It's not surprising that there are two items dominating the thoughts and tweets (not always in that order) of basketball intelligentsia this week. On one hand can  Phil Jackson SAVE THE KNICKS? (though, I would tweek the question slightly and wonder aloud if Phil Jackson  could save the rest of us from the Knicks?) Meanwhile, today marked the start of the paean to commercialization and exploitation of talent so crass that even the IOC thinks it's gauche, or in shorter form, the first day of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (proper; I like all right thinking people refuse to acknowledge the "1st round" as a real part of the tournament), it's time to fix the draft and end the scourge that is some teams being very bad (even though it's mathematically compelled in a league where some teams are very good).

Really, both issues reduce to one thing: some franchises perform better because they have better owners.  "Better" is sort of a catchall for acumen in hiring and firing coaches and executives, willingness to spend money appropriately, and more often than not, getting the hell out of the way. So, I wonder, why should we nibble around the edges of problems such as tanking, revenue sharing and free agency designed to improve competitive balance? Why not cut to the source?

So to that end, I present my Modest Proposal to fix all that ails the NBA: Relegation for owners.

Settling into something of a rhythm here, and shooting for one post per day.  Occasionally they are going to a be a short hodgepodge of smaller items simply because the longer posts take a fair amount of time to put together from watching the video, checking the stats, identifying interesting example plays and so on. Plus my attention span requires me to be working on about four longish items at any given time.

You might have heard about this already, but WOH avatar/mascot/muse Kyle Korver is on something of a streak. It doesn't take a basketball genius to suggest that you shouldn't leave him open in the corner. Step right up, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.  I know, he's a rookie and wants to impress his coaches with hard work on defense, (and he's been decently competitive on that end for a rookie to this point in fairness.) But as John Wooden said, (and Bill Walton likes to quote ad nauseum) "don't mistake activity for achievement."

Below the fold, the bad rotation of the indeterminate time period until I see the next one.

So as I get a better handle on how this is going to work, I think I've hit upon a general structure. I want to keep each post somewhat concise, but a lot of the things I want to look at are going to take 15-20 plays to illustrate the point. First of all, getting and captioning that many screengrabs is going to make my eyes bleed. Also, it's probably hard to digest more than a few at a time for a reader who hasn't watched each play over and over. 

So to that end, I'm going to break a lot of topics down into "series", which you can see on the right navigation. The first two were of Phoenix's pick and roll defense and Portland's halfcourt offense respectively. 

So how's that vaunted Points of Emphasis thing going?