Closing Bell for Trades

I'm wondering (hoping, really) if Isaiah's remaining supporting faction (both of them) were sitting around at 2:55NYT, snickering to themselves, "What a play Mr. Thomas has done! He stockpiled all the shoot-first point guards in the league, and then just sat back and waited for needy teams to come knocking on his door with their gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Shoot, we might wind up with KG AND Kenyon when all is said and done. You gotta hand it to Mr. Thomas - classic brinksmanship!"

"By the way, what time you got???"

Zeke or LB?

With NY Knicks GM Isaiah Thomas' most recent trade, bringing Stevie "Franchise" Francis in at the cost of losing cheap labor and an expiring contract bargaining chip, the questions I have are these:

1. Who will leave the Knicks organization first- Zeke or Larry Brown?
2. With Zeke flaming out of this job in spectacular fashion, at what point do the people who make Decisions say, Zeke's resume consists of the following:
1. He lmost single-handedly bankrupted the CBA. (CBA is now flourishing again since he's left)
   
2. He practically stole the Indiana head coaching job from Rick Carlisle, took a team that had come within two wins of a championship, and made it a borderline 8th seed for two years before he was fired.
   
3. He hoodwinked the Knicks organization into giving him free reign after the Knicks experienced the Scott Layden debacle. Sort of like breaking up with a girl that has a few too many personality quirks and then immediately hooking up with a hot chick at a bar who immediately moves in with you, and only then do you find out that she's Defcon-5 level crazy.
   
4. He has leveraged his team into a group of guys that consist of no less than 7 (seven!) shooting guards, most of whom need high volume to produce points.
5. He has placed two out of the three most "me-first" shooting guards in the league in the same backcourt together. (I'm sure you can guess who the third is)
6. He traded for a big guy whose downside is that he could potentially die on the court.
7. He traded for another big guy who has parlayed two months of hard work into a $30mm contract, and is now quite content to stop working again.
   
8. He was just slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit.
9. He's a tempermental prima donna who refuses to accept criticism or responsibility.
   
10. Oh, and everybody who has worked for him hates him. Super guy.
3. All this said, wouldn't it be a perverse pleasure to see LB put on the court, all at once, Starbury, Stevie Franchise, Nate "Take 14" Robinson, Jalen Rose, and Jerome "People Love Me" James???

So given the quagmire (gigidy gigidy goo!), who leaves first? Zeke or LB?

Fearless (or maybe fearful) prediction: with this kind of track record, is Zeke violently careening toward an OJ-level meltdown? Let's just say that if this sexual harassment lawsuit doesn't go his way, and I find myself watching TV one night and the network suddenly switches over to a police car chase where Bill Laimbeer is slowly driving a white Bronco down the Detroit freeway, I'll be shaking my head knowingly.

Costas Now

Quote of the day:

''I read somewhere that you said in addition to testing yourself against the best, winning a gold medal and competing in the Olympics would help you get so many babes, which is pretty much what Baron Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he founded the Olympic Games.''

--BOB COSTAS TO U.S. SNOWBOARDING GOLD MEDALIST SHAUN WHITE

What a wonderful combination of sarcasm, smarminess, and general appreciation for sports history, all directed at the Flying Tomato. If David Stern were to ever run for President, I would truly hope that Costas would be his Dick Cheney.

Missing Ralph Wiley

I was recently reminded of the life and work of one of my favorite writers, Ralph Wiley, the other day. Ralph died of heart failure in 2004, and left a tremendous void in the world of intelligent sports writing. He would frequently visit the Sports Reporters radio show in DC and I was amazed at his rapport with a predominantly white station crew. And I was thinking how Wiley provided an insight to ESPN readers that was so deep, so complex, that I realized that once he had died ESPN went on a hunt to try and fill his void as the one guy writing for ESPN who could truly articulate the complexities of race & sports.

And who did they find? Scoop Jackson and Stephen A. Smith. Scoop's writing has improved over his time with ESPN, though he's still trying to bite off more than he can chew and it leaves the reader with an empty feeling. He's a Beck's Dark to Wiley's Guinness Stout, if you will. Screamin' A. is a waste of space. His lone talent is his ability to secure interviews (and pandering interviews at that) with famous black athletes who may not be as candid with white interviewers. These two guys don't even scratch the surface of what Ralph produced during his lifetime.

Which brings me to my point/question - if Ralph hadn't died and left this huge void, would these two guys even have jobs? Something to think about...

Wiley's ESPN Archives

Predicting the Pistons' upset of the Lakers two years ago

Understanding Kobe years before the rest of us

Shut Down Lines

World's Latest Billionaire

So now that we're two weeks past the latest Superbowl and most of us are aware that Hines Ward won the MVP, it has come to the public's eye to a large degree that Ward is half-black, half-Korean. According to his accounts, when he has visited South Korea with his Korean mother, his mixed heritage and his mother having been married to a black man have been cause for perverse racism. He has told of ostracism, slurs, and the like directed his way when he last visited South Korea with his mom. It was so bad, in fact, that up until now his mom has refused to return.

Funny what one game will do to one's reputation.

Now, Ward is the toast of South Korea. According to my Korean father-in-law, all the Korean news papers have re-adopted Ward as their crown jewel. And...get this...Ward is so successful as a football player...I'm not making this up...the Korean papers are touting that he makes ONE BILLION DOLLARS a year. Mostly in endorsements, of course. According to those Korean papers, he makes even more thant Tiger Woods. No where mentioned was Ward's latest contract extension of 5 years for $27 million, which of course is just a shade under a billion.

Way to go, Mr. Ward.

BTW, who is running the Korean press these days, the same guy who witnesses Kim Jong Il's golf game???

You Ain't the Only One With a Glock

Note to self - if ever my diplomatic immunity expires and I am pulled over for some random traffic violation, it would be best not to respond to the officer's inquiries like "The Tank..."

"Problem, Officer?"

All Hail the Flying Tomato

"I never take advantage of my victory lap. I was going to ride straight down and just live it up, but I wanted to hit some airs...Then, I got my shred on." -- snowboarding Olympic gold medalist Shaun White

True, true

Sigh...No More Football...

The Superbowl is over, the 2005-06 season is done. As per usual, the game was not very well played, which seems to always be a symptom of the two week layoff. Pittsburgh's trick plays were phenomenal, defense was good but not dominant. Unfortunately the story of the game was Seattle's miscues. Hasselbeck played a pretty decent game. He only made one bad decision that got picked. But Seattle's errors ultimately killed them. Their TE dropped 3 key passes that could have led to scores. Holmgren absolutely butchered the clock not once, but twice at the end of the halves. Penalties were killer, always coming precisely at the wrong time. It's too bad it wasn't a better game. But congrats to the Steelers, b/c they were not a fluke. They were definitely the best team in the second half of the season and the playoffs.

And I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that this was the first time a Korean guy won the MVP of a Superbowl.