The Sports Curmudgeon

Unless and until Matt Walsh tells Roger Goodell that there are other people out there who also have illicit videotapes made by the New England Patriots of opponents’ signals, Walsh’s fifteen minutes of fame is up. We already knew that the Pats taped opponents’ signals in the past. Given that Walsh’s attorney has certified to the league that these are the only such tapes he has in his possession, there is nothing else that is interesting about Matt Walsh with regard to these matters. Because the bell is about to toll on his minor celebrity status, allow me to ask a couple of rhetorical questions that will probably only be answered in some book that he might write one of these days - - and in that case may only be answered in a self-serving and nuanced way:

1. When he left the employ of the New England Patriots, why did he take a half-dozen or so of these game tapes with him? Since he preserved them for about six years, it surely wasn’t to have the medium available to him so he could tape over that stuff with late night movies.

2. If taking these tapes is the only thing he did that might – I said might – be considered “actionable” in leaving the Patriots, why did he and his lawyer spend so much time and energy obtaining assurances/immunity from the NFL that he would not be culpable for anything?

Meanwhile, I have a less than rhetorical question for Roger Goodell that I wish someone would put to him when he’s in front of a microphone and camera next:

At the beginning of the 2007 season, you sent a letter/directive to each team spelling out the impropriety of taping opponents’ signals. One might easily read it as a “cease and desist order”. Then in Game 1, the Jets caught the Pats making such a tape. Unless you had other complaints regarding this subject from teams about the Pats and/or other teams, can you explain why you took the time and effort to write that letter on that specific topic at that specific time?

Follow up question: If you say it was “routine league business”, can you tell us three other random topics you have warned all the teams about in a similar time frame?

Sticking with the NFL for a moment, the Bears have released Adam Archuletta. In his final year with the Rams and in his short stint with the Redskins, it had to be clear to any offensive coordinator that Archuletta could not cover a fire hydrant. Evidently, the Bears figured that out too because he began the year as a starter but lost that starting spot midway through the 2007 season. The Redskins signed Archuletta to a contract that was the highest in the league for a safety at the time; then they traded him to the Bears for a 7th round draft pick; now he is an unrestricted free agent. If you look up “precipitous decline” in the dictionary Archuletta’s career path and the stock market crash of 1929 will be used as exemplars.

I want to give you the stat lines for the 2007/08 season for two “hypothetical players” in the NBA and then pose a question.

Player A: 28.3 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game, 5.4 assists per game, 45.9% field goal average, 0.5 blocked shots per game, 1.8 steals per game.

Player B: 30.0 points per game, 7.9 rebounds per game, 7.2 assists per game, 48.4% field goal average, 1.1 blocks per game, 1.8 steals per game.

Since “Player B” is ahead in every statistical category here except steals per game where the two players are tied, one might conclude that “Player B” had a better year than “Player A” did. Nevertheless, the folks covering the NBA did not think so. “Player A” is Kobe Bryant – the league’s MVP. “Player B” is LeBron James.

When the BCS Commissioners met about two weeks ago and decided not to change the BCS system, that was hardly surprising. They have a cash cow on their hands and even though a playoff system might bring in even more cash, it would present stress to the bowl system and there was no need for them to choose to incur such stress. They met; they listened to a proposal for a “plus-1” system; they voted; nothing changed. Other than a bit of frustration, there was no story there; everything went as expected.

However, after the meeting, a story emerged due to the flapping gums of E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University. In terms of high-sounding linguistic blather, this guy appears to be in training to replace Dr. Myles Brand when Dr. Brand finishes his stated mission of reining in all those rogue athletic programs out there. Said Gee about the “plus-1” playoff proposal:

“We will not cross that line and get onto the slippery slope: the professionalization of college football and a furthering of the arms race. We simply have to say no. If we don’t say no to this, the horse has left the barn totally. I will vote against it under any circumstance.”

That horse may have left the barn, but it sure left a lot of horse[bleep] behind. Even a university president whose contact with reality is normally years behind him or her has to recognize that college football is professionalized already. They added an extra game just a few years ago; they play conference championship games for the sole purpose of bring in additional revenue; they now involve 68 of the 121 Division 1-A schools in bowl games to bring in revenue. That, folks, is professionalization. Moreover, if E. Gordon Gee doesn’t get that, then he is worse than a buffoon; he is a moronic buffoon.

Some have said that since the BCS runs college football – and not the NCAA directly – there is no way for the NCAA to implement a playoff because the BCS teams may refuse to participate. That might bring about an interesting power struggle. Suppose the NCAA said they would stage some kind of football tournament after the bowl games and/or in conjunction with the bowl games AND any team that refused to be in the football tournament would not be allowed in the NCAA basketball tournament either. More broadly, make it any conference that would not participate in the football tournament…

There are some schools – like Ohio State – that make a ton of money on the football program. Many schools do not make a ton of money there. Far more schools show a profit on college basketball than on football and most of the major football schools also have basketball programs that operate in the black. It might be an interesting showdown. However, it will never happen because all Dr. Myles Brand and E. Gordon Gee like to do is talk and posture. They are both a waste of space.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this observation in the Seattle Times regarding the football playoff debate:

“Just wondering

“How can an 11-team conference that calls itself the Big Ten possibly be opposed to a ‘plus one’ football playoff?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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The Orlando Magic crushed the Detroit Pistons last night throwing kerosene on the embers of yet another NBA controversy regarding an error by a timekeeper. Game 2 of this series witnessed the third demonstrable scoring table error of this season. This one happened in the playoffs. I have said here before that the timekeepers in basketball games can affect the outcome of games if they are so inclined. The NBA had better look into ways to “professionalize” that position or they risk adding more anecdotal “evidence” to the stories of conspiracy theorists who are convinced that all NBA games are rigged in the first place. Listen to any of those true believers and the only games that are not fixed by the folks in the NBA executive suites to garner ratings and exposure for top stars are the games rigged by the mob who have referees in their pocket.

