Thanks to all the littles

I think this is some kind of shrimp fountain, but really that doesn’t matter.  I would like to thank all of writers, which right now is just me and Uj, but hopefully will be expanding in the next couple days, and of course our readers for helping us get 80 hits today.  This is the first time that we’ve broken 50 hits on one day and we shot all the way up to 80 which is awesome.

Hopefully a year from now we can look back and proverbially bitch slap the weakness that is 80 with like 1000 hits a day, but this is great for now, on to 100!  I would also like to thank our strangely diverse readership of late, the 5 Canadians and 3 Lithuanians that stopped by today, thanks a lot for getting things all international up in here, take a shrimp home for the kids.

DNP-CD From Around the Web

Yesterday I was looking around for some interesting dnp-cd stats to give the blog some foundational ideas and characters, like if there was some NBA player that had 200 dnp-cd over 4 years and was still in the league or something.  Sergio "DNPCD" Rodriguez would be a fine example.

 But as it turns out I found something much better, something has secured my belief that the dnp-cd is not only my favorite box score, but the most essential box score in any sports re-cap.  Since I may be the only person that has plowed through both Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 and Simmon's The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy the post modern Gibbon's and close to the same size.  I've come to the conclusion that the dnp-cd is the ultimate representation of a team understanding "the secret" and player not understanding.  Therefor the 08-09 Nicks.  D'Antoni coming to the worst "secret" team ever, which is a great irony since it was Isiah Thomas that told Simmons about "The Secret" and a coach trying to instill it upon his team.

The First website that pops up when you google (I guess I've given up and started using google as a verb, although I'm happy to see that it still comes up as not a real work on spell check. (double parentheses time; I have the exact same feelings about Avatar, when I went to see it as I was walking out my friend Erika tells me she was disappointed because she really wanted to hate it more and kinda liked it alright, which was my exact reaction too.) ) was this site from some silly local conglomeration site called examiner.com.  They had an article about How to read an NBA box score written by this guy:

And low and behold, the very first thing listed is the titular (I love that word, since it both makes me sound smart and reminds me of the awesome Dan Aykroyd sleezy art historian sketch from SNL) dnp-cd.  Followed by some other dnps that I would like to compare it too.

When a player does not play, his name is usually followed by the notation DNP (Did Not Play) with a reason for why he did not play. The most common is DNP-CD, which means Did Not Play-Coaches Decision. Other DNPs are:
DNP-Suspended (if the player has been suspended by the team or league)
DNP-NWT (if the player is not with the team)
DNP-DND (if the player did not dress for the game)
DNP-Flu (if the player sat out with the flu; this can also be Knee, Ankle, or whatever ailment prevented the player from playing.)

Now I've gone over DNP-CD and you all know what I think about it.  The next is dash Suspended.  This one is almost opposite in every way, since usually you get suspended in David Stern's NBA for doing something that your team would love you fore, like punching some flopping, kiss-ass Euro in the fucking face.  Of course, you can no longer play basket ball like it means anything to you personally anymore, so this is out.

The next is the mysterious dash NWT.  This can be almost anything, like a sick family member out of the area (in the case of eastern Euro players this means owing money to the Russian mob and having to rescue a family member before their hands are cut off to secure your debt) or a "Family Situation" aka your wife found out about one of your girlfriends back in Atlanta.

There really is nothing to say about DND, since that should be covered by one of the other ones, you just happen to have gotten some new digs that everyone who watches TNT has got to see.  So we will skip to DNP-Flu.  Here is the most interesting one, since it goes even above David Stern's head straight to God (Although David my not agree that is above his head).  God has given you the flu for one reason and one reason only, to see if you are Micheal Jordan or a complete pussy.  If you decide to play one of the greatest play off games ever and rip the hearts out of the Utah Jazz and all their collective fans as well as cement your legacy as being competitive to the point of people thinking you are bat shit insane, you are in fact not like Mike, you are Mike.  If you went home to have a lie down and missed the game, you are just another multi-millionaire athlete, so don't feel too bad about it.

I was hoping to have some clever way to wrap this post up, but frankly I have nothing.  Uji should have something a little later today about The Big Unit, the second greatest porn sounding sports name ever and his retirement.  It would be way to easy to make a gay joke about Nick right now, so I'll let you guys do that in the comments section.  Also, later this week I'll be doing my picks for the AFC Wildcard games and Uj will do the NFC and I'm hoping we can get Ron to do a rundown of all 16 teams in the playoffs, maybe.

Post #1

So here we are on the 1st Monday of 2010 and the first post of DNP-CD.  After years of enjoying that line at the bottom of NBA box scores in the sports section of the Deseret News I've decided to dedicate an entire blog to the NBA's version of the Mendoza line.  There just seemed to be something perversely satisfying to see that in a game that only dresses 12 people for 48 minutes of high intensity activity that there would always be 2 or 3 guys that just never played because their coach felt a tired #7 guy was still better than they are for even 1 or 2 garbage time minutes.
2010 seemed like the perfect time in second way, as New York Knickerbockers's coach Mike D'Antoni has used the power of the did not play - coaches decision to reinvent being a GM from the bench.  After successfully DNPing Starbury out of the league last year, in the greatest DNP-CD of all time it looked like he was back at it again with Nate Robinson this year.  Only, he had transcended the obvious and used the long term DNP-CD as a powerful multinational tool, bringing Nate off the bench for a career high 41 point explosion and then cutting his minutes drastically the next in what seems like a return to the last spot on the bench and another stretch of DNP-CD box scores for Nate in the near future.
This could be just a new tactic to create a trade chit out of Nate, a reinvention of the original Stephon DNP-CD of last year, a DNP-CD 2.0 so to speak.  This is one we will just have to ride out, but either a new era is a upon us and this blog is dedicated to it.
In a much less metaphorical way we will be talking about local Salt Lake sports, and then the specific team interests outside of the local arena that each one of us enjoys.  I think we will all have something to say routinely on the Jazz, the main focus of the blog.  I hope to talk about the limbo that find themselves in, a perpetual middle of the pack western team that seems to be stuck between the slowdown philosophy of the 1990's and the up tempo, inside outside, but not so much give and go transitional NBA of today.  Uj, goes to the games and will probably just talk about drinking 6 beers at half time and having Steven Jackson threaten to kill him during a game and Ron will discuss his hatred of Carlos Boozer, the one constant in his NBA life, that is if Ron ever gets back to me about writing.
As far as other sports go, I think there should be some U of U action during football season, and maybe some Rugby updates too, as well as other MWC info, possibly some college basketball.  I will mention my Steelers, Pens and Yankees as much as possible, Uj will go with the Vikes, Flyers and Red Sox, and Ron will be a Chicago guy all around, Cubs specifically on the baseball, so there should be lots of shit talking going on there do some serious division over laps.
Sometime soon we are also hoping to start a podcast, hopefully once a week to begin with.  Also, I think there will be lots of bad spelling, mildly racist jokes and the 'F' 'S' and 'Scrotum Sucking Cunt-Bag' words.  Also, we may talk about other blogs that have anything to do with ours, there are probably even some other Jazz-centric blogs out there, but I haven't read them so I'll assume they kinda suck.  So get ready, because there is a lot of chatter at the end of the bench for those of us who Did Not Play - Coaches Decision.