Monthly Archive for July, 2007

NBA at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 31, 2007
in NBA
. 0 Comments

What about the other team?

Minnesota now has 17 players under contract this season (Eddie Griffin isn’t even in the NBA anymore and they are trying to buy out Troy Hudson), so here is your 15-man roster for the 2007-2008 season, T’Wolves fans:

G - Marko Jaric
G - Randy Foye
G - Sebastian Telfair
G - Rashad McCants
G/F - Ricky Davis
G/F - Trenton Hassell
G/F - Corey Brewer
G/F - Gerald Green
F - Ryan Gomes
F - Craig Smith
F - Juwan Howard
F - Mark Madsen
F - Al Jefferson
C - Theo Ratliff
C - Mark Blount

I think North Carolina can beat this team right now.

Forging ahead into the future, it appears they will be going with:

Randy Foye
Rashad McCants
Gerald Green
Corey Brewer
Ryan Gomes
Craig Smith
Al Jefferson

I like all of these players except for Green and McCants, but I truly don’t see these guys leading the T’Wolves anywhere (and that’s if they can even re-sign all of these guys- Jefferson wants an extension now and Gomes and Smith would be restricted next year). 7 guys who may never be All-Stars, but won’t be detrimental to your team either. I don’t really see any high profile free agents wanting to sign with them, either, but if they are the team with the most money, then history is on their side. We shall see, but I don’t see this team with this batch of players making the playoffs any time in the next 5 years. That can’t go over well in Minnesota.

The main problem I see with these players is the lack of a true 1 and a true 5, a problem I mentioned the Celtics have. Randy Foye is a combo Guard and Jefferson is a Power Forward. Without these two key positions filled, I don’t see this team going anywhere, despite how good the 2 (Foye), 3 (Brewer), and 4 (Jefferson) turn out. As you can see, most teams have decent 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s. Wingmen are a dime-a-dozen in the NBA, and 6-9 Power Forwards almost grow on trees. The diamonds are the Deron Williams, Chris Pauls, Yao Mings, Greg Odens. That’s why Oden was taken over Durant. Durant was a far better college player, but there aren’t that many Greg Odens out there. There are plenty of 3/4’s out there, though.

That being said, Craig Smith could be a poor man’s Elton Brand (who could be the best non-starter in the League one day) and Gomes could be as good as Jeff Green will be. Brewer is my favorite player of the group, but I think he needs Jefferson to be great in order for him to succeed.

Next year’s Draft could turn them around, though, assuming they get a top pick (11th and beyond goes to the Clippers, so it’s not a wild assumption). They did the right thing by blowing up the team (which they still need to finish), they just should have gotten this package with the 5th pick of this year’s Draft (everyone knows that).

My problem with the trade boils down to just this: If teams in the West were offering you better deals, why send him East? I understand the notion of wanting to send certain players to the other Conference, but you know you aren’t going to be good for at least 3 years anyway; don’t deny it. By then KG will be a huge cap number on some team that is past its prime. Why limit your options when KG is not going to ever hurt you? You won’t be fighting for the 8th seed with the team you send him to. Whether the Suns or Warriors were realistic or not, a Western Conference team just seemed like they had more to offer than what the Celtics ended up giving.

NBA at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 31, 2007
in NBA
. 0 Comments

Now what?

Many people are making a big deal that Boston’s roster has been gutted. So what? The Lakers did it with Derek Fisher, Robert Horry, and Rick Fox. Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins will be sufficient if Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and/or Ray Allen do not get hurt. Glen Davis and Gabe Pruitt are better than Slava Medvedenko and Brian Shaw. I really don’t see a problem.

Especially when Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Scot Pollard, Melvin Ely, Dee Brown, etc. are still available. Chris Webber is making $19 million this year from the Sixers. You can offer him the starting job next to KG (then have Perkins come off the bench). I don’t see a better fit in the League.

I say all this- and yes, the prospects do look good for the Celtics- but I do have two concerns (other than injuries, which can’t be controlled):

1. Doc Rivers wasn’t traded.

2. The two most important positions in basketball (in my opinion) are the 1 and the 5 (PG and C). The Celtics now have All-Stars at the 2, the 3, and the 4. That’s not bad, but I’d rather have 2 All-Stars (of the same caliber) at the 1 and 5 than what Boston has now. It’s also much easier to fill in around the 1 and the 5. Finding quality Point Guards and Centers, as the Celtics now have to do, is going to be difficult.

MLB at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 29, 2007
in MLB
. 1 Comment

Barry Bonds is heading to Los Angeles. And I’ll be there.


The question is, though, will Barry actually be there to play- or to sit on the bench? I cannot imagine the Giants will allow Bonds to break the record in LA, nonetheless tie it.

So while I’ve been on a roller coaster ride (first I was sure he was going to break it in this upcoming series, then I was sure he wasn’t, then my faith returned), I’ve never really thought that Bonds may not play AT ALL this series. He has six games (3 in LA, 3 in SD) before he heads back home to the friendly, no-possible-riot confines of AT&T Park. I’m guessing he pulls a hammy in batting practice on Tuesday and sits out a week.

But when he does break the record, you can be sure that Bob Costas won’t get the first interview with Bonds. As everyone knows, on his show “Costas NOW” on HBO, Bob Costas called Barry Bonds “inauthentic”, amongst other things. Bonds took issue with this and called him a “midget”.

Then Costas laid this gem on him in response to the little person comment: “As anyone can plainly see, I’m 5-6½ and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally.”

In the last part of this he said/she said drama, Bonds reportedly said, “How do you know?” (that Costas came by his stature naturally) and then went on to say he didn’t care. Is that truly what an innocent person would say? How childish does Bonds seem in that statement? Is he really implying that Costas took something to keep himself short? Or does Bonds actually think Costas is really a midget that may have juiced to get up to 5′6″? Good for you, Barry- class act.

In Barry’s defense, though, Costas’ field is broadcasting- a field in which he received several college degrees without actually finishing his classes. Bob Costas is listed as a 1974 Graduate of Syracuse University, but he never actually graduated. He told an audience this information when he visited Syracuse University my Senior year there. He left school his Senior year to take a job calling the games of the ABA’s St. Louis Spirits, never officially graduating. Now, he has several honorary degrees from schools- but to go by the book, he did not achieve his “records” (degrees) the natural way.

You can use that, Barry- if you play this week.

Thoughts at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 27, 2007
in MLB, NFL, Petros and Thoughts
. 0 Comments

-
Look at the attendance for Wednesday’s Braves/Giants game. What exactly does that mean? Are 3% of the people there standing in the aisles?

- When you’re an 8-year-old girl who witnessed inappropriate sexual behavior and you want to call a sexual assault counseling center to talk about it, you just have to trust that your mother has the right number when she gives you the phone. This, though, wasn’t the case in Lake City, Florida. “I come back a few seconds later and she has this look on her face of surprise and then horror and then her eyes start tearing up,” said Karen Carter, mother of the little girl who was upset about witnessing this sexual behavior and then listened to a sex chat line when she called to talk about her problem.

You see, the North Central Florida Sexual Assault Center shut down a few months ago, and geniuses that the phone sex industry are, they bought the Center’s old number. If that isn’t brilliant entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t know what is.

- From the greatest radio show in the history of the world, Petros and Money brought on USC Insider Scott Wolf (no, not that Scott Wolf) to refute Matt Leinart’s camp’s claims that have recently been released to TMZ.com and People.com (fancy that- entertainment news web sites (not sports web sites, Matty)).

