Tuesday News Day

Your World Champs...maybe

Last year at this time I was up on my soap box, professing to the world that the Pistons had no more than a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Lakers in the NBA Finals. 5 games later I was shamelessly watching the golden boys of the world's ugliest city celebrating racously after demolishing the Laker dynasty.

So what will happen this year? I have no idea.

On paper the Spurs are better. Duncan is better than either Wallace. Ginobli and Parker are unstoppable when they get into the open court and are much quicker than Prince, Billups, or Hamilton. Bowen will shut down one of Detroit's perimeter options. But last year Shaq and Kobe were unstoppable, so I guess we'll call it a toss up.

Maybe someone will blow up the Palace during game 4 and rid us of a ultimately unsatisfying series.

On that note, all over the media today there is a backlash against the idea that this is going to be a boring series. This reverberation is similar to the Steve Nash MVP vote. I don't hear anyone saying that this is going to be a boring series, all I hear are people saying, "Whoever thinks this is going to be a boring series doesn't appreciate good team basketball," or, "Just because this isn't as sexy as the Suns versus the Heat doesn't mean that it won't be a quality contest." That sounds a lot like, "Just because Steve Nash doesn't put up 30 points per game doesn't mean that he isn't a deserving MVP." There is just such a negative reaction towards the superstar culture of the NBA recently. How can the same men (and women) who built this problem all of a sudden turn on it so violently? Remember that the media coverage of the one man Allen "I will never ever ever pass the ball" shows in the NBA are what precipitated this problem in the first place.

Pin me down and force me to choose I'll reluctantly take the Spurs in 6 because they have home court and damn it I just don't like the Pistons.

Other stuff on Tuesday:

Surging to the top of the list of "Stupidest Ways to Ruin Your Career" just behind Mark Rypien's back wall head-butt, is Rockies rookie short stop Clint Barnes will likely miss the rest of the season after injuring himself while carrying groceries up the stairs to his apartment. In other news the Rockies GM was found swinging by a rope in his office this afternoon.

Vikings running back Onterrio Smith will miss the entire 2005-2006 season after being suspended for his "third strike" from the NFL's substance abuse policy. He was caught transporting a device for beating drug tests through an airport. During questioning by airport security Smith attempted the ever popular, "throw anonymous cousin under the bus," defense which once worked for Patriots stars Terry Glenn and Ty Law. Smith would have been better off claiming the prosthetic penis was, "for the missus if you know what I mean."

The Red Sox were just handled by the St. Louis Cardinals last night in the first game of a three game World Series rematch. They fell 7-1 to Matt Morris who tossed a complete game 5 hitter. This would be perfectly acceptable if the "mole rat" of the MLB David Eckstein hadn't been the catalyst to the Cardinals offense. Eckstein is professional baseball's version of the pug, short, ugly, yippy, and obnoxious. I would rather have seen Pujols go deep twice, at least someone would have gotten fantasy points out of it.

The Major League "1st year players" draft was held today. Why is this a non event? Oh right because there's something like 10,000 rounds, 90% of the players never make it out of AA and there are two other drafts later in the year! I think I was actually drafted by the Expos last year, and signed to a A league contract. Think about this, only 4 number one overall picks have ever won the MVP, and Albert Pujols the game's best player was taken in the 13th round. This is a pack page story at best and deserves even less coverage than it gets. The Sox took a closer with their first pick by the way.

Call me crazy but I'm starting to think that Drew Rosenhaus isn't the devil. Sure it's all going to come crashing down on him someday, but read the front page article on ESPN.com today and you'll see that there is definitely a method to the madness. He has over 90 clients and no freaking secretary, the guy is a machine. The argument that since the teams can cut players with no consequences if they don't perform why can't the players demand more money when they exceed expectations actually makes a modicum of sense. The problem is that it totally discounts the fans. There is no attention whatsoever paid to the fact that the fans who scrape together money for tickets are subjected to the lunacy of rich men arguing over millions which in the long run will make almost no difference in their excessively deep pockets. It's somewhat nauseating but there is no denying the Rosenhaus knows how to play the game.

It's 85 and sunny and too nice to be sitting in here writing. More next week.