One year exhibits metrics ago last bolts recounts weekend, I joined Bleacher Report after being persuaded by my still good friend Ben Brown.  When I joined, I wrote and article, and was immediately on MLB’s top 50 writers list.  Back then, the site was minuscule compared to the empire that it is today.My first article was entitled “Does Ichiro Belong in Seattle?”  It got nearly 300 reads.  A year ago, that was impressive.  Now, you need 1000 reads to get any recognition.That first article propelled my young writing career:  My next five articles got 700, 150, 200, 200, and 1,700 reads.  A great start, and it propelled me to number 32 on MLB’s top writers, and number 2 on the Mariners, only behind Ben.Sadly, a start like that now for a rookie is nothing overly impressive.The point I’m trying to get across is:  Has Bleacher Report become too big?  How can we fix it?Look, my Dads in business, and I know how businesses work.  If you get more customers, you make more money.  Same with Bleacher Report:  The more people who are on the site, the more they will make in advertising money. I know that the people in San Francisco want money, I do, too.  I know that.What I’m saying is that Bleacher Report is too big for the individual.When I first came on to Bleacher Report, I knew a few people on the site, and everyone gave me help if I needed it.In my first articles, I got tips when I needed them.  I was helped when I needed help. Today, a rookie coming into Bleacher Report is going to feel overwhelmed:  This is a huge site with a lot of people.  Its almost like a kid starting his first day of kindergarten.  Bleacher Report shouldn’t make you feel exposed. It is unlikely his articles will be noticed, and no one will be there to help him.The obvious solution to this is make Bleacher Report smaller.  The leaders would have to either make writers cuts or set limits in articles published a month.  No one wants that.  No one wants to be told they’re not good enough.  (Trust me, I know that feeling.)  So I have another solution:We here at Bleacher Report need some sort of page for rookies, with mentors and people who will read their articles and give feedback, so that their careers can get started in the right direction.I would be plenty happy to help set up a “rookie page,” and even mentor and/or read articles.Rookies need to be recognized. We need to make Bleacher Report more hospitable.What happens if we don’t have rookies?Bleacher Report will crumble:  All of the great writers on this site will either:a:  Move on to bigger, better things.b:  Quit.c:  Die.Then, all the great writers will be gone and no one will be there to replace them.  Without rookies, the site will fall, and then it will have to build itself up again.While this situation most likely won’t happen, rookies need attention.With my solution, Bleacher Report can continue to grow, and might even grow faster.Anyone willing to help me set up this page, please leave a comment, and we can start working on it immediately.P.S:  I’m community leader of the WHL page, and it won’t let me leave my community a note.  Can someone fix that?. This week the Toronto Raptors will have their first real chance at back-to-back wins in this young NBA season.Tuesday night the Raptors face the 5-7 Indiana Pacers at the ACC.  Then on Wednesday its off to the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, NC to face the 5-9 Bobcats.To open the season, sporting betting blogs were projecting the Bobcats and the Pacers to finish 11th and 12th respectively.  Toronto was in a three-way tie for fifth.  These are must wins for Toronto.On Sunday, the Bobcats snapped a seven game losing skid by beating the Pacers 104-88.  Stephen Jackson getting 10 points, seven boards, and four assists for the Bobcats in his first home game since the trade.  The Toronto Raptors are the next opponent for both clubs. Tuesday Night vs. IndianaThe Indiana Pacers have been bitten by injuries early this season.Troy Murphy was sidelined with back issues and has returned to both start and come off the bench for restricted minutes in five games.  He did not start in the Pacers loss to the Bobcats on Sunday.Jeff Foster has only played in three games this season and returned from injury on Sunday to play for nine minutes in the loss.Even rookie Tyler Hansbrough went down with a preseason shin injury and has only played in seven games.The result of these injury woes has been a small starting line-up consisting of:Point Guard: TJ Ford with 9.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.6 assists.Shooting Guard: Dahntay Jones with 17.5 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists.Shooting Guard: Brandon Rush with 8.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, 1.6 assists.Small Forward: Danny Granger with 24.2 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists.Center: Roy Hibbert with 11.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, 2.0 assists.Troy Murphy, when he is available and able, has averaged nine points, and 9.4 rebounds, and has started three games.  But against the Bobcats on Sunday, Murphy was limited to 21 minutes, seven points, and eight boards.When your team’s second highest scorer is a defensive specialist and you are shooting 44 percent from the field and 30 percent from three, you are going to be looked upon as a get-able game by nearly every team in the NBA.  Budding superstar Danny Granger not withstanding.The Raptors should be able to take advantage of their size and shooting prowess to easily take care of the visiting Pacers.As was noted by one of Pacers fans, when you give up a 19 point lead and lose by seven to the Knicks, well? Wednesday Night in CharlotteThis season Charlotte could claim, “we’re not very good and we can’t score either.”  