Thanks for your concern. I went swimming yesterday; how about you?

For the record, 5 minutes checking the stats at basketball-reference.com, 5 minutes doing some very brief and easy math, and 5 minutes writing out the observation. So, you consider 15 minutes research to be a Herculean amount of work? That says a lot about you.

Just as an aside, I’ve now posted three time this article, and these were the first posts I’ve made in maybe 3 weeks. You posted three times (and a lot more words) in this article, and you’ve commented a lot more throughout the year on each article than I have. So of course, I’M spending too much time at the keyboard. I take an earlier comment back — you aren’t better than that.

And why exactly is Greg Oden having his tonsils removed? I can just see the scene. After another 1-5, 12 foul performance ((I love the unlimited foul rule, you would be be able to designate one guy on your team who can commit an infinite number of fouls thereby creating a modern day equivalent of Chuck Nevitt– only instead of a freakishly tall thin white stiff with a porn stache it would be a barbaric overweight muscled dude without a lick of basketball talent (perhaps someone from the UFC)who would hack the opposing talented big man until he could prove he could make free throws…… another aside; what would this have done to Shaq’s career? Aren’t free throw woes the same as a cleanup hitter’s inability to hit a curve ball……. ))Sam Presti notices that Oden has a little “tickle” in his throat and immediately calls for a surgeon to perform something, anything to get his number one pick off the court.

If anyone can understand the syntax and puncuation of that last paragraph, you win a Grammar Star.

My wife and I had a discussion this evening about the way we say Merlot like Merloh and Beaujalais like Bow-zha-lay in the foofy french way but we continue to pronounce Detroit and St Louis in the usual crass hard consonant American way. Why is that? Because we’re superficial and pretentious. If we think other people will find us sophisticated and intellectual if we drop a few consonants on wine, we’ll do it. But Detroit? You mean that place that smells and represents one of the more frightening places on earth? DetroiTTTT baby.

On the other hand, Ilgauskas has racked up his “career” total in what amounts to 7 full seasons, or about 5 full seasons had he averaged 40 minutes a game. Most of the other players on that list had more minutes and seasons to get their blocks.

SI did a feature a couple months ago about the lost art of shot blocking. If I remember correctly, they asserted that blocks as a stat were decreasing across time. Your father was a better shot blocker than your son will be — that kind of thing.

For Christ’s sakes, the guy is taller than the Empire State Building, and he’s not swatting three to four balls per game? The dude should be able to block two with his knees, no matter how many minutes he plays! It’s ridiculous.