GAME05

I can't help but cringe a little bit when Mom turns to the son and gets that super-excited "WOW" look on her face from eating what I assume to be mediocre pizza.

I guess Bud turned down the Toronto offer. Problem with Toronto is they fired their coach despite being #1 in the East and getting to the second round. Very high expectations for any new coach there--must be #1 Seed again but also at least make it to the Conference Finals. Yikes. I know about nothing about head coaches, but everyone seemed to be rooting for Bud more than any other candidate. I guess that's good. No idea what his potential upside is, as well as his strengths and weaknesses. Now we'll see if the Bucks can get creative in the offseason. Your third-best offensive player could potentially leave in FA, and you desperately need a defensive center despite having no cap space. Regardless of who we draft, players at #17 tend to spend time in the D-League, not show up and be a capable starter right away.

I'm certainly far more traditional in that if my hypothetical fiancee didn't want to take my name, it would upset me quite a bit.

It's not about the husband owning the wife, but about two individuals coming together as one and therefore sharing the same name.

So far it's looking like Hulu will pick up Last Man for an abbreviated final season.

Looks like the usual site I used to stream tv channels is kaput, so now I'll probably want to get YoutubeTV or Hulu.

They guy they put on Giannis was great at preventing the post-ups the previous two games, so no surprise he was starting Game 7 and did another good job defending. So what do you do when the defender is good against iso ball? You run more iso ball, of course! I don't really think it's anything against Giannis at all that he didn't dominate, but more a function of not doing anything to give Giannis different looks. There's enough talent in Milwaukee. I'm convinced a good coach will solve everything. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they moved Bledsoe this offseason since they've got no FA money to work with. A couple months ago I'd have said Middleton, but after this playoff performance maybe they see him as more an integral piece on the team. Bledsoe to Brogdon is obviously a downgrade and they'd have no creative PGs, but there would be a tremendous upgrade to replacing Henson with a stout defender and rebounder.

Thon. Maker. This is the best he's ever played. He's really using his quickness and he's all over the place disrupting plays. This has been absolutely incredible to watch him play like this.

I don't entirely buy the jealousy aspect of things. And coming off an injury of course he isn't going to be used as heavily as before. A new coach would certainly design more plays for the second-best offensive player. Though I saw some comments about the possibility of signing Kawai (extremely unlikely, I realize) and the person said that a sign-and-trade of Parker would free up enough room to sign Kawai. I don't know if that's really true or not. But even if not, I guess there's always the possibility of back-loading the contract since Dellavadova and Henson's too-high salaries come off the books after next season.

Bucks outscored 42-14 combined in both games on second-chance points. Giannis and Middleton make an effort, but it's like everyone else just stands there hoping something good will randomly happen, especially on a defensive rebound. Their offense is what you'd design for a high school team that only has one good player. And on defense they seem to just not want to waste any energy by making an extra effort. Not that I don't hope there aren't some changes with the roster, but overall if we hire a good coach next year, even this same team should be performing way better than they're doing now.

Snell is a 3-and-D guy on a team that doesn't really run designed 3-point plays. He played great defense today. Plus he's the rare player who is perfectly happy playing off-ball. Snell is the sort of player who is good despite looking terrible on paper. Jabari is more the opposite. All those times he stood in the lane not even guarding anybody don't show up on the stat sheet.

Bucks also got out-rebounded by anyone who just made the slightest effort to get an offensive rebound. Really frustrating to see them play good defense and get the Celtics to take a shot-expiring heave only to give up the offensive rebound.

Help me out with Bryant. At some point he was one of the better receivers in the League--never a burner, but he could out-muscle you and go up to get a lot of balls. He's not all that old yet football-wise, so I can't imagine he's lost a lot of the speed he had yet. Is he more of the one-hit wonder who had a couple great seasons but he just stopped trying? Not that the Packers are in desperate need of another starting WR, though. Cobb and Adams are plenty enough to be able to draft an early- to mid-round WR and hope he develops in a year or two. I love the House signing. The DB crew is kind of that solid-but-unspectacular, but there's no huge glaring holes unless there's a big injury. Hopefully adding a pass rusher in the draft should really round the defense out to be solid all around.

Watching Maker play he still has tons of talent but what I think he needs to get to the next level is the desire to figuratively punch guys in the chin. He doesn't demand the rebound and more just hopes it bounces to him. On offense he's a guy who is pretty good at putting the ball on the floor, yet he rarely drives to the basket and could do so more often. I also don't want to waive off players as bad until there's a real coach in here who knows how to design an offense. Anyone not doing well on the Bucks right now only means they're not good as iso ball. I keep hoping Milwaukee would be able to send somebody like Middleton+ for Cleveland's pick (assuming they keep LeBron) to get Mohamed Bamba, but of course that won't happen.

