The Brilliance of Chris Paul

I know Chris, I missed you too.

Three years ago I was best described as a casual basketball fan. Then I watched Chris Paul perform in the 2008 NBA playoffs, and I wasn’t a casual fan anymore.

Chris Paul’s run during that postseason made me want to be a basketball fan, much the same way that reading The Great Gatsby made me want to understand literature on a deeper level, or how seeing Die Hard for the first time increased my love of Christmas tenfold. The barrage of crossovers, floaters and bounce passes that Paul let loose in those playoffs left me in awe, and I wanted more.

And then, tragically, Chris Paul just sort of disappeared. After missing almost half of last season with a knee injury, he returned to the court this year as a deeply lessened version of himself. He still managed to put up decent stats and get his team into the playoffs, but the knee was clearly holding him back. Watching him this season was like watching Die Hard 2, still fun, but nowhere near as good as the original.

As a basketball fan, this circumstance made me very sad, because when Chris Paul is playing well he is more fun to watch than any other player in the league.

I say this because there is something incredibly unique about Paul’s greatness; in that it is not derived from pure athletic force, but rather from subtlety and craft. When you look at guys like Dwight Howard and LeBron James you immediately know why they are two of the best players of the league, and while watching them do their thing is no doubt impressive, there also isn’t really much to it. They are simply bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else in the league, and they know how to take full advantage of their physical gifts.

Paul is different, though. He doesn’t make other players look silly by jumping over them, he does it by unleashing an ever so slight flick of the wrist or bob of the head. His movements are so subtle that sometimes you can’t even see them until the play is shown again in slow motion.

Take the play at the 2:01 minute mark of this highlight reel for example. Watching the play at full speed, it’s not exactly clear what Paul does to make Jason Kidd temporarily lose control of his limbs. If you look carefully, you can see him do something with his right hand, but it’s just a brief flicker, there and gone before you make sense of what just happened. Paul’s like a magician performing a card trick. You know you saw him do something with that damn card, and yet it’s still nowhere to be found when he opens his hand.

It’s not until the play is slowed down that the genius of Paul’s subtlety becomes apparent. You see him feign a crossover to his left as he slides his right hand underneath the ball, leaving it spinning in place like a yo-yo. You see him calmly re-collect the ball with his right hand as he explodes past a bewildered Kidd. You see him finish with a spectacular pass that is completely mundane when compared to the magic trick that started the play.

You feel bad for Jason Kidd.

It is plays like this that made me fall in love with Chris Paul, and subsequently the game of basketball. This is why it was so sad to see him playing as a shell of his former self, to be forced to acknowledge the possibility that Paul’s best days were already behind him.

And then Sunday night’s game against the Lakers happened.

There was Chris Paul, mercilessly exerting his will onto the Lakers defense, utterly in control of every facet of the game and finishing with 27 points, 13 rebounds and 15 assists.

Paul played brilliantly the entire night, and yet as the game was winding down I found myself still waiting for that one magic trick of a play, the one play I’d need to see over and over again in order to fully understand what had happened (this ridiculous crossover move on Bynum came awfully close).

It was on the game’s pivotal possession, with the Hornets up three and fourteen seconds left on the clock, that I got my wish.

Paul isolated against Kobe Bryant at the top of the key, drove left, and then did this (fast forward to the 4:00 minute mark of the video).

When I saw the game live, I had no idea how Jarrett Jack had ended up with the ball just inside the free throw line. I saw Paul go careening down the left side of the lane where he was enveloped by the limbs of Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant, and then the ball just seemed to appear in Jack’s hands, who proceeded to knock down the game clinching jumper.

Stranded in mid-air with nowhere to go, facing what would have at best been a brick off of the back board and at worst a blocked shot, Paul somehow managed to see Jack cutting towards the lane out of the absolute furthest corner of his eye; and with one quick flick of the wrist, he’d pulled off another card trick.

And it felt good to be dazzled once again.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 dot gmail dot com.

U MAD, ADRIAN?

On Tuesday night a shorthanded New York Knicks team lost 96-93 to go down 0-2 in their first round playoff series against the Boston Celtics.  The Knicks had to play the entire game without Chauncey Billups and a majority of the game without Amar’e Stoudemire

If you were wondering how the Knicks were able to keep the game so close without the services of Billups and Stoudemire, look no further than Carmelo Anthony’s stat line: 42 points, 17 rebounds and 6 assists.

If you are a sane, rational person you will probably look at that stat line and say, “Wow, Carmelo really played great!  He sure did his best to help his team win!”

If you are somewhat insane and brutally illogical, however, you probably have a lot in common with Yahoo Sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski.

 "Where's my oat meal! I've got a column
to write!"

Following Tuesday night’s game, Wojnarowski penned this column, which I like to imagine was written on a roll of toilet paper in between bare-handed bites of cold oat meal and shouting matches with disembodied voices.

In his column Wojnarowski argues that ‘Melo in fact failed his team on Tuesday night, first by making wrong decisions on the court, and second by offending some kind of imaginary honor code during his post game press conference.

Wojnarowski begins by taking aim at ‘Melo’s apparently bankrupt soul:

“Once again, he still doesn’t understand that a superstar’s code calls for different disposition when a losing playoff night is over. Whatever he’s done, it isn’t enough. Let everyone else praise you, but the superstar doesn’t take bows when his team is down 2-0 in a series where he ended one game missing 10 of 11 shots.”

It’s hard to imagine a more quintessential example of sports writing hackery than the invocation of the “superstar’s code,” which Wojnarowski claims that ‘Melo violated by not brow-beating himself during his postgame press conference.

Wojnarowski wanted ‘Melo to act a certain way during his press conference, and the fact that he didn’t does not make him a bad person, it just gives Wojnarowski a reason to be a nattering twit.

In Wojnarowski’s world, ‘Melo’s comments were proof that he does not grasp the “superstar’s code,” which is itself a meaningless, abstract ideal that is the construction of curmudgeonly sports writers who want desperately for the games they write about to mean whatever the hell it is they want them to mean.

There is no such thing as the “superstar’s code.”  There is no governing law of basketball that demands that players of a certain skill level conduct themselves in a way that sports writers deem acceptable. 

I’d wager that if you asked Wojnarowski what the “superstar’s code” was he’d just babble something similar to, “GURGLE…Larry Bird...GURGLE, GURGLE…Michael Jordan!  Team Play…GURGLE…ULTIMATE SACRIFICE!”

It’s not real; it’s a fucking figment of the collective imagination of a bunch of self-righteous dudes with lap tops.

So to sum up, Wojnarowsk is mad at Carmelo Anthony for making an imagined slight against an imagined code of conduct.  Seems reasonable.

Once he’s done gnashing his teeth over ‘Melo’s post game comments, Wojnarowski goes on to have a hissy fit over ‘Melo’s decision to pass the ball to a wide open teammate in the final moments of the game.

