I'm sorry I've said many times that Bill knows the NBA, I was completely wrong (part 2)

Warning: shit gets heavy somewhere near the end of this post.  Usually I enjoy picking apart Simmons, like "ha ha this guy is dumb, I'm having fun with this, tee hee."  Near the end of this post I got legitimately annoyed.  I think it comes through in the writing (I'm adding this intro after I finished the rest of it).  Enjoy!

Unfortunately, we need to compare Carmelo to a better player to prove that point.

That's a great indication that you won't be able to make that point.  This is like saying "I know where there's a million dollars in buried treasure.  Unfortunately, I need to go grab a million dollars and bury it before we go dig up that treasure."

The 2011 Mavericks won the title

Indeed they did.  Let's see how.

with a veteran team 

Average age of the eight guys who played the most minutes was 31, a bit upwardly skewed by 37 year old Jason Kidd.

built around a spectacular coach (Rick Carlisle), 

Definitely a good coach--career .588 winning percentage in the regular season, and .509 in the postseason.

an elite rim protector (Tyson Chandler), 

He definitely is, although he doesn't bring much offense.

an elite perimeter defender (Shawn Marion), 

Sure.

an elite heat-check guy (Jason Terry), 

Idiotic terminology, and overstate's Terry's abilities--I'm not saying he's never hit a series of big shots, because he certainly did against the Heat in the 2011 Finals, but his career 3FG% is just just .379 and his career 2FG% is just .484.  (In 2010-2011, those numbers were .362 and .493 respectively.)  Anyways, Terry is a great 7th man, but not really a great 6th man.  Yes, I know he won the 6th man of the year award in 2008-2009, but he was playing 34 minutes a game.  NAWT A TRUE 6TH MAN.  HE IS THE CHANNING TATUM OF 6TH MEN.

quality 3-point shooting (39.4 percent and 184 made 3s in 21 playoff games), 

Agree, that is quality, although any playoff run is such a small sample as to be negligibly useful in judging whether the team was actually a good shooting team, or just happened to get hot at the right time.  The Mavs shot 36.5% during the 2010-2011 season.

savvy team defense 

Hooray for stupid bullshit (not even really anecdotal bullshit--this is somehow less useful than that would be) that can't be disproven!

and one historically good scorer with crunch-time chops (Dirk Nowitzki). 

Indeed.  

If you believe Carmelo can lead a championship team, you’re leaning heavily on that 2011 Mavs playbook — you’d need all the elements we just covered, and you’d need Carmelo to unleash a damned good Dirk impression.

Yes, except for the fact that Dirk is better than Carmelo.

Only one problem: Dirk was better than Carmelo is.

Great, so there goes your whole point.  This has been productive.

Dirk is one of the 20 best basketball players of all time by any calculation. He’s the best foreign player ever not named Hakeem. Of the 10 best forwards ever, he’s behind Bird, LeBron and Duncan, right there with Doc, Elgin and Pettit, and ahead of Malone, Barkley and Rick Barry.  He won an MVP and a Finals MVP. He made four first-team All-NBA’s and five second-team All-NBA’s. He won 50-plus games for 11 straight years, topped 60 wins three times, made two Finals, beat LeBron and Wade in the Finals, and won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan’s prime.

I'm not going to be so Simmonsy as to claim I know exactly where Carmelo stands among everyone all time, but suffice it to say that his resume does not stack up to Dirk's.  He's never finished higher than 3rd in MVP voting (in 2012-2013, mostly because he led the league in scoring) and has only been in the top 10 twice.  He hasn't won a Finals MVP, because, as we've discussed, he's only ever come remotely close to sniffing the Finals once in his eleven year career.  He's never been first team All NBA and has been second team just twice.  His teams have won 50 games just four times and have never topped 54 wins.  Basketballreference has something called the "Elo Player Rater," which, fuck if I really know how it works, but it appears to be a crowd-sourced set of rankings.  They currently have Dirk as the 3rd best active player and 22nd best all time.  Melo is younger, so he's had less time to cement a legacy, but he's just 16th best active and 67th best overall.  This "let's build a case for Melo as a guy who can win a Finals without other superstar help on the fact that Dirk did the same" attempt is falling to pieces.

And it’s not like he had a ton of help. In 15 years, he played with only four All-Stars: Jason Kidd (2010), Josh Howard (2007), Steve Nash (2002 and 2003) and Michael Finley (2000 and 2001). Amazing but true: Dirk never played with a Hall of Famer in that Hall of Famer’s prime.

Roughly the same for Melo, certainly the same on the HOFer in his prime front.  Dirk got Kidd and Nash, but Melo got two years with Iverson (even if that experiment didn't really work out).  Melo also has played with several Michael Finley/Josh Howard type players, including Billups, Marcus Camby, NeNe, and Ty Lawson.

During Dirk’s decade-long peak (2002 through 2011), he averaged 24.5 points and 8.8 rebounds and came damned close to creating the 10-Year 50-40-90 Club (48% FG, 39% 3FG, 89% FT). 

Melo can't come close to touching those shooting numbers--for his eleven year career, he's at 45-35-81.

His career PER (23.48) ranks 19th all time, just behind Doc (23.58) and Bird (23.5) and just ahead of Kobe (23.36). 

Melo's career PER is 21.17, 42nd all time, sandwiched between Alonzo Mourning and Clyde Drexler.

And he was an absolutely phenomenal playoff performer: 25.6 PPG (12th all time), 24.2 PER (12th), 22.6 win shares (16th), stellar 46-37-89% splits in 135 games, and a couple of epic multigame hot streaks in 2006 and 2011. 

I described Melo's playoff mediocrity last post, but let's add in here that his career playoff PER is 19.94, 44th overall.

Along with Pettit, Hakeem and Elgin, he’s one of four players in the shot-clock era who averaged 25 and 10 in the playoffs. 

Melo has averaged 26 and 7, but he's need to shoot a shitload to get those 26.

And he’s an underrated leader, 

Lol Melo

a famously fantastic locker-room guy, 

Lol Melo

an insanely hard worker and someone who, by all accounts, everyone loved playing with at every point of his career.

I've never heard anything to the contrary about Melo, but I've never really heard anything similar either.

That’s why I dislike comparing Carmelo and Dirk. 

You should, because Melo isn't Dirk, and on the scale of superstars, he's not even close.

But I keep coming back to these two playoff lines:

2011 Dirk (21 games): 27.7 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.5 apg, 49-46-94%, 8.9 FTA, 25.2 PER
2009 Melo (16 games): 27.2 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 4.1 apg, 45-36-83%, 9.0 FTA, 24.3 PER

It’s not THAT far off, right? 

And this, ladies and germs, is all the proof you need that Bill Simmons's writing method is pretty much "Come up with idea (usually one that adheres to my already existing beliefs about the subject matter in question), write column, ignore evidence that contradicts idea, find shreds of evidence that kind of sort of make idea look non-horrible, pimp them with idiotic rhetorical questions, profit."  Seriously, we've just run down how much better (especially in the playoffs) Dirk is than Melo.  And then, in an effort to get this train wreck back on the tracks, he throws out Melo's best playoff performance (both in terms of how far his team went, and in PER), runs it up against Dirk's performance during the Mavs' title run (which is not Dirk's best playoff performance; that came in 2010 (28.4 PER in 10 games) or if you want a larger set of games, 2006 (26.8 in 23 games), and then moves on.  Fucking unbelievable, this guy.  What a fucking chode.

The 2009 Nuggets were Carmelo’s best team; they fell to Kobe’s Lakers in Round 3 with a poor man’s version of the 2011 Mavs. 

And this is where it gets pretty fucking good.  Yes, yes please.  Let's do a rundown of the 2008-2009 Nuggets (54-28) against the 2010-2011 Mavericks (57-25).  Let's look at all those items he listed at the beginning of this post and see how they stack up.

George Karl wasn’t Carlisle. 

Oh, the George Karl with a longer track record than Carlisle, a better regular season winning percentage, and a slightly worse playoff winning percentage?  Carlisle is "spectacular" but a guy with 1100+ career wins, who's never coached anyone better than young Gary Payton, young Ray Allen or young Carmelo doesn't stack up?  Cool.

Nene and Kenyon Martin couldn’t protect the rim like Chandler. 

This is very true, but what they brought in offense probably makes up for what they didn't have in terms of rim protection.

They didn’t have a perimeter defender anywhere close to Marion’s caliber. 

First of all, this isn't true, as Dahntay Jones is a different kind of perimeter defender but probably on balance about as good as Marion.  Second of all, the defense (both individual defense, and the ability to coordinate team defense) brought by Billups to that 2009 Nuggets team puts what 37 year old Jason Kidd was doing on the defensive end for the 2011 Mavericks to shame.

They couldn’t shoot 3s nearly as well (only 31 percent for that Lakers series). 

