Perhaps auditioning to become a contributor to Awful Announcing, the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir (echoing the opinions of virtually every viewer to have watched Bryant Gumbel on the NFL Network) suggests viewers watching Saturday’s Patriots/Giants contest, ” heard someone who shouldn’t be in this seat.” “Gumbel,” mused Sandomir, “is struggling to learn what he should be doing after the network’s two seasons.”
He doesn’t see the field well, which leads him to be imprecise (or wrong) about yardage gained on a play or the yard line. More often than not, he will not even try to provide the yardage.
His imprecision leads him to fall back on ambiguities like “the ball is inside the 10” or “way short of the first-down marker,” phrases that more experienced announcers only occasionally use. Gumbel uses them as crutches. He repeatedly locates a play as going to “this side” or the “far side,” when “right” or “left” will suffice. He too frequently uses “stone” as a verb to denote a runner gaining little or no yardage. How about “stacked up” or “stopped”?
With the Giants ahead by 28-23, he said the Patriots were “within one score.” Within a touchdown, please. When New England scored to make it 38-28, he said, “They’ve moved ahead by two scores.” Which two scores? Most every fan knew, but his pattern of vagueness had long before set in.
Gumbel says things that no experienced announcer would. After Kevin Boss’s touchdown catch gave the Giants a 21-16 lead, Gumbel said a holding penalty on the Patriots was “waved off.” The Giants declined it; the referee didn’t declare the flag to be thrown in error.
When Randy Moss scored on a 4-yard pass in the second quarter, Gumbel crowed, “How often do you get three N.F.L. records to fall on one play?” Too bad only one record, the one for team scoring, was broken on that touchdown.
“Why not Scottie Pippen as the next coach of the Bulls?” asks the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith, to which Pippen himself has much to add.
“What’s my disadvantage?” Pippen asked. “No NBA coaching experience? [Scott] Skiles’ record with the Bulls wasn’t that great. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do what you’ve done your whole life. I’ve played basketball, run teams and won.
“They didn’t put me at point guard because I could dribble good. They put me there because I could run a team. I wasn’t the best dribbler, the best shooter. I wasn’t a point guard. But I knew how to run a team.”
Pippen, who is living in Ft. Lauderdale and dabbling in a few business ventures, clearly has given this some thought.
“With a guy who loved to touch it and shoot all the time, I was able to keep him under control,” Pippen said, referring, of course, to Michael Jordan. “That didn’t come from the bench, it came from making the right decisions. You try to make the game fun for everyone and then we were able to find Mike. The games I felt he was getting off too much, I’d find a way to get other guys off. And then guys weren’t running at him all the time and he could take off in the right place.”
Pippen wonders why he hasn’t been approached about getting into coaching.
“What’s the key to this good ol’ boy system they have?” he asked. “You’ve got to go to Europe and coach two years? Sit next to someone for a year? And then looking at someone like me and trying to figure out how your team did it, how you got there every time? Guys like Skiles have never been there. Can he give a motivation speech like someone who’s been in those games? I’ve played for championships.
“What experience do you need? You have assistants who have been there. If I made a mistake, I wouldn’t be the first coach to make a mistake. I’d love the opportunity to be part of the organization now that Skiles is gone. I’ve won championships with this organization and been in the competition when everything was on the line. I was a coach on the floor. Why isn’t that experience?”
Smith mentions that Larry Bird and Doc Rivers became NBA head coaches with no prior coaching experience, though to borrow from Pippen’s logic, neither of them have coached a team to an league championship. Conversely, Phil Jackson’s resume included toiling in the CBA, Puerto Rican league and 3 seasons as a Chicago assistant prior to becoming head coach.
Of course, there’s always the chance Pippen’s failure to receive a head coaching offer in the Association has less to do with an Old Boy Network and more to do with owners and GM’s around the league being unaware Scottie’s hung up his sneakers for good (which he hasn’t, by the way). After all, it was less than a year ago that Sam Smith (!) provided Pip with a vehicle to advertise his availability as a player.
For starters, if this is Rod Thorn’s successor someday – and most people in the organization would be very surprised if Rod makes it to Brooklyn – he has experience in demo jobs, which this team may need two years hence. He can judge young talent, and he can salary dump with the best of them.
And if that’s what it takes, he can do it dispassionately, because he doesn’t have any emotional ties to this current group.
The only question is whether Thorn can give him enough responsibility to make him indispensible to Bruce Ratner, who may delegate the task of picking the next basketball operations major domo to Brett Yormark.
The thing is, Yormark might feel the need to hire a bigger name, even though names don’t come much bigger than Ernest Maurice Vandeweghe III.
For now, look at the bright side: The team can always get its news out instantaneously with one call to ESPN, where Kiki made the announcement of his new job today hours before the Nets could do it.
Regrets? He had a few when he ran the Nuggets.
Judging by our calculations, he and Jim Paxson were the only GMs in 2003 to pass up both Dwyane Wade and Amare Stoudemire, which is a pretty grim double-flub.
…which doesn’t explain what he’s doing in a Burlington Coat Factory. From the AP’s Jeff Latzke.
Oklahoma starting defensive tackle DeMarcus Granger will miss the Fiesta Bowl after being sent home from Arizona following an arrest for shoplifting.
Granger, 21, was arrested Saturday in Tempe after he tried to steal a jacket from the Burlington Coat Factory inside Arizona Mills Mall, Tempe police reported.
“Mr. Granger removed an anti-theft device from a jacket and then concealed the jacket in a bag. He exited the store walking past the cash registers without paying for the jacket,” Mike Horn, a spokesman for the Tempe Police Department, said in a statement.
“DeMarcus Granger was sent home yesterday, will not play and we’ll deal with the situation when we get back,” Sooners coach Bob Stoops said Monday during a media day at University of Phoenix Stadium. “If there’s anything further, we’ll see.”
In Granger’s defense, temperatures in Phoenix have dipped below 40 degrees the last few evenings. Perhaps he didn’t pack properly?
1. Mariners moosehap
2. Unvegetarianism again, at the hand Hot Doug’s Encased Meat Emporium
3. Accidental drive with my friend Shawn to pumpkin patch, Ontario Badlands, abandoned brick works, and a coffee place in the middle of nowhere where I ended up knowing the barista already, October 14.
4. Will Rigby
5. Ninth Street Espresso, Chelsea Market location, NYC
6. David Scheid
7. Storm of ages, including Sonic Youth, the Tunnel Bar and Northampton Coffee, followed by harrowing drive in a Miata from Northampton to Rochester, February 14-15.
8. Vancouver for the first time since 1986 (except the scuzzy part. Which admittedly is large.)
9. Allison Busch (and also her tour of Flint, MI)
10. The shitty American dollar
11. The shitty American Homeland Security Administration finally arresting “Eli” Clayton of Arizona on charges for fraud which had slowed down my border crossings due to flagging my passport for eight weeks, violated what was left of my civil rights, delayed my parents, and made my friend almost miss a hot date.
12. Jamon Serrano
13. Moving closer to Mr. Met
Gerard Cosloy
Jesu – Conqueror (Hydra Head) Bottomless Pit – Hammer Of The Gods (Comedy Minus One)
Marked Men – Fix My Brain (Swami)
Times New Viking – Present The Paisley Reich (Siltbreeze)
Shellac – Excellent Italian Greyhound (T&G)
Grinderman – s/t (Anti)
Major Stars – Mirror/Messenger (Drag City)
Fucked Up – “Year Of The Pig” 12″ (What’s Your Rupture?)
Maximo Park – Our Earthly Pleasures (Warp) Golden Boys – Whiskey Flower (Emperor Jones)
Samara Lubelski – Parallel Suns (The Social Registry)
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” – season 6 (gerbils, The Blacks, the ultimatum, Jeff’s head shaved, etc.)
“Saxondale” season 2
Grinderman – Slim’s, SF
Boris and Michio Kurihara, Mohawk, Austin
Yo La Tengo & Mark Arm’s salute to classic Jewish songwriters (Keith Levene, David Weave Roth), Maxwell’s Torchy’s
Chuck Meehan
Without a doubt the wide-open rollercoaster ride that was the NL playoff scrum topped my personal list as far as 2007 sports excitement. Chollys Wallbangers a/k/a the Fightin’ Phils resiliency finally payed off by capitalizing on the Mets collapse (and perhaps giving them the initial shove off the cliff) along with the cementing of a now bona-fide serious rivalry (although CBP security in secs 301-304 may not be as enthused). The excitement in Philly was snuffed out all to soon in the NLDS due to Phils bats shutting down, Manuel giving up on a young rookie pitcher who had heroically provided the Phillies injury riddled rotation with near-guaranteed quality starts and Kazuo Fucking Matsui. Despite the deflating ending, all in all it was an exciting season, one whose dynamics and possibilities were shifting on a near inning-to-inning basis by the final stretch.. I would like to give thanks to Jimmy Rollins (natch) and give shout-outs to a few of the Phillies less celebrated heroes such as Kyle Kendrick, JC Romero, Tadahito Iguchi and the Phillies superb 1st base coach Davey Lopes.
I would also like to extend appreciation to the Philadelphia Inquirer for reversing a huge mistake as David Aldridge is currently writing for the Inkwire and Steven A Smith no longer does so, the 76ers for finally giving Billy King his long overdue heave-ho, Brian Westbrook, Mike Richards, Gary Matthews Sr (yes Phans, I like Sarge in the broadcast booth), Clockcleaner and Mayor-Elect Michael “Mixmaster Mike” Nutter.
