This Just In: The Owner of The Georgia Gwizzlies is Cwazy!

I think the Gwizzlies owner is delusional. Check out this news item on ABALive.com:

GEORGIA GWIZZLIES PROMISE BETTER EFFORT NEXT TIME

26-Feb-2008
Macon, GA — The Georgia Gwizzlies were soundly and fairly defeated on Sunday by the Atlanta Vision at the Gwinnett Center by a wide margin.

“We commend the Atlanta team’s effort, their leadership and management. They are very good,” stated team owner Embry Malone. “But we will do better next time and we will be prepared when the playoffs begin. We have quite a few games left to turn it around and we will. We want to get to the Championship Playoffs in Quebec.”

Playoffs?!? You are 1-7!!! Either Malone knows something we don’t (like well-placed funds to a certain CEO ensure a playoff spot), he is trying to get fans to come to the last three games, or he is just nuts. If anyone from the Blue Conf. - South Div. is going to the playoffs, it would be the team that just beat you by 51 points. You know: the 6-2 Atlanta Vision (whom I railed against a few days ago as being unworthy for the playoffs because of the tiny amount of games they have played, when I saw a fan-generated playoff bracket online). Atlanta is 7th in the Power Rankings, Halifax is this list on by the skin of our teeth at #15. Georgia is not even mentioned on this list, nor has it ever been on the Power Rankings list this season.

The Gwizzlies have three games left! I think the owner mistakenly inserted the words “quite a” before the more accurate “few” in his statement. All three games are against the West Texas Whirlwinds, who don’t seem to be much of a threat, with a 3-6 record. Of course, to a 1-7 team like Georgia, they may be too much to handle. Head for the cyclone shelter, Auntie Em!

Two in a row for the Rainmen, 124-95 over the Maywood Buzz

Nice to see everyone getting lots of time on the floor again tonight. Eric was a beast with 18 boards. Rebounds are so crucial and they seemed easy to get against Maywood. Two of our highest-scoring games and surprise, surprise! We have a ton of rebounds in both matches.

I wasn’t as impressed this evening as I was last night; it seemed like we started the game with the same old routine of sending Eric in low to muscle his way around. After we got warmed up, though, it was a game similar to last night. I liked how the guys who came off the bench actually opened up the point spread. Way to go!

Unfortunately, these two games were such runaways that the crowd was practically silent for most of the game, eerily so for a moment. Mavs Gillis the announcer started a few cheers; I think it is good that he starts them every once in a while, it saves my voice. The canned “De-fense” recording does bother me, though. That seems like forcing a cheer.

Speaking of cheers, we need names for the new guys. I heard Chris yell out “JT” for James Tyler. I was thinking Sweet Baby James, a play on his name being so close to James Taylor as well as the whole Baby Shaq thing. We could cheer “Sweet” when he does well. By the way James, if you read this, don’t be so hard on yourself if you miss a free throw. Just keep focused and try your best again next time.

Akeem “The Dream” is obvious. I like the concept of “his brother Jon”. The Clark Brothers. OK, that’s just too silly after all.

Jimmy Twynan. Being an ex-Harlem Globetrotter and a video game character should give us lots to work with, but I am at a loss. I tried “Dyn-O-Mite!” tonight (Jimmy Walker - “Good Times”), but it didn’t sound nearly as good when I said it as it had sounded inside my head. Back to the drawing board. Maybe I should just do what I did at the start of the season for the other players and just go ask them what they would like to be called.

One thing I love about my seats is the close proximity to the action. I am so glad I didn’t buy floor seats. We have a small community going on our side of the court, with other loyal fans as well as actual contact with the DJ, the press and even Rainmen front office folks.

Any word why Brian and Dennie did not play tonight?

Finally: I think the Weather Girls should shake their pom-poms (their actual pom-poms, guys) behind the net when the opposition is taking free throws. You see all sorts of fans in other leagues do that kind of thing. That has to be much more distracting than a few people booing. This would mean the WG’s would have to switch ends every quarter, just like the players, and not just kneel down on the floor behind the net.

