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Posts from the ‘Strictly Ballgame’ Category

Jul 31

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KG/Celtics Points

Kevin Garnett is a Boston Celtic. Let that sink in for a moment. Weird, isn’t it? For the first time in almost two decades we devoted Celtic-faithful have been given the opportunity to ponder the unthinkable questions. Questions like how many times will the Green be appearing on national television? Or how many teams in the NBA will finish with more wins than the C’s? And the kicker of all kickers: are the Celtics about to be flirting with championship #17?

Early answers are: many, my friends; very few, folks; and in the words of Borat: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!

In an effort to assess the scope of this situation, I’ll be blunt. The Celtics are better off today than they would’ve been had they gotten the number one pick in the NBA Draft. Whoa, you might be inclined to interject. You’re saying KG and Ray Allen are better for the franchise long term than Greg Oden would be? Actually no, I’m not saying that. But in case you missed my Paul Pierce Points and don’t know how much he has meant to the city of Boston over the years, I’ll be glad to expand.

I have little doubt that Oden will ultimately become the center piece of a championship team, maybe even a dynasty. For the foreseeable future, though, the kid’s still a kid (even if he looks like he could be the patriarch of multiple Oden-generations). He played one entrepreneurial year in college, and much of that one season he had the use of only his off-hand. He may be a gargantuan man among gigantic men, but rest assured, he will take his lumps for the next few years. The Shaqs and Duncans and Dwight Howards of the world simply wouldn’t have it any other way. He has a whole lot of maturing to do, even if his size and facial hair wouldn’t indicate such. Unfortunately for Paul Pierce (and hence the Celtics), time is of the essence. Paul is beyond hungry for postseason glory. He’s starving, he’s famished. Hell, he’s basically been fasting for the last five years!!

So the answer was obvious. Bring on board the two guys in the league who are arguably as hungry as Paul and at similar points in their careers, and run with it for the next three to five. The time is now. For once, that mantra employed by the Celtics’ Beantown counterparts, the Red Sox and Patriots, has been reciprocated by the Green.

Realistically, the only possible hindrance I see that could thwart this team from winning right from the word go is chemistry. As is always the case when stars get thrown together, egos will have to learn to coexist. I’m confident these three will. They have too much in common not to. All three have brought teams and cities to places they never envisioned: Paul took the Celtics to the ’02 Eastern Conference Finals; Ray carried the ’01 Bucks and the ’05 Sonics deep into the playoffs. And KG helped the ’04 Wolves win the first two playoff series in their franchise history. All have been borderline excessively-loyal guys. Other players in Paul’s or KG’s shoes would’ve skipped town years ago, given their stature and frustrating situations. As for Ray, he was as fiercely loyal to Milwaukee as anyone could be to a small-market city with no viable title shot; he didn’t depart until the powers-that-be effectively replaced him with Michael Redd.

So they’re all ecstatic to be teammates and have already been buddies for some time now, which in my opinion are the building blocks of good chemistry. And don’t underestimate the impact of Boston on their chemistry. From what I’ve heard and read, this deal wouldn’t have had a chance of happening without unrelenting lobbying on Paul’s behalf to KG. For the last few weeks he’s been in close contact with Garnett, surely playing up the value of Boston. Since the city has frequently been labeled as “that place” black athletes don’t want any part of, my bet is Paul brought KG up to speed about that misnomer. History (ie the reason why Boston has a justifiable-bad rap) aside, one thing about the city I’m sure Paul has conveyed is its unmatched passion for its teams as well as its undying love and support of its athletes.

You play pro sports in Boston, you’re automatically on a higher plateau than your colleagues in other cities. Granted, fans in Boston are needy and the media commands accountability, which combined make it difficult to be an athlete without being a celebrity. But even borderline-shy, reclusive players like Manny Ramirez feel the pull of the city to such a degree that in the end the pressure and demand is worth the reward. No city and fan base will support and defend you as staunchly as Boston. No place will drip with such visceral emotion after an otherworldly performance. And if in the end you have a hand in bringing a title to the town, every step you take from that point forward will be on hallowed ground. Paul feels it. He’s felt it through the adoration he’s received, through the devotion of the faithful. He’s felt it through Manny and Pedro and Corey Dillon and Troy Brown. And you know what else? He found a way to make KG feel it.

