Its always Next Year May 31, 2009
Posted by Matt Brown in Sports.Tags: basketball, Cavs, Cleveland, Indians, Lebron James, Ohio, Sports, Why Does God Hate Us
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Just because we’re used to this by now doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
It really looked this was going to be the year our championship drought ended. The Cavs only lost one game at (when they tried) home all season. Lebron won the MVP, and played most of the playoffs like one of those guys who makes three shots in a row on NBA Jam. (He’s on fire!! BOOMSHAKALACKA!!) We were actually sharing the rock, team chemistry was through the roof, Mo Williams was making jump shots, Varejao was flopping, and Delonte West drank from a shoe on TV.
What could be better right? Clearly, we were going to march to the NBA title, crush the hated Lakers, and convince Lebron that he really ought to just stay here in Ohio, instead of bolting to New York in 2010.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that made for TV moment. Despite having the best player on the planet…we’re still Cleveland.
The Orlando Magic simply could not miss for the first 5 games (who shoots 60%? I can’t do that on a video game), and Dwight Howard turned into a mix of Shaq and Bill Russel, and Mo Williams came up smaller Mini Me. Cleveland lost game six last night, ending our dream season, and sending back into another fit of “wait until next year”.
We’re used to it after all, Cleveland teams have been exceptional at finding ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for years now. We all know about The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, The Move, Jose F*** Mesa and JD F**** Drew.
And now we can add another team to our glorious sports lore. We just lost to a team that is coached by Ron Jeremy.
Everybody knows sports glory is unfairly distributed. The LA Lakers are going to the finals now for what, their 30th time? There is no pain, no sacrifice in being a Lakers fan. Its way too easy. Plus, LA is the 2nd biggest city in the country, has glorious weather, and is close to the beach. Its like cheating. Boston, after a few years of bitching by Bill Simmons, now is close to winning titles in virtually every sport.
But Cleveland (actually, make that all of Ohio)? Not only do we not win, not only do we lose in the most heart wrenching ways, but our state is also falling apart. In the time that I spent writing that last sentence, three dozen Ohioans said “screw it”, and moved to Arizona. Hell, in two weeks, I’M moving to Arizona.
Anybody who follows sports seriously deserves to have one shining moment in their lifetime where they see THEIR team win it all. In my lifetime, that has happened twice. In 2002, Ohio State won the national title for football. The next year, the star running back was caught somewhere on Brice Road with an AK-47 and a few bottles of Gray Goose. So much for that dynasty.
Since then, Ohio State football has become a bit of a running joke. They have good regular seasons, get to highly respected bowls, and look like those old electric football games against SEC or Big 12 Speed. Among national beat writers, they’re almost a joke.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team I rooted for before the Blue Jackets came to Columbus, also recently won a Stanley Cup. Afterwards, the NHL was caught in a labor dispute, had a lockout…and the entire sport was basically ruined. Makes the title a little bittersweet.
The Indians had a great run in the 1990s, but the team looks like they’re about to be totally blown up. The Browns moved, came back, and can’t even be good enough to lose with fashion (Also, one of their players killed a dude in the offseason). The Bengals are a team of awful convicts, and I say that as I guy who rooted for them for 15 years. The Reds did win in the 1990s, only to have their best player banned form the sport in the biggest scandal since the Black Sox. The Blue Jackets have never won a playoff game in their history, and they are in huge financial trouble.
And my beloved Cavs, the team I love the most, are caught in a terrible identity crisis, much like Cleveland itself. Will Lebron leave or not? Can we surround him with enough talent? See, Cavs fans don’t just worry about next year. If Lebron leaves, there won’t BE any more next years. Our anxiety is reaching new levels.
So we wait til next year I guess. Maybe next year will be different. And maybe Charlie Brown will finally kick the football too.
At least we’re not Detroit.
Where Amazing Happens May 20, 2009
Posted by Matt Brown in Humor, Sports.Tags: basketball, Sports, Sucks to be Blake Griffin, the NBA
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Well, now I think we have conclusive proof that the NBA draft is not rigged.
Most experts agree this draft is something of a clunker, with only one or two elite, marketable players, followed by 40 others, ranging from “role player”, to “D League”, to “Lebron James Poster Fodder”, to finally, “Wally Szczerbiak Poster Fodder” (ouch.) NBA conspiracy theorists flooded the Internet with claims that David “Diabolical” Stern would find a way to get Blake Griffin to New York, or his hometown team of Oklahoma City, a la the 1985 draft.
Instead, Blake Griffin is rewarded with an all expense paid trip to basketball Siberia, the LA Clippers. He did his best to put on a happy face last night “Hey, LA is tight man. They have lots of good players”, but if he’s smart, he’d probably rather be playing in Tehran.