Looking to 2008, I hope for a healthy Cole Hamels, for Pat Gillicks off-season moves to work out as well as his in-season moves have, and for the Flyers to continue on an upward arc and show more consistency as the season progresses. I am flummoxed on which direction the Iggles should take (one last tweak or overhaul with new coaching staff and QB?) and I would be happy to see a Dawn Staley-coached WNBA franchise come to Philly as they would be as good as bet as any to end the Curse Of William Penn. Best to all in 2008
David Roth
There are people involved with this blog — I can think of one without even really trying that hard — whose musical expertise far exceeds mine. I know my role here — that’s the periodic long and melancholic NBA post, and walking the currently quiet bitching-about-the-Mets beat — and I’m happy to play it. But I’m also glad to get the opportunity to think back on the sporting and non-sporting things I liked the most this year. The only things that came to my mind at first were “sleeping” and “sandwiches,” but I was able to come up with some other stuff after a little thought.
- No Age, in concert. I saw them in a very loud party/performance space at Columbia, in a show sponsored by Barnard College’s radio station. That in itself doesn’t sound terribly promising, but they were totally galvanizing, intense and amazing. I also want to use the word “democratic” to describe the show — which featured lots of performers-in-audience/audience-on-stage action — but there was very little that recalled any system of government at all about the show. I think that’s what I liked most about it. Second-best show honors go to Band of Horses, who managed to play a great, enjoyable set at 2am as part of a transcendently wince-inducing brand-placement CMJ-week show held at a venue named after a terrible rock magazine — and that turned out to also be a cross-promotion between the afore-unmentioned magazine, a caffeine-infused alcoholic drink and a fucking video game. In my defense, the show was free. But attending it was still pretty indefensible. So, you know, sorry. I didn’t know I’d be apologizing so soon.
- Last year’s NBA Western Conference Playoffs. I loved the Utah/Golden State and Utah/San Antonio series, which absolutely dragged a weird commitment and interest (and some of my better CSTB writing, I think) out of me that I didn’t expect. I got remarkably lucky with those series, too, as I was somehow out or otherwise occupied during the blowouts and invariably caught the remarkably exciting, wrenching, inspiring games. I don’t know when the NBA came back around for me — and I should by all rights be down on it, as the Nets, the team I died with growing up, is currently in the middle of some nightmarish rebranding/slo-mo relocation thing — but it absolutely has, even as my interest in the old home team has shrunk considerably. It helps that there’s some really good writing currently being done about basketball — Henry Abbott on one end; the Wizznutzz off on The Island of Al Jarreau, doing their insane, amazing thing on the other — but I don’t think I’ve enjoyed watching or talking about basketball this much since I was in middle school. The watching and the talking are both a lot more fun without the having-to-cheer-for-Chris-Morris part.
- Hot Fuzz. There were movies this year that made me feel bigger emotions than this one, but for a movie that ends with a 30-minute shootout between the two stars of Shaun of the Dead and every elderly British character actor alive, this one is awfully carefully made. It also made me laugh a lot.
- Roast chicken. I love to eat it, and am getting better at preparing it. 2008 will be the year of the roasted chicken. Mark it down.
- The return of Marlon Anderson to the Mets. I am trying as hard as possible not to remember anything else from the past season, which was notable only for proving to me that I’m still capable of getting pissed off and borderline depressed about sports. But I was glad to see Marlon back in the fold, and to see that he’s been re-signed. Marlon Anderson is everything Lenny Harris wasn’t, and that’s as high a compliment as I can offer.
- Remainder, by Tom McCarthy. Came to my attention via a recommendation from Sam Frank, and while I won’t say I enjoyed every moment of reading this novel — it’s purposefully distant and pretty stingy with its literary rewards — it has stayed with me more than anything else I’ve read this year, by a long shot. This and Heidi Julavits’s equally vexing, equally fascinating The Effect of Living Backwards — which didn’t come out in 2007, but which I bought at a neighborhood crap store a few months ago — are, I think, the two best books about the anxieties of life during the War on Terra Era. So I guess it stands to reason that neither one of them is that lovable. It’s not that lovable an era. But this is a very, very impressive book.
- And some bands that made songs I really liked this year, because I haven’t listened to nearly enough albums to put together much of a real list: Arbouretum, Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, Jesu, the aforementioned No Age, Band of Horses, Spoon, Twilight Singers, The Rosebuds, LCD Soundsystem. If this looks like a list compiled by a middling free-weekly rock critic…that is probably because I read a lot of brief reviews in free weeklies. And then do more or less whatever they say. Except for Animal Collective.
Kevin Rys
Sports:
Red Sox winning the World Series for the 2nd time in my life.
The Pats going absolutely ape-shit on the rest of the NFL (especially sweet for those of us who may have paid money to sit in Sullivan Stadium to watch the Marc Wilson or Tommy Hodson-led P-Men).
The Celtics return to relevance.
Records:
Cococoma lp on Goner
Busy Signals lp on Dirtnap
Black & Whites “You’re the Only Girl” 7″ on Douchemaster
Hubble Bubble “Faking” lp reissue on Radio Heartbeat Sonic Chicken 4 lp on In The Red
Shows:
Radio Heartbeat Powerpop Fest at Southpaw in March (favorites: Gentlemen Jesse & His Men, Milk & Cookies, Speedies, Tina & the Total Babes)
Krunchies/Wax Museums/Romance Novels- Ronny’s in Chicago
Wax Museums/Okmoniks the next night at Cal’s in Chicago
Busy Signals/Gentleman Jesse & His Men/Carbonas at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago
Busy Signals/Cococoma/Jack Oblivian at the Buccaneer in Memphis
Monsignor Jeff Evans/Haunted George/Cheater Slicks at Cafe Bourbon Street in Columbus (Haunted George was insanely amazing)
Ben Schwartz
I can’t offer a Top Ten in any category, since my son Archer has kept me from doing much but reading and watching old movies on Netflix. So, here’s my ten top moments of 2007:
10. Lou Piniella takes over the Cubs — best Cubs manager since Durocher, and he quickly moved to boot Prior and Wood out of the line-up by bringing in pitchers and letting them prove they could throw a ball instead of praying for them to do it.
09. “Come On, Petunia” by The Blow — found this on Martha Plimpton’s My Space page, which was then playing it as the welcome song. She’s cool too as anyone visiting will see, but finding this song was one of those classic day stopping events that had me playing it 10 times. It’s your basic K/Calvin Johnson style punk, but well done. Plimpton has since changed the song to a Bing Crosby holiday thing, but her page negates any lingering resentment I have about PARENTHOOD.
08. WGA Strike — I’m no longer unemployed, I’m on strike! The entertainment companies argue that there’s no money to be made on the Internet, which I would refute, except that I only blog here … The benefits to you the viewer? No more ACCORDING TO JIM scripts!
07. My son napping in the back seat of the car — usually happens on the way home from some excursion, my daily moment of zen. I’m truly some kind of humbled monk when that’s a highlight of my day.
06. THERE WILL BE BLOOD — is there a better film on modern America than a turn-of-the-last-century look at rural Xtianity v. raw crude commerce? Daniel Day-Lewis’ John Huston impression is hilarious and menacing, and PT Anderson has made his best movie since BOOGIE NIGHTS. I thought Anderson managed to get thru a whole movie without a single Scorsese reference until I realized it starred Day-Lewis in a giant mustache in 19th Century America. Other than that …
05. Tie: Congress Goes Democratic in 2007/Sub-Prime Mortgage Mess — Congress woulda been number one had they fixed anything (they get #5 for giving Henry Waxman a gavel) and the sub-prime disaster means I may be able to finally afford a house, now that the crooked lenders, broke borrowers, and ultra-inflated LA real estate market is rethinking its financial situation for 2008.
04. The Wrong Trousers live cover/video of “Video Killed the Radio Star” — Pitchfork ain’t always ‘tarded. Pitchfork, no doubt running out of ideas, ran a cheezy Best of 2007 list (YAWN …) and picked this video by San Diego’s twee-est band ever.
03. The Mitchell Report — well, this Internet loud mouth was certainly vindicated in 2007 on every one of my needle guesses, so far, except for The Unit, Randy Johnson, whose name was not included. Mitchell may be stepping down, but let’s just say, my investigation continues. Or, at least, my unfounded accusations will continue. Keeping the focus on the Cubs — Sammy Sosa escapes the Inquistion, Mitchell finds Dusty Baker not guilty of longstanding charges he destroyed Prior and Wood’s needle tracked arms (anymore than overwork ruined Eric Gagne’s), and the current Cub line-up remains spike free and ready to play. Sammy is a HOF first ballot candidate, thanks to Mr. Mitchell, and this might finally make Prior and Wood dumpable.
02. Roger Clemens named in the Mitchell Report — why should Barry Bonds get the hot seat alone? If anybody in baseball exhibited worse prima donna behavior than Bonds, it’s Clemens, who charged the Astros 18 mil for his part time services and would not even deign to travel with his teammates for away games. Is that really worse than Barry’s stealing Gary Sheffield’s chef and demanding three lockers and a gold plated laz-y-boy or whatever it is he got from the Giants?
01. Sam Zell — Man of The Year! And mainly for this announcement on the Cubs web site: “Tribune Co.’s new CEO Sam Zell said the Cubs will be sold by Opening Day, and that he may sell naming rights to Wrigley Field because such rights could be ‘extraordinarily valuable.’” Finally, the stink of the worst owner in baseball history, Philip K. Wrigley, who actually put a ballpark before his own team and came up with our current candy ass logo by having one of his bubble gum wrapper artistes design it — may be history. Go, Sam Go! As to naming rights, if we’re looking at Chicago based empires that like to see their name everywhere, might I suggest, Oprah Field?
For the occasion of last night’s blowout loss to the Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers (above, in dark jerseys) opted to wear the sort of tiny shorts that haven’t been in vogue for centuries. Uni Watch’s Paul Lukas writes “for the most part, though, I thought they looked great”, ignoring how this was all Kurt Rambis’ fault for leaving the shorts in the drier too long.