Furthermore, I think the fans would be more likely to cheer if the WG’s led some cheers. Not all of the cheers, but every once in a while. If the WG’s had more than just a handful of moves, then fine, we can accept they are dancers and they are entertaining us. However, since they appear so infrequently and yet they are at the game all night, why not lead some cheers? At least stay on the sidelines to make your presence known? And why are there only 5 WG’s left? Is there some internal strife or are the girls just moving on from this gig?

This home stand is great for fan morale! I am disappointed that there are only three games left in the season. We are seriously considering a road trip to Quebec for the playoffs. Who else is in?

That's What I'm Talkin' About!

The Rainmen played the first game of a double header against the Maywood Buzz last night. The Rainmen took away any sting the Buzz may have inflicted, with a 145-97 victory. The first quarter of the game was unbelievable. We were finally living up to our name, by "raining threes". We put up some monster numbers, including shooting over 50% from the field, over 40% for threes, and an incredible 79 boards, which is almost double the per-game average so far this year. While Kadiri was his usual defensive giant self, I was pleasantly surprised by Jon Clark's double-double performance. One more point for Kadiri and he would have joined Jon and Eric in that club for the night.

I liked how the rebounds were spread out fairly evenly among a number of Rainmen, showing that our team is playing well defensively under the net while still getting the chances to score big points.

It looks like this is the team we have been waiting for all season. Hats off to the front office for putting together a good mix of players and talents along with some size that we needed all along.

Sending Brian in to the hoop was a nice change from always making Eric do it. Brian was able to pull some fouls, which is almost like adding the points automatically. There were relatively few penalties called (especially against the Buzz, it seemed), which made the game go faster. Liberally subbing in our guys tired the Buzz players very quickly, which is always a nice advantage for us to have for home games.

It was great to see Kadiri get some blocks, a few baskets, as well as a three pointer. While the box score shows that he had only 3 blocks, he sure made a huge difference in the game, mostly for his strong rebounding skill. We put up the KD boxes for Kadiri's blocks last night. I guess we were also counting his defensive moves that caused the shot to be short or off-target. And to be completely honest, I put a box up for Kadiri's three-pointer, too. Here's hoping I get the chance to put a whole bunch more of them up again tonight.

James Tyler performed well with the second-most defensive rebounds (behind Kadiri) and even a few tip-ins. It was interesting to see him pass the ball out to the perimeter in the first half, but then start going for his own points in the second half. This shows some depth in the coaching strategy (yes, I said it), that we aren't just running the same few plays every time.

The Rainmen must have passed the ball around the perimeter more in the first half of this game than in most other complete games. The result was a lot of uncontested three-pointers, with a higher-than-average success rate. It was very exciting for me as a fan to watch fluid motion plays rather than the static Play #1 pick-and-roll. I was shocked to hear Coach Lewis call out "Four! Four!" I didn't know we had a fourth play! Anyway, excellent performance all around.

Congrats for putting the second stringers in for some meaningful time in this game. They showed us fans that they belong on the team. I just wish we had subbed them in for more time in earlier games, to give them experience, although to be fair most of the guys now on the bench weren't on the time a couple months ago.

I have to say that I finally understood what some people have against the 13th man rule. Tonight it was embarrassing to see the Buzz completely stop so the 13th man could take three shots at a layup. I was glad they had a monster dunk after that. Another disappointment was the number of fans there. I hope we get a better shot at weekend games next year.

Let's have a strong finish to the season on the way to Quebec! Go Rainmen!

Volume Corrected To 15° Celsius

Here is a letter that I sent today to Peter Duffy, a columnist for Halifax's Chronicle-Herald. Let's see if anything comes of this.


Mr. Duffy,

I realize that this letter is about a subject that is somewhat tangential to the point of your article, "I fear our hearts have hardened," but would you write an article about the scam that is "volume corrected to 15 degress Celsius"?

No one ever complains about this,although it seems that any time the price at the pump goes up by more than a few cents, there is a flurry of e-mails trying to call for an organized day of not buying gas as a protest. Of course, anyone who doesn't buy on that specified date probably fills up either the day before or the day after, so no real change is made in the gas companies's sales figures, but that is another matter.

This CBC Marketplace report told the story in 1999:

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/pre-2007/files/cars/gasprice/

For some reason, even though this issue received national press with that CBC Marketplace story, it is forgotten in this time of the U.S. of going to war to keep the supply of oil coming from the Middle East and Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, ostensibly for peace and democracy, but originally we went there to get Osama (remember?).