Good try, doofus.  Enough with your shitspeck-sized samples.  The 2008-2009 Nuggets were a better regular season 3FG% team than the 2010-2011 Mavericks (roughly 36% to 34%) and even with that shitty performance against the Lakers, shot 38.3% for the playoffs.  The Mavs shot 39.4% during their title run.  This is 100% wrong.  The Nuggets were a BETTER 3FG% team than the Mavs.  

They relied way too heavily on J.R. Smith, who imploded against Kobe and got outscored 204 points to 76 points. 

OK, for this one, I have no counterargument, other than to say Smith was the Nuggets' version of Terry, just not as good.  He averaged 14/3/3 while shooting 44%; Terry went for 17/2/3 while shooting 48%.  And yes, Kobe went off against the Nuggets.  He's Kobe.  

Their bench consisted of Dahntay Jones, Linas Kleiza, Chris Andersen and Anthony Carter, or, as it’s better known, the Pu Pu Platter Deluxe. 

OH GOD ANOTHER PU PU PLATTER JOKE.  NEVER GETS OLD.  Their bench also included JR Smith, who you'd think Bill wouldn't be able to completely forget about in the span of one sentence, but here we are.  Meanwhile, beyond Terry, the 2011 Mavericks playoff bench featured Jose Barea, "the corpse of" (LOLOLOL!!!!) Peja Stojakovic, and Brendan Haywood, which is pretty fucking pu pu platterish itself.  But why let facts get in the way of a narrative.  Full speed ahead!!!

And Melo’s best teammate, Chauncey Billups, played two great rounds before turning into a human icicle against the Lakers (39.7% FG, 33.3% 3FG).

Meanwhile, Melo shot 48% overall and 45% (!) from three during the first two rounds of the playoffs, then turned into a human icicle against the Lakers (40.8% FG, 25% 3FG).  You know, you'd think that if you were trying to figure out why the 2009 Nuggets didn't get past the Lakers, you'd want to see how their best player played in that series.  But I guess since we started with the thesis that Melo got let down by his teammates, we don't have time to do that.  Too bad.

Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.

GOOD JOB PUTTING YOUR COMPLETELY UNINFORMED OPINION IN ALL CAPS, TO MAKE IT THAT MUCH DUMBER!  BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!  BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!  YOU FUCKING NIMROD!  YOU ARE TRULY A GODDAMN IDIOT!

More later.

Severely, severely embarrassing

I'm definitely going to finish the Simmons "Let's turn the Hall of Fame into a novelty structure celebrating the careers of Jim Rice and Jack Morris" article later, probably Friday, but this particular dumpster fire could not wait.  Holy fucking cat shit.  Even for Rick Reilly, this is indescribably bad.  I've never seen a journalist lower themselves to shill for a franchise or league like this before.  Not even immediately before and during the NFL lockout, when mouthbreathers like Peter King stepped up to defend the league and (try to) give credence to the claim that its then-current revenue sharing model was unsustainable.  Not even then.  This is worse.

For the 98th straight season, the Chicago Cubs will attempt baseball this season in Wrigley Field. It's historic, magical and covered in vegetation. Then again, so is Machu Picchu and nobody's trying to win baseball games there.

We start off with a dip into the bottomless well of comedy that is Machu Picchu.

I love Wrigley Field. 

I used to live in Chicago and have attended many games at Wrigley.  If you have any experience with that decrepit (but profitable!) place, you'll agree with me that Rick serves as an excellent proxy for every fat, loud 50something business tripper/midlife crisis haver getting drunk in the bars around Wrigley on game day, sloppily hitting on reluctant 20somethings, and boasting about his plans to head down to the Viagra Triangle to crush some steaks at Morton's after the game.

But I'm not a Cubs fan. 

Perhaps your most redeeming quality.

If I were a Cubs fan, I would despise Wrigley. I'd want Wrigley laid flatter than Wrigley gum.

Gum is flat!

There's a reason the Cubs have never won a World Series at Wrigley. There's a reason they're 0-for-the-last-67 pennant races at Wrigley.

Yes.  Really, it's a confluence of factors, but it can be summed up in not too many words.  First, in the very long term, part of it is just bad luck, because fuck, you'd think they would have stumbled ass-backwards into a title at least once in the last century, right?  The Marlins have two in in the last sixteen years for crisesakes.  A few bounces go differently in 2003, and they at least win the pennant that year.  But anyways, that's just part of it.  The rest is that for years, the Cubs have had incompetent management and ownership, and have fielded subpar teams while making money hand over fist.  It's a pretty common story in the wide world of professional sports, although many teams run in a similarly terrible manner break through and manage to secure a title at least once every half century or so.  Anyways, the reason the Cubs haven't won a pennant since 1945 or a World Series since 1908 has barely a fucking thing to do with Wrigley.

The reason IS Wrigley.

No.

Wrigley isn't just the old family dog that needs to be put down. It's an old family dog that probably costs the Cubs about $73 million a year.

I know what you're thinking.  Just wait until he gets there.

That's three Prince Fielders!

The EXACT kind of player teams like the Cubs should avoid signing, because he's not going to get them from where they are to a championship.  See: Soriano, Alfonso, a man currently signed to the worst contract in baseball not involving a Phillies first baseman.

Where do I get $73 million?

My guess: by sitting down to a nice dinner with a member of the Ricketts ownership group, or someone employed by them, and asking "How much do you want me to say you're losing as a result of playing in Wrigley?  You name the dollar amount, pick up the tab for this food, and I'll write the story.  Also: can we talk about how exciting golf is during the meal?"

Start from the outside-in -- with the money-sucking rooftop mini-stadiums that metastasize outside the ballpark.

Ah yes, the mini-stadiums that, per a 2004 agreement with the Cubs (which has a twenty year term, because the Cubs are fucking idiots--more on that later), give the team 17% of their gross revenue in exchange for the team agreeing not to block the rooftop views.  Or in other words, 17% of their gross revenue in exchange for the Cubs doing exactly nothing.

The owners of these annoying watchtowers sell tickets as though they were the Cubs themselves.

The correct way to state that is that they sell tickets as though they are people who own property next to the stadium, which... they are.

They even sell season tickets! 

Even if the presence of the rooftops seats were something outrageous, I'm not sure how this would contribute to the outrageousness.

The city continues to protect these leeches, who pass themselves off as mom and pop entrepreneurs, but actually rake in an estimated $24 million a year, according to the club.

Where to begin: first of all, I hope you believed me when I said the Cubs probably paid Rick to write this column, because by this point in the article, he's practically admitting it.  Second of all, the city is not protecting the rooftop owners.  The deal the rooftop owners struck with the Cubs, which runs through 2023, is protecting the rooftop owners.  Guess who was at the bargaining table for those negotiations, undoubtedly represented by very expensive lawyers and with full knowledge of what they were and were not agreeing to?  THE FUCKING CUBS, WHO HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT THEMSELVES.  Third of all, let's assume the rooftops do make $24 million (combined, not each) every year.  The Cubs have what is considered to be a very bad TV deal in the current climate for sports broadcasting rights.  It expires after 2014, and at that point they will undoubtedly work to get an deal in place that dwarfs it, possibly similar to the gargantuan deal the Dodgers just signed which will pay the team about $250-$300 million a year for the next 25 years.  Do you know what this current bad deal (split between WGN and Comcast) pays the Cubs per year?  $45 million.  So yeah, I think bitching about a dozen or so rooftops making a couple million a year is pretty fucking pathetic.

Of that, the Cubs get a paltry 17 percent, or $4 million a year.

Which they themselves agreed to in an arm's length negotiation, in exchange for doing nothing.  It may well have been a bad deal, and given that the Cubs agreed to it, it probably is.  But they sure as shit can't blame the city and they can't blame the rooftop owners.

Any fair deal would give them at least half.

Perhaps.  Guess Rick should have led those negotiations.  No worries, Rick: in ten years, when the deal is up, you'll get your chance to make sure those poor destitute owners get the deal they deserve!

(There's $8 million they don't get.)

And here begins Rick's political campaign-worth math exercise.  Try to stay with him, now: the Cubs play at Wrigley Field ==> the Cubs agreed to not obstruct the views of the rooftop owners around Wrigley Field in exchange for $4 million a year ==> Wrigley Field is costing the Cubs $8 million per year.

Inside, the Cubs are prohibited from putting up advertising signs that could make them up to $30 million more a year (that would be $38 million) because the signs would block the views of the precious rooftop oglers and the city can't have that.

We have already been over this like four times.  The Cubs are "prohibited" from doing so because in exchange for that $4 million per year they're getting, they agreed not to build any signs.  This is called a legally enforceable contract.  Each side offers consideration to the other.  If they fail to deliver what they have promised, the other side can bring suit against them to remedy the breach.  To complain that the Cubs aren't getting enough from the rooftops and simultaneously lament that the Cubs are "prohibited" from building signs that block the rooftops is the height of disingenuous bullshit.

You talk about a business being in your business. Can you imagine this happening to any other business?