Memo to David Stern: Get on this. Make this problem go away.

Another NBA story that hangs out there could be made into a movie - - Whither Mike D’Antoni? If he is really zipping back and forth among Chicago, Dallas, Toronto and NYC as rumored, this guy will have so many frequent flyer miles by the end of next week, he could qualify to be an astronaut. I have read that the “knock” on D’Antoni is that he does not press his players to exert themselves on defense – hence his teams do not play all that well at the defensive end of the floor.

If that is the case, then Mike D’Antoni should realize that he is a perfect fit for the NY Knicks. That team is made up virtually exclusively of players who already know how not to exert themselves on defense. So all D’Antoni would have to do in NY would be to teach them his offense.

In MLB, there is a tempest in a teapot going on regarding the Chicago White Sox and their locker room “ritual” to try to break out of team-wide batting slump. The “ritual” involved a couple of inflatable female dolls surrounded by strategically placed bats and signs reading, “You’ve got to push” and “Let’s go White Sox”. For the record, that behavior is puerile to the nth degree and any thought that it might actually cure a team-wide batting slump would require some belief system that admits voodoo as a part of its foundation. This is the kind of silliness one might expect during a fraternity initiation week on a campus somewhere.

Having said that, there isn’t all that much reason to get one’s knickers in a knot about this. I do not care where those bats were strategically placed, the doll was not violated or objectified or demeaned in any way; it’s a doll! It is perfectly appropriate to look upon this display with a measure of disgust on the basis that it is stupid, silly, and immature, but to put oneself into a state of high dudgeon over this because it symbolizes the oppression of women everywhere is pretty silly in and of itself.

This behavior happened in a baseball clubhouse. If they had done it at high noon in the middle of Millennium Park in Chicago in full view of hundreds of passers by, that would make the behavior more than puerile; it would be offensive. Other people going about their business might have happened upon it. But this happened in the White Sox’ clubhouse. I do not want to make that out to be a sanctum sanctorum; it is not. At the same time, it is where baseball players – many of whom are adults only chronologically – engage in their team antics.

Pretend for a moment that one of my joys in life is to play air guitar in the nude in my garage. Trust me; it is not. Now, suppose that I am in medias res on some piece when you walk up to my garage and fling up the door with the intent of returning something to me. You arrive in the midst of my “performance”. Sorry, but you do not have a whole lot of “right” to take offense. My behavior is harmless – albeit abjectly stupid – and I am doing it in a place where I have every expectation that no one will need to be subjected to my harmless stupidity.

Rather than seeing the White Sox locker room incident as another bit of evidence of female oppression, I see it as meaningless feckless stupidity.

Yesterday, Dwight Perry had this query in his Sideline Chatter column in the Seattle Times:

Today’s sports quiz

The ultimate example of “total disregard for the bottom line” would be:

a) The Giants giving a pitcher with four straight years of double-digit losses a $126 million contract.

b) The Sonics abandoning the nation’s 14th-largest media market so they can move to the 45th-largest.

c) John Daly bending over to pick up a golf ball.

In that spirit, let me offer a Quick Quiz for today:

What was Roger Clemens’ biggest mistake?

a) Taking performance enhancing drugs

b) Taking advice from Rusty Hardin

c) Marital infidelity

d) Suing his personal trainer who was aware of so many of Clemens’ iniquities

Finally, there has been a whole lot of frothing around the issue of Brazilian soccer icon, Ronaldo, becoming involved with three prostitutes who turned out to be transvestites. All I can say is that this could be a lot worse. At least none of the transvestites was 15 years old.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Long-term readers of these rants know that I have a longstanding fondness for betting on horse races. They also know that I am anything but enamored by the goofs that run horseracing and the politicians who legislate about it. Now, in the aftermath of Eight Belles horrible demise at the end of the Kentucky Derby, lots has been written – and said – about that incident and what it may or may not mean. I’ve read a lot of it and I think there are three columns out there that are excellent and stand out from most of the rest. As I would have expected, Andy Beyer had a thoughtful analysis in the Washington Post.

Also in the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins had some useful suggestions and keen observations about the matter.

And on the other side of the country, Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times had this to say about the tragic events of last weekend and how the people who run racing need to take heed.

I suggest that you read these columns for yourself as you try to make up your mind about what might be done to minimize the occurrence of such fatal breakdowns in future races. And I suggest at the same time that you ignore the outrageous call by PETA for the suspension of the jockey who rode Eight Belles. I’ve watched that race on tape at least a half-dozen times; that jockey did no more whipping than I’ve seen in a thousand other races where the jockey on the horse in second place was trying to catch the leader AND maintain his second place position against other horses. If that ride merits a suspension for Gabriel Saez, then every jockey in every race will need to be suspended and there will be no more horseracing. But of course, that’s what PETA wants and that’s what they know they cannot achieve with a direct appeal/approach.

With regard to the coaching carousel in the NBA, the word is that Rick Carlisle has the inside track for the head-coaching job in Dallas. Obviously, I have no inside information to drop on you with regard to that coaching sweepstakes, but I do have some questions in my mind as to why Rick Carlisle should be a shoo-in there. Consider:

In Indiana, Carlisle won 61 games one season and took the Pacers to the NBA Finals.