Debating buying a $700 kayak trailer with a $200 car hitch. I have two 17' kayaks but I'm a bit worried that there wouldn't be tons of places to go with kayaks that long. Plus it's just me, so I'd be limited to lakes. I always wonder about things to do, and I guess kayaking/camping on a lake would make for a nice weekend.

The "closer by committee" approach only ever lasts a couple weeks, anyway. I'm sure someone will step up and assume the semi-permanent role.

The reason I said Jordan is the Bucks have offered Jabari $18M and Jordan makes $25M right now but is not expected to get quite that much next year.

The defense isn't really any different from last year. Tramon replaces House and is probably about equal in ability. The offense is about even, too, losing a WR but gaining a TE. And overall there's more of a deficit on defense than offense, and so if we're going to trade assets (which I'd be happy with), I'd much rather have Peterson than a WR.

The team is fine with shooters. If they want to be a team that drives the lane a lot, that's fine and it should mean a lot of free throws, too. They'd get more 3s if they actually designed some 3-point plays for Middleton, which they really don't. Thon and Snell can shoot long-distance, too, but of course they only just stand there and hope maybe they'll be involved. Zeller playing decent despite being a waiver claim only goes to show that the team desperately needs a big body inside who isn't entirely immobile. I'm sorta-kinda hoping Jabari leaves and we can squeeze enough money together for Jordan next year. It loses a lot of scoring, but ideally you'd hope Thon and Snell and Brogdon would all be more involved, along with Middleton getting another 2-3 points per night if more plays were designed with him in mind. But that scenario seems to be the only way we could get a real Center on the team since the high-priced nobodies on the team are still signed through next season. That or if Bledsoe is somehow traded, which I'd love to see more than Jabari leaving. There's a good defensive Center in the draft who'll be taken around #5, but we don't have any assets that I can see to move up to that spot.

During Police Academy someone asked a detective if she watched COPS. She said she did at first but now it was like turning on the tv only to be right back at work. I still like those shows, though. Especially Appalachian Outlaws because the locations are a 20-minute drive for me. BTW, you touch the back of the car for two reasons: One, because if you get killed your prints are on the car, and two: to check that the trunk is shut in case of ambush. I'd play Reno 911 24/7 if it ever came to Netflix.

Boy this team needs a completely new coach. The entire offensive strategy is to let Giannis work one-on-one and either shoot or kick it out to a 1-8 Bledsoe or a 1-7 Snell. With Middleton shooting light's out lately, why are they chewing up all those shots? #8 Seed here we come!

If you've got a specific guy targeted for #3, wouldn't it make more sense to wait until #1 and #2 have been drafted, then make the trade? Unless they don't care if it's either of two players, which would be odd.

Well, I'm about finished with the book Rule #1 by Phil Town. The first 30 pages of the book is a lot of "Only 15 minutes per week! Make money guaranteed!" and the usual bad salesman nonsense. Common sense says none of that is true, as with the example he gives of a couple buying a stock conveniently at a low point, selling at all the peaks, and repeating. But to his main points, I like the approach to evaluating a stock for the long term, what to look for and how to value a stock based on those numbers. Ideally, Town requires 10, 5, 3 and one-year numbers in EPS, Sales, Equity, Cash and ROI in order to look at the moat of a business. He notes that having less than this increases the risk and lessens probability. I won't be in a position for many months yet to be buying anything, but I was spending a long time this morning just going to many different sites and at least trying to find those numbers. I could find five-year, and Fidelity had 8-year numbers on AAPL, but 10-year numbers are all locked behind paywalls. But I found a blog post which mentioned many public libraries have subscriptions to Morningstar's Premium services. And sure enough, it looks like my parent's home library does, and offers it from home computers using the card number. So check your local library and see if it does and not pay $30/month. Town also has you look up Future EPS Growth Rate and Estimated Future PE (along with current EPS, which is easy to find). I haven't attempted to look for those yet. Once I finish Rule#1, I think I'll pick up The Manual of Ideas by John Mihaljevic and Active Value Investing by Vitaliy N. Katsenelson

Browns add a good WR next to Gordon, a passable QB who at least doesn't throw interceptions, and are a good bet to draft Barkley #1 overall. Randall ain't much, but he's still an addition. That team is going to be real good, real soon. I'm figuring they'll trade their #1 on draft day to a team who really wants Rosen and pick up a QB with their #4 to play behind Taylor for a year.

Randall was also sent to the locker room during a game and left the stadium. So maybe there's some personality issues with the coaching staff. Add in that maybe GB didn't see him as a starter and you're effectively trading a nickle CB for a significant upgrade at the #2QB position. If those are true it seems like a fair trade. Plus the upgrade of swapping the 4th and 5th round picks. Although there's a need for at least two CBs now. You want to think there's a FA CB coming along with a high-round CB being drafted.