NFL Draft: The First 10

1. Cam Newton (QB) -- Carolina
Worst pick of the draft so far. What Newton lacks in throwing technique and experience running a pro offense, he makes up for in size, arm strength, a will to win, and most importantly a 'local morning talk show host level of cheesedickery'. In other news, Brady Quinn is rumored to be financing another media campaign. But, this time it is to celebrate a non-Brady Quinn quarterback getting picked first since with the Jimmy Clausen experience officially shelved in Carolina, Quinn now has competition in the "most-overrated Notre Dame QB ever" conversation.

2. Von Miller (LB) -- Denver
But, this happens TO the Chiefs twice a year for the next ten years.


3. Marcell Dareus (DT) -- Buffalo
Excellent pick. Unfortunately, he becomes a Bill, which means he will help Buffalo lose every game 7-6 rather than 17-6. (No matter how good their defense, JP Lossman/ Ryan Fitzpatrick or whatever derivation of them is under-throwing running backs on screens will always account for a minus seven.)

4. AJ Green (WR) -- Cincinnati
Green will probably make the Jets or Packers a much more dangerous team in four years when his rookie contract expires. For now he's tied to a team with the AFC's version of Matt Hasselbeck--but with Peyton Manning's contract--who is threatening to retire if he doesn't get traded. It was so much easier back when all the Bengal players used to do was get arrested.

5. Patrick Patterson (CB) -- Arizona
Best pick of the draft. Heck, best pick of the last three drafts. Patterson matched up with Fitzgerald at practice has to become something of legend. John Skelton heaving some passes their way in practice will be the other kind of legend. Like the legend of that time the bridge collapsed, or when that guy accidentally flushed his winning Powerball ticket down the toilet.

6. Julio Jones (WR) -- Atlanta
Matt Ryan with Roddy White and now Julio Jones could be the second coming of Kurt Warner with Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. Or, John Elway with Ed McCaffrey and Rod Smith (DBSF just had to throw that last one in).

7. Aldon Smith (DE) -- San Fransisco
Can he throw the ball too? Well, neither can Alex Smith. Not sure what this will do for San Fransisco fans besides definitely make them wish they had stayed home to finish reading this month's Artforum while listening to music, which's only value is that its listened to exclusively by people that say things like, "I can't understand American music anymore" and brag about going to restaurants that serve food from countries rated in the bottom tenth of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index.

8. Jake Locker (QB) -- Tennessee


9. Tyron Smith (T) -- Dallas
A tackle? Really? What kind of analysis can you really expect from DBSF on a tackle? Let's see . . . Is he above 6'4"? Does he way over 320 lbs and not look like an obese child? Are his hands the size of pizza boxes? Will he not smoke weed before games and promise to stop drinking liquor by midnight the night before games (beer is okay until 3am when you weigh 0.5 Prius's)? If he meets those requirements and has even the minimalest desire to block someone who ways 60 pounds less than him but is all muscle and much faster for three hours on Sundays then this should be a fine pick.

10. Blaine Gabbert (QB) -- Jacksonville

The Most Bro Driver

If the name isn't indicative enough, Callaway's new Razr Hawk driver qualifies as the near pinnacle in bro-marketing/ golf technology. (Only adding "laser" into the name would have established it as inherently bro. Such marketing strategies demand a top of the food-chain animal [hawk], something that inflicts harm [razr], a nod--usually anachronistically--to the future [ergo, lasers], and an orgy of power verbs [e.g., "forged" rather than "fashioned".)

The club was "inspired by collaboration" between Callaway and Lamborghini. Presumably, they want us to interpret this to mean that Callaway used Lamborghini's technology to create light yet strong equipment. But, as every made for TV movie "based on actual events" reminds us (i.e., yes, somebody did die in that small Kansas town several years ago, but no it wasn't at the hands of an infant mass murder), this probably means some Callaway and Lamborghini executives put in a long weekend Wailea in which the former treated the latter so Callaway could use the Lamborghini name in a future advertisement.

Next, the raspy voice explains the club is "powered by forged composite". This is another way of saying "we used materials". Because the voice, or his director likely recognized the vacuous nature of the description they add that it's the same forged composite used in "supercars". (DBSF thinks supercars is one word; Google begs to differ.)

This is where DBSF's interest in the ad peaks because when he hears "supercars" he thinks hovercrafts. But, all he's left with is a few quick shots of a Lamborghini taking turns in a warehouse. It is likely the case that the supercar technology was too top secret for the likes of DBSF and, thus, for like national security and general conspiracy theorizing, Callaway & Lamborghini Co. cannot display actual supercar technology (even if it's only being driven/ hovered in an undisclosed warehouse that--let's be honest--is somewhere in central Los Angeles).

