Apples to Oranges

[Kim Malo]

At 12:04 PM 5/7/2006, HRBlaine at aol.com wrote:
>Gotta go with Egg on this one Kimmie.   Who cares how long it  took O'Neal to
>"mature"?   Point is, he *is* mature...and  only 27.

Look, I don't particularly give a damn about trades, much less trades 
that can't happen. Again, you can't trade O'Neil for Al because of 
the cap figures. So whether you would or not doesn't really matter. 
My only point was that almost all the criticisms Egg was leveling at 
Jefferson to show why we should be in a hurry to get rid of him were 
leveled at O'Neil at the same point in his career, which means that 
they aren't necessarily the absolutes she made them out to be - 
*based on her own preferred player*. I did say that I'm not sure 
Jefferson will reach his potential, which is also in a different 
style from O'Neil's. But I'm not yet sure he won't. And I don't want 
to just be good for the couple of years it takes O'Neil to become 
unhappy here, as it has in Indy, especially because for all I agree 
he's a fine player I'm not sure how many of our real problems he solves.

>So far, he is a
>damn "foul machine".

Ok, would one of you people so enamored of this phrase mind defining 
it? or do we just agree that there's perception and then there's 
reality and this is just a case of using loaded phrases to impress.

Jefferson's season average was the same as those noted foul machines 
Delonte & Pierce. Both he and Perk were well behind team leader Raef, 
whom I've never heard anyone refer to as a "foul machine"

Now if you want to argue, yeah, but look at the difference in 
minutes, if you go with per 48 min, team leader is that noted beast 
of the east Dan Dickau. Next up Dwayne Jones, understandable given 
his rookie status and the way he plays. Al comes next, but "foul 
machine" who is never called that Orien Greene is right behind and 
ahead of Perk, with that noted fouling monster Raef again not that 
far behind. Along with a bunch of others about a foul per 48 min 
behind. Is that what a fouling machine is? 1 foul per 48 min?

Do I think Perk and Al still draw too many dumb fouls? Better believe 
it. But Perk, who could probably have reasonably been referred to as 
a foul machine last season, has clearly taken steps to work on that 
and this season reduced the number of dumb fouls he could have and 
should have prevented - the sort of thing I associate with being a 
"foul machine".  In point of fact he has reduced his fouls by better 
than 1 per 48 min with MUCH more extended minutes. His per game last 
season was actually pretty low, but that's because he didn't play 
many minutes per game. Still too high this season, and too prone to 
get a couple close together, but if you want to you can see the real 
difference, with less flailing around and loss of control, begging 
the refs to call something against him. While if Al would get over 
this stupid trying to draw a dozen charges a game kick, his would 
plummet because at least a couple every game I can recall were from that.

Kim
PS Egg - I don't know what it is but for the past few months your 
posts have come all run together with quoted and non-quoted text 
intermingled and no line breaks anywhere, so they're really tough to 
read. Obviously not everyone has this problem or I assume they would 
have said, and I bet my having HTML turned off in email plays into 
it. But if there's something you changed and can change back without 
a problem I'd appreciate it. The only way I could read your reply was 
when Sean quoted it.