Down 94-93 on his team’s final possession, ‘Melo received the inbounds pass near the elbow and was quickly double teamed by the Celtics.  ‘Melo quickly passed the ball to Jared Jeffries, who was wide open under the basket, who then decided to try and pass the ball to a cutting Bill Walker rather than taking a shot.  Jeffries pass was intercepted by a rotating Kevin Garnett, and the game was essentially over.

Wojnarowski thinks that this sequence is evidence that ‘Melo is a coward and a big fat dummy.  Of course he does:

"...he made the safest possible play to ultimately deflect criticism, the one that deep down he knew would free him of blame when it predictably crumbled."

I can barely even stand to address this statement, wherein Wojnarowski is essentially claiming that ‘Melo's decision to pass the ball to a WIDE OPEN teammate in the waning seconds of a close game was not a basketball decision, but rather a PR decision.  I think the intense idiocy in such an assumption is pretty self-evident and does not really need to be parsed out, but yeah, it’s really stupid to say something like that.

Which brings us to Part II of Stupidest Thing Written in this Batshit Column, in which Wojnarowski claims that Jeffries failure to lay the ball up or make a clean pass to Bill Walker is somehow ‘Melo’s fault.

“When the ball leaves your hands for Jeffries, what he does with it is your responsibility. That’s how it works…Melo needed to let everyone else celebrate this magnificent performance and hold himself to a higher standard, a superstar’s standard. And that isn’t going, ‘Hey, I gave the ball to a lousy player, who made a lousy decision so how’s that on me?’”

Look!  It's Jared Jeffries!

Oh, ok.  So instead of defending his decision to pass the ball during his press conference, ‘Melo should have said something like, “Yeah, it’s totally my fault that Jeffries didn’t lay that ball in.  I should have known better than to pass it to a worthless piece of shit like that.  In fact, I’m surprised the mongoloid didn’t just drop to the floor and start dry humping the basketball right there!  Next time I’ll be sure to shoot over the double team.”

I wonder which clause of the “superstar’s code” that would fall under?

The simple truth is that ‘Melo made a routine basketball decision.  He was double teamed, and his teammate was wide open under the basket, thus giving him what appeared a better chance at scoring than ‘Melo had.  There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘Melo’s split-second decision to pass the ball, things just didn’t work out the way he had hoped they would.  Sometimes in life and in sports things just don’t work out, and we don’t always have to go searching for some greater meaning in these moments.

Which is really what’s so aggravating about Wojnarowski’s column.  He can’t just let the game be, he has to go digging within its crevices in search of some sort of revelation with which he can construct a narrative about ‘Melo’s shortcomings as a person and as a basketball player; and when there was no meaning or revelation to be found, he made one up.

Maybe, just maybe, there really isn’t anything to be said about this particular game other than a very good basketball player played very well in a very exciting basketball game that his team ultimately lost.

That's a column I would like to read.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com

On Dots, Baseball and the Depravity of my Mind

CONFESSION TIME: I spend a lot of time watching baseball games on the internet. Now I know what you may be thinking, “Why does this warrant a confession, Tom? I watch stuff on the internet all the time. In fact, I just watched an episode of Parks and Rec on Hulu. Boy, that Leslie Knope sure is hilarious!”

The thing is, friend, that I don’t watch actual games on the internet. I watch a two dimensional Java application that updates the game action through use of various colored dots. I do this because A) I’m a really exciting person, and B) I have fantasy baseball players to keep track of, and most of Jaime Garcia’s starts are not nationally televised affairs.

Here’s a picture of what I’m dealing with, just to give you a better idea:

So if the pitcher throws a strike, one of those little red dots appears, and if he throws a ball, a little green dot pops up, and if the batter makes contact with the ball, a little blue dot pops up and then you are told via textual updates what the outcome of said contact was (groundout, flyout, single etc.). Cute, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s not cute at all, because those little dots are going to fucking drive me insane. I’ve come to realize that the dots are not here to pass along information to me about the game, they are here to mock me and my inability to not obsess over the outcomes of ultimately meaningless baseball games.

Watching a live baseball game (either in person or on TV) comes with a certain kind of rhythm that prevents you from having to think too much. The pitcher throws the ball, the batter steps out of the box to fidget with his testicles, the ball is returned to the pitcher, the pitcher wipes some sweat from his brow, resets and throws again. That’s basically 90% of the action during a game, and it’s really quite comforting in its monotony.

The Dots (I capitalize here, so as to fully portray their menace), on the other hand, take everything that is comforting about this monotony and replaces it with anxiety and self-loathing.

There is no rhythm or flow associated with the cold, faceless dots. You simply stare at the screen until a dot appears (Red dot! Strike, woohoo!), and then you wait…and you wait…and you wait…until eventually another dot appears (Blue dot! Ball, fuck me!). The entire time you are waiting for the next dot to appear, your mind is racing and slipping deeper and deeper into madness, because there is no brow wiping or nut adjusting to comfort you, there is only the rattling of your own brain.

An example:

“Okay, 1-2 count, gotta strike him out here. Throw the slider in the dirt, Jaime. C’mon throw it. Jesus Christ where is the next dot? Why is this taking so long? Did something happen to him? Oh God what if he hurt his elbow on the last pitch and there are taking him out of the game and that’s why this is taking so long? SERIOUSLY, WHERE IS THE NEXT DOT?!”

Blue dot—Homerun.

“GAHHHHH!”

None of this has been exaggerated. It is pathetic and disgusting and I do it every day.

That's right, it's always a party

at Tom's apartment!

And I haven’t even mentioned the comments section at the bottom of the page, which usually consists of people with screen names like GOSAWX691!!1 typing things like, “Phil Hughes throws like a FAIRY!” And yet sometimes I find myself actually reading through some of these comments, as there often people out there who are bigger losers than me who like to watch the game on TV and on the computer at the same time; and these cretins will often alert you when something big happens long before The Dots have time to update.

The worst part of all of this is that while you are sitting there watching this bullshit, you are perfectly aware of how ridiculous and inane the whole thing is.

Another example:

“God, I can’t believe that I’m sitting here watching baseball on a fucking computer screen. It’s 70 degrees outside right now. What the hell am I doing with myself? This isn’t healthy; I really need to re-evaluate my--Red dot! Yes!”

It makes you feel like a heroin addict who knows that he’s destroying his life, and yet he just can’t stop chasing that dragon. Only in this case, I just can’t stop chasing that red dot.

The Dots aren’t digital representations of simple information. No, they are in fact mirrors of a sort, mirrors that reveal to all those who look into them the true nature of the human mind. A mind that at its core is obsessive, neurotic and ultimately masochistic.

