What?

Bud Selig has failed at many things during his time as commissioner of MLB. (His response to steroids being the most obvious example; I'm also not happy with his handling of parity-related issues.) He has also succeeded at many things, but the article I'm about to highlight is supposedly about his failures so I just wanted to establish up front that I'm not a Selig apologist. I'm generally on board with this guy's premise. However: what?

The thought of major league baseball without Bud Selig as commissioner? I'm absolutely giddy.

Sure. I wouldn't say I'm giddy, but I do think it's time for a change.

Replacing Selig is the only way that major league baseball can really get their house in order.

OK... fine. I think it's hyperbolic to say that MLB's "house" is "out of order," or whatever, but fine.

Yes, Selig has done a number of positive things during his reign; having said that, he's missed the boat on other opportunities.

Hear hear! Such as...

Perhaps a new commissioner will embrace the concept of two 15-team leagues, and schedule one interleague game every day, rather than 2 dedicated interleague periods, leaving a lone NL game on the schedule.

What?

Maybe he'll recongize the necessity to go back to the balanced schedule, if for no other reason than to help the have-nots in the AL East have a fighting chance.

What?

The travesty of the whole "contraction" issue - a total red herring - and the "this time it counts" nonsense surrounding the All- Star Game are just two of the strikes against Selig.

Two of the least significant ones. People need to shut the fuck up about the All Star Game. Immediately.

Avoiding a work stoppage for 15-plus years is a genuine accomplishment.

What? Weren't we just talking about...

(pause)

What?

"Missed the boat" on the "opportunity" to fuck around with scheduling? Is this clown seriously bothered by the idea that two NL teams have to play each other during weeks when everyone else is involved in interleague? Is anyone out there- anyone at all- clamoring for fewer intradivisional games?

You know what, fuck it. Let's just keep Selig. I'd hate to have him replaced by a guy who has the same shortcomings, but also thinks it's a great idea to have at least one interleague series happening at all times.

No! Readers! Come Back!

It's true, the Google Analytics don't lie. They're leaving this blog faster than Jerramy Stevens from a court-mandated AA meeting. Not too soon! Anyways, will they come back and start reading again if I do several Bill Simmons posts in a row? My guess is that they will, if only to let me know that I'm just a jealous hater and, come on, Simmons really isn't that bad. Sure, he used to be better, but I like his "every fan" perspective! Etc., etc. Yup. I can see it already. Eight comments, five of which are from anonymous/Anonymous and sound just like that.

Today he was lazy and did a chat, so I will in turn be lazy and pick on a handful of the most embarrassing questions he chose to print along with some criticisms of his own handiwork. As a change of pace I will not be complaining about the subject matter covered. Hey, his Celtics limped through the oh-so-powerful Eastern Conference and into the finals. He's earned the right to talk exclusively about them. As a non-change of pace, however, I will be pointing out a basic fact that Bill for whatever reason has so much difficulty grasping- Boston sports fans are no different than passionate fans from anywhere else. His inability to understand this might be the saddest thing about the guy.

Shane, Seoul Korea: Why is it that everyone....well at least most analysts on ESPN so convinced that the Lakers will roll over the Celtics. Considering most of them picked Detroit to win in 6 whats with the lack of respect?

To Simmons' credit, he answered that he didn't think a lack of respect had anything to do with it and it's just the fact that Kobe is playing so well that pushes analysts towards LA. I still felt like this was worth printing. A Celtics fan... is complaining... about a perceived lack of respect for his team... by ESPfuckingN, of all media outlets. It's a crazy world out there, I guess. If you look long enough, you can find people that are stupid enough to hold almost any opinion.

The irony here being that this is coming from a guy who doesn't feel like John Elway gets enough respect as one of the all time greats. Put him with Montana's supporting cast and he'd have six rings. Hey, I'm just saying is all. But Shane from Seoul is definitely stupider than me by several degrees of magnitude. Yes, Shane. ESPN totally hates the Celtics. You've got it figured out. When the playoffs started, their executives were praying for a Utah/Orlando finals so they could finally start covering teams that really draw in the viewers.

Rich (Bayonne, NJ): I hear you Bill, I am surrounded by Laker fans in NJ at both of my jobs! Laker fans are like Kobe, the biggest front runners in the league!!! Hey since you live in LA, do Laker fans arrive only 30 minutes after tip off instead of 45 minutes since it's the Finals!!!