In Detroit, Carlisle had back-to-back 50+ game winning seasons and went to the NBA Finals.

AND, Rick Carlisle was fired from both jobs.

Sorry, but something here just doesn’t seem to compute…

Sticking with the NBA for a moment, the league announced last week that 69 US underclassmen and 22 players from overseas had filed to be “early entry candidates for the 2008 NBA Draft”. That’s 91 players who want to get into the league early because they think it is time for them to “take their game to the next level”. Folks, here is some math that will bring the cool light of reality onto some of those dreams.

There are 30 NBA teams and each of them gets 2 draft choices. That means there will be 60 players selected in the 2008 NBA Draft. If there are 91 players who think they are good enough to get into the NBA with an early entry, then at the very least, two-thirds of them are deluding themselves about being drafted. That is not some curmudgeonly sentiment; that is the way the math works out; that is reality.

There are rumors floating out there that the NFL wants to stage an awards show on the Friday night before the Super Bowl where they will hand out league awards such as the MVP and the RoY and that kind of thing. You can think of this as the Oscars with steroids and without cleavage. I doubt that I would be compelled to tune into this program but if it really does come to pass, here is an idea – provided at no cost – for the NFL to create a win/win situation:

Such a new program will create a new revenue stream – and probably not an inconsequential one.

The NFL should take the net proceeds from this show and put it into a trust fund to provide health care for older NFL players who are in need.

Everyone wins. The NFL gets a new showcase for itself and it provides new monies to the health care of older players to negate some of the very bad publicity it has been getting on that issue.

Roger Goodell need not thank me - - although I’d love to join him in an owners’ box at a game some day…

I’ve read that the Buffalo Bills will get $78M from sources in Canada to play eight Bills’ home games in Toronto over the next five years. That’s almost $10M per game and obviously the Bills will also get a share of the live gate. That is a significant amount of money for a “small market franchise”. Here is what I wonder:

How many Buffalonians will the Bills alienate with this move?

How badly will those Buffalonians be alienated and will they disassociate themselves from the Bills?

Perhaps this is a sign of the apocalypse. I saw a headline last week for an article about a mock fantasy draft for next football season. That is just wrong.

Finally, with all the spelling lessons and all the practice that Jets’ fans get during Jets games, how come one of them doesn’t win the National Spelling Bee every year?

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Here is some more information on the new college football bowl games that have received blessing by the NCAA. The Congressional Bowl will be played in Washington DC in December and Navy will be one of the teams - - no matter how mediocre Navy may be in any given year so long as it is bowl eligible. That is not a given. Navy has been good for the last several years but before that you could pencil in Navy for less than four wins every season and be “on the money”.

When Navy plays in the game, there will be some kind of draw despite the Middies being on Holiday Break because there are a large number of “Navy people” in the DC area. But if Navy isn’t eligible and the game has to go bottom fishing for a team, this game will be played to a stadium full of no one. The opponent will be an ACC team that does not qualify for any other ACC contractual bowl game. Translation: This team is not on life support at the moment but is being closely monitored in its hospital setting.

The St. Petersburg Bowl – guess where it will be played – is an indoor bowl game in Florida in the winter. If that makes sense to you, then the game should be on your “must watch list”. The game will feature a team that had no chance to win the Big East playing a team that was inconsequential at best in C-USA. If my count is correct, this will be the sixth C-USA team committed to a bowl game; so the good folks in Tampa St. Pete can look forward to a raucous crowd arriving from a C-USA school that has already probably lost a minimum of 5 games in the season. You’ll forgive me if I yawn here…

Meanwhile, the good folks in Salt Lake City who also petitioned the NCAA for a bowl game were denied this grand opportunity. The NCAA pooh-bahs thought that adding a 35th bowl game would require 70 bowl eligible teams and that might be cutting it too closely since only 71 teams were bowl eligible last season. Maybe the Salt Lake City folks should take the lead in a “plus-one format”. Maybe they should petition to have a bowl game in January pitting the winner of the Congressional Bowl against the winner of the St. Petersburg Bowl. Why not? It can’t be any less interesting than some of the match-ups out there already.

Speaking of college football, I see that Lou Holtz was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Excuse me, but didn’t he leave more than one school just in time to dodge NCAA sanctions? Translation: the new coach was left holding the bag. I think I can conclude from this selection that the College Football Hall of Fame is one where “on the field” exploits are the only thing that counts and “character issues” are less than irrelevant. Pete Rose should have played college football…

Kevin Kennedy is an OK baseball analyst for FOX Sports; there are better and there are worse. However, in a recent effervescence about the start of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Kennedy noted that they were 20-8 in April and said:

“You multiply that by a six-month season, you do that every month, you got 100 wins.”

That has to make me wonder what Kevin Kennedy scored on his SAT math test…

José Canseco has lost/abandoned his home to foreclosure. His attorney told the SF Chronicle, “He [Canseco] made a mathematical decision and just let it go.” There was already an IRS lien on the house and there was a judgment against Canseco – and his brother – dealing with a fracas at a Miami nightspot in 2001. The lien and the judgment added up to just under $1.5M and so the house became a liability and not an asset. But it does make one wonder:

Aren’t the royalties on his two books enough to pay down the liens and make the house worth something?

Weren’t people paying money just to spend the day with Canseco in his home - - when he was under house arrest - - just to be able to have “the Canseco experience”? I guess there weren’t a lot of those lambs to be fleeced out there…

Isn’t Canseco in the midst of a huge movie deal – the one he wanted Maglio Ordonez to back financially – which will bring in money hand over fist?

