Adam Morrison returns...for now

Adam Morrison came over (with Shannon Brown) in the February salary dump of Vladimir Radmanovic. A prolific college scorer who was drafted #3, his career so far has featured a disappointing rookie season followed by a major knee injury, and the subsequent attempt to work his way back and carve out a role in this league. He played only 44 minutes for the Lakers, and did not make an appearance in the postseason.

He does have some offensive tools and a scorer’s mentality. He can hit open shots to the three point line and beyond, and has a nice little step back move that he can use to get his shot off over pretty much anybody that is guarding him.

But that’s about it. He does not have the athleticism or skill to take NBA players off the dribble and create shots or get to the line. He is not strong enough to post up and take advantage of his height. And he is an absolute sieve on defense, with the lack of strength and athleticism making him a guy who just cannot guard NBA players one on one.

If he was a big scorer, you could justify hiding him on defense, but with him not being efficient enough to be anything other than a complementary scorer it’s really hard to see how he is going to find his way into an NBA rotation, more likely settling in as an end of bench guy who can help you at the end of quarters or give an occasional scoring spark, with lots of DNP-CD’s in the meantime. Barring a bad run of injuries, he will be very lucky to play more than 50 minutes a month this year for the Lakers.

His contract is guaranteed this year at $5,257,228 and nobody is going to give him the $6,897,484 qualifying offer he would be due next summer, so he is for all practical purposes an expiring contract. And thus he will have some trade value at the deadline, as teams look to clear cap space for next summer (particularly with the ever-shrinking salary cap).

Thus he will be spend his time at the end of the Laker bench or in his best business casual attire this year, before they try (and will probably be able) to unload his expiring contract at the deadline, to try to add a piece for the stretch run or to avoid some luxury tax.

I wish Morrison the best in his basketball future, but I have doubts that he has much of one in the NBA beyond this year. Perhaps he can find a home in Europe, where his floor-bound shooting game might work out.

Joining the dark side

Now on twitter @LakerGMC

As if I needed something to make my blogging more irregular!

Quick hits

Some quick things I've run across, offered with little or no comment:

Ouch: “Short of writing ‘get whitey,’ It's difficult to imagine how Judge Sotomayor could have fouled up the Ricci case any more than she did. Let's count the ways.”

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Nah, no need to read bills before voting on them: TARP tax break recipients include NASCAR race track builders, Burger King, and a London rum producer. Let’s rush through cap and tax!

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Michael Kinsley on health care rationing: “Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he’d get it and you wouldn’t, it’s rationing.”

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BOTWT reader Joe Engel asks if a gay lawmaker voting against gay marriage is hypocritical, isn’t also the smoker Obama signing anti-tobacco legislation hypocritical? It has to be both or neither.

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Strange headline here: "Analysts say home loans will soon be hard to get with bad credit". Good news, but why “soon”? Why would it have ever been otherwise? The ability to repay should be the only consideration for determining whether loans should be granted.

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Ann Coulter nails the fatuousness of yet another of Obama’s moral equivalencies, this one from the Cairo speech:

Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

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Glen Reynolds on Al Franken: “Caligula sent a horse to the Senate. Minnesota is just sending part of the horse.”

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The first lady's unfortunate disrespect of Queen Elizabeth showed that one does not have to be white to be white trash.

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Megan McArdle: “There’s a reason that most countries do not attempt to fund large welfare states with a very progressive income tax, the way we do. The income of the wealthy is fungible, mobile, and volatile. These are not strengths from the vantage of the tax system.”

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Populism in action: “A health care rally drew only four people to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s office Thursday. Sponsored by MoveOn, a national public policy advocacy organization, the rally was intended to support expanded health care for the poor.”

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Jeffrey Miron: “The fundamental problem underlying the financial crisis was government policy. Instead of undertaking enormous new policies, we should try to fix or eliminate bad policies and focus on efficiency rather than redistribution. Doing nothing new and simply working with pre-existing procedures would have been much better than anything we’ve done so far.”

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A call for honesty from James Gibney:

Every product whose ingredients benefit from a subsidy should include the following language on the label:
"This product has been subsidized by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. For more information, please visit usda.gov."

And every product that benefits from tariff protection should have the following language on the label:
"This product is protected from foreign competition by U.S. import tariffs. Its price is higher as a result. For more information, please visit usitc.gov."

Freudian slip?

A tip of the hat to Powerline for this remarkable find, a quote from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be published in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

It's a fascinating glimpse into the liberal mindset for a couple of reasons.

First is the strangely uncontroversial desire for population control, by any means possible and preferably in populations "that we don't want to have too many of" as she puts it. The wackier factions of the environmental movement have often fantasized about plagues to wipe out significant portions of the human race, and even the more mainstream left mostly sees humans as a bad thing for the planet, and thus populations need to be frozen or outright reduced or unspeakable catastrophes will occur (see Paul Erlich's unintentional comedy for a pointed example).

But second is the leftist impulse that dare not speak its name, namely that we don't want too many of certain kinds of people. You seldom hear it acknowledged, but the abortion movement of the 20th century in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular, grew out of the desire to keep down black populations. "A woman's right to choose" is much like "state's rights" in that it is not in itself, nor are even most (post-1960's/early 1970's, at least) proponents of the concepts in fact trying to find justifications for racist policy, but in that they have often been used as code words for those who want to keep blacks down, be it by segregationist laws or by limiting offspring.

