East Rombo: The Blog with Balls

Yep, it is official! James Posey is Miami Heat's enforcer. For the benefit of those who do not know what an enforcer is, it is the player, commonly a forward or center, who is assigned to throw the best player of the other team off his game, sometimes to the point of injuring him. He could also be assigned to protect his team's go-to guy from the other team's enforcer. Here are some examples of players who took on the enforcer roles: Dennis Espino during the Asian Games (correct me if I'm wrong) when he punched the other team's best shooter. Charles Oakley was both the enforcer of both the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks. In our team, Gerald is our enforcer. Despite playing as a guard, he uses dirty tactics to throw off the scoring threat of the other team.

Anyway, back to my point. To prove that James Posey has taken the role of an enforcer, here is a recent article about him.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Miami Heat forward James Posey was suspended one game without pay Friday by the NBA for a flagrant foul against Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng.

Posey was ejected for taking down Deng from behind with 7:16 remaining in the fourth period of the Heat's 109-103 loss to the Bulls on Wednesday at the United Center.

Posey missed Friday's game against the New Jersey Nets at AmericanAirlines Arena.

The Bulls thought Posey should have received a longer penalty, especially since he was suspended a game in April for a flagrant foul against Kirk Hinrich during the first round of the playoffs.

"I thought it was light," Chicago coach Scott Skiles said.

As you know, Luol Deng is one of this season's scoring threats for the Chicago Bulls, slashing through the lane at will to lure the defense towards him. When he can't penetrate, he is free to kick out the ball to the open shooter. Since the Bulls don't have any threat on the low post, he's the next best thing.

James Posey apparently has taken his role to heart as this isn't the first time he's done it. So there you have it, James Posey: ENFORCER.

Recently, I have been watching the PBA on ABC5 and I have noticed some things that they can improve on.

First of all, they should improve their motion graphics. From the ABC5 logo seemingly appearing from underneath the court to their promotional animations of "clashing teams", it just irritates me. It looked like as if it was made by beginners.

Second is their scoreboard. I don't know with you people but for me, the side with the clock seems crowded compared to the side where the team names and scores are. Plus the logos are separated on one end to the other, ABC on the leftmost and PBA at the rightmost. Why not make it into one logo, PBA on ABC and place on one side? That would lessen the clutter. Overall, it's not that bad but it can definitely be improved.

Finally replay games, I hate the fact that I was watching a replay game last night without realizing it as soon as I was tuned in. I mean is it so hard to just place a date somewhere when the game was held, just to avoid confusion?

So there you have it, my rants. Hopefully these could be improved in the near future. It would not only improve their image but avoid confusion from televiewers as well.

Trash talking(or smack talking in Yahoo! terms) is a cool way of enjoying fantasy basketball. Some 'smack talks' range from funny, absurd, serious, and some, like Jopoy, even put some 'words to live by'.

The regular smack talkers I know in East Rombo are Jason, Melvin, and me. Sometimes, Gerald also talks smack, which he usually does with his traditional lies, like disagreeing with Jopoy's words to live by, when in fact, he also lives by those words.

Jopoy's quote by the way is: "Wala nang edad-edad, kung tayo na ay hubo't hubad"(Age doesn't matter when we're naked together). Or something to that effect.

This week, smack talker Jason was paired up with me for the weekly head to head battle. His smack talk was a bit gloomy, "damn injuries". As for me, since I was at the top of the standings and I was feeling overconfident of my powerhouse team(not to mention there were currently no injured players on it), I responded with "apparently lahat ng players ko healthy. HOO!" (apparently, all my players are healthy. HOO!)

But that was the ultimate wrong move of the season. Minutes later, Gerald messaged me about the dreaded Eumir curse in fantasy basketball: Dwayne Wade is out because of his wisdom tooth. A few more minutes later, I see Lamar Odom only played 3 minutes, later reading that he "will be lucky to play before the end of January" There goes 2 starters right out of rotation. A few more minutes later, Corey Maggette doesn't play because of a bruised left knee.

To add insult to injury(in more ways than one) Mike Miller played the worst game of his career with 0 points. And to add more to that, J.R. Smith also gave me 0-5 shooting, 2 points AND 2 turnovers.

This is a bad week indeed. And to end, I will tell you a theory of mine: I just realized that every time I match-up with Bit(in any league) my team suddenly seems like it has a black cloud over it: injuries sprout out of nowhere, the teams of my players only have 2 games for the week as compared to his 4 games a week, my star players have off-nights, etc. Sometimes it makes me think if Bit is the successor of the Fantasy League Devil(formerly known as Du).

Beware, for your team will suffer at his hands.

The most recent NBA All Star games have been pretty predictable as to who's gonna be its starters. Probably since the pretty good teams have been the same all those years. This season's All Star, I am hoping for some changes.

If there is one match-up I'm really looking forward to in this year's All Star game, it's Dwight Howard vs. Amare Stoudemire. Here we are presented with two beasts of the league. Both are athletic and dominating in their own right, and both would probably have no qualms on dunking on others. Although the probability of the two engaging against one each other is quite slim (due to the fact of the other All Star players' desire to showoff and score), it would be interesting to take note on their games stat-wise to see who had the more impact in the game.



It's King Kong vs. Godzilla on All Star 2007!

So move over LeBron.



NOTE: Picture will come in later...

The Associated Press couldn't have summed it up any better:



Steve Nash: 42 points, 13 assists, 6-7 from 3-point land
Jason Kidd: 38 points, 14 rebounds, 14 assists (his 78th triple-double, which ties him with Wilt Chamberlain on the all-time triple-double list)

So which one really is the point guard supreme?

Actually, why even bother asking? Just sit back and enjoy the show (which I did, thanks to a replay on cable).

This matchup was a beauty. A classic. A treat made even sweeter by the fact that it was my team of choice which came out victorious.

One down on this hectic, five-games-in-seven-nights (with two back-to-back matchups, to boot--this matchup being part one of the first back-to-back) east coast road trip. here's hoping you don't burn out, Phoenix.


GO, SUNS!


Source photos courtesy of NBAE via Getty Images.

The last time I said it, this dude spent the succeeding couple of games in an awful slump, before calling it quits on the season. This time, at the risk of jinxing him yet again (if one may recall, misfortune and I seem to have a flourishing relationship), I present to you, this: