The Sports Curmudgeon®

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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