Admitting these kinds of things is usually avoided in these days of political correctness, but then again Mrs. Ginsberg is 76, and it is not that uncommon for people who predate the PC movement to sometimes let slip things that would make their children or grandchildren blush. Nobody (except the loony right) thinks she's a racist per se, but how easily historically racist concepts such as population control and abortion slip into matter of fact conversation for the leftist who lived through the 60's is a fascinating glimpse into their underlying worldview. ("Affirmative action" serves a similar function for later generations).

Honor the Jackson Five

I love this from Move America Forward via PowerLine, a call to honor five Jacksons who really deserve it.

Lakers re-sign Shannon Brown

Combo guard Shannon Brown is coming back for the bi-annual exception, a 2 year deal for $1.99 million this year with a player option for $2.1492 million next year. This is a nice compromise for both sides.

For the Lakers, it’s reported that they get Brown for a lower figure than what he was offered elsewhere. For Brown, he gives up some salary in the first year to return to what is, for him, the perfect situation. And if he has a good year, he retains the right to opt out and more than make up for any shortfall this year.

Brown came over from Charlotte in the Vladimir Radmanovic salary dump trade at the deadline. He was thought to be a throw in, but most of us saw him as a possible useful part, with Morrison being the true throw-in. But he had to be a pleasant surprise for even those most bullish on him.

He only played 136 minutes in the regular season, but put up a 15.0 PER behind a sterling 63.1 TS%, showing an ability to hit from deep and finish with spectacular dunks as well as showing the ability to defend 1’s and 2’s competently, including some spectacular blocks.

He followed that up with 276 minutes of 12.2 PER on a solid 55.0 TS%, again playing good defense in the right matchups.

This is a guy who started the season not even sure he would stay in the NBA and ended it as a useful role player on an NBA champion. How did he do it?

By persevering, and by finding the right system for his talents. He is not really quick enough or a good enough floor general to be a 1, and a little bit undersized for a 2, making him the kind of tweener guard that struggles to find a role in traditional NBA offenses. So he moved from Cleveland to Chicago to Charlotte before landing in LA, all in his first three years.

But in the triangle, anybody can initiate the offense, meaning you do not have to have a true point guard. Indeed, Phil has always preferred big lead guards. In this offense, he would be asked to space the floor and make good passes and cuts and finish at the rim. And that fits his skillset to a T.

You also have to credit him for just working his ass off to try to learn the offense. Because it is built on reads and not plays, it takes a long time to master, but it is a testament to him that he was able to gain enough of Phil’s trust to earn key minutes in critical playoff games, in particular in providing s spark in the Lakers comeback win over Denver in Game 5 and in helping out on Deron Williams against Utah.

I’m happy to see him bring back his shooting, athleticism, strength on defense and emotion for another year or two in LA. At 24 and with a full training camp to add to his knowledge of the triangle, I expect him to be an important piece in our guard rotation. He may fight for minutes with Farmar and Vujacic, but with his skillset he will find plenty of playing time as we push towards a repeat.

Why isn't America hiring?

Jerry Bowyer has the answer:

America isn't hiring precisely because of government policy. Small business owners, who are usually the first into and the first out of the job pool, are standing by the fence and watching. They are paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have to pay their health care bills after they've been terminated? If so, for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a politically disfavored industry? Are your clients in health care (being nationalized), autos (already nationalized), banking (somewhat nationalized) or any energy production process which uses carbon (pulverized)? Until you know, you don't grow, and until you grow your market, you don't grow your payroll.

Jobs aren't languishing despite the government's best efforts. They're languishing because of them.

Crooked is as crooked does

Byron York catches Barney Frank being...well, Barney Frank.

You may recall that TARP was sold partially on the basis that the taxpayers could end up showing a profit on bank bailouts, with the money returned in the form of paying down the public debt. Which would benefit taxpayers of this and future generations.

Enter the despicable Frank, who wants to intercept the people's money to...see if you can guess...funnel it into a slush fund to use to pay off Democrat donors and special interest groups:

Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats. ...

The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

But now Frank wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under...the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."

Frank is nothing more than a common criminal, a Bernie Madoff for the gay political class. What a miserable piece of shit.

The voters wanted Democrat rule, and as Mencken said they're getting it good and hard: the emboldening and strengthening of America's enemies, a massive transfer of wealth and power from the people to the federal government, feverish attempts to permanently ration energy and health care, and making pay to play the defining principle of governance. Hope you're enjoying it!

Pair of 500 homer guys homering

Last night was a bit or a rarity (although all seven occurrences are in the last four decades) as 500+ home run hitters Ken Griffey Jr and Alex Rodriguez both homered in the Yankees-Mariners game. It was also the second time for the more exclusive feat of 550+ players homering in a game (not surprisingly, Aaron and Mays were the other).

The complete list, courtesy of the great David Vincent:

Two 500 HR Club members homering in the same game

06/17/1970 @ SFN Willie Mays 615 Ernie Banks 504 total:
1,119

05/08/1971 @ SFN Hank Aaron 604 Willie Mays 634 total:
1,238

06/12/2004 @ BAL Barry Bonds 675 Rafael Palmeiro 536 total:
1,211

06/12/2005 @ CIN Ken Griffey 512 Sammy Sosa 581 total:
1,093

06/13/2009 @ NYA Alex Rodriguez 556 Gary Sheffield 502 total:
1,058

06/26/2009 @ NYN Alex Rodriguez 558 Gary Sheffield 504 total:
1,062

07/01/2009 @ NYA Ken Griffey 612 Alex Rodriguez 554 total:
1,166