So how did it look? Some people have already complained about the compression shorts that were peeking out from beneath many players’ trunks, but that didn’t bother me (especially since compression shorts are often visible on players wearing full-length shorts too). My gripe was that the jerseys were too billowy — they should’ve been tailored snugger, to match the shorts.
Once the Lakers went back to the contemporary shorts in the second half (which I think they did just because everyone likes to do that idiotic MJ shorts tug), everything turned predictably sloppy-looking — the baggy look just doesn’t work, people. Memo to David Stern: Make everything two sizes smaller, go buy a Val-U-Pak pack of tube socks, and get back to me in 2008.
“I had to really, really exaggerate [the accent]. But a lot of people talk like that where I’m from so I know the slang,” Bosh said. “I’m a funny person – I think. So I wanted to surprise a lot of people because I knew people didn’t see that coming. Plus, I want to get my website a lot more traffic.” - Toronto’s Chris Bosh, explaining the above clip to the Globe & Mail’s Matthew Sekeres.
Though he didn’t figure on the scoresheet for Chelsea’s 2-1 defeat of Newcastle yesterday, Sean Wright-Phillips has managed to follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of such classy sports pioneers as Fred Smerlas, Fran Tarkington and Alex Rodriguez. Losing The Dressing Room fills in the blanks.
Some of you may be aware of Babestation, the channel right up the far end of the Sky Digital cluster wherein over-made up girls with blonde highlights, clearly either lapdancers at establishments that had just closed down after a police raid or university students who lived locally for a purpose, lie around in thongs on a bed in a studio space the size of a full stockroom and occasionally jiggle their breasts or thrust their arses out in a bored fashion.
Anyway, it’s partly financed by Shaun Wright-Phillips. Although he denies it’s as much as £20,000 in what passes for conversation in this 1Xtra interview, clearly he has the tone of a schoolboy caught out leafing through the stuff he found in a hedgerow. Our other favourite bit of this is when he has a pop at Joe Cole for “listening to his own stuff, he doesn’t like to mix it” (own stuff, needless to say, Oasis), just after revealing the entire rest of the dressing room listens to the same R&B as him.
A generation later, Mark Linn-Baker would pen an almost identical memo to his show’s producers. Presumably, his notes were greeted as warmly as those of accomplished thespian. the late Robert Reed (link swiped from Boing Boing)
The most generic problem to date in “The Brady Bunch” has been this almost constant scripted inner transposition of styles.
1. A pie-throwing sequence tacked unceremoniously onto the end of a weak script.
2. The youngest daughter in a matter of a few unexplained hours managing to look and dance like Shirley Temple.
3. The middle boy happening to run into a look-alike in the halls of his school, with so exact a resemblance he fools his parents
And the list goes on.
Once again, we are infused with the slapstick. The oldest boy’s hair turns bright orange in a twinkling of the writer’s eye, having been doused with a non-FDA-approved hair tonic. (Why any boy of Bobby’s age, or any age, would be investing in something as outmoded and unidentifiable as “hair tonic” remains to be explained. As any kid on the show could tell the writer, the old hair-tonic routine is right out of “Our Gang.” Let’s face it, we’re long since past the “little dab’ll do ya” era.)
Without belaboring the inequities of the script, which are varied and numerous, the major point to all this is: Once an actor has geared himself to play a given style with its prescribed level of belief, he cannot react to or accept within the same confines of the piece, a different style.
When the kid’s hair turns red, it is Batman in the operating room.
“I just returned from the Patriots win over the Giants,” writes the proprietor of Ken Dorsey’s Jockstrap, “and I’ve come to a new conclusion; Patriots fans are douchebags.” Wow, take that Fitzy! “I guess since their coach is a ball bag, I can’t really expect the fans not to be too” sighs KDJ, perhaps looking the other way at his beloved Cowboys being owned by, well, something of a ball bag.
Tonight, I’ve learned that there’s nothing worse than a Patriots fan. By the end of the first quarter, security had to escort people out about eight times (just in sections 301-303). In our section alone, we had about four or five Patriots douche bags. Most were just the usual morons who just continually point to their own jersey; I guess if you’re wearing a Moss jersey and he scores it means one of two things; he scored, so you scored as well, or Moss scored because you were wearing his jersey and you wanted to make sure we all understood that.
One personal favorite douche sat behind us. He spent the entire game chanting, “Overrated! Overrated! Overrated.” Both my wife and I thought it was odd that a Giant fan would call a 15-0 team overrated, until the 4th quarter when I actually turned around and realized it was a Pats fan. It might be the first time in football history that 14-point home underdog was called overrated.
However, the fan of the day was one piece of shit, wearing a #44 Pats jersey. He had the name ‘Evans’ written on duck tape on the back of it. I’m guessing he couldn’t afford the new jersey. Anyhow, douche bag spent the entire game turning and taunting the Giants fans behind him. Every time the Pats got a single first down, guess what he did? You’ll never guess. That’s right, he did the ‘first down’ point just like every third-rate wide receiver does now. His favorite (when the Pats were losing) was to turn around and chant, “your conference sucks!” This had to be the first time a team’s conference was thrown back at them. I guess he overlooked the whole divisional thing and the fact the Pats played in a division with three losing teams, two of which have a combined 4-27 record.
Several Ravens sources have told FOX Sports that ownership and high level executives and ownership has been privately polling and asking players if Billick has lost the locker room. Not only are they asking player opinions, they are asking employees from equipment men to those on the trainer’s staff for their read as well trying to ascertain how much faith the locker room has lost in the head coach.
The general consensus is that Billick had long ago lost some of the guys but more recently the majority of the team had tuned him out. Not only has he lost the locker room, many insisted he couldn’t win the players back either.
Thus, while Billick may get another year to coach this team, owner Steve Biscotti will have to make that decision with the knowledge that his players have lost faith in the coach.
On an entirely different tip, the ‘07 Award For Confusing A (Poor) Interior Monologue With Blogging looks to be a neck & neck race between the legendary Alex Benesowitz and the Sporting News’ Kevin Sullivan.
Was “I Fucking Told You So” considered a poor title? I never thought I’d say this, but at times like these, I really wish ESPN would get back into the made-for-TV movie business. From the New York Post’s Peter Cox.
José Canseco has inked a deal to publish a sequel to his blockbuster steroid tell-all, “Juiced,” his lawyer said.
“It will be an unjaundiced view, without the rose-colored glasses that [The Mitchell Report] obviously put on,” said Robert Saunooke, Canseco’s attorney.
As reported by The Post earlier this month, the former major leaguer and admitted steroid user humbly calls the new tome “Vindicated.”
Saunooke said the sequel is set to be published by Penguin Books and will be co-written by former Sports Illustrated reporter Don Yaeger.
Saunooke declined to discuss any big players named or any big details revealed in the book, but said that it would be a more complete version of the Mitchell Report, which stunned the nation with steroid allegations against the likes of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.
Saunooke said when former Sen. George Mitchell initially began his investigation, he contacted Canseco and Saunooke, who provided “tons of information and background” on steroid use in Major League Baseball.
But when the report was released, he and Canseco were disappointed by not seeing players like Rafael Palmeiro and Pudge Rodriguez named.
Saunooke said one of the topics for the new book will be how Mark McGwire asked for immunity prior to his appearance before Congress in 2005.
Friday’s 109-98 win over Minnesota marked Portland’s 12 consecutive victory, a streak The Oregonian’s Jason Quick credits to a highly contentious training session in a San Antonio gym on December 1. “The practice was basically set up for a fight to happen” claims coach Nate McMillan, who comes off as something of a mad genius for instituting a number of conditions recounted by Quick (”there would be no switching when screens were set, forcing the defender to fight through picks. And there would only be one dribble allowed by the ballhandler, a tactic designed to instigate more movement by the offense to get open.”)
The first sparks were ignited early in the practice, when the team was in the midst of executing a three-man weave against defenders. Joel Przybilla, the rugged, veteran center, set a pick on Maretell Webster, the third-year player out of high school. Webster cried foul, saying Przybilla set a moving screen. Przybilla, who later said he was in a foul mood that day, shot back and asked Webster why he complains about everything.
Flustered, Webster retorted with, “Why don’t you make a dunk for once?” inciting Przybilla’s bad mood.
With tempers simmering, the drills moved to a four-on-four format. Webster made a hard drive to the basket, where he was met by Przybilla. The center caught Webster in the air, bear-hugged him and threw him to the floor.
“That’s when your pride comes in and some ego gets in the way,” Webster recalled. “I started yelling at him, telling him, ‘If I get a shot at you . . . ,’ and I remember this: While I was arguing with Joel, I looked at coach, and he was just sitting there smiling. He was looking at me like, ‘Well, get into it then. Show me something.’
“And you know what, it seemed to ignite everybody, not just for me and Joel, but for everybody. The intensity of the whole practice changed.”
Soon, Channing Frye said he was “talking trash” to his teammates. And the normally stoic Brandon Roy was cussing and snapping at the teammates guarding him. And Steve Blake got so angry that he kicked a chair, prompting Nate McMillan to chastise him in front of the team.
“We were there as guests, that was not our furniture,” McMillan said. “So I told him to pick up the chair.”
“The only outcome I’m rooting for would be Jared Lorenzen putting up crazy numbers against N.E. backups, thus leading to a public outcry for Eli’s benching against the Buccaneers. Sure, it’ll never happen, but neither will New York’s first-stringers be allowed to risk injury late in the game, not if Coughlin has an ounce of smarts remaining.”
Ahem. So much for any expert prognosis that one of both of these teams would send the scrubs in. Despite having nothing whatsoever to play for (beyond individual records and making Don Shula cry), the Patriots and Giants turned an otherwise meaningless contest into a genuinely competitive, if not compelling game. I’ll still contend this was a mere historic footnote compared to what’s in store during the postseason, but there’s a lot to take away from this one. For instance, knee injuries to Giants LB Kawika Mitchell, safety Craig Dahl and center Shaun O’Hara, all of whom were sacrificed to the all-important cause of trying-to-knock-the-Pats-off.
That said, I won’t go nearly as far as WFAN’s Mike Francesca, who along with characterizing last night’s game as “everything that’s good about the NFL”, unloaded on Giants fans who sold their tickets. “How stupid did you feel,” bellowed Francesca, “watching your Giants leave the field to an enormous ovation at the end of the first half…if you managed to cozy up to a television.”
Just out of curiosity, how many games at the Meadowlands has Francesca paid to attend in late December? It’s kind of amazing to hear WFAN’s listeners accused of disloyalty by a guy far too smart to actually sit in row ZZZ in freezing temperatures. And who amongst us wouldn’t love to read of the Sultan Of Self-Importance in the middle of something like this?
With Randy Moss (2 TD’s, 6 catches, 100 yards) passing Jerry Rice for the single season TD reception mark, we can safely proclaim New England’s draft day acquisition of the former one of the most lopsided deals in modern sports history. And while New England overcoming a 12 point second half deficit on enemy territory was decent enough playoff preperation, it cannot be ignored that Eli Manning was just a few dropped passes away from having outplayed Tom Brady. Sadly for Eli, one of those drops wasn’t committed by Ellis Hobbs ; suffice to say that if a mistake free game was required by Manning to pull off the upset, that particular overthrow of Plaxico Fantastico was gaffe of the night.
I won’t call it costly, however. Luckily for Manning and Tom Coughlin, nothing was at stake, and if the former plays nearly as well against Tampa next weekend, he’ll have done plenty to challenge the perception he’s got no heart. Perhaps even within his own team’s front office.
Given that Saturday marked yet another blooper reel worthy gaffe by Portsmouth’s David James (above), one that essentially gifted Middlesborough a 1-0 home victory, perhaps an editorial in Sunday’s Observer wasn’t the best occasion for the keeper to proclaim “years ago, the only statistic that counted in football was how many pints you could drink in a night.”
These days, football is a very different beast. The English game is ever more Americanised in its obsession with stats. Top football clubs are now using a model of statistical analysis similar to that used by Billy Beane in Major League Baseball to tell us how we won, how we lost, how to pick the side, or even how to buy players.
Most people know that I like a stat or two, so I’m not dismissing their value. As a kid I spent hours poring over football annuals, obsessing over clean-sheets records, attendances and county-league statistics. But data is a complicated business. Statistics are meant to be absolute, but once you start asking how they have been collated, or what they mean, you find yourself needing not just one stat but several. You can see how I became obsessive.
Peter Schmeichel best showed how numbers can be fiddled. Years ago there was a story going round that Schmeichel got the hump because of the introduction of ProZone, so decided to prove a point. The very next match, so the tale goes, every time the ball was down the other end, Schmeichel did sets of sprints across the edge of his area to raise his high-intensity running stats. Anyone watching probably thought: ‘Oh look there’s Schmeichel keeping himself warm’; but he ended up beating one of the forwards on stats for that game.
Where does coaching, that age-old skill, come into all of this? If footballers are recruited on their statistical performances, then where is the opening for managers to coach the best out of a player? The young footballer who shows flashes of brilliance but needs an arm around the shoulder, or a kick up the backside, may never get a chance under a stats-obsessed manager. A decent old-school coach doesn’t need to look at a load of stats to work out how good a player is. I certainly can’t see Harry Redknapp doing it – he knows his players and he doesn’t often buy a bad one.
Beane’s stats revolution may work for a team emerging from administration and needing a cost-efficient solution to get into the play-offs, but, like Beane’s Oakland A’s, they’re never going to win the title. Pints aside, the only statistic that really counts in football is the result.
To mangle a point raised by My Teams Are Cursed, what would you say if you tuned into a Yankee game and instead of the dulcet tones of John Sterling, instead heard Tigers legend Ernie Harwell? Aside, from “thank god”?
Well, that’s kind of what happened during last night’s telecast of the Pistons’ home win over Indy. MSG fixture Gus Johnson worked the game, filling in for Pistons mouthpiece George Blaha who was occupied covering Michigan State’s loss in the Champs Sports Bowl to Boston College.
Apparently, this was some sort of dream come true for Detroit native Johnson, and I’m surprised Knicks ownership allowed it (assuming they knew). But I’m also certain that double standards make for an unhappy workforce, so I look forward to Jamal Crawford being granted permission to suit up for the team of his choice on his day off. Likewise if other Garden employees wanna try their hands at moonlighting (Steve Mills might make a terrific department store manager. Surely there’s a newspaper or website that will give Jerome James a shot as their restaurant critic?), hopefully they’ll be given the same opportunities. And if some of ‘em are having too much fun to come back, all the better. (links courtesy Awful Announcing)
Rick Neuheisel is coming back to UCLA — this time as head coach.
Neuheisel, who quarterbacked the Bruins to victory in the 1984 Rose Bowl and later served as an assistant under Terry Donahue, was hired Saturday as his alma mater’s 16th coach.
Neuheisel spent the last three seasons as an assistant coach for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, who finish the season Sunday against Pittsburgh. He served as quarterbacks coach in 2005-06, and was promoted to offensive coordinator last January.
He had a 66-30 record as a head coach at Colorado from 1995-98 and Washington from 1999-2002. He hasn’t been in the college game since Washington fired him in 2003 for participating in a betting pool on the NCAA basketball tournament. He sued for wrongful termination from Washington and settled in March 2005 with UW and the NCAA for $4.5 million.
Neuheisel began his road back to coaching in the fall of that year as a volunteer assistant coaching quarterbacks at Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School.
Neuheisel’s resume also includes the San Diego Chargers’ single game passing percentage mark of .818 (18 for 22), compiled in a October 11, 1987 game against Tampa Bay. Since Neuheisel’s achievement occurred during the NFLPA’s strike of that autumn, it’s probably not something he considers a career highlight.
Texas – still unbeaten against anyone who’s not in the Big Ten!
Results aside, this was an early game-of-the-season contender, and if Damion James continues to improve as much he’s shown in the past 5 weeks, talking heads and opposing coaches will have something else to gush over besides the guard tandem of Augustin and Abrams.
The 35-year-old midfielder fell to the Fir Park ground just as he was about to be replaced by Marc Fitzpatrick. O’Donnell was taken to Wishaw General Hospital where he later died, club chairman Bill Dickie confirmed. He was pronounced dead at 5.18pm.
After been treated for around five minutes on the field the former Celtic player was carried off on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance.
O’Donnell’s nephew, David Clarkson, who also playing in the match, was taken off after being alarmed by the incident.
O’Donnell, who won one Scotland cap, began his career with Motherwell and rejoined the club in 2004 following spells with Celtic, who he joined in a £1.75 million deal in 1994, and Sheffield Wednesday.
Langford became the 4th member of the Toros to suit up for the defending NBA champs this season, joining Marcus Williams, Ian Mahinmi and Darius Washington. Washington was waived by San Antonio this week, and while he didn’t accomplish much during his limited opportunities coming off the bench for the Spurs, he did average an eye-popping 28 points /6 assists per game earlier in the year with the Toros. The chances of his challenging Manu Ginobili or Tony Parker for playing time were pretty slim, but as of today, he’s a free agent and represents a far more appealing option at point guard than say, Nate Robinson.
“When a report reveals that close to 100 players were using steroids, I thank God that I’ve always pitched clean,” Martinez said in an interview in Spanish with the Dominican newspaper Listin Diario. Martinez was in Santo Domingo Thursday to receive a plaque recognizing his baseball accomplishments, part of an awards ceremony for the Dominican winter baseball season.
“Even when I felt pain in my arm, I got on the mound and pitched in that condition. I was a dominant pitcher in the steroids era,” said Martinez. “That was a difficult period for pitchers and it makes me happy that all I have done in baseball has been clean. No one can question me.”
Martinez, who returned from rotator cuff surgery on his pitching shoulder to make five starts in 2007, also said he had planned to try and pitch for the Licey Tigers team this winter in the Dominican, but that the Mets had advised him against doing so. With one season left on his four-year deal with the club and with GM Omar Minaya so far failing to sign a replacement for departed southpaw Tom Glavine, the Mets can ill afford to lose Martinez.
And on that note, Steve at the Eddie Kranepool Society can accept the pursuit of Jon Lieber under the circumstances. And while I’d rather see Lieber in a Mets uniform than stomach the thought of Kyle Lohse cashing in, it does appear as the notion of strating Aaron Heilman will never be seriously considered.
Bad enough that Blackwater’s Xmas card didn’t announce a donation to The Human Fund —- the copy is 100% stolen from CSTB’s 2003 greeting to advertisers and investors.
Well, sort of. Newsday’s Neil Best reports that Chris Connelly — man cannot live by exploiting terminally ill children year-round — will helm an “Outside The Lines” telecast next week centered on a 1972 plane crash in the Andes mountains. Said crash and resulting efforts by the surviviors to consume human flesh, have already been dramatized in the motion picture “Alive”, culled from the 1974 book by Piers Paul Read.
If you’re not psyched about staring at Chris Connelly and Bob Ley, you can always just stick to YouTube.
“It’s funny,” writes DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg “when you get an e-mail with a subject line reading ‘Manute Bol Takes on the Candidates in Iowa,’ you figure it’s gonna contain nothing but hilarity and photos of Manute Bol wearing an Abraham Lincoln hat.”
Then, when you read the e-mail, it turns out that Manute Bol is actually holding a press conference and rally on the west steps of the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines on Tuesday afternoon, while joined by hundreds of Sudanese U.S. citizens, who will be demanding the Presidential candidates address atrocities in Darfur and throughout Sudan. Among their questions:
What would you do to end the genocide in Darfur?
Should the U.S. deal with the Government of Sudan by segmenting Darfur, Southern Sudan, Nubia etc. as separate and isolated matters, or with Sudan as a whole?
Actually, Bol’s an old hand at this kind of thing — most of his public stunts over the years (KO’ing the Fridge, putting on skates for minor league hockey) were with the express purpose of raising loot or awareness about events in the Sudan.
I eagerly await the results of Tuesday’s activity, mostly ‘cuz if I continue reading this I’ll be laughing too hard to get any work done next week.
Supplier of the sordid link, Kevin Rys writes, “someone should tell Jim Leyritz that alcohol is not a performance enhancing drug when it comes to driving.” From WPLG Miami :
Police said Jim Leyritz was behind the wheel of a Ford SUV that collided with another vehicle at the intersection of Southwest Seventh Avenue and Second Street in the Himmarshee area of downtown Fort Lauderdale.
The impact caused the other car to roll over and the female driver of that vehicle was ejected and she died after being taken to Broward General Medical Center, police said.
Leyritz was arrested on suspicion of DUI because he refused a Breathalyzer test, police said.Leyritz is being held on $11,000 bond. According to police records, he was booked at 4:30 a.m. Friday.
Simply awful stuff. While there’s no word yet on how this incident will impact Leyritz’ employment with MLB Radio, surely there’s some kind of job in the St. Louis Cardinals organization?
While the Boston Herald’s Mike Felger concludes the 15-0 Patriots “beat up on a weak league”, the ever-excitable Steve Serby of the New York Post would have you believe the Giants are sold on the questionable import of tomorrow night’s clash with New England.
The Yankees are hated for a lot of reasons, but mostly because they have won 26 championships. Everyone wanted to knock off John Wooden’s UCLA teams, especially the ones with Lew Alcindor sky-hooking opponents into submission. Oh, how they hated Red Auerbach for lighting up those victory cigars during his Celtics reign of terror. Wilt Chamberlain once bemoaned the fact that nobody likes Goliath.
Now, here come the Hatetriots, the 15-0 Hatetriots, marching into Giants Stadium, and only the Giants are standing between them and the first 16-0 regular season.
The last thing the Giant players want, even with a wild-card playoff game in Tampa the following week, is to wave a white flag and surrender to the perfect team so close to becoming Greatriots.
They would much prefer to stop the Hatetriots.
Even as they fully understand it is Tom Coughlin’s decision as to who plays and how much and who rests, an umistakeable “not against us” mentality has gripped them and won’t let go.
It is as if they feel compelled in some way to defend the honor of the rest of the league.
On the road, where they are 7-1, it is “us against the world” for the Giants.
Tomorrow night, it is Hatetriots against the world, and the world outside New England is with the Giants.
Good job, then, to Big Blue’s Osi Umenyiora (”I’m what you’d commonly refer to as a hater”), who hypnotized Serby with promises of not-lying-down (”we are a brotherhood and nobody really wants to see a team just looks that much better than everybody else”), thus ignoring the most obvious scenario of all : Col. Coughlin’s job is on the line, and if a starter were injured tomorrow evening in pursuit of a meaningless win while the club still has a shot (however remote) at winning a Super Bowl, he’s almost certainly headed back to college football.
The only outcome I’m rooting for would be Jared Lorenzen putting up crazy numbers against N.E. backups, thus leading to a public outcry for Eli’s benching against the Buccaneers. Sure, it’ll never happen, but neither will New York’s first-stringers be allowed to risk injury late in the game, not if Coughlin has an ounce of smarts remaining. Umenyiora knows this, and chance are, so does Steve Serby.
A report by KARK-TV, Channel 4, in Little Rock claimed that Arkansas junior tailback Darren McFadden was present when sports agent Mike Conley recently purchased a Cadillac Escalade, which the station said was put in the name of McFadden’s mother, Mini Muhammad.University of Arkansas officials would not comment on the accuracy of the report.
“We’re aware of the report,” said Kevin Trainor, Arkansas associate athletic director for external affairs. “The situation is under review.” Muhammad, reached at her home in Little Rock, said neither she nor her son owned the Escalade.
“Mike Conley hasn’t bought nothing, and it ain’t in my name,” Muhammad said. “It’s his stepmom’s, Ella McFadden’s. Really, the truck is on loan. Darren drove that down [to Dallas ] to see how he’d like it, and maybe he’d get one later.
“ They got that all wrong. Darren doesn’t have no truck.” Conley, a former track and field All-American at Arkansas, told KARK on Thursday night that he was not at a car dealership with McFadden and that he hadn’t negotiated a deal.
“That is 100 percent a lie,” Conley told the station. “I would challenge anybody to say that I have ever been at a dealership with Darren McFadden.” Though it is considered a foregone conclusion that McFadden will enter the NFL Draft as an underclassman this winter, he has yet to acknowledge that move.
Conley assures us McFadden does not own a truck, and from the looks of this photographic evidence, why would he need to buy one?
Texas A&M officials were left red-faced Thursday night when an unidentified Yell Leader joked that Penn State coach Joe Paterno “needed a casket” during a joint pep rally.
The Yell Leader, a male student cheerleader who organizes cheers at football games, was on stage during the pep rally when he grabbed the microphone and unleashed on Paterno, 81.
“Joe Paterno’s on his death bed! And someone needs to find him a casket!” the Yell Leader screamed. Stunned PSU fans started booing. The Yell Leaders quickly left the stage, and the pep rally continued.
A&M interim president Eddie Davis and athletic director Bill Byrne apologized to their Penn State counterparts, A&M spokesman Alan Cannon said.
The Patriot News’ David Jones writes, “the man at the mike had been telling a lengthy and convoluted fantasy story that was falling flat. Finally, PSU fans began booing and chanting ‘We are!…’ At that point, the flustered yell leader fired back with his insult.”
Indeed, sometimes desperate attempts to kick-start a failing monologue just make matters worse.
(UPDATE : video of the incident. Why, oh why must Rudy’s Barbeque be dragged into this?)
Sure, everybody’s laughing after Texas dropped 52 points on Arizona State, but come next September, Chris Jessie might find his sideline pass has been replaced with a seat in the last row of DKR-Memorial’s section 124.
On the same day Isiah Thomas and a Knicks executive issued contradictory statements regarding when and if G Stephon Marbury might return to the club, the New York Daily News’ Frank Isola opines “Marbury’s prolonged absence tells you everything you need to know about the state of the franchise.”
The organization acted appropriately in the days and weeks after Marbury’s father, Donald, passed away on Dec. 2. The fact that the entire team, including Thomas, showed up at the funeral is a tremendous gesture. They have been overly sensitive toward Marbury’s feelings to the point where they are now covering for him even though it is clear that Marbury should have rejoined the team long ago.
If Marbury wants to remain on bereavement leave indefinitely that’s fine. But it is about time that the Knicks tell the veteran point guard that he is no longer getting paid for each game he misses. The grieving process of a loved one never ends but eventually an employee has an obligation to return to work.
The fact that Marbury is at odds with Thomas doesn’t excuse him from abandoning his teammates and missing valuable time. Also, the timing of Marbury’s latest hiatus leaves him open for criticism.
He returned to practice two weeks ago saying he was ready to play again. The following day, Marbury didn’t start but played well in a blowout loss to Indiana.
The next day, he skipped practice and then recorded a DNP against Cleveland. Since that game, Marbury hasn’t attended a single practice and has missed three straight games. During his latest absence, Marbury found enough time to formally file a grievance through the player’s association to fight the fine the Knicks levied against him when Marbury left the team for 24 hours last month.
On the one hand, the Knicks are telling Marbury to take as much time as he needs and are still paying him while Marbury is fighting them over one game’s pay.
There’s also the matter of the undermanned Knicks wasting a roster spot. If Marbury were waived, suspended or placed on a some kind of mental fatigue DL, surely there’s another point guard in the D-League, CBA, West 4th Street, etc. who could provide valuable minutes?
On one hand, it wasn’t a surprising endorsement since I had seen him in a local cable ad for the same establishment. On the other hand, I nearly dropped my groceries when I saw it. What the fudge was the great Keith Hernandez doing shilling for some coin store? It instantly brought to mind the time in 1982 my father told me heard something on the news about Mark Gastineau autographing pumpkins on Jericho Turnpike to make a few bucks before Halloween during the NFL players’ strike.
Keith Hernandez should not be doing anything that reminds anybody of Mark Gastineau. But he does. He endorses Coin Galleries of Oyster Bay (now with 2 locations to serve you!). He broadcasts other people’s dates alongside Clyde Frazier. He recently popped up on eBay offering a signed Keith Hernandez jersey as a bonus if you were high bidder on a Mercedes from a Palm Beach-area dealership. I assume he is compensated in satisfactory fashion by Long Island’s Largest Rare Coin Store just as he is by Just For Men Haircolor, just as he probably gets a break on a car in Florida.
If you see him in these gigs, let alone his analyst role on SNY, Keith Hernandez comes off as something of a cartoon figure (and not just because he has been animated as a cartoon figure by the very same network). He has very much become Crazy Keith, tittering over names like Jon Coutlangus and Pete LaCock, roaming tangents regarding wine and lollipops and generally playing the cranky, kooky uncle card that ex-ballplayers have been known to play in front of a camera or behind a microphone.