So, if you plan on watching a baseball game on the internet, be careful. You might not like what you see.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

Norm MacDonald and the Golden Age of Sports Parody

Last night I finally got around to watching the premier of Sports Show with Norm MacDonald, a new show on Comedy Central that will be airing Tuesdays at 10:30 EDT.

Having read the title of the show, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the show is funny and about sports. What you might need me to tell you, though, is that the show is really good and you should be watching it.

One of the things that I find most appealing about the show is the simplicity of its structure. It begins with 10 minutes of Norm doing Weekend Update style jokes about relevant sports topics, transitions into a pre-recorded sketch comedy segment, comes back to the studio where Norm does about a 5 minute editorial on one topic and finishes with him spouting off random jokes for the last 90 seconds of the show. I like this structure so much because it’s not trying too hard to be something new and innovative. The writers on the show seem to be much more concerned with the substance of the jokes rather than the form in which they are delivered.

I knew that a lot of people were excited to see Norm return to his Weekend Update roots in the first segment of the show. I’m a little too young to have enjoyed Norm’s heyday on SNL so my expectations weren’t all that high going in, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the opening segment. The jokes were well written, and Norm clearly thrives at doing quick, set-up to punchline jokes. I’d say just about every joke got an audible laugh from me, (with the exception of the Tyson rape joke, that just seemed a little dated) which is a lot more than can be said about most late night shows.

The sketch comedy portion of the first episode was perfectly amusing. This week’s sketch consisted of Norm “disguising” himself as Blake Griffin and going to a Clippers practice. (See clip below) As you know, I’m a bit biased towards Blake Griffin, so I probably enjoyed this segment more than most people did. Although if you watch the clip and don’t come away thinking that Blake Griffin is just as charming and hilarious as he is ferociously athletic, well then you’re a fucking crazy person.

I’m most excited to see what the show’s writers are able to do with this sketch comedy portion of the show going forward. Given what I’ve seen from Norm in interviews, stand up shows and movies, I’ve always thought that he had fantastic comedic timing, which is precisely what’s needed to take comedy sketches from “amusing” to “hilarious.” This is especially true if the show is going to continue incorporating professional athletes and other non-comedians into the sketches, as Norm’s ability to successfully interact with them will mean everything.

The editorial segment of the show, while very good, was by far the weakest part. (See clip below) Norm just didn’t seem as comfortable talking about one subject for an uninterrupted 5 minutes as he did spouting off jokes on a variety of topics in succession. Despite this sense of discomfort, the segment was still plenty entertaining (and poignant, but more on that in a minute) and I’m sure that it will get even better as the show goes on.

Sports Show with Norm Macdonald	Tuesdays, 10:30/9:30c
What The H? - Tiger Woods
www.comedycentral.com
Sports Show Norm Macdonald Sports News

All in all, I was very impressed with this first episode of the show, and I have a feeling that it is only going to get better as the season goes on. So if you like sports and you like laughing, you owe it to yourself to take in a few episodes.

Also, be sure to visit the show's blog here. It has a bunch of web exclusive video clips, and is updated throughout the day with short, funny blog posts.

Now for a bit of a digression.

As I was watching the show, I realized that we are currently living in a kind of Golden Age of making fun of shit when it comes to sports. It feels like everywhere you turn, there someone saying snarky or sarcastic things about something having to do with sports. See: With Leather, Kissing Suzy Kolber, Deadspin, Onion Sports Network, Sportress of Blogitude, The Basketball Jones, Sports Pickle and what I’m sure are many other blogs/shows/podcasts that I’m note even aware of.

The ubiquity of sports parody makes me feel much better about being a sports fan, because I firmly believe that the more we make fun of sports and the people who play and discuss them, the more intelligent and nuanced our ideas about sports in general become.

Just as the Daily Show and The Colbert Report are able to use humor to chip away at the shell of bullshit that gets built around American politics by the forces of punditry and sound bites; those who parody sports are able to pull the games we watch out of the clouds, where they are so often sent by those who want to turn sports into a stage on which to hold various morality plays and struggles of good vs. evil.

These people who make fun of sports are here to counteract this overly sententious discourse. They are here to remind us that in the end these are just games that we’re watching, games that are meant to entertain us and are played by men and women who are, above all else, just as flawed and human as the rest of us.

Take another moment to watch Norm’s editorial about Tiger Woods in the clip above. Yeah, he’s being funny, but he’s also forcing us to think about how ridiculous it was for us to turn Tiger Woods into some kind of paragon of everything that is good and decent in the world, and then throw a hissy fit when it turned out that he couldn’t live up to the image that had been crafted for him.

Norm’s just the latest in a wave of people who are using humor to encourage us to think more critically about sports, and we’re all better off for it.

Feel free to e-mail the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

The Deafening Silence of the Gay Athlete

A few months ago I listened to this podcast that was hosted by Bill Simmons on ESPN.com. Simmons’ guest that day was LZ Granderson, a very talented sportswriter who also happens to be a gay man.

The podcast was very informative and I recommend that everyone take the time to listen to it. The part that I was most intrigued by was Granderson’s revelation that he is aware of a number of professional athletes who are currently playing in major sports leagues as closeted homosexuals.

After listening to the podcast I remember simply thinking, “Wow, that is really interesting! I wonder who those gay guys are!” And then I went back to doing something really important like playing video games or picking at my dead toe nail.

Recently though I’ve been thinking a lot about these anonymous gay athletes, and I’ve come to realize how absolutely insane it is that they are in a position where they feel it necessary to conceal their sexuality for fear of the scorn and ridicule that their homosexuality would bring them.

Imagine for a minute that we lived in a world where African Americans did not feel welcome in professional sports. Now imagine that there was some kind of easy, painless medical procedure that could temporarily turn a black person’s skin white. Now imagine that there was a large number of African American athletes who had undergone this procedure as children and were currently playing professional sports while appearing to be Caucasian. Finally, imagine that this massive, persistent denial of identity was common knowledge, and yet the leaders of the major sports leagues were doing nothing to remedy the situation.

Sounds ridiculous, right? I’m sure that a nice, reasonable person like yourself would refuse to tolerate such an egregious breach of justice and lack of action on the part of Bud Selig, David Stern, Roger Goodell and whoever the hell the commissioner of the NHL is.

In short, this kind of bullshit wouldn’t be tolerated; except that this kind of bullshit is tolerated every day by fans, media members and athletes when it becomes homosexuals who are forced into living a double life.

Worse still is the fact that all of the major sports leagues have been unabashedly aggressive in their attempts to attract a more diverse demographic of both fans and players while completely ignoring the homosexual community.

The NBA has made great strides during the Stern era in its attempts to create a more global game. There are more foreign born players in the league than ever before, and the league has begun marketing itself heavily to the Hispanic community with the launch of its “Noche Latina” program.

Major League Baseball has fully embraced the influx of Latin born players into the league and continues to try and increase the number of African American professional baseball players by funding various outreach programs in inner cities which are meant to attract young, black athletes to the game.