As an Ohio sports fan, I am well aquainted with sports teams sucking for a long time. When I was old enough to understand football (around 1994), I adopted the Cincinnati Bengals. Since then, the team has made the playoffs exactly once, and that trip basically ended after the second play from scrimmage, as their franchise quarterback blew out his knee, never to be the same. They also managed to draft so many criminals that they make Guantanamo Bay look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Indians broke our hearts in 1995 and 1997 (I still can’t hear the words Jose Mesa without throwing a chair through a window), and the Cavs, pre-Lebron were a case study in awful.
And don’t even get me started about Ohio State. Yeah, I’m aware.
But the Clippers…they take sucking to an entirely new level, even past Detroit Lions territory. In twenty five years, the team has made the playoffs less than 5 times, and never advancing past the second round. They have picked in the NBA lottery nearly every year since it started in 1985. They own several of the worst records in NBA history. The Clippers dont just lose, they get crushed.
Part of that can be attributed to the fact that their ownership doesn’t actually care about winning. Ownership was famous in the sporting world for being stingy, refusing to retain talented players or hire new ones, in an attempt to keep payroll down and profits up. They made a serious of very questionable draft moves (Yaroslav Korolev over Danny Granger? Really??)The team has refused to fire Mike Dunleavy, a coach who shouldn’t be trusted to handle a high school JV squad, despite the team’s ineptitude for years, so they wouldn’t have to pay him a buyout. The team finally started to make a splash with their payroll, splurging over the last two years on bringing in several high priced big men, like Marcus Camby, Chris Kamen (aka the most ugly person in the entire freaking world), and Zach Randolph, who had the coolest play in NBA history. Wait, did I say coolest? I meant “play that makes my eyes bleed”.
So even when the hit the draft jackpot with Griffin, they still screw it up. Where is he going to play? Randolph’s contract is more than the GNP of most Balkan countries, so he can’t really be traded. Camby, Kaman etc are also making too much money to be send to the bench, and the team can’t really play 5 big men at once (although given Dunleavy, you never know). Where does he fit in the rotation?
Griffin is right. The Clippers do have some good players. A lineup of Davis, Gordon, Thorton, Griffen/Z-bo/Camby ought to be enough to compete for a playoff spot. But with such an inept history, such a dysfunctional organization, and such bad attitudes (Ricky Davis is to impressionable rookies as salt is to snails. If Blake hangs out with him too long, he’ll be shooting at the wrong basket and makin’ it rain at strip clubs in 5 months), expecting the team to make any real improvements is basically impossible.
Which is a pity, because Blake Griffin is pretty good, and deserves better. Hopefully he isn’t mentally damanged by his stint in NBA purgatory.
The NBA draft. Where amazing happens!
Sportmanship and Toothbrushes January 28, 2009
Posted by Matt Brown in Uncategorized.Tags: basketball, Humor, Karma, Sportsmanship
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Things can get pretty heated when me and my buddies play Madden. In the heat of battle, disparaging remarks about mothers and girlfriends might get thrown about. We might pause the game in the middle of a play, or force each other to watch instant replays of that last Hail Mary again and again. Just because we bust each other’s chops doesn’t mean that there aren’t lines that we don’t cross though. If somebody is lucky enough to have a huge lead, that person better not start going for fake punts on 4th down. Poor Madden sportsmanship will result in a deluge of profanities and hurt feelings at the very least. Flagrant violations of video game sportsmanship might result in something drastic, like my roommate discovering his toothbrush floating in our toilet.
The point is, even in the heat of competition, there are certain lines you shouldn’t cross.
Covenant Christian, near Dallas Texas, would have done well to remember that. Covenant’s girls basketball team recently defeated neighboring Dallas Academy 100-0. That isn’t a typo…they actually pitched a shutout in a basketball game. Covenant plans on competing for a state title in Texas, whereas Dallas Academy, a school that specializes in helping students with learning disabilities. Academy has only 20 girls in their entire high school. Clearly, this was going to be a mismatch.
But Covenant’s coaching staff didn’t exactly help matters. After racing to more than a 50 point lead at halftime, Covenant continued to shoot three pointers and press (according to media reports). After the game, the embarrassed headmaster for Covenant issued a public apology for the massacre, and for good reason. I know the Bible is rather silent as to what kind of defense Jesus would run, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be running a full court press against a team of special education students if he was winning by more than 20.
But Covenant’s coach was unrepentant, saying that he disagreed with the administration, and didn’t think he had anything to apologizer for. The Covenant administration, wisely seeing that this kind of behavior clashed with the mission of their school, recently sacked the coach.
I’ve covered high school sports for other newspapers before. Sometimes things can get out of hand quickly. It isn’t fair to either team, or the game, to tell one team to quit playing, but there are ways to win without embarrassing or obliterating somebody. A smart coach would have used a blowout to try some new offensive sets, and would have just asked his team to use more of the shot clock, and stop pressing. Running up the score isn’t just a display of classlessness, but it robs his team of an important teaching opportunity.
Stunts like this have a way of coming back to haunt you. In Texas, maybe he’ll just find himself on the other end of a massive blowout.
If he tried that in our apartment, he might want to watch his toothbrush.