I know he's just a reader and not a professional journalist, but hey Rich! Don't you know anything about punctuation! Like have you heard that if you ask a question you shouldn't end it with an exclamation mark! The real issue here, though, is the hilarious accusation of front runnerism from (presumably) a Celtic fan being leveled at Laker fans. Really? The Lakers? You know, one of the league's three most popular teams for the past several decades? I mean, if longtime Red Sox fans wanted to accuse Rockies fans of being front runners (or at least very fairweather) before last fall's World Series, they could definitely make a case. This, on the other hand, is butt-ass preposterous. They're the most popular franchise in the country's second largest city and have worldwide brand recognition. They're an extremely difficult ticket to grab on most nights and have been, again, for decades. Your team, on the other hand, couldn't even dream of selling out its own arena 14 months ago. You have a national fan base, and plenty of passionate lifelongers, but to point a finger at Laker fans... wow.

Bill Simmons: The Laker fans with good seats arrive in the second quarter or late in the first quarter. It's just a fact. They get a bad rap for their cheering during the game - they do know when to cheer and how to affect a game - but the tardiness is unacceptable.

Fair.

it's also worth mentioning that they booed their hero Kobe on Opening Night. Would the Boston fans have ever booed Bird in a million years?????????

Not fair. Because Bird was white.

Rick (LA): Don't forget all these "true" Boston fans chanted MVP for Kobe in the Garden last year...Boston fans the best in the world!

Bill Simmons: That story is NOT true. half the crowd for that game were Laker fans, those were the ones chanting. They were able to get tickets because the Celts were something like 12-40 at the time.

Nothing front-runnerish about that. And how many times has Bill's dad, the foremost authority on anything and everything related to the Celtics, complained about how hard it was to get rid of unwanted tickets last season? But that's not because Boston fans are to some degree front runnerish. It's because... wait for Bill's reasoning.

Chet (MA): and celtics fans aren't front runners? just look at the attendance last year compared to this year and it'll tell you all you need to know about celtics fans. you know what? you could say the same about all the boston teams if you look at the attendance before parcells for the patriots and the attendance before 1998 for the red sox.

Bill Simmons: Ridiculous. The Celtics fans were always there - it's just that it's freaking expensive to go to an NBA game, it's tough to shell out 75 bucks for a ticket to go watch Sebastian Telfair play point guard. The fans never left.

Oh. Really? Did they not? Also, notice that he didn't have a response to the Patriots and Red Sox accusations, the former of which is most definitely true.

Pat (Boston): Welcome to the spin/full denial zone. Someone presents you with facts about attendence and you just dismiss it with: "The fans never left" with a weak excuse that people cant afford $75 dollars? Gimme a break, I live in Beacon Hill and frequent "the Harp" and "the fours". Not only was there no one in the stadium, there was no one in the sports bars. Lemme guess, people just can't afford $3 dollar beers anymore?

Bill Simmons: In defense of the Celtics fans, the team was openly trying to lose games last year for Oden or Durant. Why would anyone go pay to see that?

Bill Simmons is taking crazy pills and delusional pills. There's nothing more that can be said about the situation. Look, no team is going to pack the house every night all season every season. No team is insulated from the effect its record has on attendance. But his continual insistence that Boston fans are somehow different and special can only be attributed to some kind of drug regimen at this point. (I liked his last chat session from about a month ago, when he assumed that Boston invented the "M-V-P! M-V-P!" chant. He was immediately rebuffed, but you could tell that until that happened, he legitimately just assumed it had originated there. I mean... why would it not? It's Boston, for fahk's sake.)

The numbers are right in front of you, douche. I don't care how fucking bad they were. The 2006-2007 Celtics finished 20th in the league in home attendance, 23rd in percentage of seats sold, 15th in road attendance and 20th in road percentage of seats sold. The 2007-2008 Celtics, on the other hand, were 12th in attendance (limited by the size of their arena), sold 100% of their seats, 1st in road attendance, and 1st in road percentage of seats sold. It's pretty crystal clear. That's a sign of a fan base that doesn't like to show up when their team isn't winning. Not that that's anything to be ashamed of! It's normal. Yankee Stadium isn't always packed to the gills. There are nights when you can get a seat to a Montreal Canadiens game pretty easily. Just don't go thinking your teams are any different. Unless they're a popular NFL team, they're always going to struggle to pull in capacity crowds when the team stinks.

Kyle (NC): You say Kobe's a jerkto his teammates...Didn't Bird call his teammates little girls after they lost a Finals game? All the things you're saying about Kobe, they used to say about MJ...A lot of the greats were sometimes jerks to their teammates.

Bill Simmons: True. And the next game, McHale put Rambis on his ass and we went on to win the series. Bird did it for motivation, Kobe did it because he's socially inept.