I can!

Hey, H&R Block! We're not going to pay you for your tax advice, but we ARE going to pocket the cash people give us to sit outside your window and listen to it!

Just wait until Rick finds out that people sell beer, hot dogs, and (often) unlicensed Cubs apparel MERE BLOCKS from the stadium!  What a bunch of leeches!

If all this seems insane to you, you should talk to Bruce Springsteen.

Ah yes, Bruce Springsteen, that champion of big business who hates it when the little guy makes a buck here and there.

In the middle of a recent concert at Wrigley, he stopped, turned toward the rooftops and said, with a smirk, "Everybody up on the roof! Who'd you pay?"

Well first of all, they paid the Cubs with 17% of their ticket price.  Second of all, it's sad to hear he said that, and I hope he didn't, but if so it's because the Cubs got to him like they got to Reilly.  Give the Ricketts credit for trying to win the PR war--the Tribune Co. (owners of the team until the Ricketts bought it in 2009) would have been far too stupid to even realize that was something they should attempt.

You say, "Well, the Cubs aren't really a business. They're a city treasure, a kind of living museum."

No one says this.  This is the worst straw man ever.  Everyone knows that pro sports teams are enormous businesses.  It just so happens that to some people, the Cubs are also a charming local institution with a lot of cool history.  Most of those people will die of heart disease before the age of 45, but there are a lot of them in the greater Chicagoland area, and even they know the Cubs are "really a business."

Fine, if they're a city treasure, then the city should help support them, the way it did for this summer's 30th anniversary of the Chicago Blues Festival, which received a $15,000 grant.

I hope you didn't have any liquid in your mouth when you read that, because you probably just ruined your laptop.  WHERE IS THE $15,000 GRANT FOR THE CUBS, MAYOR EMANUEL?  SHAME ON YOU.  THEY'RE STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET UP THERE AT CLARK AND ADDISON.

The Cubs pay 12 percent city "amusement" tax on every ticket (about $17 million a year -- we're up to $55 million), and yet the city doesn't give them a dime. Very unamusing.

My angle in this post so far has mostly focused on his gross mischaracterization of the 2004 rooftop deal, but let's not neglect his embarrassingly pathetic overarching message that a team with nine figure annual income, valued by Forbes as the 36th most valuable pro sports franchise in the world in 2012, is in some kind of financial quagmire.  I don't mean to turn this into #OccupyWrigley, but holy fucking shit on a stick, the Cubs shouldn't be paying taxes on their tickets?  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Also, that $17 million, to the extent it's even worth acknowledging the argument, has nothing to do with Wrigley itself.  Obviously any stadium in any part of Chicago, rooftop LEECHES or not, would be paying that tax.

There's more. You can open the doors of your business pretty much whenever you want, but the Cubs can't. They're allowed to play only 30 night games a year. And they can't even pick the nights. When owner Tom Ricketts inquired if they might play a few Saturday night games this season, the local restaurants fumed, "It'll kill our dinner business!"

This is the only part of the article that is not buttfuckery of the highest order.  In short: until 1988, the Cubs did not play any night games.  That year they finally began doing so after installing lights, but they had to make a deal with the city restricting the number of night games they could play per season to get the lights approved in the first place.  Part of the city's justification was the high degree to which Wrigley is integrated with its surrounding neighborhood, making night games a pain in the ass for local resident.  These regulations remain in place today, and really, I think the Cubs probably have a legitimate gripe in wanting them relaxed.  The area directly bordering Wrigley is all businesses at this point anyways.  And anyone who moves to the neighborhood certainly knows what they're getting themselves into (unless they do so during winter and have the least informative real estate agent ever): Cubs fans are going to piss on your house.  They're going to.  They might be slightly less inclined to do so after a day game than after a night game, but it's going to happen.  If the Cubs want to play a normal "every game is a night game except for getaway day" schedule, fuck it, I say let them.

Now back to the buttfuckery.

Got it. Everybody gets to compete for customers except the Cubs.

The degree to which he's shilling for the team is exactly as embarrassing as I promised it would be, right?

Any idea how much more the Cubs could get for a TV package with 55 night games, which is what many teams play and when most fans watch? Me neither, but let's guess $5 million. (We're up to $60 million.)

Regardless of their day/night game balance, starting in 2015 they're going to have a deal that's worth a fuck of a lot more than $45 million per year.  Let's try not to weep too hard for them.

God forbid they'd want to put up a decent video replay board, which is ad gold for most teams and, by the way, a place where Cubs fans could actually tell the score of the game without having to do the inning-by-inning math themselves, as they do now on the old hand-lettered relic in center. ($7 million? Total so far: $67 million.)

They can do this anytime they want.  This is one of the few complaints raised that actually directly relates to Wrigley (as opposed to if they played in a different, modernized stadium in a different location) but unfortunately for Rick it's still fucking idiotic.

Plus, can you imagine the frogs that would rain down if they tried to sell the name of the stadium? They could never do what the White Sox did, which is to sell Comiskey to U.S. Cellular for $68 million over 20 years. The Cubs could probably get $100 million. There's another $5 million a year. (That's $72 million.)

Again, they are welcome to do this anytime they want.  Not even those nefarious robber baron rooftop owners would be able to stop them.

And forget about how long it takes you to get up and get a hot dog at Wrigley (two innings sometimes), or get to the restroom and back (often three). Hell, by the third inning, the Cubs are on their third reliever. No wonder so many people sneak food in. What's that total in lost concessions? A million? (We're at $73 million.)

Who cares, but yeah, Wrigley is a fucking trashhole for a lot of reasons and this is one of them.  They can't really remedy this until they move to a new stadium.  Too bad for them.

And that's just the money they don't get.

You say this as if you have made arguments so far in this article that would be convincing to anyone other than the Ricketts family.

Imagine the players they don't get -- because of their weird start times, their rotting training facilities, their wimpy weight room, their nonexistent in-game batting cage, their backachingly small clubhouse and their 104-year ringless streak.

To the extent this is even an issue, which, who the fuck knows if it is unless you hook a bunch of MLB players up to lie detectors and then ask them if these things actually make the Cubs an unattractive destination, it can and has been remedied by money many times in the past.  See: Soriano, Alfonso, and many many others.

Can you imagine what a genius like Cubs GM Theo Epstein could do with another $73 million a year? He'd be Theo, Unchained. He'd have the fourth-highest payroll in MLB instead of the 15th (2012). One of the biggest draws in sports shouldn't be 15th in anything.

Prior to 2012, they had not been outside of the top 10 in payroll since 2003.  They were 3rd as recently as 2010.

The Red Sox finally stopped treating their little neighborhood park like it was a Faberge egg. They started putting up signs everywhere at Fenway, maxed out revenue anywhere they could, and won two of the past 9 World Series. You hear Boston fans complaining?

Again, with the fucking signs.  Good thing the Red Sox were able to put up those signs after reneging on their deal to not do so with the rooftop owners around Fenway!

And yet Ricketts doesn't want to raze Wrigley.

THEN ALL OF THIS, EXCEPT THE ROOFTOP DEAL WHICH HE HAD NO PART IN BUT RUNS FOR TEN MORE YEARS ANYWAYS BECAUSE THE TRIBUNE COMPANY IS RUN BY ASSHOLES, IS HIS FUCKING PROBLEM.  HE CAN DEAL WITH IT AND CONTINUE TO MAKE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.  I THINK HE'LL BE OK.  Jesus Christ, what's Rick's next article?  A spirited defense of Jeffrey Loria?

He was practically raised on Wrigley. He lives close enough that he takes the "L" to most games.

MLB owners: they're just like us!

And because he loves it, he has offered to pour $500 million of the family's money into renovating Wrigley -- $300 million for fixing the joint and the rest into a proposed hotel/fitness club across the street.

And what does Ricketts want for plowing no government cheese into the Wrigley rat trap? Not a dime. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA nice try.  There is a sizable difference between "not wanting any city funding" and "being told to fuck off after asking for city funding."

He just wants the city to relax some of the restrictions that make the Cubs a kind of crippled Carnival cruise ship with foul poles.

There's your trademark Rick Reilly Topical Joke.  I think I liked the Machu Picchu one better.

And STILL aldermen such as Thomas Tunney are gumming it all up. Tunney wants more parking, more cops 

What business is it of the city that the city not be turned into a fucking mess after a business does a huge construction project to expand their operation?  The nerve!

and to extend the sleazy rooftops deal, 

DIE.

all of which he doesn't want to pay for.

Why the fuck should he, or more accurately, should the city?  Make a good argument, Rick.

"You're talking about one of the richest families in America," Tunney told reporters the other day.

Correct.

Not at this rate.

Do you have douchechills yet?

Epstein really didn't want any part of this column, but he did email to say, "We're focused on doing everything we can with what we have available to us now to make the baseball operation as healthy and successful as possible."

Too bad there's so little available.

Oh my God.  Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God

It's simple, Chicago. You can either have your creaky, quaint, vine-covered crypt, or you can win. But you can't have both.

Let's recap: first of all, the Cubs, like every single other MLB team, are not hurting for money and will not be anytime soon.  Second of all, the team is about to get a gigantic TV contract that will gives it more revenue than it'll know what to do with.  Third of all, Wrigley has one unfixable revenue problem (concessions line lengths), several revenue problems that are difficult but not overly burdensome and could be fixed with some clever negotiating (number of night games, amount of advertising in the stadium, rooftop deal), and several revenue problems that the team simply has chosen not to fix because they like the history of the stadium (no fancy scoreboard, no naming rights).  Together, those problems are probably 1% of the reason the Cubs suck and have sucked for some time.  The other 99% is attributable to incompetence, something that Epstein might be able to do something about, but that Ricketts seems to be contributing to.  Fourth of all, anytime the Cubs want to build a new stadium, they'd have financiers lined up around the block, and said new stadium would undoubtedly be one of the best revenue generators in sports, but it won't happen because Ricketts himself doesn't want to do it.

For those reasons, dear reader, you should feel sorry for the Cubs.

Do the math. You're used to it.

Is that supposed to be a taunt?  Is there a reference to Chicagoans being good at math that I'm not getting, other than the fact that everyone knows it's been 100+ years since the Cubs won a World Series, which, let's face it, doesn't really involve much math?

Rick Reilly is the worst sportswriter on the planet.

A long lesson in dumb fuckery with Clark Judge

Losing pretty Cutler making winning ugly Plummer look great

So now Jay Cutler is mad as hell and sure looks like he's not going to take it in Denver anymore. Great. Almost makes you wish the Broncos never disposed of Jake Plummer, huh?

No.

Well, it does me. If ever there was a quarterback done wrong it was poor Jake. He didn't throw the tightest spiral. He took too many chances. And he threw unnecessary interceptions. He was booed at home, booed on the road and shredded weekly by the hometown media for his flaws. In short, he was embraced like the Avian flu.

I will agree that he was booed unnecessarily a lot, but he also did tend to play his worst in big games.

So what's to like? This: He was 40-18 as a starter.

With the Denver Broncos, when they had a great defense and were pumping out 1,000 yard rushers like some sort of factory that makes 1,000 yard rushers.

All the guy did was win.

Except for, you know, when he lost. Like in the playoffs.

He took the Broncos to the playoffs in 2003. He did it again in 2004. He had them in the 2005 AFC Championship Game.

I'm sure Broncos fans get misty thinking of those back to back to back runner's up trophies.

Yet he was gone two seasons later, shuffled off to Tampa Bay to make way for Cutler, the second coming of John Elway. Only, he's not. He's not even the second coming of Jake Plummer,

Actually, if you believe Football Outsider's DYAR stats, Jay Cutler is almost exactly the second coming of Jake Plummer (when he was good) when it comes to regular season statistics. Except, Cutler is 9 years younger than Plummer and has never had a season as bad as Plummer's 2006 campaign.

and, no, I don't care that he throws a fast ball like Randy Johnson or that his right arm can launch space shuttles.

Because that's obviously the only argument Cutler's apologists can make for him.

I want someone who can win, and Jay Cutler is 17-20 as a starter, failing to reach the playoffs in his NFL career.

Yeah because Jake Plummer's always been a "winner," like how he was 15-21 after his first 3 seasons.

Plummer not only got there three of his four seasons in Denver, he took the Cardinals to the playoffs in 1998, their first appearance in a non-strike year in over two decades.

You know who were also good quarterbacks in 1998? Rich Gannon and Elvis Grbac.

Denver never had a losing season under Plummer. It hasn't had a winning season under Cutler. Draw your own conclusions.

My conclusion: Devner's defense and running back situation has declined dramatically in the past few years.

I have, and they go something like this: Plummer knew how to win; Cutler knows how to throw a pretty pass. I know which I'd rather have.

Explain to me how having a Quarterback (whose main responsibility is THROWING PASSES) that throws "a pretty pass" is a bad thing.

When the Broncos drafted Cutler they were coming off a 13-3 season where they beat New England and were one win from the Super Bowl. But after losing to Pittsburgh in the conference championship game, coach Mike Shanahan decided he could go no deeper into the playoffs with Plummer. So he traded up for Cutler.

For Plummer, the message was clear: His get-out-of-Denver ticket had just been punched, and Cutler would succeed him in no more than a year. Anything short of the Super Bowl wouldn't matter for Plummer, who could take his 40-18 record somewhere else and watch what could have been.

Knowing that his job was on the line, Plummer hunkered down and had one of the worst seasons of his career. Only a cagey winner would know how to do that.

Plummer didn't sulk. He didn't demand to be traded. He didn't threaten to move. And he never asked to meet with his head coach or demand an explanation.

He just played like shit until the situation worked itself out.

"Jay is going to be a hell of a player," Plummer told me that summer, "but, hopefully, when his time is right. Until that time I'm going to be the one taking the snaps.

And that time became right way earlier than most people imagined, due to Plummer's abhorrent on field play.

"Fans always like change. I understand that. It's almost like having an old girlfriend. You always think the pasture may be greener on the other side. But until Jay is ready they're going to have to deal with me."

Now that's what I want to hear from my quarterback. Don't tell me your feelings are hurt. Don't go running to your realtor. And don't mention the name Matt Cassel because if you're more concerned about what is beyond your control -- and, contrary to what he might think, Jay Cutler is not running this show -- you're doomed as a quarterback.

Hmmm, what recent Broncos quarterback was it that went into a tailspin when there was talk of him being replaced? Fuck, we were just talking about him. Don't tell me, don't tell me!

Of course, Jay Cutler is not doomed. He has a long career ahead of him, and he has a world of talent. What he doesn't have is the guts of Jake Plummer, and too bad.

All the guts that Jake Plummer had to say "I'm going to let Mike Shannahan determine when my career as and NFL Quarterback comes to an end."

/wipes tear from eye

He could learn something from his predecessor. In fact, the more I hear Cutler whine the more I'm convinced Denver owes Plummer an apology.

Sorry Pittsburgh and Indianapolis's defenses were too good for you, Jake!

He didn't score many style points while he was there; he just won. For some reason, that wasn't enough.

Because at the end of the year, no one cares about regular season victories when you make dumb mistakes in the playoffs.

Cutler, on the other hand, is cut a break ... and for what?

That even without looking at the stats (Cutler was 5th overall this past year), one should be able to tell that he's a well above average quarterback.

He took over his rookie season when the Broncos were 7-4 and lost three of five starts. No problem there. Rookie quarterbacks struggle. But then he was 7-9 in his second season and 8-8 in his third. Worse, the Broncos positively self-destructed last year, blowing a three-game lead with three weeks to go.

But he doesn't--

Yeah, I know, it wasn't Cutler's fault. It might have helped if Denver had a running back who could stay in the lineup for three weeks or a defense that didn't leak like the Titanic. But all the Broncos had to do was win one freakin' game in three tries, and they couldn't pull it off. Blame the defense all you want, but look what Cutler did down the stretch: Nothing.

In his last three games he had two touchdown passes and four interceptions. Worse, he lost to Buffalo at home on the next to last weekend of the season. I don't want to hear how he threw for 359 yards or 316 the next weekend against San Diego. He didn't win. Period. End of story.

It was literally all his fault. Nevermind that the Broncos defense provided less resistance than the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 (eat your heart out, Rick Reilly).

So his defense stunk. Kurt Warner's defense in Arizona wasn't all that great, either.

Yeah, except for when they caused two of the best offenses in the NFC to have their worst weeks on the season in consecutive games during the playoffs.

And the Cardinals' running game was worse than Denver's. In fact, it was worse than everyone. But Arizona pulled the mother of all upsets by winning the NFC and coming within 45 seconds of knocking off Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XLIII. Warner overcame the club's shortcomings because that is what good quarterbacks are supposed to do.

It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Warner had the luxury of throwing to the best WR in football that year (Fitzgerald), a guy who'd be a #1 WR on most teams (Boldin), and a 3rd WR that most teams would be happy to have as a #2 (Breaston). Other than that, it was all Warner, all by himself.

Cutler is acknowledged as one of the game's top young quarterbacks, yet he can't overcome much of anything. And that is a problem.

Peyton Manning didn't make the Playoffs till the end of his 3rd full season, and didn't actually win a playoff game until his 6th. Ipso facto: Jay Cutler will never overcome anything.

He can complain about his new head coach, too, but this just in, Jay: Josh McDaniels didn't draft you; Mike Shanahan did.

You, and anyone else on the Broncos who wasn't hand picked by McDaniels, are therefore subject to any and all moronic personnel decisions that revolve around which players the coach has a personal preference toward.

It is also evidence that Cutler might not be the quarterback we thought he was.

