NBA - Italian Style

European players are still fighting to impose his basketball style in the NBA, and they have achieved it lately more than ever. This time is not German nor Spaniard, is Italian. Andrea Bargnani is Toronto Raptors leader scorer with 21.3 points per game and the 2nd best scorer among centers in the league only behind Dwight (superman) Howard.

NBA number 1 draft pick in 2006, 2nd place in rookie of the year award behind Brandon Roy, many said Andrea could not get it because a month sidelined by an appendectomy surgery. Known as "Il Mago", he won twice the rookie of the month award being the third Raptor achieving this with Vince Carter and Damon Stoudamire. 


After NBA star Chris Bosh decided to be part of the beach boys project along with D Wade and Lebron James, someone had to stepped up as the offensive leader of the Canadian franchise and it was no other than the Italian center, 2nd best scorer and blocker leader for the team last season.


This is a tough league for the Europeans, only few of them adapt well and a smallest portion succeed the way Dirk Nowitzky or Pau Gasol have done it. I must say I was not expecting much from the Italian at the beginning of the season, but he really has showed maturity and consistency and also has been a key factor in every Toronto win this season raising his average to 24.7 ppg when Raptors win the game. 


The 7 feet center has increased almost 50% his scoring capabilities this year compared with his career in the NBA and not only he is scoring more points but he is more effective averaging 3% more in his field goal percentage. This combination plus the fact he is the current go-to man for coach Jay Triano shows how high has the Italian elevated his game this season. We can even say the depart of Chris Bosh hasn't been noted so far because if we end the season today, Raptors are still out of the playoffs in 9th place in the Eastern Conference. 


As many of the European centers in the NBA, he is an all-around player being able to shoot from long distance or play strong in the post. He might be the decisive player to take Toronto back in the playoffs this season, of course with the contribution of many other key players like De Rozen or Weems. 



It comes to my attention how natural he deals with big moments of pressure. As an example I'm referring to the Raptors vs Knicks game on December 8th this year were The Italian scored career high 41 points in the Madison Square Garden including a 3point to tie the game with 28 seconds left in the game. Lets be honest, beside Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller, how many players do you remember making their career highs in NYC? This requires some character. 


Enjoy that game recap below. 

Beach Boys are not heating the Heat

It comes to my attention how "the beach boys" are not winning the games they supposed to.

Is understandable they need to find their roles in this new and excessively marketed Miami Heat, since all of them were scoring leaders in their previous teams. Big questions of the pre-season were who was going to step up offensively? and who was going to take Magic Johnson's role of drive the plays. After 15 games is Lebron who leads the team in minutes, points, assists and steals but so far it isn't working out very well having only 8 wins and 7 losses.

When you see a Heat game the 3 first quarters are ok, nice plays, dunks and fast breaks. But when the 4th quarter arrives, a lack of leadership is reflected in a really poor shot selection and is like each one of them is just isolated from the team. 

It is not a coincidence D Wade and King James are shooting 5% worst when compared with last year. Wade FG 09-10 was  47,6% and 10-11 is 43,8%, same with Lebron who was FG% 50,3% and this season is  45,5%. Dear Heat fans this is pure poor shot selection.

Although scoring responsibilities are well balanced having James with 23.6 ppg, Wade with 21.1 ppg and Bosh with 17.6. ppg it is certainly balanced between them but not for the team reflecting 62% of the offensive load in Miami. This is by no means healthy for a NBA final contender team. If we compare them with the first season together of the original big three in Boston, NBA champions of 2007, Pierce, Garnett and Allen were responsible of  55% in 2007 and by that time we talked of an unbalanced squad. The difference is that 07 Celtics' big three were having better shot selection reflected in 482 FG% while 2010 Heat's beach boys are shooting 469 FG%.

So Miami needs to start thinking about tweaking a little bit the offense in order to start winning more games, but this has to be from Spoelstra's head and his inexperience leading with superstars might be a big negative factor accomplish it. Only the time will show us the answer.

MLS cup final, what went wrong?

I understand people are dissapointed about the overall satisfaction of the MLS CUP Final, there are many things to blame but I feel people are counting too many.
 For those who missed the action, Colorado Rapids won in overtime 2-1 to FC Dallas with an own goal. 

Don Garber and the Rapids with the MLS CUP

It is unfair to blame the two teams for not playing a nice and entertaining game. I don't remember blaming FIFA and World Cup organization of 1990 for the boring and phisical game played between Germany and Argentina that ended 1-0 with a Penalty kick goal in regulation time. We have the same case between Milan and Juventus in UEFA Champions league 2003 final, both teams played a boring scoreless battle which led them to Penalty kicks. And we can name an endless of examples where teams was just too worried about losing the game that fogot to play football. But this is the sport's nature and true fans of the game should not worry about that.

Casey, player of the game, fought every battle.