Barry Zito has taken a huge measure of grief for his huge guaranteed contract and his horrendous pitching performance this year. Overshadowed by this is the situation involving the Braves’ Mike Hampton. He too got a huge contract – not as big as Zito’s, but still huge – from the Braves and he has been out of action for almost three years now. In his latest minor league rehab assignment, Hampton had to leave a minor-league game with pain in his pectoral muscle. His last appearance in a major league game was in August 2005.

Here’s another Olympics note that seems to be a bit off key. Canwest Publishing owns a bunch of newspapers in Western Canada; the 2010 Winter Games are in Vancouver, which is in Western Canada; Canwest has “signed on” with the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee to be the “Official Regional Newspaper for the 2010 Games”. In exchange for advertising/promotional space in Canwest’s many papers, the Vancouver Organizing folks will give Canwest “exclusive rights in the regional newspaper publisher/product service category”.

If this does not present a self-evident case of an “appearance of conflict of interest” for Canwest, then I guess I just don’t understand what an appearance of conflict of interest might be. Forget whether or not the sportswriters of Canwest will get preferential access to stories and officials; they will. Suppose there is an emerging story that might involve “corruption” or “wrongdoing” involving some of the Vancouver Organizing folks; might the Canwest coverage of that kind of story be suspect? It would be to me…

Finally, Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle offered this insight into the entirety of the college football bowl picture:

“Bowl Championship Series officials rejected a proposal to decide the national champion with a four-team playoff. However, the BCS big-wigs did agree to a significant change in their system. From now on, after all the usual procedures are followed, the top two teams will be selected by superdelegates.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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When NBC acquired the television rights to the Kentucky Derby, one of the positive parts of its bid was that it wanted to do a one-hour show leading up to the race itself. That show caught on and developed good ratings and was expanded to two hours either last year or the year before that. This year, it was a program that took the better part of three hours. Folks, there isn’t that much to say about a single horse race to fill three hours on TV; I don’t care how many “up close and personal” features they make or how many stories of “tragedies overcome” they put together, three hours is too much.

And then comes what they like to call “the most exciting two minutes in sports.” Well, before anyone gets all lathered up about the sterling performance exhibited by Big Brown on Saturday, here’s something to consider. Using fairly standard handicapping techniques, Big Brown would have finished 13 lengths behind Secretariat had he been in Secretariat’s Derby. So, pardon me if I don’t fall all over myself in ecstasy over a race won by the least worst of a sorry crop of three-year olds.

One other thing about the race that makes me a bit edgy is that Big Brown’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, has more than a checkered past. He has been fined or suspended by the racing authorities in six different states and every year for about the past five years some of his horses have had “issues” involving illegal substances. Does winning the Derby vindicate him or give him stature? Or does his prior behavior taint “the most exciting two minutes in sports”? You make the call…

And by the way, “the most exciting two minutes in sports” compared to what? Compared to:

Some diva stretching out her less than artistic rendition of the National Anthem?

The time it takes an NFL referee to review a replay tape?

The two minutes it takes some batters to scratch, spit, adjust the batting glove, scratch again, scrape dirt in the batters’ box, spit again, scratch yet another time …?

The two minutes it takes a PGA golfer to line up a putt?

I agree. Saturday’s Derby race was more exciting than those sports happenings…

Another thing that was less exciting than it could have been over the weekend was the Celtics/Hawks Game 7 of their playoff series. Atlanta scored 26 points in the first half of that game; the outcome was not really in doubt at any point in the second half. The defensive stats for the Celtics demonstrate the reason for the rout. The Celtics blocked ten shots had eleven steals and forced sixteen turnovers in the game. The Hawks blocked only five shots, had only two steals and forced only eight turnovers. That’s dominating the stat sheet; that’s not an intriguing game to watch; the outcome was not in doubt for very long.

Lots of people in sports media decry the use of “new stadium blackmail” used by rich and powerful team owners to get taxpayer money to feather their already well-feathered nests. But I don’t see or hear too many folks screeching about the same kind of arm-twisting done by the US Olympic Committee. USOC claimed that their office space was inadequate for its staff and all the important work that staff does. They threatened to move their HQS out of Colorado Springs. In case you didn’t know, the USOC offices were on the site of the US Olympic Training facility in Colorado Springs which came about without members of the USOC sitting on street corners with tin cups in hand…

Somehow, Chicago became the rumored relocation site - - and remember that Chicago wants the USOC’s blessing to bid for the 2016 Olympics. That was enough of a credible threat that the mahoofs running Colorado Springs capitulated and came up with a “public/private funding package” worth more than $50M including 90,000 square feet of top-shelf office space in downtown Colorado Springs. The city is on the hook for a little more than $25M but the USOC will stay in town for the next 25 years.

Please remember that the “relocation three-card-monte game” isn’t always played by team owners. The USOC takes its regular turn slopping up goodies from the public trough.

Meanwhile, the reason that Houston has the MLS soccer team that it does is because the team used to be in San José and could not get a new stadium built for them there. So it relocated. However, the Houston area is not exactly falling all over itself to get a new stadium done for the Dynamo either. One proposal called for the Dynamo to pay for the stadium to be built on land owned by the city; and in the end, the city would own the stadium. Needless to say, the Dynamo didn’t buy that one.