Only if you thought this about Cutler: "Mediocre quarterback who can't handle playing in the NFL."

So he lives in the shadow of Elway. Big deal. So did Jake Plummer. In fact, Plummer was closer to the Elway era than Cutler, so the contrasts were more apparent.

Plummer came in after nearly 5 full years of Brian Griese being the whipping boy for the Denver fans/media. Where's Griese's pity parade?

He didn't throw like Elway, but he did find a way to win -- and isn't that how we measure our quarterbacks?

No, you measure than by comparative stats that take into account the hundreds of variables in football. And even if the mouth breathing idiots who consider wins the ultimate stat say that you have to win a Superbowl to be worth a damn.

Cutler was supposed to be an improvement on Plummer, but while he has the measureables -- the size, the big arm, the accuracy -- he's as short on the intangibles as he is on victories.

Intangibles like: throwing a back breaking interception and putting a great season to waste.

Maybe we should face facts and realize that while he's no John Elway he may be no Jake Plummer, either.

Maybe you should face the facts that you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

WMTMQR Part 2: Please Make the Dumb Man Stop

There is no intro I could possibly write that would do this justice. Let's begin.

This recent New York Times story about the work habits of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen is both unintentionally hilarious, and disquieting.

Irony. So much delicious irony in that sentence.

The hilarious part: "The hours Mullen and Tebow spend together are geared around 1.3 seconds, the amount of time Tebow has to make a decision after the snap." This is another instance of the sports world's nutty obsession with claiming to be able to sense tenths of seconds.

Yeah, everyone knows that defensive linemen and blitzing linebackers and safties only move towards the QB in full second increments. Why bother practicing for a 1.3 second release when the defenders will only arrive after either exactly 1 second or exactly 2 seconds? How silly is that? I mean, come on, Tebow. Why bother with precision? Like, for example, say you need to throw a precisely timed pass to a receiver who's running an out route. Shouldn't it be good enough to say "Hey, I'll throw it about 3 seconds after the snap?" I think so. I mean, how much more precise could you get.

While we're on the subject, I think it's worth pointing out that a player who runs the 40 yard dash in 4.6 seconds is clearly no faster than one who runs it in 5.4 seconds. Why bother measuring the tenths? What a waste.

Gregg Easterbrook is so fucking stupid that I can't even creatively express my rage.

The NBA season has started, so it won't be long until an official somberly instructs a timekeeper to put a tenth of a second back on the clock.

Hopefully, because then he will write about it and then I will get to write a blog entry that looks exactly like this one in response.

There is no chance Tebow or any quarterback under game conditions can tell the difference between 1.2 seconds, 1.3 seconds or 1.4 seconds.

Very true. However, idiot, that's not the point of whatever these drills are. It's to give Tebow an innate sense of how long is too long to hold onto the ball. Say he runs drill X 100 times. He releases the ball after 1.2 seconds 25 times, after 1.3 seconds 50 times, and after 1.4 seconds 25 times. You think he couldn't pick out at least a few of the times he held the ball that fraction of a second too long? I'm reasonably sure he could. And while he may be incapable of doing that kind of thinking during a game, the point of a drill is to make it so you don't have to think when the game rolls around. You just act.

Probably a good quarterback can tell the difference between one second and two seconds under game conditions, which is impressive enough.

I can tell the difference bewteen 1 second and 2 seconds when I'm playing a pickup game with my friends. I am not a good quarterback. Anyone with a working brain should be able to make that distinction.

But, "Tim, make your read in 1.3 seconds" is a meaningless instruction.

You're a fucking idiot.

Coaches, officials and others in football and basketball talk about tenths of seconds because it makes them seem super-skilled -- obviously only an incredible genius could plan events down to the tenths of seconds!

Actually, they do it because tenths of seconds are often the difference between sacks and touchdown passes, or buzzer beaters (hence the name!) and waived-off non-shots.

No human being accurately senses the passage of tenths of seconds.

It doesn't take ESP or some kind of supernatural "sense." It takes an awareness of what it feels like to do something a certain way. This is what drills are for.

Sadly, Easterbrook is exactly right about what he considers the "disquieting" part of the NYT article (college athletes who devote excessive amounts of time to sport at the likely peril of their studies), so I won't rip it apart here. Moving on.

TMQ Accuracy Improves by 0.14 Percent: Over the weekend, Mike Pereira, the NFL's chief of officials, said officiating accuracy, which was 97.78 percent in 2007, was down this season to 97.64 percent. That's a difference of 0.14 percent! About 14,500 plays had been run in the NFL this season to the point of Pereira's statement; the difference breaks down to 20 more officiating mistakes leaguewide this season compared to last season. TMQ has always believed that most officiating decisions are correct, in college and high school as well as the pros. But 97.64 percent accuracy seems like runaway pseudo-precision.

So apparently, we can't trust division anymore. sure, my calculator says 25/4 is 6.25. But doesn't that seem a little too precise? Very suspicious. This is what astounds me about Gregg- his inability to follow a chain of logic that arrives at a sensible conclusion. If you told me "NFL officials were 97.64% accurate last year," I might be a little intrigued. I might say "oh yeah, how do you know?" And then, if you showed me this study, which shows that there were X blown calls on Y plays, and that (Y-X)/Y = 97.64, I'd say "Oh. Cool." Gregg's inability to do the same is mind boggling.

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! Minnesota leading Houston 14-7 and facing third-and-3; seven-man blitz; long touchdown to Bernard Berrian.

See below for the Chiefs being hung out to dry by TMQ for not blitzing on a two point conversion, which, as you know, is roughly the equivalent of a third and three. (I admit that the compressed field a defense faces on a potential 2PC mitigates the "long TD" problem and makes a blitz seem slightly more logical. Still... shut up, Easterbrook.)

Arizona leading St. Louis 17-7; six-man blitz; long touchdown to undrafted Division III player Jerheme Urban.

If you'd seen this highlight, you would know that the defensive back who got "burned" for the TD literally had an interception in his hands on this play which he then miraculously flipped/tossed to Urban. This extremely unlikely occurrence is not the fault of the defensive coordinator who called for a blitz.

OK, time to wrap up with an angry and critical one-liner. Uhhhh.... Gregg Easterbrook is ugly.

Something I Don't Understand: Game Recaps

Often, I don't have the opportunity to watch a lot of football on the weekends. Hey - I'm a busy guy! But sometimes I still like to know what's going on in the football world. Therefore, I turn to teh_interwebs to help me catch up! Often, I can even find out what happened in the football game even though I didn't watch any of it!

But here's what I don't understand. The articles generally give me a weird, jumbled version of what actually happened in the game. Case in point: the AP recap of today's Bengals-Jets game. Since I was busy all day and couldn't watch any of it, I had to go find out what happened online. I actually wanted to find out what happened in the game, but I ended up with a mishmash of numbers and a suspiciously postmodern pastiche of game events. I think it's generally consistent with how any sports recap articles are written (for your reference: today's Rams/Redskins game, yesterday's Texas Tech/Nebraska game and even yesterday's ALCS Game Two).

Here's my breakdown of this style, using the Bengals/Jets recap as a source text:

The beginning of the article: The Most Exciting Events In The Game

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Rested and rusty after a bye week, the New York Jets made just enough plays to beat the winless Cincinnati Bengals.

This opener makes sense, though it really kind of kills the suspense! I mean, do I really need to read the rest of this article? Then again, considering the Bengals, did I really even need to find this article in the first place? (LAWL!)

[Are teams really rusty after one bye week? Aren't most teams actually better off after a bye week, since their staff can plan better?]

Thomas Jones ran for two touchdowns, including a 1-yarder late in the game, and caught a pass from Brett Favre for a score as the Jets beat the Bengals 26-14 on Sunday.

A slightly more detailed version of the above - though, from all indications in the stats, Thomas Jones' importance seems overstated. He did score three touchdowns, but he didn't account for 90 yards of total offense. These facts actually hurt my understanding of the game: it seems like the author just wanted to chuck the most interesting events (i.e. touchdowns) right up at the top of the article .... but it completely screws any uninformed reader, because the reader can't figure out the context of those scores.

The End of the Article:Pointless Filler of Uninteresting Events

Fitzpatrick ran it in over the right guard from 1 yard to make it 17-14 with 8 seconds left before halftime. The play capped a 14-play, 66-yard drive in which Fitzpatrick was 8-of-10 for 64 yards and led the Bengals to their first five first downs of the game.

Wait, why am I hearing about this at the very end of this article? Why is the fact that this drive "led the Bengals to their first five first (sic) downs of the game" concealed till the end of the article? Wouldn't it have been more interesting to know this earlier, to demonstrate how the game was still close even though the Bengals didn't manage a first down until over a third of the game had passed?

Is the fact that they had their first five first downs of the game a secret-code for AP writers, perhaps intimating that tonight's post-work alcohol binge will be an overload of this?

Feely's 43-yard field goal with 5:36 left in the third quarter made it 20-14.