It was an article of faith circa 1986 that you shouldn’t get up to buy a hot dog if you knew Darryl Strawberry was coming to bat in the bottom of the inning. Well, you couldn’t leave your seat for any of the Met seasons in which Keith Hernandez was in his prime. You had to watch him work a count, jaw at his pitcher, confront his catcher, bear down on a bunter, give a quote. It is not hometown bias that leads me to say that Keith Hernandez was the most fascinating player I ever saw.
That’s my Keith Hernandez, my Mex. The one on TV and in the Pennysaver, Crazy Keith? He’s somebody else as far as I can tell.
Hernandez turned 54 last October. I think he’s entitled to a) earn a living and b) play the clown as often as he likes. I can understand why an admirer of Keith’s would flinch at some of the commercial activity he’s involved with, but that’s exactly the sort of work a part time broadcaster might need to avoid autographing pumpkins by the side of the road. Unless and until Mex turns to reality TV, his legacy is largely safe.
Coleman has purchased land on Linwood between Clairmount and Taylor and hopes to acquire more to Gladstone. He is building a pizza shop, cellular phone store and upscale barber shop to accompany the ultra hip Snyx Sneaker Studio built in a strip mall this year dubbed Coleman’s Corner.
Next year he has plans for a farmer’s market, laundromat and dry cleaner across from the strip mall.
“People here have to go outside the city to spend their money,” Coleman said. “Hopefully in two or three years we won’t have to go across Eight Mile to get the things we need.”
City officials praise Coleman’s investment — which he has made without any tax breaks typically requested by companies moving back to the city — and say they hope it pushes other retailers to return. A recent city-sponsored report estimates that city residents spend roughly $1.7 billion outside Detroit every year.
His neighbors do everything from sell sneakers to paint walls to clear snow and even manage shops. Coleman said it is part of his efforts to get people living in the area to change their way of thinking.
“We are talking about setting a standard for what we do in the neighborhood,” Coleman said. “It is all about changing the perception of where we are and where we are going.”
Coleman wants his neighbors to expect quality products, good service and clean shops. Coleman said everything from crime to economics to dropout rates are impacted by the mindset of people in the area who do not yet believe the neighborhood can be better.
“It is a standard we accept,” Coleman said. “That has to change.”
To that end, Coleman has no bars or steel sheets to cover windows and doors at his businesses, unlike many other businesses, gas stations and shops in the neighborhood, because he said it makes people think the business is unsafe. Shoppers don’t have to pay clerks through bullet-resistant plastic windows and visitors are warmly greeted.
Coleman’s work is genuinely inspiring, and I remain hopeful other prominent ex-Nets will soon do their part to give something back to the community. Marcus Williams’ laptop repair center? A chain of John Calipari Mexican takeaways? How much longer need we await the opening of Jayson Williams’ rifle range?
Trevor Ariza, ladies and gentlemen. Surplus to Isiah Thomas’ requirements and traded along with Penny Haraway’s expiring contract for that final piece of the puzzle, Stevie Franchise.
Seriously, while I’m fully in favor of Denver doing whatever they need to do to fashion solidarity as they search for that elusive 7th win, there is something mildly weird about this much bravado on the part of the Bolts, given all the weeping and finger-pointing that ensued after they were bounced by the Patriots last January.
Rather than defend itself against sexual harassment again, Madison Square Garden on Wednesday settled a lawsuit filed three years ago by the former captain of the Rangers’ cheerleading squad, the Rangers City Skaters.
No details of the settlement were provided by the Garden or the former cheerleading captain, Courtney Prince, who sued the Garden and two Rangers employees in October 2004. She accused the Garden of sexual harassment and of retaliation, because it fired her and tried to smear her reputation.
The Garden and Prince’s lawyer, Kathleen Peratis, issued nearly identical statements. “We resolved this matter with no admission of wrongdoing on any part,” each said while offering no further comment.
Fred Nance, a sports law expert who is a regional managing partner for Squire Sanders, a Cleveland-based law firm, said: “They’ve gotten the right idea now, by resolving things like this and getting out ahead of them. It certainly gets the issue off the front pages and out from under the microscope, as long as there aren’t more allegations of this type of conduct.”
A psychiatrist hired by the Garden said Prince had a bipolar personality that was apt to have been manic and hypersexual at the time of the bar incident.
In her court documents, Prince said that she showed no unusual symptoms when the psychiatrist examined her and that his diagnosis was derived from comments made by 10 skaters in unsworn affidavits. Two of the skaters later said in affidavits that they had been coerced into signing the earlier statements.
Several years before Eddie Sutton’s career at Oklahoma State ended in a booze-stankin’ resignation and handover to his son Sean, something terrible happened to him. It’s hard to say, with any degree of certainty, what it actually was. But the formerly vital-looking — if obviously hard-living — man seemingly lost all the collagen from his body and physically crumpled sometime during his late 60s, and spent the rest of his OSU career looking like a wrinkly plastic bag filled with whiskey.
Sutton kept coaching, and his team kept winning for awhile, but he himself simply went slack, and hung wrinkly inside his suits on the sideline like something that had been improperly stored. It was almost merciful when the obviously rather-undone Sutton finally stepped down after the 2006 season in the wake of a crash and DUI arrest so egregious that it had even Bob “Don’t Do This To Me” Huggins shaking his head. During his spare time, Sutton crafted an exclusive CSTB podcast, did some hunting and fishing and…holy shit, really? The University of San Francisco? Okay, if you say so, Janie McCauley of the Associated Press:
Sutton is coming out of retirement to replace Jessie Evans as San Francisco’s basketball coach and will have his shot at 800 victories after all. USF announced Wednesday night that Evans was taking “a leave of absence” for the rest of the season and that the 71-year-old Sutton would lead the Dons (4-8) on an interim basis.
Sutton’s first chance for win No. 799 will be Friday night at Weber State.
“It’s very important,” Sutton said of winning 800 games. “I had a chance earlier this year to take a Division I job and didn’t think I wanted to do it. From a selfish standpoint, it is something I’m excited about.
…(USF AD Debra) Gore-Mann said she or someone from her staff would be traveling with the team regularly in the near future to “lend my support to the student-athletes and to assist interim coach Sutton in any way I can.”
Sutton retired as Oklahoma State’s coach after the 2005-06 season. He has 798 victories in 36 seasons as a Division I coach at Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State.
When his victories at Tulsa Central High School and the College of Southern Idaho are included, Sutton won exactly 1,000 games before retiring from coaching in May 2006.
His retirement came about three months after a drunken driving accident caused him to miss the Cowboys’ final 10 games of the 2005-06 season. Sutton pleaded no contest to misdemeanor aggravated drunken driving and two other charges following the February 2006 car accident.
“I’ve thought about that and I would say it probably does (enter into this decision). I certainly didn’t want to end my coaching career the way it ended here,” Sutton said, speaking from an athletic office at Oklahoma State.
He called his drinking problems a “thing of the past.”
…and an imminent cease & desist notice from the EPL, which should render the above highlights invisible. And with all due respect to Purdue and Central Michigan, Aston Villa’s 4-4 draw at Chelsea was easily the most entertaining sporting event of the day for people who hate defense.
Last week, Roger Clemens via You Tube, finally answered my unfounded charges (and those of the Michelin Report) that he used steroids. I’m more than a little miffed that, rather than face me and my questioning, Clemens has chosen to sit down with CBS’s Mike Wallace for a 60 MINUTES interview. It’s pure spite on The Rocket’s part, considering how long I’ve been investigating him and the endless hours I’ve spent on Google over this issue. Wallace, who no doubt got the interview because his son Chris Wallace is a big name at FOX News, has not reported a sports story since Abner Doubleday retired. No information yet on whether Clemens will fly out to Wallace (techinically, an away interview) or whether he will insist Wallace come to Texas.
Peyton Manning and center Jeff Saturday have started 125 games together. Since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger, only one quarterback-center combination has started more. Buffalo’s Jim Kelly and Kent Hull are the standard of longevity, durability and excellence with 157.
Saturday signed with Baltimore as a free agent from North Carolina in 1998. He was waived six weeks later, three months before his first season would have begun. He was working as an outside sales representative at a Raleigh, N.C., electrical supply store when Polian called in 1999.
Saturday became the starting center the following autumn. He has missed two games in eight years. Manning has started the first 159 regular-season games of his career.
They are centerpieces, staples, stars, world champions, leaders. Manning is the team’s offensive captain. Saturday, a three-time Pro Bowl pick, is its NFL Players Association player representative and a member of the NFL’s inaugural six-man Player Advisory Council.
“Throughout the week, we’ll talk about things we see,” said Saturday, who along with identifying the front and its key defenders, makes the line calls, setting the pass protection and blocking schemes. “I consistently try to ask, ‘What do you like? What makes you comfortable in this protection? Who would you change that we’re assigned to and how we’re going to protect?’ “
I’m grateful to Richards for penning the above bit of puffery because at the very least, it does answer the question “why on earth would Tony Dungy not play Jim Sorgi from start to finish on Sunday?”, as well as providing yet another gratuitous opportunity to link to this.
Despite his role as a crucial cog (.278, 20 HR’s, 98 RBI’s) for the 1980 AL Champion Kansas City Royals, 1B Willie Mays Aikens finds himself rotting in the stony lonesome — FCI Jesup, to be exact. Aikens, writes the Washington Post’s Darryl Fears, “is a poster child for what some jurists and civil rights activists say is the absurdity of the difference between the way federal law treats people convicted of crack cocaine offenses and those found guilty of crimes involving powder cocaine.”
Aikens received more than 15 years for possession of 64 grams of crack — about the weight of a large Snickers bar. To receive an equivalent sentence, he would have had to possess nearly 6 1/2 kilos — more than 14 pounds — of powder cocaine.