Other topic is being used to blame the lack of success of MLS CUP final is the North American nature to believe in the playoffs as an exciting way to end a season. Evidently, mostly europeans are using this argument to criticize the lack of tradition of US Soccer whereas in Europe the ligue winner is the actual champion and on the other hand MLS league winner or  "Supporters Shield" is just a team that gets a place in the underrated Concacaf Champions League. 

Remember 2 of the most important events in world soccer have a playoff format, being the UEFA Champions League and the FIFA World Cup.
 
My opinion, I grew up in a european soccer environment where you can witness a team winning the league 6 weeks before the season ends (boring), but I am also a big fan of north american professional sports like NBA, NHL and MLB and it looks pretty normal to me when the leader of the regular season doesn't have what it takes to win a playoff series and doesn't reach the finals. I like playoff environment and postseason madness from the fan point of view and I see nothing wrong in having MLS CUP playoffs at the end of the season.

What I think really went wrong sunday night was raising the expectations of the event so high and think neutral fans in Toronto would fill the stands at 3 degrees Celsius on a late Sunday night. 

Veteran Pablo Mastroeni finally had his cup.

A low profile pro league like the MLS cannot expect having a decent TV rating when NFL Sunday Night Football is on the other channel. That being said, league has to adapt to its TV rating rivals and schedule the MLS CUP final accordingly. 

Regarding the host city, this is not the all star game or the super bowl as I said in my previous post, each team needs start feeling the finals as a home battle and 2 leg series is ideally the better way to enjoy this show.

MLS CUP final in Toronto - Lets give a great closure to this exciting season.

With a forecast of 4° C and a little rain on Sunday afternoon the BMO field has the greatest challenge in its short history, to gather a decent crowd for such an event.

I don't agree in planning the MLS CUP final in a different host venue like the NFL does with Super Bowl or the UEFA with the Champions League final.

The league is not ready yet to such situation, you need to gain more popularity, fans, expectations, etc. Even if the match would've it been LA Galaxy against NY Red Bulls it might have been a little different but I still think the competition needs more maturity in order to make the fans travel several thousands of kilometers to watch their team play the final with pre-winter weather. Not even in "Copa Libertadores" we have a single host venue, over there they play two-legged series to win the most prestigious club competition in Latin America.

I really like the fact the best soccer in the league is conquering a media quota, players like the MLS 2010 MVP Colombian David Ferreira or like Omar Cummings need to gain more recognizing and be more tied to the MLS image, since they are the players that are actually making this league a better one. On the other hand, designated players like Beckham, Henry and Ljungberg creates expectations, sell shirts, bring experience but not necessarily raise the level of the game.

I really invite all soccer fans, eurosnobs or not to enjoy the MLS CUP 2010 between Colorado Rapids and FC Dallas. These are the teams that generated the best soccer (and the Real Salt Lake of course) and the most exciting games throughout the season.

On the FC Dallas side, a player like Ferreira is all craft and guile, the authentic 10 of the MLS is always a pleasure to watch. Only Argentinian Javier Morales could show such control of the attacking design in the league. The Colombian, leader in game-winning assists, has very good company with Marvin Chavez and Brek Shea on the flanks looking very much like Seattle Sounders scheme. Also, the best goalie in 2010, Kevin Hartman has just demonstrated he can win games by himself like in the West finals game against LA Galaxy with an outstanding performance, so he is inspired a so the entire team.

The Rapids with the best attacking duo in MLS (Connor, Cummings) are a team you can really fear when close to the penalty area. Also, the captain and spiritual leader Pablo Mastroeni, who 12 years a go made his debut to play the midfield next to Carlos "El pibe" Valderrama in Miami Fusion, knows this is his great chance to win the MLS CUP specially when turning 35 years old.

Lets close this chapter in an appropriate fashion and prepare yourselves for the best soccer in North America.

Colorado Rapids in MLS CUP final

Attacking power was released last night by the Rapids and the best offensive duo in MLS, Conor Casey and Omar Cummings, did nothing but harm although one unlikely goal by right back Kimura (only japanese in MLS!) was enough to make the difference. Great night by Jon Busch and SJ's defense which always kept the hope on for the Quakes saving and stopping all attempts created by this full feared couple of forwards until minute 94.

Rapids midfield was able to stop Wondo from generating occasions and Johnson was a not as free as he found himself against the Red bulls. The MLS scoring leader, Chris Wondolowski, only had 1 shot on goal all night.

I liked the gest of Pablo Mastroeni when he received the "Eastern Conference Champions" cup and instead of raising it alone as the captain he went down to the floor and make it all team raise it. What a team player he is, I really like his attitude and leadership.

On the other hand, Don Garber has to change this format for next year urgently, either change the name of the title or the fixture format, but it is kind of odd watching a Western Conference team winning the Eastern Conference title. It just does not look right and might damage MLS image in the future.

At this stage of the playoffs I would like to see LA Galaxy's defense against this Rapids attacking duo, It's gonna be exciting, but we still missing tonight's game at 9:00 PM ET to decide the other team in the MLS CUP 2010.