When you think about it, Garnett has always been destined to play in Boston. Here is a guy who literally leaves it all out on the court on a nightly basis, hell or high water. Now he’s going to be playing in a house that won’t be wondering if he’ll blow the roof off; no, they’ll be expecting it every night. And that first evening when he’s formally introduced and the entire waterfront shakes, like all athletes in new places, he’ll want to savor that moment and freeze it in time, because he’ll have to believe it will be next to impossible to rival it. So it goes for athletes previously foreign to Boston. Just wait until the first shot he hits. The first big swat he records. His first 20-20 game. His first deft dish to Paul for an overtime dagger. Just wait, KG, just wait.

It was this notion that Paul undoubtedly succeeded in relaying to KG, along with the fact that he, KG and Ray will be manhandling the East for the next few years to the tune of 55+ wins and an annual top seed in the playoffs. Once again I won’t mince words: I believe the Celtics are poised to make multiple Finals appearances over the next couple of years. I can’t go so far as to put them on that next level with the two best teams in the league, the Suns and Spurs (only because either Steve Nash or Tony Parker would manhandle Rajon Rondo en route to a Finals MVP), but I entirely believe the Celtics are now the team to beat in the East.

So am I calling number 17 just yet? No, I’m not ready to make any crazy proclamations, but I am ready to watch these guys play ball. And I will say this: when you unite a trio of seasoned and starving superstars and they get a few shots at the glory fruit, expect them to find a way to get fed.

Jul 24

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NBA Betting Scandal

With all due disrespect to Barry Bonds and Michael Vick, what’s transpired with NBA referee Tim Donaghy over the last week is, for lack of a better term, in a whole different league. Bud Selig and Roger Goodell actually have grounds for a toast, albeit one wrought with sick irony. While each of their respective enterprises, MLB and the NFL, is seeing a major scandal come to a head, their governing-counterpart in the NBA, David Stern, is smack in the middle of a s–t storm the likes of which has never been felt in professional sports.

I never thought I would defend Bonds, a blatant cheater who is going to break one of baseball’s timeless records because of performance enhancing drugs. I also couldn’t fathom trying to give perspective to Vick’s perpetuation of a cruel and sadistic hobby for profit. But now, amid allegations that Donaghy has been fixing NBA games in an elaborate criminal endeavor, in accord with members of the mob and possibly his own colleagues, I must say that Bonds and Vick are now small potatoes. For Vick, his alleged involvement in a dog-fighting ring is abhorrent, but nonetheless is mutually exclusive to his day job as an employee of the NFL. In Bonds’ case, the entire home run/steroid era of the last decade is going down in history with a collective asterisk; he’s just going to be the poster-boy because of the amount of dubious home runs he’s hit. However, right next to him will be his partners in crime, guys like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and Gary Sheffield (and many more).

The word “integrity” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to athletes and improprieties. Bonds and everyone else who’s ever juiced have exhibited very little personal integrity, which in turn has cast a shadow over the game of baseball. Likewise for Vick, and his alleged operation of animal cruelty. There are two glaring differences between them and Donaghy though. First, their actions never sought to undermine the games themselves in the name of illicit financial gain. Second, they are athletes, not officials. There have been two major precedents for players using their sports to profit monetarily, both in baseball. In 1919 the Chicago White Sox (aka the “Black Sox”) threw the World Series because they were underpaid and treated poorly by their owner, Charles Comiskey. The term “Black Sox” was in fact spawned because Comiskey was too cheap to pay for his team’s dry-cleaning, resulting in black, sordid uniforms (although history would ultimately validate the nickname). The second instance involved Pete Rose, who as we all know wagered on tons of baseball, which included his own team, the Cincinnati Reds. However, he never bet against his own team, and he was still one player on a field of nine.

What Donaghy has supposedly been doing, fixing games, is not simply on another level of the severity scale, it’s on the highest level. Why? Because he’s a referee; it’s his sole purpose to moderate games in the most unbiased of fashions. In addition, basketball is the easiest game to fix. Unlike in other major professional sports, officials in basketball actually hold sway over how many points are scored. Of course the play of the athletes is obviously supposed to dictate the amount of foul calls and not vice versa, but that’s exactly the catch. With over/unders (ie a set gambling line for two teams’ aggregate points scored) representing a huge chunk of wagers, an NBA official could very conceivably alter the final score and/or outcome of a game by calling or not calling inordinate numbers of fouls. If you watch this YouTube compilation of Donaghy and his crew calling Game 3 of this year’s Suns-Spurs series, you’ll see what I mean.

