Shoutout to the Garbage Men

Yo-Yo what it do, the Bulls may have lost last night's game against the defending champeen Lakers, but they hung tough throughout most of it, even leading the game at one point in the 4th quarter. Unfortunately, they had no answer for a late-game barrage of threes from the likes of Steve Blake, Shannon Brown, and Matt Barnes (wha ha happened?). Luckily, the Bullies have a chance to right things tonight against the Phoenix Steve Nashes Suns. One of the bright spots from last night's loss was the play of Joakim Noah, especially his defense against Pau Gasol, who was held to 12 points on 3-10 shooting. This leads me (closer) to the topic of today's post.....

If you haven't been following the goings on down in South Beach, the Pat Riley Chemical Feast are off to a blistering(ly pedestrian) 8-6 start, and one of their most glaring holes is their utter lack of a dirty work player, i.e. one whose scoring is generally inessential to their actual impact on the court.

Let's recap a brief and very incomplete list of some of the NBAs great (recent) past and present garbage men, describing the strengths they harnessed to offset their lack of traditional basketball skills, and rating them on the standard 5-point junkyard dog (JYD) scale. In no particular order:


Dennis Rodman:

This pic pretty much says it all. There wasn't a single loose ball that the Worm saw and didn't yearn for with the burning passion of a thousand dying suns. He led the league in RPG seven times, averaging 15+ a game in six separate seasons (twice over 18). Perhaps no other stat confirms his otherworldly rebounding prowess than his all-time leading career mark for rebound rate. At 23.4%, this means he grabbed nearly a fourth of all the caroms available throughout the course of his career. He couldn't shoot or post-up worth a damn, but Guy. Got. Ball. Oh, and he spent the great majority of his career playing against guys at least twice this size.

4.5 out of 5 JYD:









Bruce Bowen:

Not your prototypical JYD, but a JYD nonetheless. While he always had a very limited offensive repertoire, he never really hit true JYD status until his long and fruitful tenure with the Spurs. Through eight seasons, three of which resulted in a championship, he averaged just a shade over 30 minutes a game, with a paltry 6.5 PPG over that span. He also established himself as one of the premier defenders in the NBA, generally focusing in on defending the opposition's top offensive wing player. While he also got criticized (justifiably) for his at-times dirty defensive tactics, you can't argue with the results or his indelible contributions to those perennially championship contending Spurs teams.

4 out of 5 JYD for BB:









Ben Wallace:

The original Big Ben (excluding this one, of course), who is known primarily for his boss-as-hell afro, all-time poor FT shooting, and prodigous defensive and rebounding skillz. Undrafted out of college, he's been in the league going on a decade and a half now. He's won defensive player of the year four times in his career, and made four all-star teams in that span as well. All this despite the fact that he'd still likely miss the first bucket given this opportunity: It's a fucking gimme, mang!

Also, he was featured in one of the all-time great NBA video game commercials:


For all of the above and not much else, Benny the (one-time) Bull gets a 4.5 JYD:









Joakim Noah:

A JYD for the twitter-age, if there ever was one. Since being drafted out Florida with the 9th pick in 2007, Joakim has gone from a being a poor-man's Andy Varaejo into an elite-level beast on the glass and defensive end in general. Joakim has improved so much in this time, that he's actually starting to play himself out of JYD status. He's currently averaging a cool 15 pts and 13 rebs, which means he's actually got more offensive game than a JYD has any right to have. But to be fair, he's certainly ugly as hell, which any true JYD should be.

3.5 out of 5 JYD (if only because he can actually put the ball in the basket on a semi-regular basis)









Honorable Mention, Jerome Williams:

After all, he's the namesake for this post's terribly dumb scoring system, so I'd be remiss to exclude him from the definitive (ask anyone) list of JYDs. With career averages of 6.6 pts and 6.4 rebs/game, he clearly was never a focal point on the teams he played for. But through sheer hustle and determination, the true JYD was able to hang in the league for nearly a full decade. Praise be to Jerome for maximizing his uber-limited skillset.

5 out of a possible 5 JYDs:









Finally, here's a timeless and G-funked-the-hell-out cut from the Above the Rim soundtrack, starring TuPac, one of the dudes from Cool Runnings, some other guy, and Marlon Wayans:




HAPPY THANKGIVING EVERYONE!!!!!

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