Finally, DBSF would have appreciated a post-script to the statement that "23 million turbostratic fibers are forged", which explains the counting process as well as the deviation in the turbostratic fibers per club. So, like do some clubs have only 22.8 million fibers? Simply providing a standard error would have sufficed. In the end, DBSF is left little disappointed when the close-up of the driver head fails to reveal a "Tap Out" emblem.

Jason Williams: Put in 12 Years, Got some Tats

Earlier this week former King, Grizzly, Heat, and Magic (and then Grizzly again) PG Jason Williams announced his retirement after struggling with back injuries. After being drafted 7th overall in the 1998 draft, Williams proved his value retiring as the Grizzlies all-time assist leader, winning a ring with the Heat, and posting near double-doubles in points and assists in his first two years with Memphis.

Considering that players like Michael Olowokandi, Raef LaFrentz and Robert Traylor were drafted before him, Williams appears to be a steal in the draft. (Dirk, Paul Pierce, and Rashard Lewis were all drafted later making his seventh pick seem more justified.)

However, DBSF's interest in Williams focuses on the evolution of his tattoos. Basically, Williams presents a case of how a young man evolves from standard senior year of high school fare consisting of a wicked flying dragon, a crawling tiger, and initials encased in a flaming basketball into full sleeves and words spelled out across fingers.

Kings: 2 tattoos--crawling tiger and curly-tailed dragon. Definitely looks like a Ralph Lauren polo would cover those up and he could work 50 hours a week at his Dad's accounting firm and nobody would be the wiser. The hair suggests he could also coach high school lacrosse on the weekends.



Grizzlies: Year 4 in the NBA must presents that existential crises facing all mid-twenty somethings--who am I? Jason William's response? "Jason". Put it across the right forearm. No more polo-t's at company picnics. Further, the hair's gone from the Sacramento days so he no longer looks like that guy from your cousin's frat at Clemson.



Heat: Williams now expands to left forearm and replaces the curly-tailed dragon with some wild-stuff that basically reminds DBSF of Caron Butler's tattoos covering Caron Butler's old tattoos.



Finally, the Magic: Full arm inner- and outer-decoration. He's got "White Boy" across the fingers, and the Mark McGrath birds on his hands. Fully committed; no longer eligible to work at Dad's accounting firm.

Eastern Conference First Round Picks

It's much easier to project series after they've started. As such, DBSF offers his qualified prognostications:

Bulls-Pacers: Bulls in 5 (would've been in 4 if projected before the series started). There exists a direct relationship between Derrick Rose and a team's success. That relationship is muted when you replace "Derrick Rose" with "AJ Price" in the equation.

Hawks-Magic: Magic in 7, DBSF guesses. Does it matter? Whoever wins this series serves only to entertain Bull's fans over 5 games some time next week.

Celtics-Knicks: Celtics in 6. This could also be Celtics in 7, Knicks in 6, or Knicks in 7. When certain recently-acquired Knick's superstar(s?) choose to provide effort on both sides of the court the team becomes slightly more challenging. Unrelatedly, that Shaq deal probably isn't proving as fruitful as the Celtic's would've liked.

Heat-Sixers: Heat in 4. Somebody had to lose in 4 to the Heat in the first round. Doug Collins' career 39.5% playoff record, unfortunately, makes his team the ideal candidate.

John Wall's Rookie Year in Perspective

Averaging over 22 points, 12 rebounds, and almost 4 assists per game Blake Griffin secured Rookie of the Year in December--around the second time he hit his head--mid-dunk--on the backboard. Had Griffin not missed last year because of surgery to repair a broken knee cap, John Wall, who averaged 16.5 points, 4.6 rebounds, 7.9 assists, and 1.7 steals per game (7th in the NBA) would most likely have won rookie of the year.

So, DBSF thought it was worthwhile to compare Wall's numbers to the last few rookies of the year (and Griffin). But, the problem with comparing the numbers of ROYs is that they usually play on poor teams where their stats get inflated because coaches and GMs let rookies play and shoot their way to all-stardom. So, while Wall put up Jason Kidish numbers he also played 38 minutes per game on a team that won only 23 games (24 if they beat the Cavs tonight) where he averaged almost 4 turnovers per game, shot 40% from the field and under 30% for threes.

Fortunately there are clever individuals, who in college rather than smoke weed and watch Family Guy DVDs over and over, created statistics to standardize players' performance. In comparing Wall with past ROYs two 'advanced' measures are useful. The first, PER (player efficiency rating) reflects per-minute standardized production where the league average is 15 (i.e., being above 15 indicates that you're "above average"). The second 'Win Shares per 48 minutes' estimates the number of wins that a player contributes in a season per 48 minutes. (For actual calculations see PER and WS/48.) Below are the PERs and WS/48s for Wall, Griffin and the last 5 ROYs.