The NFL has its own marketing campaign that is geared towards attracting more Hispanic fans and players, and has also attempted to globalize by holding regular season games in Europe.

All of these things have been done in the name of creating a more diverse and inclusive league, which should be applauded. Yet it is unfathomable to me that Stern, Goodell and Selig can claim to be committed to achieving this goal while there are DUDES CURRENTLY PLAYING IN THEIR LEAGUES WHO FEEL IT NECESSARY TO HIDE THEIR OWN HOMOSEXUALITY FOR FEAR OF BEING DENIGRATED BASED ON THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION.

I believe that is the responsibility of every sports league to make it abundantly clear that homosexual athletes will not only be tolerated but embraced.

I say this because this isn’t a situation in which one gay athlete is going to come out and drag the sports world kicking and screaming into a realm of tolerance a la Jackie Robinson, who fortunately for us didn’t have the option of concealing his race. After all, what would be the incentive for a gay athlete to come out now? They certainly aren’t going to be inspired by the blatant homophobia that continues to characterize professional sports.

During his conversation with Simmons, Granderson mentions John Ameachi, a former NBA player who revealed himself to be gay years after retiring. Granderson claims that Ameachi is one of the most knowledgeable, well spoken and engaging former NBA players that he has ever met, and points out that he would make a fantastic broadcaster or analyst.

And yet, where is John Ameachi now? Despite his knowledge and eloquence, he hasn’t been heard from at all since coming out, and this doesn't appear likely to change any time soon.

A gay athlete who looks at Ameachi's example will most likely see two possible consequences of coming out. At best, he will be relegated to obscurity like Ameachi. At worst, he will find himself suffocating underneath a mountain of intolerance. More likely, he will experience both. I imagine that it feels much safer to continue living a double life, however heartbreaking and maddening that may be, than it is to stick ones neck out in such a way.

Perhaps if these leagues attempted to make the same kind of inroads into the gay community that they have into the black, Hispanic and international community, some of these closeted players would be more willing to embrace their homosexuality rather than hide it.

Perhaps if the NBA reached out to John Ameachi and used him as an ambassador to the gay community, young gay athletes would finally have a role model to look up to and be inspired to live their lives openly.

Perhaps if league offices did more to educate players about the harm that homophobia can cause, gay players would begin to see the world of professional sports as one in which they can exist safely.

And don't try to tell me that eliminating homophobia in sports is something that league commissioners don't have the power to achieve. If Stern can attempt to eliminate his league's "thug" image by instituting a dress code and ramping up the NBA Cares program, and if Goodell can attempt to eliminate his league's dog murdering and strip club shooting problem through the institution of a draconian personal conduct policy, something can be done about homophobia.

The road to acceptance in the sporting world for homosexuals isn’t going to be an easy one, but it’s one that we need to start walking right now.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

Thinking About Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds is currently on trial for perjury stemming from allegations that he lied about taking steroids while under oath.

This is something that I could not give less of a shit about.

Which is odd, because when I think about how I felt about Bonds just a few years ago, this is a trial that I should be absolutely invested in. Yet here I am, merrily enjoying baseball’s opening weekend without giving a single thought to the Bonds trial. I haven’t read one article, blog post or news report on the trial--and I don’t think I’m alone.

The utter apathy with which people are treating the Bonds trial is a little startling when you consider just how violently the tide of public opinion was bearing down on him just a few short years ago. Everyone hated Barry, and everyone wanted to see Barry pay for tarnishing the game with each record setting, HGH fueled swing that he took.

I heard that every time Barry Bonds winks, Jesus Christ is

brought back to life and then immediately killed in a fire.

I was one of these people who wanted to see swift justice brought against the criminal that was Barry Bonds. To me Bonds went against everything that sports were supposed to give us. He wasn't an incredible athlete amazing us with displays of what the human body can accomplish. No, to me he was a cheater who was brazenly rising to the pinnacle of his sport. He was artifice where there should have been art.

I remember being a dip shit teenager and shouting incredibly dip shitty things at the TV as I watched Bonds inch closer to what seemed like every record that ever existed. “Guuhhhhh Barry I hate you! I hope you get sucked up into your own butthole and DIE, YOU CHEATER!”

So why is my former hatred only matched in its breadth by my current apathy? Why am I not ecstatic that the man who I blamed for ruining baseball and marring the record books is now facing serious jail time?

I’d like to think that I feel this way now because I have become so desensitized to the “Steriod Era” by the cavalcade of superstars that have been revealed as users over the last ten years. This explanation would make sense after all, it would be very easy for me to say, “Oh well now that I know that everyone was doing steroids back then, I guess Barry Bonds isn’t quite so evil.”

But that explanation is bullshit, really. Even as a kid I was nowhere near naïve enough to believe that Bonds was the only one taking steroids, and that hulking monsters like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz were clean. Deep down I knew that that entire era was riddled with players who were on steroids. How could I not know?

The truth is that I fostered my hatred for Barry Bonds simply because he was perfectly suited to play the role of the villain in the baseball narrative that I so desperately wanted to conceive.

“Barry Bonds is a surly, cocky bastard who wears an earring and is mean to reporters and his teammates! Of course he would cheat. Not any of those other guys though, because they are just really solid dudes and solid dudes don't cheat, you know?”

Yeah, no way this guy did steroids.

I wanted so desperately to believe that this notion was true, so I made it true, and all the tumblers of my baseball fantasy world clicked elegantly into place. The nasty motherfucker who I never liked anyway was an evil cheater and all the other guys who I liked weren’t. It was so simple and clean, and I know a lot of other people performed these same mental gymnastics. It wasn’t until the truth about the ubiquity of steroids was shoved into our faces that we were able to let go of the “Barry Bonds as the Devil” image.

I think it’s important to consider our treatment of Bonds because he stands as a perfect example of our ability as sports fans to completely delude ourselves in the name of our own prejudices and biases. We jump at every chance we get to mark one guy as a villain and crown another as a hero, even when logic compels us to do the opposite. This tendency is incredibly fucking dumb and needs to stop.

So the next time you want to turn someone into the Attila the Hun of whatever sport it is that you follow, take a minute to think about whether or not you are doing so because you are being reasonable and nuanced, or just because you think the guy is kind of a dicknose.

E-mail the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

Kobe Bryant, Hardest Working Man in Show Business

After playing somewhat poorly in a tough loss against the Miami Heat last Friday, Lakers guard Kobe Bryant did something that was as predictable as it was constructed.

He remained at American Airlines arena long after the game had ended, shooting jumpers for several hours with only a couple of ball boys, a few reporters, and a conveniently rolling camera to keep him company.

A lot of people will see Bryant’s extracurricular shooting session as yet another piece of evidence in support of the idea that Bryant cares more about winning, works harder and leads by example better than anyone else in the league. Just look at Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, who was gracious enough to live tweet Bryant’s shooting session.