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/10/06/Afghanistan/

That is another issue for another letter, and certainly a very important one compared to the relative minutae of this letter. However, the effect of volume corrected gasoline amounts to Canadians paying $655,000,000 ANNUALLY for gas they never receive.

The central question is why is gas corrected to 15 degrees Celsius? It is to standardize volume when retailers sell it to unsuspecting consumers. However, the standard of 15 degrees Celsius is beneficial to the retailers, while Canadians are paying for gas that never makes it into their vehicles.

Here is a link that shows Halifax's average temperature.

http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N44W063+1202+0017800G2

As you can see, at 6.6 degrees, our annual average is nowhere near 15 degrees Celsius. Other than in July and August, our monthly average temperature doesn't even pass 15 degrees.

Well, one may ask, what about Toronto, with its hot summers? Surely, they must have a much higher average annual temperature that would make the 15°C standard a reasonable one? Nope. The average annual temperature in Toronto is one full degree higher than Halifax, at 7.6°C. Even the Big Smoke has only 4 months that average higher than 15 degrees.

So what does this mean to the average consumer?

This website shows the effect of temperature on gasoline:

http://www.users.qwest.net/~taaaz/AZgas.html#HOW%20GASOLINE%20IS%20SOLD%20IN%20CANADA

A quote from that website: "Gasoline volume changes approximately 0.125% for every 1°C change in temperature"

Therefore, a 60 litre weekly fill-up at Halifax's average monthly temperature of -4.9°C in February costs the consumer an extra $1.77 per fill-up, at today's price of $1.179 per litre.

Calculations:

15°C standard minus -4.9°C average = 19.9°C difference

19.9°C times 0.00125 per °C change in gas volume = 0.024875, or about 2.5%

60 litres per fill-up times $1.179 per litre = $70.74 cost of fill-up

$70.74 times 2.5% = $1.77 extra because of volume correction to 15°C

Given our 6.6°C average annual temperature and assuming we drive the same every month for the whole year, the rip-off for a consumer who fills up with 60 litres every week amounts to $38.62 per year.

This takes into account the 2 months of the year that our average monthly temperature is above 15°C.

While this doesn't seem like much, it is flat out theft. We are paying for gas that we never receive!

Transport Canada says there are "About 13.2 million automobiles accounted for 78 per cent of all vehicles in 1995. Some 3.4 million trucks of all types made up 20 per cent of the total. The remaining two per cent of vehicles consisted of 319,000 motorcycles and mopeds and 64,000 buses."

http://www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/Report/anre1996/tc96_chapter_10.htm

Assuming there has been no growth in these figures and assuming each vehicle uses 60 litres per week (trucks use more, small cars use less), the total larceny adds up to $655,883,460! (Total of 16,983,000 vehicles @$38.62/year)

Could you write a story about this government standard that rips off Canadian consumers? Everyone I talked to about this fact didn't even know that it made a difference in how much money they spend at the pumps. It is a story that gets swept under the rug because the government is the biggest single benefactor, since they earn about half of what we pay for gas in the form of taxes.

This Industry Canada website,

http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/mc-mc.nsf/en/lm01094e.html

shows the government's complicity, explaining it away because other countries use 15 degrees as their standard and we have used it for natural gas and propane for decades. Well, we used to think the earth was flat too! Just because a standard has been used for a long time doesn't mean it is right to do so.

Strangely enough, this Ontario Ministry of Revenue website,

http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/bulletins/gt/gas1_2003.html

says in plain language that volume corrected gas is different from non-volume corrected gas. The reference is about 3/4 of the way down the page, under the heading "Ambient Temperature Allowance". Apparently, when the government talks about tax revenue, it makes sure it collects all the money it feels is due.

Thanks for reading this message. I hope you write an article about this issue. $655,000,000 is a lot of money. Canadians shouldn't have to give it to oil companies and the government with no say in the matter.

Best regards,

Phil Kempton

UPDATE: Mr. Duffy responded to me message to him with an e-mail of his own. I won't publish it here, because I didn't ask him if I could, but he seemed to take interest in the isue I had brought up, and said he would keep the information for potential future use. Maybe it was a form response to a reader submission, but I would like to think that Mr. Duffy was sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story on his own.