John Wall 15.7; 0.038
Blake Griffin 21.8; 0.150
Tyreke Evans: 18.2; 0.097
Derrick Rose: 16.0; 0.078
Kevin Durant: 15.8; 0.040
Brandon Roy: 18.0; 0.114
Chris Paul: 22.1; 0.178

Arguably the two best players in the NBA this season--Rose and Durant--had rookie PERs and WS/48s closest to Wall. (For another perspective, DeMarcus Cousins, probably the second runner-up for rookie of the year to Griffin and Wall had a PER of 14.6 and WS/48 of 0.022.) Although not exceptional stats for a "rookie of the year" rookie year, Wall's numbers are comparable to recent winners. And, considering Wall's prediction after last night's overtime win over Boston's b-team that the Wizards will make the playoffs next season, you have to believe his improved performance will contribute to this optimism.

Top 5 NBA Flat Tops--Whites

To most fans 'epic NBA flat tops' conjure memories of Scottie Pippen, Dominique Wilkins, and Kendall Gill (Kendall had some flat tops with the Nets and Hornets that aerodynamically speaking, were phenomenal). But, DBSF also remembers the Caucasians, who were mainly mediocre at best as NBA players (save Mullins and Schrempf), that made the commitment to angular, vertically-inclined hairstyles. Below are the Top 5:

#5 Chris Mullins: Nothing too sexy about Mullins' flat top. His hair just grows this way; perhaps a family member or favorite TV character growing up was in the armed services and contributed to his life-long commitment to the flat top.


#4 Eric Montross: What DBSF calls the "uncommitted flat top". You know he wants to take it to the next step in terms of verticality but either because of pusillanimity or because at 7'0" Montross was too self-conscious to add any more height he couldn't commit.


#3 Detlef Schrempf: There's something a little too Arian about this flat top. The angularity is a little too precise. What Schrempf makes up for in commitment to the flat top, he sacrifices in excessive fear-inducing qualities.


#2 Dave Corzine: DBSF knows what you're thinking--the angularity is deplorable, the verticality is Montrossian. But, Corzine doesn't have the hair for a flat top. Rather, he commits, throws in a Tom Selleck mustache and comes to hack some big men down low while the starters and second team get a breather.


#1: Dwayne Schintzius: Back when guys, like Dominique, thought it was revolutionary to complement the flat top with some lines in the side of their heads, Schintzius basquiat'ed the flat top with a shoulder-length mullet. Creativity and perspicacity alone make Schintzius the runaway favorite. Considering the arithmetical sharpness of the front of his flat top he almost deserves to be a living footnote in the canons of human hairstyle.

MLB Needs New Names for Pitching Injuries

The Colorado Rockies announced on Wednesday that they were placing their ace, Ubaldo Jimenez, on the 15 day DL for a "cracked cuticle". This reminded DBSF of the time former Detroit Tigers' pitcher Kenny Rogers had to start (yes start, not finish) the season on the DL because of "tired arm".



DBSF isn't questioning the toughness of these players as an injured cuticle limits a pitcher's pitch options (in Jimenez's case--according to ESPN as there is like a 'name that Finnish architect?' zero-percent chance of DBSF knowing this--it affects his curves, sliders, and fastballs).

But, considering that San Fransisco 49er's Safety Ronnie Lott lost a part of his finger in a game tackling running back Timmy Newsome and then finished the game sans finger (it was the tip portion, the part that has the nail on the other side, and can't bend on his own unless his friends closer to the hand bend), MLB might consider going to the creative department to come up with more menacing names for pitching injuries.



As for "cracked cuticle" DBSF would go for something like "advanced bone displacement" to conjure the idea that--a la a the alien in Aliens--some finger bone is attempting to grow through the skin, thus giving the injury a sense of terror and sci-fi, which based on movies, like Inception or the Twilight series, has serious commercial appeal.

Further, instead of tired arm make up something about ligament damage or do what the NBA did with plantar fasciitis--create a syndrome that sounds so terrible everyone accepts at face value that it is prohibitively painful, yet also too difficult to spell so its not worth looking up on Web MD.

NCAA National Championship Reflections

Is the court raised with conventional metal and wood supports or hovercraft technology? The later seems more interesting from an engineering/ GI Joe perspective.

Butler Forward Matt Howard's shot fakes are of the elementary school variety.

Clark Kellogg's halftime prognosis was that in the second half players (on both teams presumably) were "going to want to make more shots". During that period CBS could have probably run another one of those Miller Lite ads where the goof ball commits some faux pas and is mockingly corrected by a bartender, who looks like she's the slightly less attractive sister of a Victoria's Secret model.

Butler is leading at half time despite none of their players stepping in the offensive paint yet.

The face paint on Butler band members screams Midwest/ minor-major.

