Vernon Maxwell (a pain in the ass who has fought with paying customers in the stands and worn out his welcome everywhere he has been)

Lazaro Borelli (I thought he was the fourth tenor)

Greg Foster (was a role player who was cut by the Wizards - any questions?)

Vladmir Stepania (direct descendant of Vlad the Impaler?)

John Celestand (will probably run a fruit stand after his NBA days are over)

Tyronn Lue (he comes from the Lakers; did you see him during the playoffs? I don't think so.)

David Wingate (he is the perennial NBA "player to be named later).

Lots of times I tend to hammer the sports media - and particularly the Washington Post sports section. But I do have to say that a welcome addition is the return of Sally Jenkins to the sports page. Her first column last weekend dealing with the brouhaha of "revealing photos" of women athletes was really good. Compare it with the TV interview of Johnette Howard - former Post columnist - who says it is wrong and exploitative and all the standard crap but never answers the assertions of the athletes that they chose to let the photos be taken and do not care if they are used. Today, Sally writes about Tiger Woods and uses her father, Dan Jenkins, as the source material for the column. When people get onto the subject of genetics and how it predetermines the abilities of progeny, those people get themselves on the brink of a quagmire. (Remember The Bell Curve which was excoriated for saying something everyone knows - there are people who are dumber than other people and you can use math to express how many of them there are). Nonetheless, Sally Jenkins was pre-destined to be a top quality sportswriter because Dan Jenkins is one of the ten best that ever did that job.

It is the beginning of NFL cut-down season. The first round of slices comes by COB today and the rest come at the end of the week. In personnel moves, the Ravens have finally gotten Tony Siragusa into camp. Supposedly he got the raise and the contract extension he was looking for. He is also supposedly well over his playing weight which is ponderous to begin with. (One estimate was that he was about 375 lbs.) Tony said that his holdout was all about "standing up for what he believed in"; it appears that he spent a lot of his "standing up" time seated at the buffet table. I wonder how long it will be until he gets injured so that he winds up playing about 25% of the year? The Ravens also got Peter Boulware back into camp; he has been rehabbing a surgically repaired shoulder.

The Dolphins are really hurting on offense and the loss of WR Lamarr Thomas for the season last nite will make their QB deficiencies even more obvious. Damon Huard has looked bleak at best; Jay Fiedler has been injured and has never been mistaken for a hot prospect; Mike Quinn is a decent back-up QB. One of them is going to be "The Man" and that won't work. Oh yeah, their best RB, JJ Johnson, will be suspended for 4 games for violating the steroid policy but he has appealed that decision meaning he may miss games later in the season as opposed to the first part of the season. It won't matter to the Dolphins.

The Bolts are about hand the ball to Ryan Leaf as their QB. They might as well since Jim Harbaugh is on the downslope of his mediocre career and Moses Moreno has probably hit the plateau of his mediocre career. Since they have all that money invested in Ryan - and can't get it back since over $10M of it was a signing bonus - they might as well find out if this guy has finally gotten his head together. Things being relative, Ryan "getting his head together" might mean that he does not kick a local newscaster in the crotch after the first loss of the season.

Quarterbacks are in such short supply that the only one released so far has been Phil Stambaugh from the Bills. That is Stambaugh not Sam Baugh!

Brad Culpepper was cut by the Bucs. I think he can still play a bit and should hook on elsewhere.

Andre Rison found a job with the Raiders. What took him so long? Andre has been - or has fostered - a bad boy image for a long time now and this seemed like a natural fit.

The Detroit Tigers were 8-23 at the start of the season. They are now 61-62 and are only 5 games out of the wild card position in the AL. They are not going to win the wild card chase because there are too many teams for them to climb over, but they have played 53-39 baseball since that awful start. Lots of times, teams that get off that way just mail in the rest of the season; the Tigers did not.

#2 son wrote me about yesterday's offering. He said that I should not explain lines such as the one about Byron Hanspard winning the "Mr. Blutarsky Award"; he says that the people who get it do not like to have it explained. Fair enough. Then #2 son suggested that Mr. Hanspard should be looking for a letter from MENSA where the envelope is identified as an IQ Contest and there is an admonition not to open the envelope. On the inside is a single sheet with the words, "You Lost!"

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...