Ugh. You can almost hear him humming the Rocky theme as he typed those out.

It’s not fair to single out Wojnarowski by the way. You can find many other examples of sports writers waistbanding their boners long enough to type out slack-jawed odes to Kobe’s work ethic here and here,

These people were fooled by Kobe Bryant, because I don’t think he shot basketballs into the wee hours of the night because he is some kind of basketball Mandala artist. I believe he staged his late night shoot around because he wants people to think that’s what he is.

Let’s look back at Bryant’s failures in the closing minutes of Friday’s game. After nailing a 28 ft. 3-pointer to tie the game at 88 and doing his underbite face thing, Kobe gets stripped by Dwyane Wade on the next possession, which leads to a fast break dunk for LeBron James.

On the next possession Kobe catches the inbounds pass, and with 24 seconds left on the shot clock he decides to chuck a 3-pointer. Airball.

On the following Heat possession Kobe plays some truly awful pick and roll defense as Wade explodes by him for an easy layup.

The next time Kobe touches the ball he fumbles it out of bounds for a Lakers turnover.

The game ends with Kobe clanging a 30 ft. 3-pointer attempt off of the front of the rim.

Looking back at those last few minutes of the game, it’s pretty clear that Kobe’s failures were derived from poor shot selection, (even the 28 footer that went in can be described as ill-advised) bad defensive awareness and a lack of ball security.

So how exactly is shooting jumpers for two hours after the game supposed to help remedy these issues?

It isn’t.

It’s only meant to keep Kobe’s carefully constructed image intact, so that even in defeat we can still find an excuse to praise him for wanting it more than anyone else. So it’s not surprising when Heat beat writer Ira Winderman tweeted that Kobe did have access to a private practice facility after the game, but instead chose to work out in the empty arena.

I’m willing to bet that there weren’t any cameras in the practice facility.

It’s not like this is the first time we’ve seen this kind of behavior from Kobe, either. Remember the filmic hand job that was Spike Lee’s Kobe Doin’ Work? The movie was billed as a documentary, but Kobe came off like an actor rather than a subject.

The guy who constantly bitches at referees, sneers disapprovingly at his teammates and sits in silence on the bench had suddenly vanished. Instead what we saw on the screen was a calm, jovial guy who goes out of his way to encourage his teammates and chit chat with Sasha Vujacic. (Easily the most ridiculous part of the movie)

"Does this make me look intense? God I hope
this makes me look intense."

Anyone who has watched Kobe Bryant play more than 2 times will understand which one of these personas is real, and which one is not.

If Kobe really wanted it more than anyone else, he could have found a much better use of his time following Friday’s game. He could have studied game film to figure out how to improve his pick and roll defense with Pau Gasol, or he could have done some dribbling drills to make sure that he doesn’t get his pocket picked again in the final minutes of a close game.

Personally, I think he would have been best served drafting up a Craigslist ad that would read something like, “NBA player seeks personal assistant to stand behind the bench and scream ‘Hey fuckhead, don’t forget to pass the ball!’ at me during the last four minutes of every game. If interested send references and resume to Bmamba69@gmail.com.”

Then again, none of those things are going to look very good on camera.

You Want to Talk About Bobby Cox? Let's Talk About Bobby Cox

One of the things that I was looking forward to most this coming baseball season was the fact that Bobby Cox had finally managed to shuffle his way out of the league after managing the Atlanta braves for what seemed like an eternity.

Last year, during his “farewell season,” every uber-sentimental sportswriter, broadcaster, and pundit spent the season rhapsodizing about Cox's impact on the game, his managerial genius, his place in history, and all that other bullshit. Unsuprisingly, the endless fellating added a level of insufferability to the season.

I had assumed that this season would be free of all Cox worship (hehe!), since you know, he’s retired now, and there is better shit to talk about.

Well you know who doesn’t think there is better shit to talk about? Jayson fucking Stark, who decided to skeet this shit all over the internet on Monday. There is nothing especially new or remarkable written in this article. It’s a standard “changing of the guard” puff piece about Fredi Gonzalez following in Cox’s footsteps, which Stark uses as a convenient excuse to slobber all over Cox (ha!) one last time. but I was struck by one moment in which Stark decided to write about Cox and his wife:

“It was the first time in 50 years in baseball, Cox said, that he'd ever sat in the stands and watched a game with his wife. Which, when you come to think of it, was as good a bit of news for the local umpiring crew as it was for the lovely Pam Cox. Then again, there have been a lot of firsts this spring for Bobby and Pam Cox. Breakfast together. Nearly every morning. That's been new. And trips to the mall. Lots of trips to the mall. Never had time to do the mall thing before, Bobby Cox reported.”

Daaaaawwwwwwwwww, isn’t that just precious? Sweet old Bobby is just a regular schmoe like the rest of us now, taking his wife to the mall and watching ball games with her on sunny afternoons.

HEY! You know what else is adorable? The time that Bobby Cox grabbed Pam by the hair, called her a bitch, and punched her in the face. Oh, you don’t remember that? Well let me refresh your memory.

From the May, 1995 issue of Sports Illustrated:

"According to the police report, the Coxes had been entertaining friends when Bobby spilled a drink on the carpet of their northwest Atlanta house and Pamela made a comment about it. The report said that after the guests left, Bobby, 53, "hit her in the face with his fist," pulled her hair and called her "a bitch." When they reached the house, the police reported, they heard arguing inside, where they found Bobby drunk and Pamela with the left side of her face swollen."

I’ve always been intrigued by how this little nugget of information gets conveniently forgotten anytime people write about Bobby Cox, who lest we forget, has been ejected from more baseball games for going ape shit on umpires than any other manager in history.

If it wasn’t for people like Jayson Stark, you might be inclined to think that Bobby Cox is a fucking asshole who has rage issues. Lucky for us, Jayson Stark is here to remind us that Bobby doesn’t have any anger management issues, he’s just “old school,” and maybe a little “salty.” His rage is meant to be endearing.

Endearing enough, in fact, that Stark thought it would be a good idea to mention Cox’s propensity for losing control on the baseball field in the same breath that he attempts to peddle “aw shucks” schmaltz about Cox’s relationship with the woman that he once grabbed by the hair, called a bitch, and punched in the face. You may have missed it if you weren’t paying attention, so go ahead and re-read that first block quote.

This column is more than just an example of Jayson Stark being lazy and a little bit irresponsible, however. It is a perfect representation of the hypocrisy that persists in the way that the media chooses to cover certain people.

Baseball in particular is littered with fallen heroes who are saddled with the media’s indelible mark of scorn. For instance, can you imagine someone writing a puff piece like this about Barry Bonds or Pete Rose without there being any mention of their scandalous pasts?