Why the heck is this the last line of the story? Is this for people scoring at home while reading the article, so they can know exactly how every single point was scored? Did this event not have any drive associated with it? Or is the writer just getting paid by the word and including as much meaningless verbiage as possible in order to line his pocket?

The problem with this format:

The problem is that the article never really tells the story of the game. Rather than telling the chronological story of the game - and giving the reader a sense of the game's ups and downs and providing actual context for the big plays in the game... the story simply cobbles together a series of highlights which tell no actual story. As a result, the whole article doesn't even want to be read: it's as though the article doesn't even WANT itself to be read... as though the author EXPECTS you to click on something else before you get to the end.

I expect to be attacked by this kind of image-hopping thing when I'm watching TV highlights - they only have a few seconds to tell the story of a game. But with journalism, you'd think you could at least get a coherent story - because every sports game is just that: a story of sequenced events. Unfortunately, every sports game's recap is a mishmash of unsequenced events.

When you're stuck in an image-obsessed culture that has little appreciation for context and real narrative, I guess this is what you get.

Beijing Roundup

Since Larry B's been slacking on his on-the-spot investigative journalism, I'll have to take over. He's probably too busy trying to score with all the Olympic athletes from Sweden who finished their events two days ago and have nothing to do but cruise the Beijing bar scene.

Anyways. My gripes with Olympic coverage lately:

1. Soundbite re: a men's quarterfinal in the 200m:
"If there was an Olympic record for winning easily, Usain Bolt would hold it!"

I wonder how this record would be measured. Maybe in number of smiles, asshole fist-pumps or pointings to the crowd. Seems to be inherently slanted towards non-swimmers, as it's hard to see if Michael Phelps was grinning his big-eared ass off while he was whomping all those other people. But he wasn't, I'm sure, because he is nice and humble and white, unlike those fiery-tempered Latin sprinters.

2. NBC Commercial for the Opening Ceremonies DVD:
Own a part of the spectacular show that people will be talking about foever.

No. The only reason people might talk about this one even in six months? Part of it was faked. Does anyone ever talk about the Opening Ceremonies from past games? If you do, shut up and let me make a point already. Then, go back to wherever weird people like you live, which is probably in a foreign country.

3. Re: an Exxon commercial I've seen running several times:
"Why is this worldwide company involved in a public health problem?

Because devoting .0001% of their 11 billion dollar, national-record profits allows them to put sanctimonious ads on TV to convince more people of a generally false assumption that Exxon is devoting a large share of its energies to fixing public health problem, when actually Exxon is devoting a large share of its energies to fixing the public health problem of its execs not having enough Bentleys.

4. The disappearance of the "human rights" story.

All I heard about in the months and weeks leading up to these games was "China's human-rights record" and "Tibet" and all that. Now, China's not even letting protesters do what little they had hoped. Now, it makes sense to me not to turn th Olympics into a political statement... but it seems to me that a hell of a lot of journalists and media institutions were happy to jump on the "China sucks and mistreats its dissidents!" bandwagon four weeks ago, but are just as happy to jump on the "Wow, these are such a well-run Olympics!" train right now. I call bullshit.

__________________________________________________________________

Also, Jemele Hill's article on Michael Phelps [I think we here at FJM should go to a no-links on her] is unsurprisingly base and formulaic. What's really amazing is that Hill has an incredibly unique ability to generalize her own perspective to everyone. Most of us are cured of this by the time we graduate high school, when we realize that yes, other people do have different opinions. I won't do the whole article, because I think the first two paragraphs sums it up:

What's an athlete? Who's an athlete? What's mental toughness? What are limits? What is greatness?

We thought we knew those answers before Michael Phelps.

What's an athlete? Who's an athlete? Mental toughness? What are limits? What is greatness?
I knew all those answers before Michael Phelps, and I still do.

But now that we've witnessed Phelps win eight gold medals, it turns out we didn't know anything.

Speak for yourself, Jemele.

ESPN brings out the Big Guns

I assume that I'm like most of America with and HDTV - you see what's on in HD, then if there's nothing good on, you watch something that looks amazing because it's in HD. Example - Sunrise Earth on Discovery's HD Theater. I would never wake up early enough to see the sun rise here at home, but you show me the sun rising over Machu Picchu, and I'm there. Sunday I fell victim to ABCHD's coverage of the ArenaBowl. A few years ago I watched the AFL on TNN because they had hilarious yokels call games, and more recently because it was on NBC when I woke up while at college. It makes for decent watching, I suppose, but where's the fucking defense? This year, I fell asleep while watching the San Jose/Philadelphia game and went to ESPN for the score and a column to make fun of. Big surprise - they just used the AP and then made up a stupid graphic to partner it with. So you don't have to click over to read what the AP said (basically, I should have stayed awake to watch the lack of defense,) here's the offending graphic:


A closer look at the "notable" leagues that gave Philadelphia championships:

World TeamTennis? Are you fucking kidding me? Multi Colored Courts, pro athletes that get drafted for a game, (and then back out because they realize that they have to play a game in St. Louis - good choice, Andy.) and get excited because they play music! But remain quiet at all other times.

The MISL? Let me tell you a little something about this league - I've held their MVP and championship trophy. It's nothing cool, just a good Facebook profile photo. The players think they're hot shit, when in fact, they play indoor soccer. Sure they get paid to play a game and sure they have much more skill at soccer than I do at anything, but it's FUCKING INDOOR SOCCER GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, ESPN. Really. What other shit leagues will you pull out?

How about another league that ESPN has a giant TV stake in - Major League Lacrosse. Not to be confused with the NLL, (which should be easy to do, they're in the same stat shot) the MLL will be broadcast on ESPN2 until 2016. And only ESPN2. Until they need to run ESPNews because Brett Favre has sent a text message which some might construe as him thinking he might want to play another year, then it will move over to ESPN Classic/3.

While I don't really have anything against minor league hockey or indoor lacrosse, how does one go about bragging about those championships? You live in a city with an NHL team and you're going to celebrate that the minor league team won? No wonder those people threw batteries at J.D. Drew, the biggest accomplishment in sports are the shitty teams winning all the trophies.

Most seem to think Philadelphia hasn't won a pro sports title since the 76ers in 1983.

And most who read your adorable graphic will realize that they have not, in fact, won anything of value.

Idiocy, Thy Name Is Jemele Hill

Life's been dealing me some lemons lately. It's been rough. My parents' basement is developing a mold problem, my Super NES isn't reading cartridges right now, we're out of Pop Tarts, and worst of all, my Kate Beckinsale poster fell off the wall and somehow got ripped in the process. Sigh. That's just the way it goes sometimes, I guess. But whenever I hit a rough patch like this, there are two truths I can always lean on to make me feel better:

1. "No matter how bad life gets, there is always beer." - Norm MacDonald
2. No matter how bad life gets, Jemele Hill will always be the perfect balance of entertaining and ignorant.

There was one particular hand gesture that came to mind when I heard the NFL will be intensely scrutinizing players' hand signals for possible gang signs next season. And let's just say the response I thought of is the same gesture Michael Vick gave Atlanta Falcons fans.

Let's just say that since you recently decided to compare rooting for the Celtics to being a Nazi sympathizer, you might as well just directly say that the NFL can go fuck itself. Go ahead, let it out.

I'm usually not opposed to a league being proactive, but in this case not only has the NFL gone too far, it has successfully insinuated to the public that the league is full of Doughboys and O-Dogs.

The second clause and the third clause there are redundant. That's like saying "not only are you ugly, you're also very unappealing to look at." Unless, of course, Jemele thinks there's another aspect of the policy that takes things too far, which is doubtful. Also- easy on the hyperbole, champ. The league is not insinuating that it's "full of" gangsters; it's insinuating that it's worried about the possible presence of some level of gang affiliation.

Sports leagues have a right to protect their image. Doing so often rubs players the wrong way, but sometimes it's what is best for the league and its players. NBA players rebuffed the league dress code, but ultimately it was for their own good. An undying allegiance to Phat Farm and Jesus pieces was costing the league and the players money at the box office. When corporate sponsors are uncomfortable and reluctant to spend, the players don't make as much as they possibly can. Besides, with any job, there is nothing wrong with instituting a standard of decorum.

Remember this- it will be very, very important.

But the NFL's latest move is not about decorum or even petrified sponsors.

The "Paul Pierce incident" (the impetus for this idea) is less than 2 months old, and no NFL games have been played since it happened. How do we know how sponsors would respond? How do we know how much negative media attention might develop over the first incident that resembles Pierce's that happens this fall? We don't. Thus, the league is being proactive. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

It's just a league overreaction, and a reminder to the players that they -- and not the coaches and owners -- are under the rule of a stern commissioner.

I think pretty much everyone involved in the league is aware of Goddell's personality and iron-fisted rule at this point. I don't think any coach or owner is happily parked on their ass, saying to themselves "Ah, good ol' Rog. I know he's on my side. I should be able to do pretty much whatever I want."

