To begin with, I'm a little annoyed with myself for not thinking of this sooner, it would've been great to have started it before the season. But it's too late for that now, so I'll just do a quick little summary. The job of the Celtics "Tankometer" is to measure my perceived level of how hard they (and by they I mean the players, coaches, and front office combined) are trying to win games. At the Beginning of the year Boston would have ranked at 50%, taking a wait and see approach on trying to make the playoffs vs grabbing a top lottery pick. When the Celtics were in first place at 12-14 I would have had them all the way up in the mid 90s, as a division title seemed well within reach. Today I rate the C's at 47%, and dropping rapidly.
The Tankometer dial can be significantly moved by both on and off court occurrences. For example, if it was used to measure the Bulls and Cavaliers, the recent Luol Deng trade would send Cleveland way up and Chicago way down. For the Celtics, the Courtney Lee for Jerryd Bayless deal has some minor negative effects. While I don't think it'll make much of a difference skill wise, it sets the precedent that Danny Ainge is plotting future minded moves (anyone could end up gone), and that probably weighs slightly on the psyche of the team.
As far as on court play goes, even worse than dropping 8 of their last 9 games may be the fact that Boston has allowed season high point totals (119 on Sunday in OKC, 129 last night in Denver) in consecutive contests. No effort on defense is the #1 indication of a lack of interest in competing. Given all this, 47% may seem rather high; but the C's are still just one game back of a playoff spot, and Rajon Rondo should be back fairly soon.
Also, it's pronounced Tank-ah-meh-ter, like speedometer or thermometer, not tank-o-me-ter.
RELATED: The Stiemsmometer, and the critically acclaimed Tebometer series.
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Tankometer -- accent grave over the "o," as W.C. Fields would have put it.
ReplyDeleteI hope my punctuation conforms to the standards of Strunk and White.
Haha. Hey Abacus, I just had to reset my template, and in doing so it eliminated disqus for comments and reverted to this method. It seems better than before though, what do you think?
DeleteThe "prove you're not a robot" numerals are easier to decipher than some of that funky lettering they'd used previously.
DeleteThis format doesn't seem to send a "somebody talked back to you" e-mail.
(By the way, how is "disqus" pronounced -- like a piece of track and field equipment, or like what students used to do to disrupt my class?)
One more BTW, if I may -- have you ever sought out any free-lance writing assignments? I'm trying to figure out how feasible it could be for a tech-moron such as me to generate a little side income from home.
Yeah, I think in order to get notifications about other comments you have to check the "notify me" box, and I'm guessing it's then all comments, not just replies to your own. Good question about disqus, I assume it's a play on discuss, but I think it's pronounced discus. I have tried somewhat to find paying gigs, but the competition is immense and the pay minimal. I make a little from writing for Yahoo contributor, but the money wouldn't be anywhere near worthwhile if I didn't also do it for fun.
DeleteAppreciate the informative response on the side-work "scheme." By "Yahoo contributor" are you referring to "Yahoo Voices" -- which was one of the places I'd heard might have opportunities?
DeleteBack to the substance of the post:
In the old days, the phrase "Doing the Corrigan" meant reversing direction, either physically or philosophically. I've always presumed it came from vaudeville since the Three Stooges used it a time or two.
The modern sports lexicon needs something like "Doing the Bynum" -- maybe you can create a scale (or "ometer") of some sort for trades.
Thanks again
I really really hope no other NBA team gets suckered into signing Bynum to another contract. Yeah, yahoo contributor is part of "voices," or maybe the other way around. I think voices is more non-sports stuff. Or maybe it used to be called voices and they have recently changed it to contributor.
Delete