Unsung Hero - Kadiri Richard

I am a big fan of Kadiri Richard. I bought Kadiri's jersey (and waited for it to arrive since there weren't any in stock when the jerseys were first sold). Two games ago, I brought boxes of Kraft Dinner (KD) to string up in front of my seats for each block he made, only to see him have no blocks for that game against Quebec. I found that the Rainmen played zone defense for at least the first half, and then an ineffective man coverage in the second half when Quebec capitalized on drawing defenders away from the net and then scoring. This doesn't give one a lot of chances for big blocks.

In my haste to get to the game against Vermont, I forgot the boxes, but I will bring them to the rest of the games. I didn't miss much of a chance to string them up, since KD only blocked 2 shots. Most of our defense in that game was in the form of grabbing the ball after the shot, hence the 34 defensive boards for the team.

It seems like Kadiri has never really been used to his full potential, with Eric being chosen as the man to take the ball in to the hoop. Watching Kadiri's highlight reel shows that he is certainly capable of driving hard and I have never really understood why he has been relegated to a largely defensive role with almost no opportunity given to him to score unless the opposition's defense breaks down. Maybe it is the Rainmen's small offensive play list that leaves Kadiri out in the cold. He has too much talent to simply be a 15-to-20-minutes-per-game player. Looking at his stats, he has rarely played more than half a game and his stats prove that the more time he has on the court, the more effective he becomes, with rebounds and blocks.

Having said that, his attitude -- both on the court and the bench -- is excellent. No one has a bigger smile when the Rainmen are winning (remember those days?), when a teammate scores an impressive basket Kadiri is right there congratulating him, and no one is more imposing when KD gets his scowl on to intimidate an opposing player. As the Rainman who starts chants nearly as much as Chris, Dunc and I do, Kadiri is almost as valuable to the team on the bench as he is on the court. I simply think he has more to contribute than he has been given the chance to show us.

A flurry of thoughts on the Rainmen

Here are some posts that I put on Chris Parsons's fansite about the Rainmen, with some minor edits and additions for context.

On Rick Lewis's coaching ability:

If a game is lost with 12 minutes to go, try subbing in the guys who wish they could play enough so they might actually make a difference. Being down 20 points going into the fourth, against Vermont no less, means that this leaves 12 minutes for our bench warmers to get some real time, not the garbage 90 seconds that Lewis deigns to give them.

Rick Lewis seems like a nice enough fellow and gives good interview on the Q, but proper player utilization, gametime decision making and clock management are not his fortes. Maybe he could be the PR talking head for the team, but please can we have a different head coach? How about the 2 assistant coaches? Give them a crack at running a game or two. Why not? At least they know the players and their respective strengths and weaknesses. We may have next year’s coach already on the payroll and I don’t mean Rick Lewis.

On Halifax vs. Vermont:

Looking at the box score of this game, it seems like it was the Lantrice and Eric show. Fine, they are supposed to be our best scorers, but 2 guys can’t match up against 5. Looking at the amount of time the starters played makes me cringe. Of course we ran out of gas! Eric played all 48 minutes of the game! Lantrice, Brian and Ferg got a combined 15 minutes off! Lewis treats his backups like they were made out of glass and he doesn’t want to risk breaking them by taking them out of the wrapper and actually playing them.

On the rest of the season:

I was looking forward to watching the Rainmen whup the Maywood Buzz (3-21), but now I think we’ll be lucky to split the games with them.

I highly doubt the Bahama Pro Show will come all the way to Halifax, considering they only have 6 games under their belts, according to the ABA website (if that site can be trusted). The Bahama website is current as of November 2007, so no help there.

I admire Mr. Levingston for trying to finish the season off without missing any home games, but it seems that just as the Rainmen are getting some PR traction in Halifax, our team is collapsing on the court. I hope we can finish off the season in a strong way, to bring our record closer to .500. Luckily, we have a home stand of games with only Vermont being a clear favourite against us. I would love to see us take at least 4 of the 6 games to end the season.

On the Rainmen's recent additions to the team:

I am glad they sell programs at the games, it’s hard to keep track of our players. Is this common for ABA teams or is Mr. Levingston trying to find the right mix, even as the end of the season approaches? The two new additions sound promising, we certainly can’t do much worse.