“You can supply a whole neighborhood with 6 1/2 kilos,” Aikens said by telephone from prison, where he is in the 13th year of his sentence.
Activists, lawyers and many federal judges say cases such as Aikens’s demonstrate the inequity of cocaine sentencing laws and validate the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recent decision to ease prison time guidelines for crack offenders. The new guidelines will apply retroactively to about 19,500 inmates.
Within hours of the decision, Aikens said he was on the telephone with his lawyers, asking them to request a sentence reduction. They calculated that the new guidelines could shave nearly 2 1/2 years off his sentence.
“The disparity, as far as I’m concerned, is totally wrong,” said Aikens, a nonviolent offender. “This took me away from my family. My girls were 4 and 5 years old when I was sentenced. Now they’re 18 and 19.”
The sentencing disparity is more than two decades old. It was established after the cocaine-related death of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias prompted Congress to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. It allowed sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine, seen at the time as the more dangerous form of the drug, to be 100 times more severe than for crimes involving powder cocaine.
The law was intended to curb the violence associated with the crack cocaine trade in black communities. But opponents say it was fraught with problems.
More than 80 percent of defendants were, like Aikens, African American. According to this year’s sentencing commission report to Congress, the median weight of the crack carried by offenders was 51 grams. The median weight carried by powder cocaine offenders was 6,000 grams.
“Most of these crack dealers are, in fact, low-level offenders,” said Eric E. Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. “Most of them aren’t violent. There is this vicious stereotype of black dope dealers armed to the teeth. But it’s not true. It’s a shame that this type of stereotype started coming out again in the debate over drug sentencing.”
The New England Patriots’ shot at history Saturday night will be available for every household in the country with a television after months of wrangling.
The game against the New York Giants, in which the Patriots could become the first NFL team to go 16-0 in the regular season, was originally scheduled to be shown only on the NFL Network, which is available in fewer than 40 percent of the nation’s homes with TVs.
But the league announced Wednesday that the NFL Network feed will be simulcast on NBC and CBS. It’s a major concession by league officials, who repeatedly said they would not show the game anywhere but the NFL Network. The NFL had faced mounting pressure from politicians in recent weeks to make the game available to more viewers.
This will be the first three-network simulcast in NFL history and the first simulcast of any kind of an NFL game since the first Super Bowl in 1967, when CBS and NBC both televised the first meeting of the champions of the newly merged National Football League and American Football League.
So much for CBS’ planned network premiere of the Cloonster’s “Good Night & Good Luck”, not to mention NBC’s showing of an “Law & Order : SVU” repeat with an MMA storyline. Maybe Mushick can write a column about how some of us really don’t give a hoot whether Eli plays one quarter or three on Saturday? Even if LT, Harry Carson and Carl Banks started on Saturday, New England would still run the table.
Still, this provides further ammo for those who’d argue football has long since replaced baseball as American’s national pastime. With the possible exception of the public stoning of Simon Cowell, what other non-news event is of great enough interest to justify a simulcast by two competing networks?
Apparently, Howard Bryant isn’t the only one less than sold on the Mitchell Report’s findings. From Wednesday’s NY Post :
Roger Clemens’ attorney has launched his own investigation into whether the Yankees pitcher used performance-enhancing substances as the Mitchell Report claimed.
“We are convinced the conclusions in Mitchell’s report are wrong and are investigating the findings ourselves,” lawyer Rusty Hardin told The New York Times. “At this stage we have uncovered a lot of logical people who we thought Mitchell was going to talk to but never talked to him or his investigators. That’s troubling.”
“Maybe they’ll get the same detectives O.J. Simpson is using to find the real killers” writes the Journal News’ Peter Abraham. And it’s interesting to see how until he sits down with “60 Minutes”’s Mike Wallace next month, no part of Roger Clemens’ recent P.R. offensive has included actually answering questions from the media or an MLB-sanctioned investigator.
With the possible exceptions of Brady Anderson and Mike Piazza, the biggest winner to come out of the Mitchell Report’s release has to be Rusty Hardin, whose bulldog tactics will undoubtedly catch the eye of the next public figure to become a national pariah. Depending on how their respective trials work out, R. Kelly and Barry Bonds might want to keep Rusty in mind for future work.
Newsday’s Ken Berger can’t tell us exactly who will take the floor for the Knicks tonight in Orlando, but odds are pretty good there will be at least 5 players in uniform.
The Knicks walked into Amway Arena this morning apparently unaware of Isiah Thomas’ plans for the starting lineup tonight against the Magic. Thomas said there will be changes, but wouldn’t say what they’ll be.
“We’ll make a change,” Thomas said. “You’ll see at game time.”
After an uncomfortable give-and-take with reporters about what those changes might entail, Thomas allowed some news to slip out. Not only did he acknowledge for the first time that Stephon Marbury has filed a grievance over being docked one game’s pay for leaving the team in Phoenix on Nov. 13, but he stated that the organization is fighting the former starting point guard on that grievance.
“Our position is as it is,” Thomas said.
“As what?” I asked.
“It’s a fine,” he said.
Asked if there has been any reconsideration on the Knicks’ part with respect to the docked pay, Thomas said, “No.”
As for the lineup changes, Thomas said his decision wouldn’t be altered by the fact that the Knicks haven’t had a full practice with the new lineup.
“All these guys have played together before and they’re familiar with each other,” Thomas said.
At the center of the change is expected to be struggling center Eddy Curry, who sat slumped over at his locker this morning with a sweatshirt hood pulled over his head. Curry said he wasn’t sick or down, but he looked like he would rather be anywhere in the world other than the visiting locker room at Amway Arena.
“I ain’t heard nothing,” Curry said. “What’d he tell y’all?”
Informed that Thomas said there would be changes but wouldn’t specify, Curry said, “I’m not even thinking about it. If it happens, then I’ll take it from there. But right now I’m not even thinking about it.”
Magic coach Stan Van Gundy, who also has contemplated lineup changes with his team having lost seven of nine, scoffed at Thomas’ attempt at secrecy.
“I don’t think them catching us by surprise on a roster move will have much to do with anything,” Van Gundy said.
Hardly satisfied with pointing the many reasons why Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph in the same starting five doesn’t-fucking-work, the New York Times’ Howard Beck reports that Nate Robinson and Wilson Chandler have traded lockers. Beck cites “the chaos, the congestion and the cameras” of the assembled tri-state media “staking out the Knicks’ burly big men”. Seems like a wise move — if N8 were trampled to death, Stephon Marbury might be on bereavement leave for the remainder of his contract.
While Cleveland’s Damon Jones Palm welcomes any talk of a move to Miami (”I’m very comfortable with the system,” says Jones, which is an interesting way of describing work as Shaq’s valet), Heat guard Jason Williams has an entirely different take on such trade talk, as told to the Sun-Sentinel’s Ira Winderman.
“The thing about it is how it affects your family,” Williams said before scoring nine points in Tuesday’s 96-82 loss to the Cavaliers.
With the trading deadline less than two months away, Williams said he can’t help feel he’s viewed more as an expiring contract than a needed contributor.
“We’re like some high-paid prostitutes anyway in this league,” he said. “They just use and get rid of us whenever they want.”
What Williams doesn’t appreciate is being scapegoated.
“Losing, everybody’s just going to start to look for reasons why,” he said. “Blame this, blame that, blame him, blame me.”
Miami’s a mess this year, no doubt, but the 8th spot in the Eastern Conference isn’t totally out of reach. I see no reason why Pat Riley won’t wait until at least mid-January before leaving to spend more time with Alonzo Mourning’s family.
A holiday hangover has the hard news moving slowly at CSTB HQ this morning, so instead we’ll kick things off by wishing regular reader Hall Of Famer Carlton Fisk a very happy 60th birthday. Fisk, shown above making dinner plans with close pal Thurman Munson, is hopefully doing something fun today (chopping wood in New Hampshire? replaying the Jabbers’ back catalog from A-Z?) and isn’t even slightly enraged the guy in the following video clip looks nothing like him.
“Most of it is abusive but why do people get away with it?” Wenger said. “Because they are in the mass of people. Sometimes the best [thing to do] is to film them and show the DVD to their family at home. That is the way to deal with it.”
Wenger is not saying that either players or managers should be immune from criticism, but he believes a line should be drawn on what is acceptable.
“They are entitled to an opinion,” he said of supporters. “They can say to the manager, ‘You are useless’, but you cannot say, ‘You are a fucking bastard’.
“Sol has a big point,” Wenger said of the man he signed from Spurs. “Why should we not be respected just because we are on the pitch? I agree completely with him.”
Isiah Thomas might well concur, though there’s a slight difference in that Wenger rarely catches such grief from his club’s own supporters.
Men’s room wall, Casino El Camino, Christmas Day, 2007. Handwriting analysts, do your worst, but I’ve got my suspicions about who might be responsible for such vandalism.
After a sluggish showing in a home defeat to Real Madrid Sunday night, Ronaldinho was off to Brazil for La Liga’s winter break. Not a moment too soon, either, as the Guardian’s Sid Lowe writes the veteran striker has been “getting the stick. And not just any old stick, either, but a bloody great plank encrusted with nails.”
When Ronaldinho arrived at El Prat last night in the comic get-up of the teenage bad-boy – sunglasses, silly hat, sparkly jacket, BA’s chains and Suggs’s trousers – it was barely an hour after the final whistle at the Camp Nou. It was the fastest he’d moved all night and rather than wagging thumb and little finger at adoring fans, he sneaked silently through a side door. If he is late back again, busy holed up in the boot of a car or working on his pneumatic drill impression, few will care. In fact, right now, plenty of Barça fans couldn’t care less if he doesn’t fly back at all.