Now the Dynamo has played the “relocation card” and maybe they have found out that it is not a trump card. Houston’s mayor isn’t budging and the Dynamo has already been moved once. Stay tuned in to this one…

The CBS College Sports Network and the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters staged the first College National Eating Championship a couple of weeks ago in San Diego. Contestants ate plates of “college food” such as cheeseburgers and fries. How long until the NCAA steps in to try to regulate this latest sporting competition?

The National Association of Sports Commissions named the Cleveland Sports Commission the “2007 Sports Commission of the Year”. I’m having a tough time figuring out what a city or state sports commission does that is important enough to justify an award. Moreover, I have exactly no idea why the world is a better place because of the existence of the National Association of Sports Commissions.

Ryan Perrilloux was kicked off the LSU football team permanently and looks for a place to transfer where he can play football. Going to a Division I-AA school would allow him to play without sitting out a year. Perrilloux reportedly failed a drug test and that was the final straw. He had previously been associated with a counterfeiting investigation, using phony ID to get into a gaming casino and a contretemps at a Baton Rouge nightspot. Perrilloux was a top recruit and had made an oral commitment to Texas and swerved at the last minute going to LSU. That is probably the best thing to happen to Texas in that recruiting year.

Interestingly, one of the players at LSU who might replace Perrilloux at QB for the Tigers is Andrew Hatch - - who is a transfer to LSU from Harvard. Yes, that Harvard…

Finally, here’s an item from Dwight Perry’s column in the Seattle Times:

“Transplanted San Antonians John and Rhonda Till of Greensboro, N.C., are such big fans of the Spurs that their 2-year-old son is named Parker Duncan Ginobili Till.

“Just be glad he wasn’t born back when Dampier, Olberding and Paultz were playing.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Often, I use a line from Scott Ostler’s column in the SF Chronicle to make a point or provide a chuckle. Here is a link to one of his recent columns that you ought to read in its entirety.

Enjoy.

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There’s lots of NBA “stuff” to deal with today. Larry Brown has a new job as the head coach in Charlotte. I’m not so sure he didn’t jump too quickly to take that job. In NY, Larry Brown coached under the “supervision” of a former great NBA player who had demonstrated a huge set of shortcomings as a GM/executive in the NBA. Now, in Charlotte, Larry Brown will coach under the “supervision” of a former great NBA player who has demonstrated a huge set of shortcomings as a GM/executive in the NBA. Is there an echo in here? Oh, and days after he took the Bobcats’ job, there was an opening in Dallas and potentially one in Phoenix. While I will go on to say that both of those teams have significant problems, they are both more talented than the Bobcats.

Let me start with Dallas. I’m not going to try to paint Avery Johnson as the next Red Auerbach; he’s not. But as an NBA coach, Avery Johnson is better than average. If you rank ordered the problems the Mavs had last season, they would be:

1. Players on the court
2. Owner
3. Coaches on the bench.

Dallas was winning two out of three of its games (35-18) when Mark Cuban dug into his hip pocket and paid dearly to acquire Jason Kidd. The Mavs were a “break-even team” after that trade (16-13). Here is the cold, hard breakdown on what Cuban did to the Mavs:

Jason Kidd’s stats are alluring particularly if you are enthralled with triple doubles. But Jason Kidd cannot cover any point guard in the NBA effectively. Therefore, Kidd’s stats have to be seriously devalued because he will give up points and assists and rebounds at the defensive end of the floor all the time he is on the court. Chris Paul averaged 12 assists in the series against the Mavs and less than 2 turnovers.

Jason Kidd has been “unhappy” everywhere he has played. It took almost three seasons of his whining and whispering to reporters and migraine headaches – which miraculously disappeared when his work location changed latitude and longitude – to force his way out of New Jersey.

Dallas now owns the $21M contract of a guy who is old, who cannot play any defense, and who has a history of being a less than happy camper in all his previous stops. BRILLIANT !!

I do not want to leave the impression that the Mavs gave up all that much to get Kidd. Dsagna Diop is a spot player in the middle. He won’t carry a team anywhere, but the Mavs could have used someone large to help out Eric Dampier in the middle. [By the way, Dampier’s defense is less than stellar too.] Losing Devin Harris was not all that huge either since it will probably be another two years until Harris is an average NBA point guard. In two years, Jason Kidd either will be out of the league or will be playing for a hugely reduced salary.

Do you realize that the Knicks are no longer the team in the NBA with the highest payroll? That’s right; the Mavs now own that distinction; the Mavs’ payroll is more than $16M higher than the Knicks. Like the Knicks, the Mavs have the month of May at their leisure…

Back when David Stern invented a new rule limiting owners to seats off the bench and off the floor, Mark Cuban did his pouting and complaining shtick on sports talk outlets. One of the points he made in several places was that because he was on the floor and was in the players’ huddle during timeouts, it allowed him to see just how much respect the players had for Avery Johnson and how good a coach Johnson was. He said that Johnson might not have gotten the Mavs’ job had not Cuban seen him in action. That was less than 24 months ago; now Johnson is gonzo.

There was a report in the Dallas Morning News of a confrontation between Johnson and Cuban in Johnson’s office after a loss to the Lakers. According to that report, witnesses heard Johnson tell Cuban that if he knew so much, then he (Cuban) should coach the team. If true, that proves that Avery Johnson knows what he is doing. There were rumors that Don Nelson got tired of Cuban’s talking X’s and O’s to him and that is why Nelson left in the middle of a season. I have no idea if any of that is true, but it does fit a pattern. And now Mark Cuban – the guy who uses his blog to tell the world how everyone else is running their business stupidly – gets to hire his first head coach. Stand by for the Mark Cuban full court press of sports talk show appearances after the hiring to trumpet what a great decision he made.

Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune summed up a lot of this:

“Ownership Hysteria Alert: Mark Cuban is coming to Wrigley for tonight’s game. Anytime you get a rich guy coming to town after his team tanks in the playoffs you’ve got a perfect match. Apparently, Aramis Ramirez is the Spanish playoff term for Dirk Nowitzki.”

Meanwhile in Phoenix, there is a simple bottom line. The trade for Shaq did not work for the reason that I and a boatload of other observers said it would not. Shaq cannot play the kind of game the Suns used to play and the Suns are less effective playing the way they have to play when Shaq is on the court. Shaq was supposedly there to provide defense – particularly against the Spurs’ Tim Duncan. That might have worked three years ago, but Shaq is no longer able to provide that. Duncan just posted 24 points a game and 14 rebounds a game against the Suns. The ghost of Wilt Chamberlain could have done that.

In Denver, Carmelo Anthony said his team quit. I don’t know if they quit, but watching the Nuggets play basketball is almost like watching those filmed “And 1 Tour” exhibitions. It’s all about running and hogging the ball and playing as little defense as possible so you can get the ball back as quickly as possible so you can run and hog the ball some more. Allen Iverson – acquired by the Nuggets last year – is a transcendent talent who plays full tilt for 48 minutes. But he has never been a winner because he is selfish and does not share the ball. Put him on the same team with Anthony and JR Smith and assists will become an endangered species - - as they are in Denver.

Interestingly, the Nuggets are now 4-20 in playoff games since Carmelo Anthony arrived. In his single year at Syracuse, he led the Orange to the NCAA Championship. To do that, he led his team to six “playoff” wins in a season. So, how many more years might it be until he matches that total in the NBA?

The Mavs, the Suns, and the Nuggets have some striking similarities:

1. All three teams traded for superstars who forced a trade out of their previous venue.

2. All three teams do not play defense.

3. All three teams are out of the playoffs in the first round.

And if that were not bad enough, all three of these teams play in the NBA West where there are a bunch of young teams playing good basketball and getting better such as LA, New Orleans, Portland and Utah.

Finally, now that Dick Vitale has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, let me say unequivocally that is one acceptance speech I do not want to hear - - BAY-BEE!

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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I am really surprised that those mighty protectors of all things noble and good - - and inoffensive to anyone and everyone – in the NCAA have missed out on this one. Those are the folks who forced schools to change their nicknames because they might have been offensive to some – but not all – Native Americans. These are the folks who try to regulate or at least put boundaries on the kinds of signs that might appear at NCAA games or on the themes of halftime shows by some collegiate bands. These are mightily sensitive folks; you would have thought they would have acted by now.

You see, the NCAA gives out an award every year to the best pitcher in college baseball and they call it the Roger Clemens Award. Now if the NCAA will force changes in team mascots and try to limit the expression of students at NCAA events on the possibility that someone might be offended, don’t you think they ought to change the name of that award? Might not someone, somewhere, be offended by the allegations of steroid and HGH use followed by an assertion that Clemens and an underage girl had a relationship of some kind? What about the feelings of those potentially offended folks? Shouldn’t there be some kind of appreciation for their outrage at NCAA headquarters?

As the tawdry part of the Roger Clemens story continues to play out in the media, I am amazed at how the mighty have fallen. Two years ago, Roger Clemens name was being associated with Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson and Sandy Koufax as one of the great pitchers of all time. Now his name is being associated with Jerry Lee Lewis and Luis Polonia. Sic transit gloria mundi.

There was a column in the LA Times earlier this week by Wallace Matthews. It puts a perspective on Roger Clemens situation without any grand rhetorical flourish. I commend it to your reading.

According to a column by Craig Smith in the Seattle Times, a high school pitcher in Spokane Washington struck out 21 hitters in a 7-inning game. Do the math. He struck out every batter. Two years ago, a columnist might have allowed himself to do a huge extrapolation and refereed to this kid as “the next Roger Clemens”. I don’t think there is any great temptation to do that today…

Staying with baseball pitchers for a moment, here is a quick quiz courtesy of Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Barry Trotz” is:

“A. The coach of the NHL’s Nashville Predators.

“B. A digestive-tract disorder that afflicts Giants fans whenever Zito takes the mound.”

After the Chicago Cubs lost to the Washington Nats by a shutout, Cubbies’ manager Lou Piniella did a post game interview on cable TV for the Chicago area. According to the Chicago Tribune, he said:

“When you don’t score runs, it definitely increases the other teams’ chance of winning.”

I should say so. Since baseball allows no tie games to exist, if you don’t score the chances that the other team will eventually win are 100%.

There are headlines proclaiming that the European Champions League title will be contested between two English soccer teams. Manchester United will play the winner of a Liverpool/Chelsea match in Moscow for the European Cup. Here is another potential “first” for this match up – even though I would not know how to gather the data to prove it:

If the final teams are Manchester United and Liverpool, not only will this be the first time two English teams have played for the championship, but also this has to be the first time that both teams in the finals would be owned by Americans.

I haven’t seen any reference to that in any of the British papers that I scan online but if this happens, I will expect to see a reference to the intrusion of those bloody colonials into “the beautiful game”. After all, those blokes over there don’t know football from a foot stocking…

High definition television has to be the best thing that has happened to the NHL in the last 50 years. Ratings for the NHL on NBC were up 11% this year and ratings on Versus are up more than 25% for the playoff games so far. Be careful about reading too much into ratings increase on Versus; the number was trivially small to begin with so a 25% increase is really a very small increase in viewers. But it beats a decrease by a mile!!