Bill Simmons, sports psychologist, is able to easily discern the subtle nuances that separate these two situations without even talking to either player.

Jake (DC): You can't win. You should have known this after however many years of marriage. Also, should/does the commissioner have any say in trades which are clearly made to help out old friends? I mean, doesn't that upset the competitive balance of the game while at the same rip the fans off? Something should be done about this...

Bill Simmons: The thing is, in both cases (KG trade and Gasol trade), it clearly helped the league as a whole. So nobody said anything. The interesting move would have been if the Spurs or Suns filed a lawsuit or tried to get an injunction on the basis that the Gasol trade was not fair and that other teams weren't given a chance to properly bid for him. Would have LOVED to have seen how that played out.

Dear Christ, I hope he's serious in thinking that that could actually happen. A whole new angle on the tininess of Bill's brain- honest belief that sports teams in this day and age would consider trying to go to court against other teams because of allegedly unfair trades. Fantastic. I really think the Bucs, Cowboys, Packers, and Patriots should file suit against the Chargers for not shopping Eli Manning's draft rights appropriately back in 2004.

Let's take a little look at a bit of homerism.

First this-

chapin (Boston, ma): Bill can you set the odds for PerkIsABeast.com's servers crashing after The Beast puts up 20 and 20 in game one? How do you think he will fair throughout this series?

Bill Simmons: Forgot to mention Perk as an enormous X-factor for this series. He was legitimately eye-opening in the Detroit series - nearly averaged a double-double and made some monster defensive plays. He's becoming the player we always wanted him to be.

Which is fine to say, until you respond to the exact same kind of sentiment from a Lakers fan about one of their players like this-

Renaldo (Los Angeles, CA): When are you going to admit you were wrong about Lamar Odom. The guy hit two game tying shots in game 4 of the Utah series, he hit all the clutch free throws in Game 4 of the Spurs series. The guy has been coming through

Bill Simmons: You're right, Lamar has proven himself - every question has been answered. The guy is an absolute sure thing in the Finals.

Like I said in my intro, nothing wrong with Bill being a homer in this context. It's just funny to notice.

Matt Walsh, From under some rock: Ok what if I said that I have a tape of the entire Patriots team clubbing baby seals. Would that keep me in the limelight for another week?

Bill Simmons: You're leading TMQ this week!

Easterbrook isn't due to write another column until August, but we can only hope he manages to squeeze in a little something extra in response to this.

Noam (NY, NY): Can we get a promise that after your inevitable finals and post-finals columns, we get a 2 week moratorium on columns that are about Boston sports teams (including veiled Boston team columns)? Maybe a column about having kids making somebody revert to writing only about their favorite teams?

Bill Simmons: I am doing my best not to over-Boston it... but come on, the Pats were the most written about team of this decade, the Sox won the World Series and the Celts just made the Finals. What do you wanyt from me?

We want you to write about other stuff more often. It's pretty simple. You don't have to ignore Boston. You just have to talk about them less, and other teams more. I promise the stories are out there. Really, they are.

I didn't write ONE Celtics column during the regular season... sure, it was because I didn't want to jinx them, but still.

1. That's incorrect.

2. Sure, there was only one true all-Celtics column, and it came pretty near the end of the regular season. But 80% of every mailbag and 60% of every "general NBA" column was devoted to the Celtics. Just saying.

Let's wrap it up.

Ben(New Jersey): Sports Guy! I've been a fan for years but I've never written in before. I'm a senior in high school and my friends and I love to play a game called KG that. It's when you take something ordinary and go crazy over it. For example, we went out for Chinese last Friday and after one of my friends ordered his beef and broccoli i told him he should KG it when it comes. When the waiter brought out his beef, he got up on his chair and started pounding his chest screaming "THATS HOW YOU ORDER CHINESE" he then ran around high fiving random people while pounding his chest and screaming. We ended up getting kicked out, but I'd say it was worth it. Whats the funniest situation you could see where you could KG something?

You are a zero. You're a disaster. You don't deserve to have access to a computer, let alone the internet. You don't deserve to reproduce. You and your unfunny friends should be immediately deported to the least exciting town in Mongolia. You stink.

Bill Simmons: Love it!

Of course you do.

FMTMQR: You Can't Be Fucking Serious

(For anyone new who is confused by the above acronym: if Gregg Easterbrook, aka the Tuesday Morning Quarterback, writes something stupid in his column (Ha! If!), I usually complain about it the next day in what I call the Wednesday Morning Tuesday Morning Quarterback Review. If you can't figure out why this one is titled FMTMQR instead of WMTMQR, please navigate away from this site. Go to Google and search for "GED programs.")