We will never be allowed to forget the ways in which Rose and Bonds marred the face of baseball, and yet we are all but encouraged to forget the ways in which Bobby Cox marred his wife’s face.

Slap a mustache and some diabetes on Cox, and you've got

this fella on the right here.

Cox manages to get a pass from the media simply because he fits ever so snugly into the Great American Baseball Narrative. He is the ideal rendering of the old, wise, gruff, hard-nosed coach that gets cast in every baseball movie ever. People like Stark fucking eat that shit up, and they will do whatever they can to keep people like Cox placed squarely in the archetype that has been molded for him.

Witness Stark getting lost in Shoeless Joe’s corn field as he attempts to characterize Cox’s relationship with new Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez:

“So the new manager makes it a point to constantly seek out the former manager, because that's The Way It Ought to Be.”

That’s right, he just went breathy capital letters on your bitch ass.

Stark is intent on reminding us that even in retirement Cox remains a paragon of tradition and basebally-ness, and is here to make sure that The Game is still being played and managed the right way.

The truth about Bobby Cox is that he is a man who happened to coach and win a lot of baseball games, who lost control of his temper during a lot of those baseball games, and who on at least one occasion grabbed his wife by the hair, called her a bitch, and punched her in the face. In our eyes he shouldn’t be anything more or less than that, and that’s The Way It Ought to Be.

Tony Larussa and Kenny Williams Can Eat Shit

Over the course of the past week two of baseball’s most outspoken and identifiable crotchety bastards made some statements that can most accurately be classified as “super bitchy.”

It began when Tony Larussa, head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, threw out all kinds of unsubstantiated accusations about how the MLB players union was hypnotizing his star player, Albert Pujols, with the allure of cash-money-hoes in an effort to get him to refuse to re-sign with the Cardinals in favor of hitting the free agent market next winter. The idea being that Pujols will make a lot more money on the open market, thus driving up player salaries as a whole.

Then White Sox GM Kenny Williams ran his mouth about how “asinine” it was that a player like Pujols could potentially make $30 million a year, adding that he would be in favor of having MLB “shut down” for a while in order to rein in player salaries.

So I like to crush brews and drive, big deal.

Normally I wouldn’t really care a whole lot about what a drunk driver who bats his pitcher 8th and a GM who seems to covet strikeouts have to say. In this case, however, I was bothered by the fact that each of these statements seem to boil down to the same basic implication:

These players are making too much fucking money.

It is the above assertion that is most likely going to take center stage when the owners and players sit down next December to re-negotiate the league’s collective bargaining agreement. The owners would love to find a way to reduce player salaries in the next CBA, possibly through the institution of a salary cap. If the owners push for a salary cap, shit is going to get very real very quickly between them and the players union, and it is very likely that we will see a lockout or a strike

The owners will be much more likely to come out on top in the event of a work stoppage if they can control the public discourse surrounding the negotiations, and whether they are aware of it or not, Larussa and Williams have just kick-started the owner’s propaganda machine, which will soon begin lurching forwards.

In the coming year you can expect to see a lot more owners, coaches, and GM’s making similar statements as they try to sway public opinion to their side. The hope being that when the lockout eventually does come, people won’t be saying logical things like, “Hey, why is it that these ultra rich owners need more money?” Instead, they will be saying things like, “Duuuurrrrrr, if those spoiled, overpaid, prima donna players would just get some gat dang sense in their heads, we could play ball!”

If the discourse does indeed head in this direction, logic and reason will be dealt a tremendous blow and Baby Jesus will cry a thousand tears of blood, because player salaries are not spiraling out of control, they are just becoming a hindrance to teams’ abilities to make a fuckload of money without actually having to spend any of that money on baseball players.

One only has to peruse these leaked financial documents, or be made aware of the fact that many “small market” teams are actually run by some of the league’s richest owners in order to understand that most major league teams are more concerned with profit margins than they are with winning.

That is why it’s so disappointing to see Larussa and Williams taking such a strong anti-players union stance, because they are directing their ire at the wrong people.

Yes, it is possible that a salary cap would make it easier for the Cardinals to hang onto Pujols and for the White Sox to field a better team, but these benefits would require the players to take a big, fat, unnecessary knee to their financial scrotums.

If Larussa is really worried about losing his star player to free agency, he should be publicly admonishing his team’s executives for their unwillingness to pay the best baseball player on the planet the money that he deserves.

Yeah, tell me how many K's Dunn
and Konerko had last year.
Yeah...that's it...don't stop...oh God!

If Williams is really upset about higher salaries making it harder for him to put together a competitive team, he should be asking his owner for more money to spend on good players. He should then look in the mirror and say, “Hey dipshit, if you want to win, you shouldn’t give $56 million dollars to Adam Dunn and $37.5 million to Paul Konerko.”

Instead, these two pricks have decided to take the easy way out and cast their lot with the owners, because after all, it’s always nice to be on the side that has all the money.

Goodbye, 'Melo Brick Road

Before we begin, can I just say that I really hope that this headline wins the award for “Most Retarded Carmelo Anthony Trade Saga Headline?”

Finally, Carmelo Anthony has been traded to the New York Knicks, and thank fucking Christ that this whole mess is finally over with. I had just about reached my limit for wild speculation and interviews given with sunglasses on.

According to the Denver Post, the Nuggets have received Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Ray Felton, Timofey Mozgov, the Knicks 2014 first round pick, and two second round picks from the Warriors.

The Knicks will receive Carmelo, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Renaldo Balkman, and Anthony Carter.

In other words, the Knicks just shit all over the bed.

I don’t say this because the trade is a lopsided one, but because the Knicks should have been able to steal Carmelo from the Nuggets for next to nothing. Instead, they had to give away 3/5 of their starting rotation and a Russian guy who’s face has been smashed into Blake Griffin’s testicles, which is actually a good thing as far as I’m concerned, because…I mean…those are Blake Griffin's nuts.

Anyone who isn’t half of a derp has known for months that Carmelo only ever wanted to play for the Knicks. He didn’t want to play with the Nuggets, he didn’t want to end up on the Lakers, and he sure as shit didn’t want to agree to a trade to the Nets. Honestly, why would Carmelo agree to play in New Jersey with Brook Lopez and a bunch of D-Leaguers? Unless of course he was really interested in having Lopez teach him all about Anime and how to awkwardly talk to girls. (I enjoy conceptualizing Brook Lopez as a gigantic child, kind of like Tom Hanks from Big)

All the Knicks had to do was wait the Nuggets out. They should have stood strong, and told the Nuggets that if they weren’t willing to trade them Carmelo now, they could just wait until the off season and sign Carmelo without losing anything. Yes, I am aware that Carmelo stood to lose a lot of money if he signed as a free agent under the soon to be renegotiated collective bargaining agreement, and that he could only keep his max contract by getting the Nuggets to agree to a trade. Still, this does not mean that the Nuggets had any kind of leverage over the Knicks.