NBC also announced that it will exercise its option to do NHL games next year putting the NHL on Sunday for at least 10 games. This may not be as good as having ESPN pick up the telecast rights – and putting the full ESPN cross-promotional hype machine on the case. But it beats no TV exposure other than Versus by a mile!!

Here’s what I think would really make hockey more exciting on TV – now that Hi-Def allows you to follow the puck easily. If the league were to contract to somewhere between 16 and 20 teams and put another three or four teams in Canadian cities where the fans really care about the game, there would be energy in all of the games. I’ve never been to Winnipeg or Regina so I don’t know if there are sufficient numbers of fans there to garner TV ratings for games involving those teams but I just know that the fans in the building there would be passionate hockey fans and I would be able to sense that as a viewer at home. Watching a game with the local fans in Atlanta or Florida or Columbus? Not so much…

Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald recently:

“Dale Earnhardt Jr. has opened a new bar, Whisky River, in Charlotte, N.C. Cannot confirm the bar aims to be a place where people can come in, relax and feel like they haven’t won a race in 70 consecutive starts.'’

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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There were a lot of rumblings about the story in the NY Daily News that Roger Clemens had a longstanding “relationship with a country music singer. If/when the entirety of this story becomes known, I will be happy to take a position on its importance. For the moment, I have only a couple of simple comments:

1. How this can be used by the defense in Clemens’ suit against Brian McNamee for defamation is not obvious to me. McNamee’s alleged defamation related to Clemens’ alleged use of steroids/HGH not about his marital fidelity.

2. If this relationship were actually sexual in nature, the important part of that would be the age of the young woman when the relationship was “consummated” in the Biblical sense. She would have been 15 when they met; he would have been 28 when they met; a sexual relationship at that time would have been more than inappropriate.

3. If there are specific allegations of a sexual liaison between Clemens and this young woman, might he offer as a defense that all he ever injected her with was Vitamin B-12? [Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one cheap shot…]

Similar numbers of rumblings occurred around the story of Caleb Campbell (S, Army) being drafted by the Detroit Lions meaning that he can indeed play NFL football if he makes the team and can fulfill his Army tour of duty obligations by working in recruiting and community outreach positions. I have heard all the arguments for and against the rule that will allow him to do that. But that is the rule that was extant when he signed on to go to West Point and play football. All he is doing is abiding by that rule which he did not instigate or implement. For those who have a gripe here, your gripe is with the Army/DoD and not with Caleb Campbell.

I have read speculation in several places that the rapidity of the first round of the NFL Draft on Saturday (it took 3 hours and 31 minutes) could lead to holding just the first round of the draft on Friday night next year in prime time from 7:00 to 11:00 PM EDT. I can see that happening for one very simple reason. NFL Network – wholly owned by the NFL – needs programming and during the off-season, they just do not have a whole lot of original programming to offer up. A move like this can help NFL Network so I do not think it will have a lot of trouble being approved.

When the NFL schedule is analyzed and parsed to levels of detail that don’t make all that much sense, you often hear about teams that the league has been unkind to with regard to travel burdens. Well, for the 2008 season, the travel burden fell pretty unkindly on the New England Patriots. In October the Pats play consecutive West Coast games against San Diego and SF; then, in December the Pats go to Seattle and Oakland on consecutive weekends.

When the Raiders drafted Darren McFadden with the fourth overall pick on Saturday, they created a logjam at tailback. Obviously, the Raiders will sign McFadden eventually and he will be in camp and on the team. Already on the roster were – in alphabetical order – Michael Bush, Adimchinobi Eschemandu, Justin Fargas, Lamont Jordan and Dominic Rhodes. That logjam got a little less congested yesterday when the Raiders released Dominic Rhodes.

Two seasons ago, Rhodes played a big part in the Indy Colts’ win in the Super Bowl over the Chicago Bears. He cashed in with a lucrative deal in Oakland despite a DUI incident proximal to that signing. The NFL suspended Rhodes for four games; he then became part of the Raiders’ backfield and now he is gone. It will be interesting to see where/if he signs on next…

There is yet another idea afloat to put an NFL team in Los Angeles. The NFL has made it abundantly clear that this is not going to happen absent a new spiffy stadium in LA and that the city fathers can continue to try to come up with ideas to make the LA Coliseum into something less awful than it currently is but that will be insufficient. Now comes forward billionaire developer, Ed Roski. He has a plan to build a stadium in the City of Industry, which is about 35 miles east of LA and where the funding for the city comes almost entirely from sales tax. The City of Industry is zoned 92% Industrial and 8% commercial; there are only a handful of permanent residents but there is good transportation to the city and it is near LA.

This plan is different from most of the other “plans” that have been proffered in the recent past. The key element here is that Roski already controls the land needed for the stadium and he claims to have in hand all the environmental impact statements needed to move forward with a stadium. There is some tug-of-war ongoing with the State legislature in California over use of a portion of this sales tax revenue for the stadium; I don’t pretend to understand all of that but if that were the single stumbling block to getting a stadium and an NFL team back in LA, I think the votes could be rounded up to make that happen.