Among Wolf’s claims are:
- Leinart pays a “lackey” $5,000 a month to just live with him
- Leinart wasn’t paying the child support regularly over the last 9 months
- Didn’t see his son the morning of the ESPY’s because he “had to get ready for the show”
- One of his spies saw Leinart at a trendy club in Hollywood a couple of months ago when he was supposedly “too sick” to see his son
- Also once heard Leinart said he had gout and couldn’t see his son

Here’s the audio.

And, for no reason, here’s an interview they did with “Chubbs” from Teen Wolf.

MLB at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 26, 2007
in MLB
. 0 Comments

The Yankees making the Playoffs would be bad for Baseball.

With a 7-1 win last night in Kansas City, the New York Yankees pulled within 6.5 games of the Red Sox for the Division lead and remained 4.5 games behind the Indians for the Wild Card.

Last year the St. Louis Cardinals had the least amount of wins (83) of any team to ever win the World Series. Now, the Yankees will probably have to have many more wins than that to make the Playoffs, but the fact that they can play so bad and so under their potential for the majority of the year and still possible make the Playoffs is a bad sign (just as the Cardinals finishing up so poorly last year and still winning the World Series, nonetheless making the Playoffs, wasn’t good for Baseball either).

The NBA and NHL have always been different. Over half of their teams make the Playoffs. Hockey has seen so many low seeds advance far into the Playoffs that it is almost commonplace to have the seeds of Conference Finals opponents add up to double digits. And the NBA has seen an under .500 team make the Finals (Rockets in ‘81) and is notoriously known as a League where players don’t try hard every night and even tank games.

Baseball and the NFL have always seemed to stray far away from this type of criticism- the NFL because there are so few games, which makes every game extremely important, and because only 12 of 32 teams make the Playoffs. Baseball obviously has an extremely long schedule and many players actually physically take games off, but it has even a smaller percentage of teams that make the Playoffs- this has lead to not really having any “average” teams win Championships- or even make the Playoffs for that matter. But last year a team was rewarded because… well I don’t really even know why. The Cardinals weren’t hot going into the Playoffs and haven’t really played particularly well this year. I kind of think it was just the Mets’ pitching staff was that bad and then, somehow, they beat the Tigers.

This usually hadn’t ever happened in Baseball. This was a Hockey thing- an NBA thing. “Average” teams could slip into the Playoffs and make a run. The Lakers could take half the year off and still win a Championship. If your NHL team just squeaked in and you had a good goalie, you felt you had a chance.

Now this epidemic is creeping into Baseball. The Oakland A’s have recently played awful in the 1st half of the year and then made a run, but they always ended up losing before the World Series. Then the Cardinals went and won it all and now every fan thinks their team can do it, too- especially kool-aid drinking Yankees fans.

And these are the most confident fans in America- allowing their team to be this bad and then making a miraculous comeback (miraculous comeback defined in the fans’ heads as “trying”) is not going to be good for any Baseball fan who has to sit in an office with a Yankees fan or go out for drinks with one. They will be relentless in their confidence now- and wrongly so.

The best thing to happen to teams that need a major change is not making the Playoffs. Look at the current Los Angeles Lakers. They can squeak into the Playoffs every year, giving their management and fans false confidence when they really need major change (if they want to compete).

Same thing with the Yankees. Despite them making the Playoffs leading to every Veteran team not trying until the All-Star break or people not exerting themselves in order to save energy for the stretch run or a barrage of annoying, over-confident asshole fans- it’s still even bad for the team’s overall success.

They’ll never know they have to change until they fail.

Thoughts at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 24, 2007
in MLB, NBA, NFL and Thoughts
. 4 Comments

- On Sunday afternoon, former NBA Referee Tim Donaghy received a couple of phone calls. One reportedly said, “You’re fired- and a dead man!” and then hung up.

They don’t have any suspects on who said that or another threatening one almost 2 hours later… but “You’re fired” and a threat to his life? Shouldn’t you check David Stern’s phone records right away? Just maybe?

-
This was the advertisement on the back of my Sports Illustrated last week.