Seeing Donaghy make the latest call in NBA history for Manu Ginobili was enough to draw skepticism from both the ABC crew announcing the game as well as scores of reporters and journalists. Upon watching that entire reel from Game 3 (as well as the whole Suns-Spurs series) it is more than possible for one to come up with a variety of conspiracy theories of apparent crookedness with legitimate hard evidence to support a claim. I don’t want to speculate but I will expand on the implications of this scandal. I see a possible two-fold disaster pending for the league.

The first issue at hand is its awareness of the FBI investigation into Donaghy, which has been ongoing for nearly a year. There have been conflicting reports as to Stern’s knowledge about the federal probe, with the New York Times reporting most recently that he was not brought up to speed until after the Finals (although the New York Daily News reported that Donaghy’s neighbors in Pennsylvania were under the impression that a private investigator who was looking into Donaghy’s gambling proclivities a year ago was acting on behalf of the league). In short, if it surfaces that Stern had knowledge of any aspect of any investigation into Donaghy or Donaghy’s activities themselves and allowed him to continue calling games, this thing will snowball in the face of the commish.

Next is Donaghy himself. He will undoubtedly name names in either an effort to take heat off of himself or expose what could well be a greater referee-conspiracy. This is no doubt Stern’s worst nightmare. Whatever comes out of Donaghy’s mouth will double as a serious blow to the credibility and integrity of Stern and his league. In a statement made Tuesday Stern reinforced his belief that Donaghy was acting alone.

“We think we have a rogue, isolated criminal here,” said Stern.

Within this context Stern might as well have subbed the word “hope” for “think”, because at this point in the investigation that’s all he can really do. Once Donaghy turns himself in this week and the Feds tape recorders start rolling, this scandal could take yet another decisive turn for the ugly.

As ESPN.com’s Sportsguy aptly pointed out, this scandal is a story straight out of a Hollywood script. I agree with his vision of this imminent film, right until the ending. If this story truly followed a movie script everything would happen as Sportsguy laid out until the point where the ref (Matt Damon) is indicted and placed in protective custody while awaiting trial. At this juncture either the mob boss (Alec Baldwin) or the embattled commish (an always-shady Ron Silver) would give the word to “dispose” of the ref before the trial to avoid further damage down the line. The film would end with Damon getting approached by a few gun-toting thugs with silencers, and that would be that. A viewer would be left with the token question: was it the mob boss protecting his future interests or the corrupt-commish resorting to all and any measures to preserve his league? Both would have legitimate reasons to rid themselves of Damon and viewers could decide for themselves.

Hollywood and fiction aside, this scandal has opened a door into a dark and murky world usually left to be portrayed by art. But don’t be fooled: both the stakes and players in this devious and highly illegal scam are real, and it’s going to get a lot uglier before there is any resolution. Let’s just hope art sticks to imitating life and not the other way around.

Apr 29

Multi-Points

So much is happening in the world of sports that I’d have to write five pieces to adequately address everything that’s gone down in the past week. But that would take a long time and I don’t get paid for this (yet).

A quick recap. First the Red Sox swept the Yankees at Fenway. Then the Bulls scorched the Heat in four, making Miami the weakest defending champion in decades. Next the Sox proceeded to take two of three at Yankee Stadium. Then the Patriots traded a signed-Tom Brady jersey to Al Davis for Randy Moss (actually it was a fourth round pick). Finally the week concluded with the Golden State Warriors winning Game 4 against Dallas, to go up 3-1 against the defending-Western Conference champions.

What does all that mean? Well most relevantly it means my NBA Playoff Preview Part Deux has officially been “deaded” quicker than Turtle’s record deal with Saigon on “Entourage”. It also means I now have the chance to throw my two cents on all of it…


Yankees The Yankees have suffered through slow starts before (they were 9-13 two years ago) but what strikes me about this April is that without A-Rod the Bombers wouldn’t have won more than five games. Because with him they still only won nine!! That’s embarrassing. Just how embarrassing is anyone’s guess. But if you want to find out for yourself, and you happen to have the pleasure of being chummy with a New York fan, ask them what’s worse: watching A-Rod’s most prolific-April in history result in a record of 9-14 or living through a 5-18 start, which evidently would have been the case minus A-Rod’s superhuman effort early on. I say the latter’s less humiliating, because the Yanks starting staff is ravaged and Mariano Rivera always struggles out of the gate, so Yankee fans would at least have a viable (albeit weak) excuse for such a sputtering start. But with A-Rod hitting more home runs than some divisions over the first half of the month, to win nine out of twenty three games is just poor.