And they couldn’t care less because last night Barcelona were beaten 1-0 by Real Madrid in what used to be called the derbi and is now dubbed the clásico but was only classic in the way that old telly programmes which weren’t very good the first time are classic. Because a Julio Baptista goal inflicted Barça’s first home defeat for almost two years. Because they failed to score for the first time since a 0-0 with Espanyol almost three years ago. Because defeat leaves them seven points behind Madrid, closing an annus almost as horribilis as the Queen’s. Because, in an admirable display of clichéd fools seldom differing, both Marca and AS’s websites declared it a “white Christmas”, while Sport and Mundo Deportivo called it “the nightmare before Christmas”. And because the league looks done already: “It’s over,” insisted Marca’s Roberto Palomar, “the difference between Madrid and Barcelona is the difference between an antelope and a lion. And I don’t remember a single documentary where the antelope wins.”
The only person Ronaldinho destroys these days is himself. Overweight, unfit and unhappy, there have been flashes of brilliance and plenty of goals – last year he scored 21 – but there’s no escaping the decline. Worse still, he’s seen as the embodiment of all that’s wrong with a Barcelona team going down the galactic route, while Madrid head in the other direction. He missed over 50% of Barça’s training sessions last season, can’t get on with Samuel Eto’o, and has already pulled out of two games this year – on the morning of the match. As one columnist put it, “Ronaldinho is the best player in the world but the worst sportsman at Barcelona”; “Dinho”, another declared, “is deceased … or gone fishing.” Last night wasn’t just about last night. For Ronaldinho it was a challenge: now or never. And as the fans whistled him from the field, the inevitable conclusion was never.
“It’s like they’re running all over the sports landscape trying to money-whip everybody into their barn” says Sports Illustrated’s Terry McDonnell of ESPN’s recent attempts to raid the world of print journalism for pricey talent, with notable acqusitions including Howard Bryant (Washington Post), Rick Reilly (Sports Illustrated) and T.J. Quinn (New York Daily News). The New York Times’ Richard Perez-Pena takes note of the competitive environment…and expects us to swallow the following :
“It’s the exact same model as what happened to athletes,” said Leigh Steinberg, a top sports agent. “We’re seeing free agency for sports journalists.”
He and Scott Boras, the agent for Alex Rodriguez and other stars, said that change had no doubt already produced an unnoticed milestone: In a sports locker room somewhere, in an interview between a prominent reporter and a low-level player, the scribe is the better-paid person in the conversation.
Aside from the likes of Reilly spending very little time in locker rooms (save for their own health clubs), it might’ve been interesting to have just one example cited. Other than Joe McEwing being quizzed by anyone who isn’t on welfare. But Perez-Pena isn’t the only one overly excited by the brave new world of writers-raking-it-in. Darren Heitner (above) of the ferociously unreadable Sports Agent Blog is eager to fill a niche.
It is just a matter of time before agents become a staple of the negotiations for up and coming journalists. Who knows…some day I may get a call from Will Leitch of Deadspin.com or a blogger who does not actually go by a name, like TBL of TheBigLead.com, asking for representation. These bloggers may end up being the future big time players making top dollars in the media market. Jamie Mottram, writer of Mr. Irrelevant and host of The Blog Show, went from heading AOL’s FanHouse to being in charge of Yahoo! Sports’ new blogging platform. There are success stories out there in the blogging world.
But even if blogging ends up being a fad and slowly dies away, companies like SI, ESPN, and Yahoo! are banking that internet sports news is going to be the main way that sports fans receive their content. They are displaying this faith by paying large sums of money to sports journalists, prying them away from traditional media entities. As a sports agent and journalist, I am very interested in what future sports journalist contracts end up looking like, and hope that I am one day involved in a sports journalist’s contractual negotiations.
Regardless of my personal feelings about Leitch’s work, I have a hard time believing a thrice-published author and widely-recognized TV pundit is without the benefit of representation (perhaps, y’know, a lawyer?). And even if that were the case, I’d have an even tougher time imagining Leitch putting his career in the hands of a delusional internet troll, particularly one whose own blog makes the average Deadspin commenter come off like Red Smith by comparision.
Still, the old adage, “there’s somebody for everybody” comes to mind in this instance, and while I love the idea of Heitner getting a call from “a blogger who does not actually go by a name”, I see no reason why Alex Benesowitz would need to remain anonymous.
Mark Jackson will be working ABC’s telecast of the Suns/Lakers game later today, and Sports Media Watch’s Paul Sen predicts the former St. John’s standout “will spend the two-and-a-half hours stating the obvious, making painfully lame, pithy comments, and taking over the telecast.” With a bit of wishful thinking, Sen opines that Jackson “could easily make a far better coach than analyst.”
Jackson’s name has been mentioned as a slight possibility to fill the inevitable New York Knicks coaching vacancy — ironic, due to the fact that Jackson and current Knicks coach Isiah Thomas have more in common than excellence at the point guard position.
In 1998, Thomas was hired to be the lead analyst for the NBA on NBC. He was paired with Bob Costas in a two-man booth, and was arguably worse in that position than he is now as Knicks head coach. Midway through the season, the Detroit Pistons did the world a favor and fired Doug Collins, allowing NBC to hire him and partially save their lead broadcast team. That year, Costas, Collins and Thomas worked the NBA Finals, and NBC had enough good sense to ‘promote’ Thomas to the studio team the next season. The resulting two-man team of Costas and Collins was one of the best NBC had during its NBA coverage.
The parallel is uncanny. In 2006, ABC named Jackson the lead analyst for its NBA package, pairing him with Mike Breen. During the 2007 NBA Playoffs, the Houston Rockets fired Jeff van Gundy, and ABC added him to the team of Jackson and Breen. So far this season, Breen and Van Gundy have worked in a two-man booth for most games, due to Jackson’s YES Network duties, and those telecasts have been far easier to listen to. In fact, the teams of Breen and Van Gundy and Dan Shulman and Hubie Brown have easily been the best ESPN has had since taking over the NBA in 2002.
With one team already having a coaching vacancy (the medicore one-time contender Chicago Bulls, who fired Scott Skiles yesterday), here is hoping that this Christmas, NBA general managers can give fans a true gift and hire Jackson away from the broadcast booth.
Surely Sen is aware that if Jackson were to relinquish the microphone for the clipboard, YES would struggle to find a suitable straight man for Ian Eagle?
Though acknowledging “when salary caps and guaranteed long-term contracts can’t be easily consumed, the coach is considered extraneous”, the New York Post’s Peter Vecsey (not responsible, I admit, for the outta context headline above) reminds us that aside from whatever else deposed Bulls coach Scott Skiles did wrong, we wasn’t the GM.
Three years ago, the Bulls won 47 games with the above mentioned core, plus Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler. Last season they won 49 games. In between Curry forced a trade to the Knicks that yielded Tim Thomas, the No. 2 of ‘06 and the No. 9 pick in ‘07; Chandler was dealt for P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith, and Ben Wallace was signed to $60M, four- year free-agent contract.
What do the Bulls have to show for that? Thomas was waived long after being sent home by Skiles. Smith was traded to the Nuggets for a pair of second rounders and Howard Eisley. The No. 2 pick was used to take LaMarcus Aldridge and sent him to Portland for Tyrus and Victor Khryapa. And last June’s No. 9 selection got them Joakim Noah.
Don’t look now but Aldridge is precisely the type of player the Bulls would love to have patrolling their paint . . . and they wouldn’t have had to trade two of their top six for, say, Pau Gasol.
“Looks like we finally returned the Portland favor from 84!” a Bulls official laments.
Brandon Roy might have also helped from that ‘06 draft. No, nobody knew he was going to be All-Star good when the Timberwolves tabbed him and traded his rights to Portland for Randy Foye. But we all kinda knew Roy was 6-foot-6 and a smooth operator and Chicago’s backcourt remains conspicuously undersized.
What’s more, why delete Chandler and add Tyrus, an obvious long-term project, and the 6-foot-7 Wallace who had the benefit of the 6-foot-11 Rasheed Wallace playing alongside him when the Pistons won the title, when you’re trying to compete for a championship in the present?
Looking back (which helps a bit, I admit), of all the moves John Paxson made would anybody do any of them?
Though the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith alleges Ben Wallace told Paxson “He (Skiles) quit on us, so we’ve quit on him”, a direct quote from Big Ben is far less illuminating (” “How would I characterize my personal relationship with any coach?”). Yahoo Sports’ Kelly Dwyer hints that Skiles’ taskmaster rep might make him a better fit for the amateur ranks.
Losing games early in the season was a Skiles trademark, but this year’s model seemed to be losing by more points than in years past, and every rotation player saw his contributions falter as the team limped along. Youngsters like Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah were yanked in and out of the rotation in what appeared to be borderline-arbitrary moves. Griffin went from receiving DNP-CDs to starting to taking in DNP-CDs again in one four-game stretch, and the offense was by far the league’s worst.
Skiles’ NBA future seems pretty grim at this point. He did nothing short of a remarkable job in 2004-05, and should have won the Coach of the Year award. He constantly had these Bulls overachieving and rarely taking nights off in a league that takes entire weeks off at a time. He knows the game, doesn’t destroy players on the sideline or in practice, and has taken two teams (Phoenix being the other) into the second round of the playoffs.
But the stereotype that followed him into Chicago four years ago, that of a coach who will burn out and lose his players after a few strong years, hasn’t been affected. He seems the perfect college coach at this point, which is a shame, because the man truly knows the NBA game. Jerry Reynolds recalled an anecdote during a Kings broadcast last night where he had to ask Skiles — then a point guard for the opposing team — to explain the proper way to run a play to Rodney McCray, then playing under Reynolds for the Kings. The dismissal was needed, but it doesn’t make it any less unnecessary.
