Tim Tebow: Savior or fluke?

A huge buzz has been swarming in the NFL lately, all of this is about a fellow named Tim Tebow who has miraculously brought a Denver Broncos team that was once 1-4 to a 6-5 record. People can't seem to understand how they're winning with such an unorthodox quarterback "who can't throw". Also how did that defense that looked so horrible at the beginning of the season all of sudden look like the best defense in the NFL. These are some intriguing questions that some people can't explain and maybe even some people think that Tebow's obsession with Jesus Christ is providing some type of divine intervention. I along with everyone else was very curious and tried to figure out how this was happening.

Time of Possession

I think this is a very underrated stat that a lot of people over look when it comes to team defense. Before Tim Tebow took over the starting quarterback position for the Broncos, Denver was averaging about 26 minutes / per game for time of possession. However after the 6 games Tebow has started (from @Miami till @San Diego) the Broncos are now averaging 32 minutes / per game in terms on time of possession. I think this might help why the Bronco defense has suddenly picked. With Tebow at quarterback the Broncos are running the option play allowing a player like McGahee to find more holes in the line. The defense has a lot more time to rest on the sideline thus allowing them to give up fewer yards and play at a higher level overall.

*Note* The top 2 defenses in the NFL right now (Steelers and Texans) are also the top 2 teams for time of possession.

Turnovers

I think this is the biggest reason why the Broncos have been doing so well lately. Tim Tebow does not throw interceptions. This is huge for maintaining control of a game even if the team isn't playing well. Tebow has only thrown 1 interception so far in all six of his games. Contrast that to Kyle Orton who threw 7 interception in five games. Tebow has only thrown for the same amount of touchdowns with a higher yards/completion.

Clutch gene

I don't know what it is about certain athletes like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, etc but they have it. Definitely Tebow has it as well. Even though the offense has been struggling all night when the team needs a score Tebow always come through in the clutch. It really is uncanny, however I don't think we should be surprised. He did it in high school, he did it in college, and now he's doing it in the NFL.

I think everybody knows that Tim Tebow has to improve his passing if he wants to be a legit starting quarterback in this league. But from I've seen he has been progressing as a passer, his windup throwing the ball is much shorter now for example. However he has a special talent that I don't think should be discarded. I'm not sure if he's going to be a perennial starter in this league but if he improves look out.

Golden State Warriors: In limbo

Alright so from my previous post you guys can tell I'm a big Jeremy Lin fan, so this past NBA season I bought NBA league pass just so I could follow his NBA development. I've watched almost every Golden State Warrior game this season along with reading Golden State message boards to try and find people's opinion on Lin. During this time I've grown some type of interest to the Warriors basketball team. Not the kind of the interest in which I hope they win, but more of an interest of how Warrior basketball fans perceive the team and just following how the team functions.

First things first, this is really not a good team. But yet the way they talk about this team on CSN BayArea especially that guy Bob Fitzgerald, you'd think this team is a few players away from being a playoff team or something. But I think now the stark reality is starting set in on this team and that "suck" mentality is starting to show.

Joe Lacob, the new Golden State owner, had better blow this team up quickly if he wants the Warriors to be competing for playoff positions a few years down the stretch. I'll give a quick note on some people

Keith "Smart"

It seems like the general consensus on the message boards and media is that this guy sucks and can't coach at all. When I first started watching Warriors games I thought Smart was doing ok however my opinion of him completely changed as the season wore on. I realized that Monta Ellis was leading the league in minutes per game. That's right, more minutes than Kobe, Lebron, Wade, Durant, Rose, (insert player better than Ellis). What really confused me is that Keith Smart keeps complaining that his team has no bench, but yet he plays his starters 40+ minutes every game. The reason you have no bench is because you never play your bench! Every other NBA team I can think of has a regular rotation in which the second unit can develop some type of chemistry together over the course of the season. However with the way Keith Smart coaches he basically just throws players in when he feels like it and doesn't really have any sort of consistency in his rotations. For example against the 76ers, "Smart" thought it was a good idea to put Vladamir Radmanovic at the 5 while they were getting killed by dribble penetration. I don't know what gut feeling tells you to do that. Anyway this guy can't complain about not having a bench since he never let a second unit really gel. Before the All-Star break the Warriors were playing their best basketball of the season, you know why? Because Smart was finally using the bench! Guys like Lin, Wright, Bell, Udoh were all contributing and getting meaningful minutes. But what happens after the break, Acie Law comes back and Smart thinks it's a good idea to throw him in there and give him 20-30 mpg while not giving anything to Lin and Bell and severely reducing Udoh's minutes for Vlad's. So how's that working out for you "Smart"? Also another thing I can't stand about this guy is his double standards for coaching players. He yells at Stephen Curry for not playing defense but then when Monta Ellis is letting guys drive by him like a turn style not one word comes out from him except comparing Ellis to Hercules. This is why this defense sucks, there's absolutely no accountability for defense as long as you score. Even though Acie Law was getting torched last night on the defensive end he made some offensive plays in the 4th quarter now all of a sudden he's getting critical minutes. This defense is probably still the worst in the league despite the numbers. I can go on and on about how bad Keith Smart is but I'll end it here before I write a paper. Bottom line, this guy needs to get canned, if Keith Smart is in the future of the Golden State Warriors expect mediocrity for years to come.