An NFL official told the Los Angeles Times this week that the league was focusing its attention on players' hand gestures because of an overblown incident involving Paul Pierce during the NBA playoffs. After a scrum with Atlanta's Al Horford in the first round of the playoffs, Pierce flashed what the NBA deemed "menacing gestures" toward the Hawks' bench and was fined $25,000. Pierce vehemently denied making a gang sign.

That makes it overblown, I guess. Now, no one's definitively saying that Pierce runs with a gang and would have shot and killed the Hawks if he could have. But what he did was certainly strange, needless, and overaggressive. The fine might have been excessive, but I'm not sure if I'd call the incident "overblown." It wasn't that huge of a story to begin with, and gesturing at an opponents' bench in the way Pierce did probably isn't within the bounds of good behavior.

(Side note- this is why I hate Boston sports- check out the video of the incident. Then check out this video from a local Boston sports station, which tries to get Pierce off the hook by documenting non-threatening hand signals he uses during pregame celebrations that are absolutely nothing like the ones from the incident. Now, maybe any city's local sports station would make a claim like this if one of their stars did something sketchy. But I doubt it. Just my opinion. Go fuck yourself, Boston fans besides those who read this blog.)

According to the Times, if a game officials sees a "suspicious hand gesture," he must alert the league, which will be hiring gang experts to review game tapes.

Right. Exactly. It's not like they're throwing down personal foul penalties or taking points off the board during the actual game. They're just looking into suspicious incidents to make sure there isn't anything overly negative going on.

"We were always suspicious that [gang-related hand signals] might be happening," Mike Pereira, the NFL's vice president of officiating, told the L.A. Times. "But the Paul Pierce thing is what brought it to light. When he was fined … that's when we said we need to take a look at it and see if we need to be aware of it."

What a normal, expected reaction from a business as powerful and profitable as the NFL. (No sarcasm)

Being more aware is generally a good thing, and I'm certainly not suggesting the NFL look the other way on something as serious as gang violence.

Except that by bitching about a new policy that will simply involve the league reviewing any suspicious signals, you're basically implying that they should be looking the other way. We have a label for this.

But by responding to a situation in another pro league, the NFL successfully planted a stereotype about its own -- namely, that the league is filled with Bloods and Crips.

Damn you, NFL, for being proactive! You know, I don't really think any given sport should start a steroid testing program until its athletes are breaking records at a furious pace. By instituting a program before any of its own athletes are caught, that sport is insinuating that steroids are a widespread problem. We all know that's not the case.

The next time a player throws up an ode to his fraternity in the end zone, Johnny Consumer is going to be thinking: "Drive-by."

Based on the Pierce incident, it's somewhat probable that that reaction would have happened whether or not the league instituted this policy.

The last thing the NFL should want to do is add to the perception that players are out of control.

Yes, it would be much better for them to bury their collective heads in the sand and insist that their sport couldn't possibly have any problems.

We can get that idea without the league's help, even though NFL rule breakers are the exception, not the rule.

This is one of the most batshit crazy things I have ever read. Let me simplify Jemele's stream of logic for you: Paul Pierce did something sketchy and got fined for it ==> Paul Pierce doesn't play in the NFL ==> Therefore, it's dumb for the NFL to institute a policy that responds to Pierce's incident ==> People already think the league is full of out of control players anyways

Don't read that too many times. You might get dizzy. I'm not 100% happy with the way it turned out, but I think that's Jemele's fault rather than my own.

Maybe the NFL decided now was a good time to reiterate its tough-on-crime stance because of some of the criminal shenanigans that have taken place the past week. Jaguars wide receiver Matt Jones was charged with felony drug possession, former Viking Darrion Scott received a three-game league suspension for putting a plastic bag over the head of his 2-year-old son, and Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw was released from jail after serving time for a probation violation.

You are not helping your case. (Again.)

Time to show everyone who's the boss.

Yeah, actually, maybe it was.

What's lost is that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest gang affiliation was even an issue for the NFL.

Jemele is still struggling with the concept of proactivity (sic?). Hey, why worry about a potentially dangerous problem until it's a really legitimate problem?

When asked on Friday if the NFL had a gang problem, league spokesperson Greg Aiello quickly issued a strong denial.

What the fuck else is an official spokesperson going to say?

So why is the NFL creating smoke, when it's adamant there's not an actual fire?

You're absolutely clueless.

"What they've done is publicize the solution without giving us any information on the problem," said David Cornwell, an Atlanta-based sports attorney who once served as the NFL's assistant general counsel.

That's because they probably don't know much about the problem, but want the public to know that they're being proactive. Do you see a trend developing here?

All this does is ease a path to stereotyping. Even if a game official witnessed a "suspicious hand gesture," how exactly could the NFL prove intent?

They don't need to. They need to investigate and see if there really is a problem or not. If it seemed like there was a problem, they would probably discipline (or at least have a discussion) with the player in question. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

In my old Detroit neighborhood, kids and adults use hand signals all the time, but they represent neighborhood pride, not gang activity.

That's fine, but maybe they represented different things to different people. Some of them probably were/are open for interpretation. And remember how Jemele approved of the NBA's dress code, because millions of dollars from sponsors and fans was at stake? Hmmmmm. If you really stretch your brain, you should be able to envision a scenario in which the same issues come into play for the NFL.

These days, players are so creative they invent their own signals. Doug Christie, possibly the most whipped man in the history of professional sports, used to send hand gestures to his wife, Jackie, after made shots and free throws. Jason Kidd did the same on foul shots as an ode to his ex-wife, Joumana. Steve McNair put up his fraternity sign on touchdowns.

All of these are perfectly acceptable. If these incidents happened in the NFL after the institution of this policy, the league would probably review the tapes, consult with the players, decide whether or not the signal was harmful to the league's imagine, and then either let them slide or ask the player to please stop. Not that difficult.

And sometimes, players merely copy what they see from hip-hop videos, unaware of what those hand signals mean. It's naive, but imitation is the root of pop culture.

Were the players to accidentally use gang signs they saw in music videos, the league's paying customers and sponsors would probably not care where or how said signs were learned.

The NFL's heart is in the right place, but there are times when even the most well-intentioned rule can be harmful. Case in point: David Dicks, the police chief in Flint, Mich., has come under fire for ordering officers to arrest people who wear their pants too low and expose what we'd rather not see. Personally I detest seeing young men "sag," because they're copying prisoners. But even I can't argue that Dicks' directive is unconstitutional and provides a convenient way for cops to racially profile.

I for one don't know what Dicks' (haha.... "dicks") motives were. But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt here and suppose that this policy is actually about indecency rather than race. Just like this NFL policy is about protecting the image of the league, rather than race. Oh wait, this is a Jemele Hill column. I almost forgot. Everything is about race.

"I do understand what they're trying to do [in the NFL], but I don't think it's a move in the right direction," said Carl Taylor, a senior fellow at Michigan State University who has studied gangs, violence and youth culture for years and is the principal investigator for the Michigan Gang Research Project.

Why is that, Carl? Please explain your position.

"I also understand why they don't want guys doing [gang signs].

Oh, OK. You're not going to clarify. You're just going to contradict yourself.

It's also interesting because you open that Pandora's box. A lot of people don't know the Ku Klux Klan has signs too. Are you going to police all signs?

You definitely should. All signs linked to violent, hateful organizations, anyways.

"The mere fact that they've done this, we're looking at black and Latino athletes. It does have the undercurrent of racial stereotyping,

1. People of all races are members of gangs. There may be a disproportionate number of non-whites in gangs, but it's not like some kind of uniquely black/Latino thing.
2. If that is the case, it's not the NFL's fault. Not wanting to appear to be racially stereotyping is not a good excuse to overlook a issue like this. (Sorry about the double negative.)

but also youth culture stereotyping."

Hiding gang activity behind the pseudo-intellectually protective umbrella of "youth culture" is disgusting.

The NFL wants to make money and have a clean league.

And this is not a good way to achieve that goal, because....

But it has to be careful. In its thirst to appear tough, fans can be left with the wrong impression.

Remember when you said this?

The last thing the NFL should want to do is add to the perception that players are out of control. We can get that idea without the league's help...

You're fucking stupid.

Best Title I Could Come Up With: Jemele Hill Flat Out Sucks at Writing About Sports

After more than a year at this blogowebpage, I'm starting to feel like I can assign specific adjectives to some of the writers we most frequently critique. When I think Mariotti, I think "ignorant." When I think Simmons, I think "obnoxious." And when I think Jemele Hill, it gets simpler: I think bad. She's terrible. She's just... fucking awful. I'm not linking the article. It's her most recent as of Sunday night.

More than a week has passed since the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship, and I've been patiently waiting for someone to point out the obvious.