“If you don’t give us what we want for Carmelo, we will just let him join your team as a free agent next summer, but we will totally dick him out of 15 million dollars first, BITCHES!” is not an effective bargaining strategy.

Unless of course you are bargaining with the Knicks, who apparently believed that the Nuggets were willing to lose Carmelo without getting jack squat in return out of sheer spite.

If the Knicks had just been patient, the Nuggets would have traded Carmelo for whatever they could get, because getting something is a hell of a lot better than getting nothing at all and whatever righteous satisfaction may have come from fucking with Carmelo’s money.

The Nuggets handled this whole situation rather brilliantly as they were A) Able to convince the Knicks that there were other possible trade destinations for Carmelo, and B) Able to convince Carmelo that they were willing to not trade him at all, taking him and the rest of the franchise down in a fiery crash.

In the end Carmelo seemed to panic just as badly as the Knicks did. Why else would he agree to meet with Nets ownership this past weekend, or make statements about “being screwed” if he didn’t get his extension. If he had just stayed calm, and made it very clear that he would only play for the Knicks, he’d be playing with much better teammates right now.

Now, I’m not saying that this was a “bad” trade for the Knicks. It’s never a bad thing to have two superstars on your team, and they are now set up pretty nicely to make a run at Chris Paul or Deron Willias in 2012. I’m just saying that it could have been a much better trade if the Knicks, and Carmelo, had just had enough balls to call the Nuggets’ bluff.

Instead, the Nuggets turned what should have been Wilson Chandler, Eddy Curry, and some draft picks into a pretty solid cache of assets--assets that could still belong to the Knicks right now.

There really isn’t anything that the Nuggets should have done differently. Well, there is one thing. They should have benched Carmelo at the start of the season, played him 3 minutes a game, and hired Joaquin Phoenix to do this right in his face every time he sat down on the bench. That would have been pretty cool.

On Hi Corbett, Fernando Valenzuela, and the Human Condition

Next week the Colorado Rockies will begin Spring Training at their new state of the art facility in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (which just so happens to be the stupidest name for anything ever) in Arizona. The team will be leaving behind its former spring training facility, Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, Arizona forever.

As a diehard Rockies fan and a frequent attendee of spring training this move makes me super duper sad. Sad enough, in fact, that just thinking about it makes me want to mainline some Dilaudid and listen to “Put me in Coach” on repeat for two hours.

The reason I am so sad is because Hi Corbett Field has long been one of my favorite places on the planet. Walking into Hi Corbett didn’t feel like walking into a regular baseball stadium. It felt like stumbling upon a high school field that for some strange reason was being used by professional baseball players. The place fostered a unique kind of intimacy between players and fans, an intimacy that made watching a meaningless baseball game in the middle of the fucking desert become not only bearable, but somehow immensely enjoyable.

There was nothing better than getting to the field a few hours before game time and watching the players warm up and take batting practice.

You could stand three feet away from the pitchers in the bullpen, separated only by a chain link fence, taking in all the little nuances of a pitcher’s wind up and delivery, all the stuff that gets washed away in the distance and immensity of a regular stadium.

You could stand right behind home plate during batting practice, close enough to hear the players joke around with each other between cracks of the bat, or to hear Todd Helton walk up to Dexter Fowler and Chris Nelson and say, “Oh hey, are you the new black guys? You must be the new black guys.” (Now try watching this commercial without sensing some palpable racial tension.)

The stuff that dreams are made of, really.

I made a lot of great memories at Hi Corbett, and since the stadium has now joined the scrap heap of history, I figured now was as good a time as any to do my part in memorializing the place by sharing my all time favorite memory from spring training with all of you.

It was 1997 and I was sitting about 20 rows back from home plate, watching the Rockies and Padres play. Pitching for the Padres that day was none other than former legend Fernando Valenzuela, and I can’t really remember who was pitching for the Rockies. It was probably Kevin Ritz—Kevin Ritz was the shit.
The first memorable thing about this day was how un-fucking-believably hot it was. I can remember having to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes or so to soak my shirt in cold water in attempt to stave off heat stroke. Everyone in attendance had fallen into a kind of silent heat coma.

I don’t know if it was the heat or the relatively slow pace of the game, but in the bottom of the 2nd inning one fan who was sitting a couple of sections away from me decided it was as good a time as any to absolutely lose his mind. He opened his mouth, and screamed into the hot silence:

HEEEEYYYY FERNANDOOOOOO!

And then he did it again:

HEEEEYYYY FERNANDOOOOOO!

And again…and again…and again. Sometimes he would add in some poorly constructed insult like, “You’re washed up! Go back to the golf course!” but he always started with the same refrain.

HEEEEYYYY FERNANDOOOOOO!

The man sat there in the sun, shirtless, ponytailed, and burnt to a crisp, shouting at Fernando Valenzuela throughout the entire game. Not a single person in the stands did anything about it either. No one even acknowledged him, we all just sat there in a silent fever dream and listened to him lose his shit.

HEEEEYYYY ERNANDOOOOOOO!

His madness settled over us like a black pall.

Due to the small size of the stadium and the silent nature of the crowd, there is no doubt in my mind that Valenzuela could hear this guy screaming at him--clear as day. And I swear to God, the crazy man got in Fernando’s head. You could almost see the relentless chant weighing down on him as he struggled pathetically to make it through each inning.

At this point in his career poor Fernando wasn't quite what he used to be. Once one of the best pitchers in the game, he was now just a bloated shell (seriously, he was really fat at this point) of his former self, struggling to make the rotation, and now he had to deal with this bullshit.

It wasn't until many years later that the enormity of the situation really hit me. I realize now that I didn't just see a baseball game that day. I had seen the inanity of life crawl its way out from underneath one of Fernando's skin folds, revealing to us all that even those who had managed to conquer the world--who had reached the pinnacle of human achievement--come to the same sad ending that the rest of us do. They end up fat old men, standing on a mound of dirt in the hot sun, grasping at the wisps of their former glory as they get berated by an anonymous, burnt husk of a man.

And for that, I give solemn thanks to Hi Corbett Field. I'll miss you.

You can go fuck off somewhere, Salt River Pima-Mariwhateverthefuckyournameis.

You're Going to Hate Blake Griffin

Everyone is officially head over heels in love with Blake Griffin, just as they God damn well should be. I will be the first one to admit that I have wasted what probably amounts to hours watching Youtube videos of Blake Griffin dunking on everybody’s faces. Why do I do this? Because it makes me feel all tingly in my pants, that’s why. In fact, just writing this is getting me kind of excited, which is making my roommate kind of uncomfortable.

Anyway, although I am enjoying my Blake Boners for the moment, they also make me very afraid for what the future holds. The thing is, I know that someday the national love fest surrounding Griffin is going to come to a screeching halt.