If Nick Young and JR Smith ran a clinic on how to play team defense, the players from Butler and UConn didn't attend, and ended up attending some other clinic where they learned the exact opposite of the Young-Smith approach.

At half, the teams are a combined 15-65 with three assists. In NBA parlance, that's a three-game road trip for Brandon Jennings.

Butler has several no-tattoo line-ups. It's like the antithesis of the Denver Nuggets.

Probably the most Midwestern thing about Butler's game is all the falling--both teams, both sides of the ball. That and the mandatory 4-8 picks per possession all of which are of the knock-your-wind-out quality.

Jimmer Fredette wins the Naismith award. He looks like he would also make a good lacrosse player or Congressional intern.

Butler's lay-up line requires two passes prior to the lay-up. That comes as no surprise.

Butler goes 3-31 from 2's. That sounds like a late-90's LA Clipper's record coming into the All Star break.

There have been more exciting late-September NL Central divisional battles for 4th place . . .

Further Evidence that John Wall is a Rookie

In Tuesday night's loss to the Heat, Wizards' guard/ best player/ future/ dance innovator reminded fans in the Verizon Center that he was in fact a 20 year old rookie. It all started when Wall began closely defending Miami's back-up/ Soviet center Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Right there's problem number one--presumably Wall was hoping for an easy steal, but Ilgauskas is like a Y2K bug threat from outside so letting the Russian lumber around until Wade or LeBron takes a hand-off from him would've sufficed. Instead, Ilgauskas caught a case of Marcus Camby-elbows, which resulted in Wall receiving a face full of Eastern Caucus forearm.



Wall responded by throwing a hand at Big Z, which considering the size disparity probably came off as more of a slap to the target. Next--God bless his heart--Javale McGee fancied that the best way to rectify the situation would be to have no other than, yes Javale McGee, intervene. Inevitably this caused what could have simply been poop falling on the edge of the carpet to diarrhea hitting the ceiling fan (on "AC Blast").

To even things out Heat reserve forward and the consummate veteran (although not for 'love of the game' reasons but to meet fiduciary responsibilities associated with fecundity) Juwan Howard entered the fray, and did exactly what any veteran should attempt to do in a close game--cause a ruckus involving as many of their good players at minimal cost to your team.



So, what resulted? Ejections. The Heat lose two bench players, who most often it seems only fill roster space, in Ilgauskas and Howard, and the Wizards lose Wall and almost McGee. Here's a less obvious case of where the Wizards' youth compromises their ability to win--Wall allows marginal players from the other team to engage him in a fight that results in his team losing their best player and almost another starter (McGee).

What Wall needs to learn is that no matter the degree of elbow-injustice, he can't go Pat Swayze in 'Red Dawn' and attack the Soviet invader. He needs to play for the Wizards to win, which means that fisticuffs are the work of otherwise limited veterans (or, in the Wizard's case recently called up D-Leaguers, like Othyus Jeffers or Mustafa Shakur).

Final Four Prognostications

ESPN reported today that of the 5 million-plus brackets on its website only two had selected the Final Four correctly. Although DBSF erred with the masses, he did have over half of the Final Four teams still alive in the second round. This preamble is included simply to qualify predictions, which based on past prognostications at least, will likely result in the opposite outcome of what is predicted.

VCU-Butler: VCU is a fart away from the Washington metro-area. The DC area is to basketball players what rural Louisiana is to football players, but multiplied--by like a lot (ironically, VCU has 0 players from the DC area, but its effect on talent must be a contagion). Honestly, University of Maryland Eastern Shore could probably win two games in the tournament if it were ever given something better than a 15-seed.

For a reason that has yet to be determined there is a wealth of basketball talent in the DC area. And, even though Butler has 1.5 pros on its team, DBSF likes VCU's size and speed. But, according to the commentators on Sportscenter that tell DBSF what to think everyday, VCU's game is predicated on building a lead with threes and maintaining it.



Winning the entire tournament while relying on threes presents consistency problems. And, considering that VCU is the first team in the history of the NCAA to win 5 straight games and not be in the Championship, DBSF is suspicious of their being able to stay hot from behind the arc (not to mention they were something like 3-13 from 2's in the first half verse Kansas). Verdict: Butler 68-58.

Kentucky-UConn: Younger super-athletes meet slightly older super-athletes. Kentucky can beat a third of the NBA's teams if it wants to. Kentucky can also lose to one of those junior colleges where bench players also work at the scores table/ concessions stand during games should the psychological state of certain Wildcat players deteriorate.

When they played in November, UConn won by 17. Kemba Walker has gotten to the point where he is now college basketball's version of Derek Rose--he makes phenomenal athletes look like they're being controlled by someone's little brother in a video game (see Brandon Jennings below . . ). Verdict: UConn 70-65.