Let's just get right to the action; it'll be brief, because I want to watch the Djokovic/Federer match. What? Tennis is for sissies, you say? Well, that may be true. But at least I'm not pulling a total nerd move like you and reading a blog. Go practice kissing the robot you built some more. Nerd.

Norv Turner's decision to punt in New England territory in the fourth quarter when trailing by two scores might go down as the single worst coaching decision of all time. Let us count the ways in which the decision was ludicrous. First, the Patriots have the best offense in football history, so the odds of getting the ball back quickly without New England scoring were very low. Second, you need a touchdown and a field goal and are in field goal range. Why aren't you at least attempting a field goal? Sure a long field goal try might not work, but punting is guaranteed not to work!

OK. I'll buy that. That punt was a bad decision (more on it later), and since the Chargers were down 9 points, a field goal would have drawn them within one score. That's fair analysis.

But then... IN THE VERY NEXT PANDAFUCKING PARAGRAPH:

Giants coaches, please note -- two straight playoff games have featured opponents playing the Patriots close through three quarters, then folding in the fourth quarter after going passive. (Trailing New England by 11 points late in the divisionals, Jacksonville passively kicked a field goal on fourth-and-goal.)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

If you are not wholly and completely insulted by those two paragraphs when read together, I don't know what to tell you. I don't care where the Jaguars were on the field. THEY KICKED THE FIELD GOAL TO GET WITHIN ONE SCORE. YOU JUST CRITICIZED THE CHARGERS FOR NOT DOING THE EXACT SAME THING. Fucking.... fuck. No. This is not happening.

Stat of the Week No. 10: Three days after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Favre threw a killer overtime interception that cost the Packers the NFC Championship Game at home.

If he's referring to the always talked-about cover jinx, I guess I can't blame a guy who bases most of his analysis on "the football Gods" for also believing said jinx. Still, this isn't even a stat. It's a description of a play. That happened in a game. And is not "cleverly noteworthy" in any way, like the rest of the stats of the week are intended to be. So Favre threw a horrible interception. And? Why not just make the stats of the week a rundown of the most significant plays of the week? I vote yes. Everyone else who votes yes, raise your hand. OK, now raise your hand if you just don't give a shit. OK, put them down, I get it.

By sending in the punt team, Turner quit on the game. At that point, he no longer was trying to win -- rather, he appeared to be attempting to hold down the margin of defeat so people would hire him to do banquet-circuit speeches in the offseason and introduce him as a coach who gave the Patriots a good game.

Allegedly, this is the exact same thing Jack Del Rio of Jacksonville did two weekends ago. Actually, it is completely false, fabricated, made up, and many other things that synonymous with those words. I'll concede that coaches might do stuff like this during meaningless regular season games. But you're really telling me that in the playoffs, with all of the following on the line: a Super Bowl trip... a shot at eternal glory... a shot at extra eternal glory for knocking off a 17-0 team... a shot at a ring bigger than your head... a shot at silencing all the critics that continuously mock you for being a shitty coach and looking totally confused most of the time... all the hookers and cocaine you can buy (should you win the SB and decide to spend your bonus that way, hey, whatever, I mean it's your bonus, spend it however you want, if you just want to buy a house or something, that's fine too)... with all of that, a coach is going to stop trying to win? No, no, no, no, and no.

OK, sorry, that's all I've got for now. I'm off to pansyland to dance in a field full of lollipops and watch some tennis!

A Banner Day For Anecdotal Bullshit

I wanted to write something substantial tonight, but between trying to finish off Scoop Jackson's hilarious Randy Moss column that I started yesterday and working on a fantastic Dennis Dodd puff piece about Les Miles, I didn't have anything really solid to give you. Until I checked over at ESPN.com and saw Bill Simmons has a new article up. It's basically 14 or so paragraphs of fellatio for the Celtics, which isn't really a surprise or worth my time to complain about. But two of those 14 paragraphs stuck out from the rest. I'm pretty sure that between them we have some kind of record for consecutive sentences filled with anecdotal bullshit. Take a look and tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this. First, the setup.

Much has been made of Boston's team slogan -- "Ubuntu," an African word meaning unity -- but you need to attend a Celtics game to understand why they're on pace for 139 wins this season.

Either I've missed the coverage (unlikely), or this is false and no one actually gives a fuck what their team slogan is. Has anyone heard anything about this on a national level? If anyone out there is from the Boston area (Google Analytics says there's at least a few of you... come on, speak up), can you let me know if this is even a story on the local level? All I do all day is consume sports media from a wide variety of sources, predominantly the Celtic-loving ESPN, and I've heard just as many stories about the Celtics and their "ubuntu" since the NBA season started as I have about that version of basketball they show on the Spike channel with all the trampolines and ridiculous dunks. Which is too bad, because I really like that trampoline basketball game. I just haven't heard anything about it in a while.

