On basketball and trade deficits

The second round of the NBA playoffs are starting up and you can already see series themes developing.

Starting in the East, my respect for Rajon Rondo is growing by leaps and bounds. The fact that he plays for a Boston team prevents me from actually liking him (too many years surrounded by too many Boston fans), but when he's playing right its tough to be cheering for the other team. TNT's Kenny Anderson has hit on a very interesting point regarding how other teams play Rondo. Due to the fact that I can shoot a mid-to-long range jumper about as well as Rondo can, most teams sluff off his defender, daring him to drive. This tactic worked last year while Rondo was still learning the pro game and developing chemistry with his teammates. This year Rondo is using that extra space to see the court, deliver the ball and when necessary setup and blow by his defender. In the NFL you always try to get to the quarterback. The only time where you don't is if you know he's going to pass and dropping 8 or 9 guys into coverage can, occasionally, work. That said, if the QB knows he'll have time he's always going to win. The analogy seems to be holding with Rondo. While occasionally dropping off him could lead to him forcing the ball when he shouldn't, consistently dropping back is just giving him more time and less pressure. In any and every game I've ever seen a good defense attacks its opponent, in this case the Magic should try it more.

In the West I'm prepared to make a very bold prediction. First though, I need to say that 10:30 or later start times are just cruel. One of the things about probably living on the west coast in 3 months that I'm most looking forward to is the fact that I'll be able to see these late games without having to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning. That said, in watching the Lakers play the Rockets you can really see that the Rockets have a pretty decent match up with the Lakers. Michael Lewis wrote a stellar article a few months ago, that everyone should read, that detailed how the Rockets' Shane Battier plays defense against Kobe Bryant. It described how they don't care if Kobe goes off for 30+, as long as he's taking a lot of shots to get those points. Specifically, they called out the long range contested 2 from the wing as the lowest percentage shot he takes. Either Kobe hasn't read that article, or he's trying to prove it wrong, because boy did he take a lot of long range contested twos from the wing. Yao's size gives Gasol problems, although if I were Gasol I'd be pulling Yao as far from the basket as I could to clean things up, and Fisher is on his way to making yet another point guard a whole lot of money this off season. Artest is a tough enforcer who gives the team mental and physical toughness that T-Mac just can't supply (Ewing Theory here anyone?).

All that would seem to suggest that I think the Rockets would win this series. If it were just based on the players on the court playing in the specific match ups outlined above I'd be forced to say, "yes, the Rockets have a good chance in this series". I was just about to call my Dad up last night and explain all those points when one thing changed my mind. Rick Adelman's face showed up in all it's HD-unglory on my TV. Cackling to myself I gleefully dialed my parents and explained my idea. "I just figured out how I'm going to pay for law school, if gambling were legal. I'd take out the biggest loan I could find and put it all on the Lakers. It's Rick Adelman vs. Phil Jackson. It's guaranteed money!"

I've been watching this particular match up since the 1992 finals, and like gravity, death and taxes I'm now convinced that one of the immutable laws of existence is that Phil Jackson will always, Always, ALWAYS beat Rick Adelman. Whether it's the players, the refs, or some grand cosmic force, a Rick Adelman lead team will never defeat a Phil Jackson lead team. After having a good laugh about this idea we decided that just paying for law school wasn't enough. No, we were going to save the American economy and prevent a potential decline of American Hegemony, all based on this one immutable fact.

The biggest pile of money that America is currently playing with is the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Here's $700 billion that congress has mostly, kinda, sorta, ok-not-really, authorized the executive branch to use to "fix" the economy. Yes that's a gross simplification, but run with it for a second. What if, instead of investing just $700 billion we put that money on the Lakers to win this series. I'm terrible with understanding what the odds makers notations mean (Lakers -64/17, Rockets -52/28) but what I think that means is that the Lakers are roughly 6 to 5 favorites to win this series. If someone actually knows what the line is please inform me, but either way the Lakers are the favorite. Fine, we're not making all our money back, but $1.3 trillion is definitely better than $700 billion any way you slice it. Unfortunately, as my Dad pointed out, there aren't too many casinos that'll take that kind of action. I thought for a second and realized that not only could we save our domestic economy, but we could also fix the trade imbalance! China! They'd take the other side of the bet! Yao Ming is a perennial NBA All-Star not necessarily due to his play but rather due to the fact that he generally gets about 1.2 billion more votes than any other player. Chinese honor would demand that they back the Rockets in this bet. A quick search suggests that the current trade balance with China is roughly $34 billion favoring the East. Well, lets double down a lot and bet the TARP money on the Lakers to win and force the Chinese to back the Rockets!

There's not many places where you can see a discussion start with pressure defense on a point guard and end with a discussion on geopolitical economics, but I hope that the digressions made sense. More to come as the series unfolds.