LOLOLOLOL. You are a pisser. And I mean that in a good way.
Now I haven't fact checked everything, but I do find it humorous that your very first assertion is wrong. In fact I think you're "making it up and presenting it as fact."
The truth is you engaged me first with this:
I remember that and I didn't consider it to be an engagement. I saw a post and I spoke my thoughts. Guys respond to each other like that all the time without directly addressing each other. It was not meant to initiate a one on one back and forth. Certainly not an angry one. Your reply was adressed to me by name.
However I won't split hairs with you on that one, I did respond to your post first. So you are right!!!!!
Now eat my words! (That was a joke.)
Listen, here's the deal. I do sometimes throw the first dart. I have admitted it and apologized to Marv for it. More often than not it happens when I'm trying to engage in a complex dialog and my wife is crowding me and preventing me. I get hasty and my grumpiness comes through in my message. I'm sure there are other cases too. However, knowing I do such, I usually back off quickly and try not to let things escalate out of hand. Usually....
I'll be honest with you, it's very minor but even in your initiation of dialog with me, which I posted above, your opening with "come on now" bugged me, and probably set the tone, and I admit that is not justifiable provocation. It's just enough to raise some hackles though and when two like-souls meet, like you and I, we find ourselves on a course of no return.
That's fine, these things happen. It got testy. I know I sling the grenades as much as anybody, though I have a code of ethics that I adhere to to not cast the first insult. My feeling is that one should let the anger die when the thread runs out, not try to let it fester then get someone 2 weeks later.
I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I remember stuff in pretty intimate detail. People say inconsistent things all the time. It would be pretty easy to catch guys on "but you said..." on a daily basis. I don't normally do that, I reserve that treatment for the few who obnoxiously say black one day, white the next, then red, etc.
The reason I don't do that is because it makes people angry. When you wait for a period of time to pounce on someone, it means you are looking for a fight. So really, my gripe with you has nothing to do with the other thread, and not even that you tried to 'catch me' but the tone and the method you did it.
That night I actually did compose 90% of a reply to your post and accusations but I didn't post it for a couple reasons: 1) it was a looong reply, and late at night, and I was bleary eyed and needed to proof read it so I left if for the next day, but then I got busy and it lost momentum, 2) I could sense we were getting testy and I thought perhaps it best to let it die, or at least rest awhile, 2) I thought i'd save some of my examples for a larger, more narrative piece, rather than to keep accepting the burden-of-proof challenge to every counter-puncher who disparages the efforts and demands far less from himself.
Those are my negatives, I admit to those foibles, so feel free to exploit them for all they are worth.
Blueseats, couldn't a couple of those comments you just made be considered punchy? I demand far less from myself? You would be hard pressed to find someone who "does his homework" more than I do. I just don't present my evidence as verbatim quotes from the newspaper, but instead work them directly into my postings. I prefer statistics, records, etc. which I consider more concrete than much of what I have seen you post in regards to Marbury, which seems to be largely anecdotal. I consider anecdotal evidence a far second to the recordbooks, however I don't discount it entirely by any means.
Now, your accusation that I "make stuff up and present it as fact" did bother me. I simply present my ideas and substantiate them as best I can, and you trying to spin it as something else is a point blank cheap-shot. You may feel entitled to that as tit-for-tat for who knows what, but that doesn't mean I'll take it.
You say you don't have to take it. Are you trying to deprive me of responding to your "dullardly" and "intelligence" remark? That is when it went too far blueseats. Do you expect me to just sit back and take it?
Now you accuse me of hijacking this thread. Be serious.
When this thread came up I chose to take the opportunity to evidence that Larry Brown stated that he did not want to have to slow us down, but in his estimation we needed to scale back the tempo at the beginning of the season until there was less uncertainty to the offense. We were leading the league in TOs and an intelligent rookie like Frye, coming out of a good Arizona program, recognized we were not in sufficient control of the offense. In january we were able to push the tempo better, but then Marbury got hurt, AD got suspended and traded, Crawford suffered thru the trade deadline, and Isiah got hit by an embarrassing law suit, and the bottom fell out again. Then toward the end of the season, when the guys who were with the coach started gaining control of the club and getting their confidence back we were able to pick up the tempo again and closed the season on a relative strong note. SO I think the truth is Larry would have liked the tempo higher but didn't feel we were up to doing that and playing defense at the same time, so he put defense as the first priority.
Such involvement I consider quite appropriate.
I have no problem with the basketball-related assertions you made, though I may feel differently. I believe you know that.
Blueseats, you got upset about a "come on now" and someone else (ongbok I believe) saying they agree with me, so tell me this: How would you have reacted if I were the one who showed up telling you to "eat your words" on this thread? When I threw those words back at you it seemed to make your blood boil, so I believe it would make you quite angry.
And that type of involvement I consider to be highly inappropriate.
Now to basketball. Larry said a lot of things during the season. He said he would do a lot of things which he did not. So I don't know what he really wanted to do outside of establish a dictator-like presence on the Knicks.
So I have to go by what actually happened. And when you are starting Rose, Taylor and Davis, it sure doesn't look like you want to force the tempo up.
Since those same passages contained evidence to substantiate my assertion that "Browns playbook was not the size of a telephone book" (as, btw, is the reputation of Flip's) I chose to bring that to your attention.
Blueseats, first let me provide you with a link: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/basketball/nba/10/27/power.rankings/
a quote from that link:
Detroit Pistons
Ben Wallace is a defensive terror, but new coach Larry Brown's playbook is thicker than Allen Iverson's rap sheet. They might need a season just to learn the plays. They could make it to the Finals, but they're probably still a year away.
It says that LB has a big playbook. Is it true? I don't know! I read all the same stuff you did about Saunder's telephone-book sized playbook. I am pretty sure that if we put Saunders' playbook next to a phone-book, the phone book would be larger.
But it is all moot anyway, because the size of the playbook doesn't really mean anything. What matters is that the players understand their roles in your system. It would be nice if players could go weeks without playing and be able to step right in and feel comfortable, or know how a play works from every position, but it is quite unlikely. And that is why nearly every player on the team, even the good soldiers Malik Rose and Antonio Davis, made comments on how hard it is to play when one doesn't know what is going on.
What hijacked the thread was your taking umbrage to my paraphrasing of "making stuff up and pawning it off as fact" as "liar", and your refusing to concede that Brown limiting us to "a handful of plays" constitutes "not a telephone sized playbook."
Back to personal issues I guess...What I took umbrage to was the way you decided to engage me. As I stated above it seems to take a lot less than how you addressed to me to get you going. That was the hijacking. Is it any surprise I did not reply to you nicely? And then you exploded with all the sleaze remarks, etc...it was all over then.
And here we find ourselves with all your animus and all the extremes you are going to.
Pot calling Kettle...?
****
Everything has to be taken in context, quotes, statistics, whatever. Very little can be proven beyond a doubt, even with DNA. It's just about adding weight to one's assertions. Many times they only serve to remind us of things we already knew but had forgotten. But the argument that evidence diminishes a case relative to someone who merely repeats his own opinion over and over is bunk.
That said, it's fine to agree with the opinion of someone without evidence opposed to someone with, but it's usually because you came into it holding the same opinion and you like the way they expressed it.
Blueseats, I'm going to let that remark ride. I suggest you do the mature thing as well and stop taking shots at me. Just let it ride.
oohah
5/31/2006 12:39 PM