I know that one day a lot of people are going to hate Blake Griffin. How can I say this with such confidence? Because we have already seen it happen dozens of times over.

The reason that we all love Blake Griffin so much right now is because we care about him only for what he does on the court, which is undeniably beautiful and raw and thunderous. Eventually, however, we are going to get used to watching him do his “NBA Jam” routine on a nightly basis, and then he will become just another basketball player.

Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky already touched on the inevitability of this normalization back in January. Petchesky wrote:

“Titles are won after that changeover from myth to superstar. The player figures out what he has in himself, and only then can he harness it into some kind of kinetic energy. It's not nearly as romantic as potential energy.”

Petchesky knows that someday Griffin is going to cease to be the un-molded ball of ferocious energy that we so enjoy him as now; that some day he is going to solidify into a rigid, definable superstar and the romance surrounding him will die.

What I am concerned about is the part that comes after this solidification. Even when we stop being so enamored with Griffin’s game, we are still going to have to find something to say about him on a daily basis. This will lead us to begin talking about Blake Griffin as a person, and we aren’t going to like what we find.

We’ve been through this with oh so many superstars that have come before Griffin.

Not too long ago, people were just as in love with Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett and Lebron James as they are now with Blake Griffin. Bryant was loved for his merciless scoring ability, Iverson for his fast twitch crossover that could make Michael Jordan look stupid, Garnett for his unyielding passion and intensity, and LeBron for his inability to hide how much fun he was having on the basketball court.

We loved all of these guys simply because they were doing things on the court that we had never really seen before, and that was all we needed.

But after awhile things became routine, and we started searching for things other than their games to talk about. Soon it wasn’t enough just to talk about them as players, it became necessary to start talking about them as people.

Is Kobe Bryant actually a selfish, maniacal asshole?

Is Allen Iverson actually a disrespectful thug?

Is LeBron James actually an arrogant, soulless shithead?

Is Kevin Garnett actually a mean spirited bully?

Granted, each of these guys did things that greatly exacerbated people’s willingness to turn on them, but it seems as if we were doomed to start hating them no matter what we found out to be true about them as people, because as people they could never live up to the perfection that they represented as players. No one on Earth possibly could.

It’s not hard to believe in this inevitability when you consider that LeBron James is probably the most loathed of this group at the moment, even though all he did was exercise his right as a free agent; whereas Kobe Bryant was accused of rape after putting his dick into a place where he was specifically told not to.

In what twisted moral universe are those two offenses deserving of equal amounts of hatred? One in which hatred is all that’s left to keep us entertained.

Someday, fairly or unfairly, something unlikable about Blake Griffin is going to come to the light, and we will all latch on to it for no other reason than we need something to talk about. Maybe he’ll get spotted in a night club with Lindsay Lohan, and we’ll all begin questioning his judgment. Or maybe he’ll get spotted corpse-fucking a dead dolphin on a secluded Japanese coast line, and we’ll all begin to wonder if he’s really got the heart of champion. No one can say for sure.

What I can say for sure is that one day you are very likely going to find yourself hating Blake Griffin. Someday you are going to be watching him soar through the air, poised to convert yet another face melting alley oop; and instead of yelping with excitement, you’re going to mutter something like, “Fuck that guy, he’s an asshole.”

So do yourself a favor, and enjoy him while you can.

OMG! John Elway FTW!

WordsFinest proudly presents this piece from guest writer Tom. 


It is Super Bowl week, which means that you are about to be inundated with an upsetting amount of completely banal stories exploring every possible angle of the big game. In fact, I can already predict what some of the headlines are going to be this week:

1. A Tale of Two QB’s: Rodgers and Roethlisberger Ready to Rumble
2. Hair Apparent: Matthews vs. Polamalu, Who’s got the Best Locks?
3. In the Driver’s Seat: How Donald Driver went from Car Thief to Super Bowl Starter
4. Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood: How Aaron Rodgers Became King of Green Bay
5. Seoul of the Game: Koreans Worldwide Rooting for Hines Ward
6. Big Ben ready to Rape the Competition (Okay, you probably won’t see this one)


Riveting! Don’t worry though; I’m not going to bore you with any sort of half-cocked Super Bowl story, because I respect your mind and your body way too much to treat you that way.

So let’s go ahead and talk about the Denver Broncos for a little bit, because why the hell not?

WOOHOOO! EFF YEAH! BRONCOS!

Recently the Broncos hired John Elway as the team’s Executive VP of Something or Other, and Bronco fans everywhere got all kinds of excited. “He’s gonna turn this baby around! He’ll bring a winning attitude back to our team! BYAHHH!”

These Bronco fans are extra, extra stupid.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what makes people think that John Elway has the ability to positively impact a football team from a front office position.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at his qualifications for a second:

1. Was blown out in 3 Super Bowls by astronomical margins, before riding Terrell Davis’ coattails to two straight Super Bowl victories.
2. Owner of an Arena Football League team.
3. Lost $15 million dollars in a ponzi scheme
4. Owns an overpriced chain of steakhouses
5. Proprietor of a number of failed business ventures
6. Has a big stupid horse face.

Does that look like the resume of someone who should be given any kind of say in the day to day operations of a football team? If you are crazy enough to think that it does, I’d like to direct your attention to
this interview, specifically the moment when he was asked about in what capacity he would like to work in for the team. Elway answered, “I'm not interested in being the head coach and I'm not interested in being the general manager. I don't have that kind of experience to be able to pick those players day-in and day-out.”

Translation: “I don’t want to be involved in any on field decision making, nor do I want to have any kind of a say in player personnel matters. What I really want to do is just hang out in the owner’s box, drink Jack and Cokes, and try to scam some socialite tang. I’ve already got my eye on Tebow’s mom. She is one fine piece of church-ass.”

The truth is that Elway’s hiring is nothing more than a publicity stunt, meant to distract fans from the fact that the Broncos organization is in absolute fucking shambles right now. And you know what? It’s totally going to work, and it is all your fault, ignorant Broncos fan, because John Elway is your Golden Calf, and you just can’t let him go.

Mentioning John Elway to Broncos fans is like injecting super charged Cialis straight into their dicks. They become completely unhinged, things like reason and logic lose all sway, and they spend the next four hours shoving their Elway boner in your eye while they tell you how he is the greatest football player to ever walk the Earth.

And now Elway’s presence is going to keep fans invested in the team. People will continue to shell out obscene amounts of money for tickets and merchandise, and Pat Bowlen will keep lining his pockets with the money needed to feed his fur coat fetish. All Elway has to do in order to make this happen is show up at a few home games, give a few interviews every week, and feed the fans all the bullshit “I know what it takes to win” platitudes that they want to hear. It will be way too late before anyone notices that the team still sucks.

Some day, Broncos fans, you’re going to have to kill the Golden Calf.

(You are totally jacked up for the Super Bowl now, aren’t you?)