James Tyler is listed on a basketball recruiting website as 7′1″ and 360 pounds!!! That’s heavier than Shaq, although he is also 16 years younger than the Diesel. In fact, his nickname was/is “Baby Shaq”.

I hope his weight doesn’t make him too slow. If he has some speed, he will definitely make his presence known on the court. Another website shows his strengths as: “Low Block Scorer” and “Rebounding”, while he needs to improve as a “Finisher” and his “Intensity/Passion”. This site also mentioned that Tyler “got serious about basketball and shed some weight, thus opening up his low post game.” Some other sites list Tyler at 310, 320 and 330 pounds, respectively.

As for Akeem Clark, a few years ago he was praised as being one of the U.S. best 3 point shooters. Interestingly, Booyer and Clark were on the same USBL team Gary Steelheads and were activated at the same time last year. In addition to being teammates on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis team for a year, they were also together on the Black Hawk East Junior College team in 2002. Either they were separated at birth and are karmically connected, or James is one heck of a salesman at getting Akeem on his team. Hopefully Akeem can stay healthy and contribute to the Rainmen this year, unlike Booyer, who was released again due to a chronic leg injury after playing only 5 games for the Rainmen.

On the 2008 ABA playoffs:

I just found this 2008 playoff tree, reportedly from the Manchester Millrats.

Apparently we will be playing the Atlanta Vision, in Georgia. The top 4 teams (Vermont, Beijing, Manchester and Texas) get byes, as does the host team Quebec. 4 California teams as well as Atlanta and Halifax make up the rest of the roster. For some reason, there is no 10th seed.

I don’t think a team (Atlanta Vision) that has played only 8 games should be in the playoffs. The Atlanta Vision have beaten the Gwizzlies 4 times, the Bahama Pro Show twice and lost to Beijing twice. That’s it. That is their whole season so far, with 15 games cancelled. The Vision will play the Gwizzlies 3 more times and Bahama once more. So we get to play a team that has played a total of 3 other teams, while Mr. Levingston and the rest of the Northeast division, who have worked to provide as complete a schedule as possible, are penalized by not advancing to the playoffs.

edit: Apparently the link above was a bracket that another fan had made up, as his projection of how the playoffs will go. It is not an official playoff bracket. Read the entry below to see that this fan playoff bracket is the best info that we have so far on the playoffs, since no one, not even the CEO of the league, is giving the answer of exactly how the playoffs will be seeded or played.

Here is correspondence between a Rainmen fan and Joe Newman, the CEO of the ABA.

This just shows that Newman has no idea how the playoffs will go. In a real league, the format would be set well in advance, with teams — and fans — knowing ahead of the end of the season whether or not they will be in the playoffs.

Having most of the teams fold or play incomplete seasons messes up the seeding, but there should be a rule that teams must play at least 50% of their scheduled games (50% is the absolute lowest, it should probably be higher, like 67% or 75%) to qualify for the playoffs. Otherwise, a team like the 6-2 Atlanta Vision who are only successful at beating up on the Gwizzlies (1-7) and the Bahama Pro Show (1-5) would get in while a team that actually plays different teams, including ones that are better than they are, gets the shaft.

The fact that the league CEO doesn’t directly respond to a fan’s e-mail is disappointing. The fact that there is no apparent clear-cut rule on which teams will make the playoffs is disturbing. I smell a rat in the state of Denmark, to mix my metaphors.

On the Rainmen's end-of-season home stand and another blast at Halifax's newest free tabloid, Metro:

I think the new guys may be the key to rounding out our formerly guard-heavy team with some big offense. Will Lewis’s program fit them in to actually make a difference? That remains to be seen, but we will have a half-dozen chances to see it, over the next 3 weeks.

I read this Metro article on the Rainmen. Chris and I consistently write longer passages on rainmenblog.wordpress.com than that 178-word footnote. Other than talking to Mr. Levingston for a couple of sound bites, the reporter did less research than Chris (or I) do for most of our posts. While I am pleasantly surprised that there is even local news in the paper, the length of the piece shows what I said about the tabloid’s editorial slant towards stories that can be read in 30 seconds or less.