Monta Ellis

OMG this guy is like top 10 in the league in scoring, he needs to be the guy the Warriors build around! Yeah only if the league changed the rules so your not allowed to play any defense. The Warriors would be NBA champs every season with Ellis as the MVP. This guy in my mind is what you would call a "Team Killer". The entire team lives and dies on whether Ellis has a good game or not. This happens because Smart just gives him the ball and says make something happen. That or Ellis hogs the ball and basically just either A) Drive to the basket B) Drive pull-up jumper C) Drive and kick where all his teammates are just waiting if he kicks it to him. Nobody moving without the ball, just standing to see if he passes them the ball. So when Ellis is hot the offense and him look great. But when he's not he basically just shoots the team right out of the game. When your entire team's success is dependent on one player you'll never be able to win consistently throughout an NBA season (Look at Kobe pre-Gasol, whose in another dimension than Ellis) It's not just me that has this opinion other GMs across the league don't view Ellis as a star either. If I were Lacob this would be the first thing I would do this off season to build a TEAM, get rid of Ellis.

Stephen Curry

This guy is a great shooter...... that's about all I can say about him. Oh wait I also forgot that sometimes he'll make a nice ally-oop pass, can't forget about that. But seriously I don't really see what all the fuss is about this guy. It seems to me that the fans/media think that this guy is a franchise point guard. I just don't see it. He is a very similar player to Monta Ellis but to a lesser extent. I wouldn't call him a team killer but he certainly hurts the team more than he helps them. For every 3 pointer/jumpshot he makes in a game he already made 1 or 2 ridiculously dumb turnover or foul. Also he may be the worst point guard in the NBA in terms of defense. He tries at least compared to Monta Ellis, who I don't think he even cares, but this guy CANNOT guard anybody. He is a very streaky player and like Ellis if he's not shooting the ball well, he really can't help the team in any other way. But his development has been stunted my Smart's terribly erratic rotations so I'll give him a break on this.

Jeremy Lin

It's been a real up and down season for him, and I admire the fact that he was able keep his confidence despite the constant changes in his environment. When the season first started he looked pretty good to me, however he started regressing when he went back to his shooting guard mentality. In one of his interviews he stated this exact thought, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJIXiSvR8g. I really thought the D-League was a true blessing for him to learn how to be a point guard, and Eric Musselman really prepared him a lot for the NBA. After being recalled for the third time he truly looks like an NBA point guard now. His defense is already, in my opinion, one of the best in the league for point guards. I may seem a bit delusional but from what I've seen so far Jeremy has got the potential to be a solid starting point guard in the NBA.

Golden State finished the season strong beating teams like the Mavericks, Lakers, Trail Blazers, however in my opinion these wins were pretty hallow. Most playoff teams toward the end of the regular season tend to play a bit relaxed even if there's seedings to play for. For the Warriors sake I hope Lacob doesn't view these wins as hope for the future and that nothing radical needs to happen. Too often what happens in sports is that the ability of a team is looked at from a bias sample size rather than the season as a whole. Also I'm not really a strong believer that finishing the season strong means success in the next season.

This may sound drastic but if the Golden State Warriors want to win Ellis needs to be the first one to go.

Lakers Struggling Again....

Ah so my favorite team, the Lakers, are playing mediocre at best once again in the regular season. Seriously this shouldn't come at all as a surprise to anybody whose been a fan of the Lakers for more than 2 seasons. After getting absolutely crushed by the Memphis Grizzlies couple of days ago, I never broke a sweat. Look the Lakers said it themselves, other teams care more about "these" games then they do, and it's showing on the basketball court. Now I'm not saying they can keep playing the way they're playing and expect to repeat as NBA champs, but I think it's too early in the season to tell if ANY team is going to be contenders or not. Look at the Miami Heat, they looked down and out struggling to keep above .500 early in the season. Now they're on the cusp of taking over Boston for the top spot in the East.

I think the same thing is happening to the Lakers. When the season first started, they were "Amped!", "Ready to Go!", "Over Take Jordan!", .... you know what I mean. They were beating teams left and right from the start. Then all of a sudden losses to the Nuggets and Suns brought them back from they're season starting honey moon high. In my opinion, that's when the Lakers demise started. Although they won the next 5 games, I could see their intensity slowly starting to dip, then came their 4 game losing streak to Utah, Indiana, Memphis, and Houston. That four game losing streak was a the lowest point so far however I have yet to see a great performance by this LA squad since November really.

This team has been so used to playing with no sense of urgency that when it's time to show up, nothing happens. A perfect example was the game with San Antonio. It was their opportunity to show everybody that they're still the team of the West. When the game first started things were looking great, they jumped out to a 16-11 lead and were playing with some serious fire. However they were unable to sustain that intensity, and fell apart late in the game. They just don't know how to play the entire game full throttle thats not an NBA championship.

But tactically I think the biggest problem with the Lakers is that they've stopped playing team basketball. Almost every offensive possession I've seen from them lately has basically been 1 on 1 plays. This will get it done against crap teams but against good teams this type of strategy won't. The Lakers this season has a total of 2 wins over teams with winning records (Hornets and Chicago). The reason the Lakers were playing so well was that they were moving the basketball beautifully getting opponents to shift continuously. As good as Kobe Bryant is, the offense starts with Pau Gasol. We all remember this Laker team without Gasol *face in palms*. When Gasol stopped playing aggressively and starting settling for outside jumpers and not attacking the basket, that's when things started to go downhill for the Lakers. After his maturation last year in the NBA finals I thought finally he had broken through to go on and become a completely dominate player. But actually the complete opposite has occurred, he's gone back to being "soft", if you will, and now Kobe Bryant is going back to his old self of hogging the ball on every offensive possession.

The Lakers still have plenty of time to get back to where they need to be. But one thing they don't want to miss out on is home court advantage. I believe this, if the Lakers don't finish with the 1 seed in the West they won't be repeating as NBA champs.