Ok, so I may have altered it a little.

- Remember back on June 29th when the Yankees/Orioles game was suspended, just as the Yankees took the lead in the 8th, due to rain? (Orioles fans were very upset, as was Melvin Mora, who got thrown out for calling out the Umpires for basically waiting to call the game until the Yankees took the lead) Well, they are picking it back up on Friday- with Derek Jeter on base and the Yankees up by 2.

I have to say, I really hate this rule. It just seems like a video game, saving it before it ends and picking right back up where you left off- even a month later. Real games were not meant to be played this way. Even when I’m playing a video game I like to start over (unless Lee Evans has 5 TD’s in the 1st Half- then it’s ok to save it for later if you have to go somewhere).

- Same-sex marriage just got a new supporter. Ron Garber is being forced to pay alimony to his ex-wife, Melinda, despite the fact that she has registered a domestic partnership and taken the last name of her Lesbian partner.

So it’s not bad enough that this Dude’s wife of 18 years and mother of his two children changed teams on him, but he has to pay her $1,250 a month for the next 5 years, too, since the California Courts don’t recognize a Domestic Partnership as a real marriage. Ron is appealing, but this is actually the law.

That… sucks.

NFL at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 23, 2007
in Buffalo Bills and NFL
. 133 Comments

Rumor around Buffalo is that a certain recent Buffalo Bills Draft pick, for privacy’s sake let’s call him Marshawn L.- no, that’s too obvious… let’s say M. Lynch- has already, before he has even spent a large amount of time in this new city, been barred for life from a popular downtown bar.

The reason for the banning is because Mr. Lynch, allegedly, brought in his own alcohol. Now this doesn’t seem like a major offense, but weird situations like this keep coming up in Marshawn’s life. I don’t think Marshawn is anything like a Michael Vick or Pacman Jones… but I’m not exactly sure he isn’t, either.

-The unmistakable man with the shiny teeth and the big dreads was apparently mistaken as somebody else when he was shot at last year while attending his sister’s high school graduation. A person even called his mother 20 minutes after the shooting to tell her it wasn’t meant for her son. How a person with this knowledge, if true, has Marshawn’s mother’s phone number, I don’t know- but it isn’t a good sign.

-Marshawn was accused of sexually assualting a former girlfriend last December, but the case was thrown out because the accuser apparently changed her story and lack of evidence. This could easily be the case of someone just trying to get theirs from someone who is going big time, but it could tell a little about the place in Oakland that he’s coming from. Could be people dragging him down in the future.

- And then everyone remembers this:

Marshawn claims he only took the cart because he was going to help a teammate who had just returned an interception for a touchdown who was probably tired, but too many people were celebrating around him, so he just decided to tip his whip. “That’s how we do it here in Oaktown. I was gonna ghostride it for a minute at the end, but it ain’t got no neutral, so it would’ve just kept rollin’. So I just did that move — I got it from my boy Hurp. His name is Dion Hurp, and he does it in any kind of vehicle we ride in. Buick. Chev. Boxes. Whatever.”- SI.com

-In an interview Marshawn did with a local TV channel (WKBW) in Buffalo, he said, “You probably won’t see me too much, I’m gonna probably be at my house- got a nice little ‘Boom Boom Room’ downstairs.” Well, people have already seen you out, Marshawn- seen you out bringing your own booze in, so now you can go use your Boom Boom Room (which I think is just a bar/club type room where you can party, but UrbanDictionary.com uses the word in this sentence: “I’m taking your mom to the Boom Boom Room to get a lil’ brother.”)

-
Marshawn often does this pose (from the blog Upper Playground), which is, supposedly, not a gang sign. “It’s something for the family — it lets us know we’re well-respected and well-connected. The people in our family know what it means, and it ain’t nothing like what some people think.” What is it then, Marshawn? Even if it is just actual blood relatives, it could end up in a Sebastian Telfair, Amare Stoudemire kind of situation. He is not going to be able to support and keep tabs on everyone from his “family” in Oakland. I want to say families are supportive and keep you strong, but they can also be disruptive and bring you down (similar to an opportunistic ex-girlfriend).