Fighting it out with the injury riddled Nets for the honor of being the lowest scoring team in the NBA, the Bobcats have averaged 85.3 points per game.Charlotte’s shooting isn’t much better than the Nets.  They’re hitting on just 42 percent of their shots.  Rounding out their shooting woes, the Bobcats manage to be the third worse team from three, hitting on only 27 percent of shots from long distance.But the Bobcats have done something about their inability to score.  Four games ago they traded for their new leading scorer, Stephen Jackson.  Jackson has averaged over 17 points per game since joining the Bobcats and was an important addition in ending the team’s seven game losing streak.The acquisition of Tyson Chandler in the off-season has not worked out as planned.  Chandler is only averaging 6.1 points and 6.5 rebounds in eleven starts this season and missed Sunday’s game due to injury.  The biggest knock on his game being the seven fouls per 48 minutes played that he is averaging.Chandler is day-to-day and may play Wednesday.  However, Nazr Mohammed has averaged the same points in half of Chandler’s minutes.Against the Pacers, Nazr Mohammed was the Bobcats leading scorer with 18 points and five rebounds.The Bobcats likely starting line-up on Wednesday is:Point Guard: Raymond Felton with 10.3 points, 3.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists.Shooting Guard: Stephen Jackson with 17.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists.Forward: Boris Diaw with 13.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists.Forward: Gerald Wallace with 13.7 points, 11.4 rebounds, 1.2 assists.Center: Tyson Chandler with 6.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, 0.4 assists.The Bobcats are 3-7 over their past 10 games and 1-3 since Stephen Jackson joined the team.This is another get-able game, even on a back-to-back.The Raptors must take advantage of the undersized, poor shooting Bobcats for their first set of back-to-back wins of the season.The back-to-back against the Pacers and Bobcats represent a pair of no excuses games for any team with real playoff aspirations..

The UFC has now had three consecutive controversial decisions in main events.  In the first two controversial decisions, nearly everybody involved has been blamed metric conversion . This time, the joke is on us.After the fight between Lyoto Machida and Mauicio Rua, fans expressed their outrage with the judges for awarding a decision clearly not supported by the majority of fans and media people measurement conversion . The fact that many people must have been influenced by questionable commentary is beside the point metric “combat baby . People weren’t happy with the decision, and they needed to blame somebody.Cecil Peoples in particular was singled out forridicule after saying some half-baked remarks regarding the scoring of the fight, but Peoples wasn’t alone inreceiving the blame.The UFC was blamed for the judging controversy, as many fans felt that the decision was arranged by the UFC standard bolt sizes . Unknown to these people is the fact that the judges are appointed by the athletic commissions, not by the UFC.Even the fighters don’t seem to understand this point.

After the Machida decision, Rampage Jackson blamed the UFC for the decision and stated that the UFC needs to get new judges . Tito Ortiz said something similar following his decision loss to Griffin.Another casualty in the initial controversy was Machida, who instantly seemed to go from being fan favorite to enemy of the state.I don’t know how people can blame Machida simply for not thinking that he lost a fight that incidentally three judges thought he won, but if there is one thing people can do, it’s finding a way to blame somebody.The good news for Machida is that if fans are this quick to blame him, hopefully they’ll be just as quick to praise him again if he can defeat Shogun in the rematch.After the decision in the Randy Couture vs bolt & nut . Brandon Vera fight, people could no longer blame one or two judges screws and bolts . The new target became the whole judging system.At least in this fight, people didn’t crucify Couture like they did Machida . This time the blame was at least narrowed to something possibly responsible for the problem.MMA scoring criteria used by athletic commissions aren’t perfect, but they certainly aren’t the only problem, as we saw last Saturday.Last Saturday a much larger problem emerged. In the fight between Machida and Shogun, while there were many fans who felt that Machida deserved to win the decision, there were almost no media experts who felt the same way.There were only a few exceptions.In the Forrest vs Tito fight, the fans and media experts were all over the map.The most common scoring for the fight was probably 29-28 for Forrest Griffin, but I saw online that many people scored the fight 29-28 for Ortiz, while others went as far as 30-26 for Griffin.BloodyElbow posted an article expressing outrage that a judge could possibly have scored the fight for Ortiz. BloodyElbow was far from alone in scoring the fight 30-26 for Griffin.Apparently the problem isn’t just with the judging system.So who do we blame now?We can’t blame one particular judge, because there have been too many judges responsible for the three recent decisions, and the recent judging controversy has shown us that we can’t blame the judging system itself.There are some fundamental issues that need to be resolved to rectify thissituation I’m still working on that article.