Another factor in favor of this new proposal is the longstanding relationship between Ed Roski and Roger Goodell. The commish says that he has known Roski for a long time and that Roski is a “credible man”. That cannot hurt…

The whole story on this – at least the whole story from Mr. Roski’s position – can be found at www.losangelesfootballstadium.com. If you go there be sure to click on the options so you can see the design for the stadium itself. It is a unique design concept…

Finally, Mike Bianchi summed up much of a current sporting situation with this single line in the Orlando Sentinel recently:

“New motto for The Players Championship now that Tiger Woods will skip it while rehabbing after knee surgery: ‘We buried our ratings at wounded knee.’ ”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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The Lakers swept the Nuggets out of the playoffs. That the Lakers advanced is hardly unanticipated; that they swept is not all that stunning. Nevertheless, this does provide a glimpse at the potential for another NBA chronic underachiever. I have talked about how Tracy McGrady has never gotten his team out of the first round of the playoffs and how that indicates that he might be underachieving his “$20M salary”. Consider now Carmelo Anthony. He has been in the NBA for four years now and like McGrady, Anthony has never been on a team that made it out of the first round of the playoffs. I believe that the Nuggets with Anthony have gone 4-19 in playoff games.

In a couple of previous versions of the Nuggets, Carmelo Anthony did not have a whole lot of help on the squad. However, this year the Nuggets have Allen Iverson and Kenyon Martin out there with him. Iverson is a top shelf player; Martin was an overall first pick in the draft at one time. In one of the more interesting ironies, Marcus Camby was just named defensive player of the year on a team that allows almost 107 points per game. So, Carmelo Anthony is not out there alone trying to fend off opponents; he has a bit of help. Nevertheless, the Nuggets are going home at the end of Round 1 yet again.

Lamar Odom and Ron Artest were once on the same AAU basketball team. (I believe that Elton Brand was on that team too.) Odom shares an off-court interest with his former teammate, Artest; Odom is an aspiring music company executive. Odom has a music company called Rich Soil Entertainment and that company will release an album by a rapper known as Ali Vegas in August. [I am informed that Ali Vegas is indeed known to folks who actually listen to rap music; I do not.]

Odom, however, seems to understand a bit of how the world works that might have escaped Ron Artest’s cognitive view. Artest asked for time off during the NBA season to promote an album that he had released under his own record label; Odom is purposely waiting to make the release in August, which is the off-season in the NBA for every player. It would seem as if Odom has indeed made the connection that playing basketball provides him with the resources and the status to do other things in his life and that the resources and status from basketball need to be maintained if he wants to do other things in his life that rely on resources and celebrity status. Maybe Ron Artest should give him a call…

As the horseracing season stumbles toward Kentucky Derby Day – it’s this Saturday if you had not been keeping track – the state of horseracing is moribund. The fact that this year’s crop of three-year olds has excited exactly no one has shone the light on many of horseracing’s significant problems. Some of those problems have to do with changing demographics and changing interests of new sports fans to be sure. Other problems fall into the category of self-inflicted wounds.

The people who run racing and who own the racetracks make their money on the “take-out”. In pari-mutuel wagering, all the money goes into a pool; the track takes a percentage off the top and then distributes the remaining money to all people holding winning tickets. So, large betting pools mean large revenues for the track. That’s not so hard, is it?

The problem comes when betting pools shrink – as they have been doing for some years now. What the racing moguls have done is to raise the percentage of the “take out” thereby reducing the amount of money returned to people who have made winning wagers. Guess what that does. It makes some of the people who used to bet the races take their money and wager it elsewhere – such as on football games or basketball games or in casinos. In some of the exotic wagering pools such as superfectas, the “take out” can be as high as 25% and that is abject nonsense. On a simple sports wager, the biggest “take out” I can recall is 15% and often you can find sports wagers with 10% as the “take out”.

After the moguls have driven away some of the bettors who might provide money for the betting pools, these same geniuses card too many races on too many racing days. It may not seem logical at first, but overdoing the number of races available for betting actually decreases revenue. When the fields are short and uncompetitive or if the quality of horses entered on a day are so miserable that it is obvious that the only reason they are there is to fill out the card for the day, bettors will turn their attention elsewhere. When they turn their attention elsewhere, that is like asking the Grim Reaper to show up and do his thing.

Oftentimes, the arrival of the Triple Crown races rejuvenates an interest in horseracing. If that is the case this year, then that rejuvenated interest is muted far more than in any year that I can remember. A friend of mine who is of British extraction suggested that the reason for horseracing’s decline here is found in American history. He said that racing is indeed the sport of kings and that Americans fought a couple of wars to assure that they would have no kings. He could be right; but I think that horseracing’s decline has more to do with the blockheads who run it.

Speaking of wagers on sports, one of the Internet sportsbooks listed the odds for teams to win the MLS Championship this year. The defending champions – the Houston Dynamo – are not nearly the favorite. The Dynamo are listed at 6-1. Teams with lower odds are:

DC United (5-2)

New England Revolution (7-2)

Chivas USA (5-1)

Interestingly, the LA Galaxy is listed at 7-1 and I wonder how that can be since they have Landon Donovan (US national team star player) and David Beckham (asserted by his acolytes to still be a top-shelf player) on the Galaxy. How can there be two “world class players” on one team in a second-tier or third-tier league and still that team is not one of the top three favorites to win that league championship?

I absolutely could not make this up. Last week, on msnbc.com there was a story about three teenagers who were practicing synchronized swimming in a pool at St. Edwards State Park in Washington. They are members of the Seattle Synchronized Swim Team. All three passed out and went under at the same time. They were taken from the pool and to the hospital. I have never held synchronized swimming in any measure of high regard but synchronized swimming is more than a few steps above synchronized drowning.

Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald recently:

“Marlins players served food Friday at Camillus House of Miami, a homeless shelter. Given the team’s baseball-low payroll, there might or might not have been doggie bags involved.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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