a feature Synergy was, about how useful Just Type is, and about how my apps, data, and settings have been in a “cloud” (Palm Profile) 2.5 years before Apple’s iCloud. And, ultimately it’s something everyone will see first hand very shortly. Blackberry’s QNX is a straight out rip off of the webOS’ card multitasking metaphor. Once Palm was bought out by HP, Google hired Palm’s director of human interface and user experience, Matias Duarte, to be their director of user experience for Android, whose impact will be really felt in earnest starting with the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android. Or you could look at iCloud and Apple (finally) joining the multitasking bandwagon as influences of Palm’s innovation.

But that’s not what this is about. This is a look into why it failed. And by failing I don’t mean why webOS the operating system failed to be good, but why webOS failed to gain traction in a highly competitive mobile landscape.
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I just want to get this out there. I don’t have the time to do a full post, and if I did it would go on LibertyBallers or DraftExpress. The Miami Heat are overrated. I’m not even saying the individual players are overrated (although I do think Chris Bosh and his anemic/apathetic defense is one of the most overrated players in the game, but I love both Wade and LeBron. It’s the big 2 and Chris Bosh), it’s their fit, and more importantly each of their ability to contribute without a high usage rate.

From a skillset standpoint, LeBron and Wade are bad fits next to each other, floor spacing will be a huge problem. None of the three are good defenders, and Chris Bosh downright terrible. And I really don’t like Chris Bosh as a third wheel. You’re taking a guy used to playing with a near 30% usage rate and decreasing that by 10%. You don’t want your third wheel to be a mediocre passing, terrible defender. He’s not going to give you “Chris Bosh value”. He’s not going to add the value to the Heat he would to virtually any other team, and because of that his deficiencies become magnified. You can overlook Bosh’s defense when he’s scoring 22-24 points per game. If he’s scoring 16 points per game? They become a much bigger issue.

Poor defense (particularly interior), poor shooting, and no depth. They’ll win 55 games just on sheer talent, but I’d be surprised to see them come out of the east this year, and don’t think they’re as destined to dominate the East as some do. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if in 3 years this squad, starring the big 3, hasn’t won an Eastern Conference Championship.

Or, perhaps better stated, Grunge Is Not Dead.

For the record, I used that word (grunge) while grinding my teeth. I generally dislike it, and use it more to describe a time period and geographic rock movement (RE: Seattle) than I do an actual musical genre. If Alice in Chains became popular 3 years earlier before the mainstream media coined that term they would have been a metal group. If Nirvana became popular two years earlier we’d refer to them as a punk group. If Pearl Jam became popular earlier we’d be talking about their similarity with The Who and a splash of Neil Young rather than lumping them in with Nirvana. Grunge was always a media buzz-word to create hype about the Seattle movement.

(That’s not to take anything away from what grew up out of the underground Seattle scene at that time, I just don’t consider it a musical genre).

That being said, those bands comprise some of my absolute favorite, and certainly my favorite “contemporary” (can they even be called that anymore?!) music.
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Originally posted at baseball.realgm.com.

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