Anyways let's get to Bill's amazing consecutive sentence streak of AB.

In the layup lines, everyone is high-fiving and joshing.

Every single team in the NBA does this. Go to a meaningless November game between the Sonics and Timberwolves. It's happening, I promise.

Before the opening tip, Posey greets each starter with a prolonged man-hug and inspirational words. The nightly sequence might hark back uncomfortably to Rocky and Apollo's beach snuggle, but it works.

Before he throws every pass, Peyton Manning thinks about pudding. Is that why the Colts won the Super Bowl last year?

During games, bench players stand and cheer as if they're being coached by Mark Madsen.

Also a practice of every team in the league.

In garbage time, the starters root just as passionately for the scrubs.

Again.

These guys eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games together.

No way. NBA teammates doing stuff like that? Why isn't this a bigger story? I bet they even sometimes go to parties together! Maybe the Knicks should try that kind of thing.

They don't care about stats, acclaim, shots or minutes.

Wow. None of them? Not even the bench guys, many of whom are probably hoping to crack a starting five somewhere else in the next couple of years? That's so refreshing. I'm tired of all the selfish athletes out there who only care about stats, like Fish Fillet-Rod. Or Buffet-Rod, if you like that better. I can't decide.

It's a team in every sense.

A fitting conclusion to this sequence. So let's tally it up- that's eight straight sentences which are meant to prove a point, yet fail completely to do so because they contain no real information which is relevant to the attempt in question. Instead they're filled with vague descriptions of things that are completely non-unique to the team/individuals in question, or things that almost definitely have little or nothing to do with how well a team plays. That's the wordiest definition I can think of to describe anecdotal bullshit, and Bill is a master of it. I'm very impressed with his work here. I don't think this streak will be matched for a while.

The sad part is, I can tell you why the Celtics actually are winning a lot of games: they have a lot of good players whose styles of play work well together. Weird, right? If I hid that answer amid like fifty other wrong possibilities like "They all like the same breakfast cereal" and "The whole team went to see a movie together, and they all liked it equally," how long would it have taken you to find it? Hopefully not very long, or you're too stupid to be using the internet.

Now, I'm not saying team chemistry doesn't matter. It most definitely exists and affects the makeup of teams. But ultimately, winning is a function of talent. A lack of chemistry can sometimes slow teams down, but there are countless examples of times bad chemistry didn't affect a championship caliber team at all. And sometimes team can play over their heads and use chemistry or some other intangible to have success in the short term. But in the end, teams that have talented players whose on-court styles mix well is 95% of winning.

Of course, this kind of explanation is boring for people like Bill. He wants to believe that there is some other kind of mystical force driving his favorite teams. It's not good enough for him to just acknowledge that they're really good. He needs more. I can't say I blame him for that, although I do find it a little strange. When my favorite baseball team went on an absurd hot streak and won the NL pennant last fall, I wasn't thinking that maybe they had started a book club together and that was the reason they won all those games. I just figured they had some talented guys and were lucky enough to win a bunch of close games in a row. Is that crazy? Is it boring? Does it really matter? At least I wasn't grasping at magical straws and suggesting that their success happened because they cheer for each other from the dugout and give hugs during the pregame stretching routine.

The point is, the Celtics have three of the top 40 or so players in the NBA on their roster. One is a big man, one is a guard, and the other is a tweener. It just so happens that Garnett draws a lot of double teams, which leaves the other two guys open for kickouts. Allen is a lights-out shooter and Pierce is a great slasher, but Allen can also slash and Pierce can also shoot. Add in a bench full of guys that don't suck, a not overly difficult schedule, a little luck, and boom, there's your 27-3 record. The real factor is that their three best players' styles perfectly compliment one another. Is their relationship off the court part of that complimentary nature? A little bit. Maybe.

If you want to write an article full of speculative crap like Bill has here, you have to approach it from the vantage point of "Wow, I can't believe how good my favorite team is, so I'm going to offer some alternative theories as to why they win all the time! I'm not saying these are true, I'm just kind of talking out of my ass!" At least that way you look like someone who's just really giddy about the team's success and wants to write something about it, instead of someone stupid who thinks no other team in the league does stuff like hang out together or cheer for each other from the bench. And yes, before you leave your snarky comment, I know Simmons mentions that talent is a part of the equation in his article. But really, look at it- where do you think his heart really lies when it comes to the question of what leads to wins?