Well, you're the sportswriter with the national audience. Maybe some dude in a bar in North Dakota made whatever point you're looking for, but it's unlikely more than six people heard him. Why don't you go out on a limb and take care of this big announcement yourself?

Fine, let me be the bearer of bad news.

Great. Glad you finally gave in.

The Western Conference is overrated.

That's it? That's your big point? Let's count the ways in which that is dumb and/or wrong.

1) Arguments about which conference/league/division is tougher or better than its counterparts are lame and pointless to begin with except in very special circumstances. (I'm honestly not sure I can make it through another college football season with this bullshit as the backdrop/main talking point. I might just have to take a fall off and hope that people find something else to yammer about by 2009. Yes, SEC, you have a lot of good teams. We get it. Go fuck yourselves.) Of course, assuming you buy into that like I do, much of this post immediately becomes very ironic. I already thought about that and I'm OK with it.

2) Six games between two teams, in the context of conference superiority, means nothing.

3) Not that it matters, see point 1, but it was pretty obvious that the Western Conference was a lot better than the Eastern Conference this year. The West was 66 games over .500 in matchups between the two. That's an enormous advantage. Yes, the Celtics were perhaps the best overall team in the league. (I still maintain that the Spurs or Jazz would beat them in the finals more than half the time, but whatever.) That, however, does not make the East better. Was the WAC better than the Big 12 because Boise State beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl? Was the NL better than the AL because the Cardinals beat the Tigers in the World Series? No, and no. Unless you're Jemele Hill, in which case: yes, and definitely, because you have a tiny brain.

The basketball certainly is entertaining. The Phoenix-San Antonio opening-round series was better than any of this year's NCAA tournament games.

It went a mere five games, and was never in question after the 1st quarter of game three. So... no. There were probably like ten March Madness games that most people would consider "better" than that series, regardless of how cool games one and two were. You sound like JA Adande.

And if I had been told I could attend only one NBA game this season, I'm positive I would have picked a Western Conference matchup.

But winning and entertaining are two different things.

Very true. And all season long, the West ran the East's collective ass up and down the court, winning 57% of the games they played against each other.

All season long, and especially during the playoffs, we heard nonstop about how much better the Western Conference is than the Eastern Conference.

If this is true, and I don't think the part about hearing it "especially" during the playoffs is, that's probably because every playoff team in the West won at least 50 games while the East sported just three 50 win teams (and one playoff team that as eight games under .500). Seems fair.

But if that's true, why has the East won three of the past five NBA championships?

This is perhaps the stupidest sentence in the whole article. Again, let's use a list to specify why:

1) Small sample size means the finals aren't indicative of much in terms of relative conference strength

2) I must have forgotten something, isn't this article about the 2007-2008 season?

3) Since in Jemele's mind it obviously isn't, I think we might as well point out that the West has won seven of the past ten titles

4) Oh wait- that makes no fucking sense; why does the fact that Detroit beat LA four years ago make the West overrated now?

5) Think about that for a second. Jemele wants you to believe that, contrary to popular belief, the West is not better than the East right now. Why? In part, because Detriot beat LA in the finals in 2004.

6) Wow.

(And when you consider the Pistons-Spurs series in 2005 lasted seven games, the East easily could have been winners of four of the past five.)

Nevermind about that last sentence being the dumbest in the article. Hey, if the Lakers don't blow that huge lead in game four of this finals, it goes seven, and you never know what can happen in a game seven. And if the refs hadn't stolen the 2006 series from the Mavs, they might have won it. So it's really the West that could have won four of the past five.

We're so fond of the style of play in the West, we've given the conference a free pass for how its teams have recently failed to show up in the NBA Finals.

The Lakers sort of showed up this year. (Not so much in 2004, but again, that was five finals ago.) On the other hand, the Spurs have obviously shown up in each of their three recent appearances, and the Mavs definitely showed up in 2006. That was a damn good series. What are we talking about again?

The past few Western Conference teams in the Finals have had one very obvious character flaw:

They've been softer than John Daly's midsection.

Wow, how do you ruin a John Daly joke? That's difficult to do. The Spurs are the opposite of soft. That Mavs team was also not soft. So let's go ahead and take what happened this year, and extend it several years back without regard for reality or facts. Sounds great.

The Mavericks mentally shrunk against the Heat in 2006.

Few could blame them, given the way that series unfolded. (They also lost games 5 and 6 by one and three points respectively, FWIW.)

The Lakers were completely undressed by the Pistons in '04. And this year, reigning MVP Kobe Bryant and his sidekick, Pau Gau-soft, were punked by the Celtics.

This is the big, bad West?

Yeah, it is. The same West that has flat out torched the East in head to head play each of the last several years. (60 games over .500 in 2006-07, 55 games in 2005-06, 62 games in 2004-05)

It's often been argued that if you entered Western Team A into the Eastern Conference, it'd either win the conference outright or at least be among the the East's top teams. But after watching how the Celtics annihilated the Lakers, how can that possibly be true?

Insanity. Absolute insanity. No explanation needed. (Except for the part about people saying Team A would outright win the East, which would obviously be untrue. And I don't remember hearing it this past season from any analyst.)

In fact, a lot of the Western teams have major issues lurking behind those pretty 50-win records.

Just as a lot of Eastern mid-tier teams have major issues "lurking" behind their 35-45 win records.

Houston can't win a playoff series.

Apparently, if you use some kind of advanced math, their inability to succeed in the Western playoffs proves that they wouldn't be one of the better teams in the East. You know, I don't see anyone out East besides Boston, Detroit, or Cleveland winning a whole lot of playoff series either.

Utah can't win on the road.

They won 17 regular season games there this year. Besides Boston, Detroit, and Orlando, no Eastern team won more than 18. In 2006-07, their 20 road wins were more than every Eastern team except Detroit and Cleveland.

Denver doesn't play defense.

Just like Washington and Cleveland don't play offense.

Golden State can't get focused (and doesn't play defense).

The Indiana Pacers, the East's #9 team this year (as the Warriors were in the West): a pillar of focusedness. Thanks, Jamal Tinsley and Jermaine O'Neal!

Phoenix can't get past San Antonio (and doesn't always play defense).

Just as with the Houston situation, apparently the fact that they can't get past a Western team that's won three titles in the last six years means they wouldn't cut it out East.

New Orleans doesn't have enough pieces and is too inexperienced.

Hilarious and inaccurate anecdotal bullshit.

Dallas has yet to regain its confidence after losing to Miami in the Finals.

They have managed, however, to continue to win lots of games.

And San Antonio, the West's savior, is starting to get old.

OK, you got me there. Clearly they suck. And Boston and Detroit are a couple of spring chickens. No key players of 30 on either of those teams.

At least in the East, there's no pretending. When Eastern Conference teams stink, they make it obvious (see: the 76ers', Nets' and Cavaliers' Finals appearances).

This is a direct contradiction to pretty much everything you've written so far.

A team with 37 wins (Atlanta) and a team with 45 wins (Cleveland) pushed the Celtics to seven games -- something the mighty West's Lakers had no shot at doing.

Something they had no shot whatsoever at doing, unless of course they managed to not pull an epic collapse in game four and lose in the final minute. Yeah, they were really miles away from making it go seven.

Both Boston and Detroit had a better winning percentage against Western Conference teams this season than against teams in their own conference. But outside of Boston, very few people thought the Celtics had a chance against the Lakers.

Why?

Because Vegas is close to LA, and because everyone thought Kobe would carry the Lakers because recent history suggests that having the best individual player in a Finals will lead to victory. I don't think conference superiority was at the forefront of most people's minds. Maybe it was tucked somewhere in the back. Maybe.

Understand, this isn't an argument about which conference is deeper. Clearly the West wins that argument. Every Western playoff team won more than 50 games, while just three teams in the East accomplished that. Only four Western teams had a losing record against the East -- the SuperSonics, Clippers, Timberwolves and Grizzlies. Just four Eastern teams managed a winning record against the West.

(Larry B slaps holds head in hands, slowly shaking it back and forth)

That ship sailed the second you started writing this, Jemele. You weren't on it.

But despite those gaudy, imbalanced numbers, the East's recent dominance in the NBA Finals

Probably the loosest usage of "dominance" I've ever seen.

has earned its teams the right to tell everyone to be quiet about how great the West is.

I sure hope the Celtics' and Pistons' shoulders don't get too sore from carrying those other thirteen teams around in the context of that argument.

At the very least, there should be a moratorium on that crazy talk that the NBA playoff format should be changed so that teams with the top 16 records make the playoffs, regardless of conference.

So Jemele can even admit (like five sentences ago) that the West is deeper than the East. But she still calls for a moratorium on this idea, which has been proposed precisely to award the conference with more depth. Let's hear it for consistency.

Golden State last season against the five, count 'em, five Eastern playoff teams that finished with worse records than the Warriors: 8-2. Yeah, it would have been totally unfair to let them into the playoffs in front of the 37 win Hawks or 40 win Sixers.

Horrendous.