Red Sox I can count on one hand the number of players in the game today who are capable of carrying their teams for a stretch of time all by their lonesome: Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez (honorable mention: Vlad Guerrero, Ryan Howard, Carlos Beltran). Here’s my point: look at what A-Rod has done in comparison to what Manny has done until this juncture. Now extrapolate that s**t. Yankee fans love noting how “it’s only April”. Well for Manny April represents the calm before the storm. While A-Rod’s .355-14-34-1.297 has been the respirator on which the whole Yankees-organization is breathing, Manny’s .202-3-13-.629 has been nothing short of a comical farce. Why? Because the Red Sox have taken five of six from New York and have the best record in baseball. Manny, meanwhile, has contributed little more than a few bombs and a couple goofy exchanges with Dice-K. We all know that as the weather warms up so too does Manuel Ramirez. (Makes that 6.5 game lead seem a little more imposing, doesn’t it?)


Randy Moss Let’s make something clear right away: the Patriots don’t need Randy Moss. In the months subsequent to their collapse in the AFC Championship they signed the deep threat (Dante Stallworth) they so desperately needed, a big and physical possession receiver (Kelley Washington), and a slot-specialist (Wes Welker). Those acquisitions supplemented a receiving core that proved to be nearly sufficient enough to return to the Super Bowl. So when the opportunity arose to pull Moss out of Oakland for nothing more than a fourth round draft pick, Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli probably said, why not? Then they met with Moss, and most assuredly laid down the law cut and dry. Something along the lines of if you come here and work like every other guy on this team, you’re going to win a Super Bowl. Anything less and you’ll be out on your rear end quicker than you could ever imagine. The knock on Randy Moss has always been his incessant and inherent selfishness. Now he has the opportunity to tie his personal legacy into that of the most successful franchise of this era. Here’s one vote saying Randy chooses the Patriot-way over the highway.


Mavs-Warriors Forget the 67 wins in the regular season. Twenty percent of the Mavs’ 15 losses came against the Warriors. (That’s three.) And frankly they look exactly like the team that last June stood by, in shock and awe, as the Heat took four straight from them in the Finals. Which is to say they’re playing scared. And timid. Playing the Warriors period was already the worst-case scenario for Dallas. It’s rapidly becoming a worst-case nightmare. Including playoffs, Golden State has now taken a whopping nine of the last 11 from Dallas. The Warriors’ coach, Don Nelson, knows all of Dirk Nowitzki’s secrets. And their fans are genuinely intimidating. So how exactly are the Mavs going to pull off three straight and avoid becoming the biggest fraud in NBA history? Don’t ask me. Optimists will point to last year as the Suns climbed out of a 3-1 hole to down the Lakers. The parallels end there. The weight on the shoulders of the Mavs is immense. Between their implosion in the Finals last year to dominating the entire league but Golden State this season, the Mavs are going to have to overcome history and reality. (Plus Stephen “Haymaker” Jackson.)

Finally, a few notes on imminent Eastern Conference second round matchups…

Nets-Cavs This Nets team is pretty much on par with the New Jersey teams that went to back to back NBA Finals a few years ago. Difference is the rest of the Eastern Conference was god-awful back then. No more will Jason Kidd win multiple playoff series’ by leading the fastbreak and tossing alleys to Richard Jefferson. The Nets reign as the most hard-nosed defensive team in the East has long passed. Simply put, anything the Nets can do Lebron can do better. Shoot. Pass. Defend. All advantage Lebron. He’ll ultimatley need a true wingman to take the next step, that much is known. But for the moment Lebron won’t have too many problems disposing of a team that recently has taken nothing but steps back.

Bulls-Pistons The Pistons exhausted their nitrous way too prematurely last year. For a team that already understood the grind of winning an NBA title, Detroit burned itself out in the 2005-06 regular season (64-18), had to dig itself out of a 3-2 hole just to defeat King James in the second round of the playoffs, then bowed to the Heat in the East Finals. I know what you’re thinking. To say the Bulls are hot after watching what they did to the defending champs would be like saying an ice-bath is cool. And yes, Ben Wallace did get the better of his old team during the regular season, but don’t let that fool you. Chicago is still maturing, and this season Detroit has adapted its mentality to that of a team expecting to win a championship.