R.I.P. The Daily News

The Daily News was closed on Monday. While the suddenness of the event was shocking, with no final edition printed, it was plain to see why it happened, once the circulation stats were reported. The News only had 16,000 subscribers, versus over 100,000 for the Herald. To be fair, the News is mainly a Halifax paper, while the Herald has both metro and provincial editions. Anyway, the paper was losing millions of dollars, so what better way to solve that problem than to start putting out a free paper!?!

The company that owned the News has started producing a new tabloid, called Metro. There are a number of other cities in Canada that already have this paper, so the owners must think it will succeed here too, although a not-free paper that actually had local news stories and real reporters had failed.

I picked up the first Metro paper yesterday, just to see it. Wow, it is great for the vision-impaired! The font is the largest I have seen in a newspaper, with all sorts of white space between lines, wide margins, etc. I guess they have to somehow fill up the pages that aren’t full-page ads. I really dislike the sans-serif headline font.

The stories take about 30 seconds or less to read, which makes me feel like I am watching TV, instead of reading a “newspaper”. I was surprised to actually see current news stories as well as a few local items, but as I foretold, the paper was heavy with ads and downloaded fluff from national news providers. This will probably be the only copy of Metro that I ever pick up, unless one of my kids has a papier-mache project for school.

The Rainmen haven't made much progress this season.

The Rainmen lost 120-102 to the Quebec Kebekwa on Wednesday night. It was the worst game I have seen them play. There are a few new players on the team, replacing some guys who were among the first to join the Rainmen, and it doesn't look like Coach Lewis has worked them into his "program".

We lost the game because of our lousy defence and poor free throw shooting.

Re: percentage from the line. Eric had the majority of the foul shots and his percentage is the worst on the team, at 0.381. He didn't even do that well in this game, sinking only 5 of 14 (0.357).

I was surprised to actually hear Coach Lewis remind Eric to shoot off his fingertips. I thought that it would be unnecessary to remind him of this technique, considering Eric's experience and obvious talent on the court, but unfortunately he needs help. The angled spin that Eric puts on the ball is the ugliest free throw move I have ever seen, along with the almost non-existant arc that sometimes happens. I wish Eric would stop doing that. Quite often the sideways spin makes the ball rim out, when a straight backwards spin would cause it to go downward through the net. These are just observations from a non-professional. I have a lot of respect for Eric as a player and a person.

Re: Defence. Watching your opponent go uncontested for lay-ups time after time is ridiculous. Not getting rebounds (Except for Eric, who had a good game except for the FT%) is crazy. I see that the main difference between us being 8-16 instead of 16-8 is the lack of rebounding, both offensively and defensively. We can go-head-to-head with any team in this league, even the mighty Frost Heaves, but for some reason, Coach Lewis has drilled into the Rainmen's heads that all 5 players MUST be in defensive positions as soon as possible, regardless of the potential for boards.

Why not leave one guy under the net, or 2, if the opposition has strong defenders, to get that !#%$@ ball? With the exception of Eric's performance, our offensive boards are almost extinct. As others have said on this blog, we need more than one guy to consistently take it to the hoop and stay with it until that ball goes in. Defensively, we aren't too bad on some nights in keeping the opponents from scoring for the first few tries, but then the opposition draws our guys clear of the net, making that move that Chris referred to in his post , which leaves one guy open, who goes in uncontested. That happened way too many times in this game.

I am going to say it again, for like the fourth time: How about having someone in under the net to pick up the errant 3-point shots? If we had great shooters who consistently drain it, then fine, let it go and get ready on D, but our guys seem to have good nights and bad nights. I think it is imperative that the coaching staff actually coach each game as it unfolds and make changes as necessary. I know that seems to fly in the face of what is currently happening, but give it a try! Please!

I cannot believe that this lack of rebounding has not been observed by the owner Mr. Levingston, the coaching staff, or the players. Why do they let this keep happening? Guess what: if we score more points because of rebounds, we don't have to concentrate so much on having so many defenders in place, waiting for the opponents.

OK. Time to take my soapbox and go home. Good luck to the Rainmen in Boston and Vermont. We'll see you next week.

What Do Teachers Really Make? Taylor Mali Explains...

Powerful example of Slam Poetry.