All of this proves absolutely nothing and it really is hard to get into trouble in a town like Buffalo, but I don’t like the pattern. The Bills risked a very high draft pick on him and we don’t need Sheriff Goodell coming to town any time soon. And I’m not trying to make Marshawn seem like a bad guy, for all I can tell, people seem to really like him- but he’s not in “the Town” anymore, where he was a high school and college star. Even in Buffalo, where players also get special treatment, he’s already been kicked out of a popular spot.

At the very least, he’s not off to a good start.

Thoughts at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 22, 2007
in ESPN, NBA and Thoughts
. 0 Comments

- Lakers Forward Brian Cook was on the “Petros and Money Show” (the greatest radio show in the history of the world) on Friday and he had this to say about what goes on at the Walton Compound in San Diego, hanging out with Luke Walton and Richard Jefferson:

“It’s a big bachelor house, you know. Eight rooms… Little bit of pool… little Beer Pong.”

They better play no blowing. Only Bitches blow.

But, Man, I would love to see that. Cookie and RJ verses Luke and some skank they met at Stingaree earlier that night. Or maybe they play singles. I bet Brian Cook dominates. He’s got great wrist action on his shot- that transfers well into Beer Pong.

My first reaction was to make fun of the Lakers here- like ‘what the hell are your players doing during the off-season’ or something like that- but his honesty is refreshing. Most players would have kept that one a secret, I bet.

Link to interview

(on a side-note: It is most definitely called “Beer Pong”- there are many variations of “Beer Pong”, but there is no such thing called “Beirut”. “Beirut” was a term made up by some intellectual Assholes that compared the throwing of a ping-pong ball towards the cups on the other side to the hideous dropping of bombs that the city of Beirut has frequently experienced. So it has nothing to do with paddles or bouncing or whatever- the game of “Beirut” just does not exist. Unless you are an Asshole.)

- ESPN has often updated, renovated, and built new additions to their compound in Bristol, CT. Their newest building, which is in its final stages, includes a new entrance to the entire facility, an NFL conference room, and a golf-tee patterned countertop.

For all the new additions, though, ESPN Vice President, Mike Soltys, said they always kept one thing in mind: “Our mission is to keep our focus on our fans.” Really, Mike? I’m just going to ignore the fact that you called your viewers your “fans”- but, seriously, you care about your fans? Why charge for ESPN Insider articles, then? Why make ESPNews never part of a basic cable package?

ESPN can do whatever it wants for now, as there is no way to get around it- but some day some network or some media conglomeration will challenge it. Challenge it harder than FOX ever dreamed of, too. But until that day… we are stuck at the mercy of the World Wide Leader… leader of what? I don’t know. But it certainly isn’t Fan Appreciation, Mike. Maybe Fan Gouging.

-
This is 2 blocks from my apartment and my alibi the night this sign was defiled is shaky, at best.

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 20, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

MLB at Random

Published
by
Daniel-San
on July 20, 2007
in MLB
. 0 Comments

Destiny… thy name is Bonds.

After giving up almost all hope (and begging Barry to rub some of the cream and the clear on himself) just a few short days ago, Barry goes and does something like this… and totally redeems himself!

Yes, this rooting interest in the Home Run record is purely selfish (I have right field bleacher seats 13 games from now), but at least I’m paying attention to it. I follow every Giants game- every Barry at-bat, if I can. All, basically, for just… money.

It seems weird- the game I grew up on, the game that once ruled my life- now I’m only following the biggest story in it because of greed. It’s a far cry from the days when I used to study the stats on the back of every baseball card I had and dream about a quicker way to get out of the box.

But can you blame me? Most athletes only show up for the same reason.