July 17, 2007
A Basketball and Baseball Potpourri Today…
Having been off the air for 10 days, I missed the opportunity to make all of you aware of some important celebrations in the month of July. Everyone knows about July 4th and about Bastille Day, but one of the reasons you come here is to learn new things and presumably, these public service announcements help in that regard:
July 13 was Embrace Your Geekness Day. Hope you all enjoyed that one.
In case you missed the July 13 celebrations, July 15 was Be A Dork Day. I saw loads of folks celebrating that one…
July is National Blueberries Month and National Baked Bean Month. Please do not try to celebrate those two things together…
July is National Hot Dog Month and National Horseradish Month. You may celebrate those two things together - - and you can add baked beans to the mix too if you’d like.
AND July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. If enough people celebrate that one, I won’t need to think about jamming those things where the sun never shines…
There are a few NBA items on my clipboard that deserve comment. Recall that I said that athletes ought to be paying attention to the trial where Allen Iverson was sued on the basis that his bodyguards beat up a couple of people who would not give up seats in a VIP section of some club for Iverson. Well, the jury found in favor of the plaintiffs here and while they did not get the $20M they asked for, this could be a chilling precedent for “celebrity-athletes” who travel with their posses.
Speaking of Allen Iverson, he should be reveling in the results of the Americas Cup Regatta. The defenders from Switzerland retained the Cup rather handily. Switzerland is a landlocked country so one wonders how these folks get to practice regularly for ocean yacht racing. And we know that Allen Iverson has a dim view of “practice” as opposed to actual competition …
Steve Francis had his contract bought out by the Portland Trail Blazers to the tune of about $30M. That’s right, he will collect that money on the premise that he will say home and stay away from the team. He joins an elite club of outrageously overpaid and underperforming players who wore out there welcomes in NBA locker rooms league-wide. This is the player known as “Stevie Franchise”; it seems as if the Blazers are the first actual “Franchise” to figure out Stevie’s true worth.
If you’d like to get a sense of the difference between the NBA and the various European Leagues, consider the situation of Khalid El-Amin. You probably recall him as the gravitationally-enhanced point-guard of the UConn NCAA championship team from a few years ago. He’s been playing in Europe (Turkey) and the Ukraine for a while now and has been the league MVP wherever he has been for the last four consecutive seasons. Even with that résumé, do you think he’ll be a top prospect in any NBA camps this September/October? I don’t.
I know that ESPN has a cozy relationship with the NBA and that ESPN might actually stand for the Exceedingly Strident Promotions Network, but some of their recent business has gone over the top. If you check out the crawl on ESPN and its sister networks, you will find the scores and the top stats for games in the NBA’s Summer League. These data do not mean didley-squat to anyone outside the nuclear families of the players involved in the games; they should not be reported anywhere - - let alone on the self-proclaimed World Wide Leader in Sports. Can we get someone to intercede with the ESPN decision-makers on our behalf here? How about Mother Teresa? Oh, I forgot; she’s dead…
And there’s good news on the WNBA front. The WNBA just signed a rights deal – actually an extension of its rights deal – with ESPN through the 2016 season. Why is that good news? Well for the first time in the 12-year history of the WNBA, they will actually get someone to pay them a rights fee to put their games on TV. That’s right; for the first 12 years, the WNBA did not get paid when its games were on the tube. So this is a breakthrough moment for them.
In baseball doings, I wonder if the “yardsticks” for greatness have changed over the past decade. Craig Biggio got his 3000th hit a few weeks ago; that has generally been a ticket to an early induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I don’t want to denigrate Biggio’s career because it has been a very good one, but I’m not sure he belongs in the HoF at all let alone on his first or second time around. Similarly, Frank Thomas joined the 500 home-run club this year and that too was a sure-fire way to get an early induction into the Hall of Fame. I’m more inclined to put Thomas in the Hall than I am Biggio, but neither one of these guys scream out “greatness” to me. If the “yardsticks” haven’t changed, maybe they ought to?
The TV series, The Bronx Is Burning, seems to be making George Steinbrenner out to be some kind of heroic figure. Perhaps Yankee fans think that way; but even so, consider this:
Without George Steinbrenner, there might never have been a Danny Boy Snyder. So, is Steinbrenner’s contribution to sports all good?
I’m sure you remember Danny Almonte – the Little League pitching phenom who led his team to the Little League World Series title and just happened to be a couple of years over the age of 12 at the time. Well, Danny’s career in baseball took a significant turn for the worse when he started pitching to people his own age – and maybe some who were even older than he. He was released by the Frontier League Southern Illinois Miners in June. There aren’t a whole lot of pro baseball leagues below that one…
I’m sure you’ve heard that Dan Patrick will be leaving ESPN in mid-August. He’s been a fixture there for almost 20 years and has provided entertainment as well as information in all those years. Now there is one more favor that sports fans ought ask of Dan Patrick as he leaves the ESPN ambit. Maybe Dan Patrick could take Stuart Scott aside and explain to Scott all of the opportunities and all of the things one might do if one were not shackled to ESPN with something as restrictive as a “contract”. Now wouldn’t that be a glorious present for Dan Patrick to give to all of his ESPN fans sometime real soon…?
Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald a couple of weeks ago:
“The Orlando Magic was left in the lurch when Billy Donovan changed his mind and abruptly returned to the Florida Gators. The Magic then hired Stan Van Gundy. Cannot confirm speculation Van Gundy plans to announce he is leaving the Magic to spend more time with his family. Or that the club would then set its sights on hiring a coach who in turn would be accused of falsifying his résumé and is fired.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…
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