Kingdumb

This is ridiculous. The world has lost its damn mind.

I was all ready to write a calm, reasoned column explaining how I respected the opinion of the people, especially those from Cleveland, who were mad at LeBron for going to Miami, and for doing it the way he did. (There has been so much animosity, the conference should have been sponsored by Haterade, not Vitamin Water. Am I right! I'll be here all week.) I can’t do that anymore. I have been pushed over the top.

For what it’s worth, I have been baffled by all the hate slung at James for the way he has left the Cavs. He had every right to go, and the way that he did it is justified if you take a look at it, but I’ll get into that later. Right now you are probably either looking for the URL that you wanted to go to because you are sick of having LeBron James’s free agency in front of you 24/7, or else you are wondering what pushed me over the top.

I could take the hype, and even the anger, which I disagreed with, but Dan Gilbert’s open letter to the fans of the Cavilers was too much for me. I would link it for you so that you could make your own judgments, but I don’t want something that insanely juvenile, petty, bitter, and just plain stupid (written by one of the guys who made this happen, no less) to be linked to my website. Google it if you want to read the whole thing. Instead, here are some excerpts, which I will waste 2 minutes of my life cutting and pasting that into this word document, changing the font that Gilbert stole from the Sunday comics, and telling Word to ignore the run on sentences written by this imbecile who somehow got enough money to own an NBA team, and then break down for you.

“This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.”

HOLY CRAP! SOMEONE CALL THE NEW YORK TIMES! NO! CNN! NO! TMZ! NO, 911! DEAR LORD, JUST CALL SOMEONE! A professional athlete who makes most of his money off of his name was being self promotional! A guy who has been told that he was the best in the world since he was 18, and rightly so, was a little bit full of himself! Kudos to Gilbert, though, for (mis)using quotation marks around ‘witnessed’ and ‘decision,’ because…actually I can’t think of a single reason why he did that. To mock LeBron I guess. You can take the only appeal that Gilbert’s franchise will ever have, but you can’t take his punctuation. Take that, “King!”

“The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.”

Instead, we will put out a terrible team around the best player in the NBA who fell into our lap, fire our coach and GM heading into the biggest offseason in the history of basketball, completely botching it and running said player out of town. You're welcome.

(This is me ignoring 'nor NEVER will betray you' - his sic, by the way. There is so much here to make fun of that I'm not even going to waste words on that particular irony.)

“There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be communicating much of that to you.”

They will be communicating much of that to you. But not all of it. They are going to leave out the “we effed up massively, and now have no idea where we are going. Let’s hope the 2011, 2012 and 2013 drafts have someone who can be the best player in the league for 5 years on our team. I bet we could build a championship around that…wait, never mind” part.

“You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.”

He has a point here, moving the Browns to Baltimore was pretty messed up. What’s that? He is talking about LeBron going to Miami where he has an actual chance to win? Yeah, never mind.

“"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE"

You can take it to the bank.”

Come on, Dan. The rust belt is depressed enough as it is. Now you are going to tell us that the juggernaut you are building around Anderson Varejao is going to win a title before LeBron and Dwyane Wade? Fine, take it to the bank. Or the casino, because banks don’t actually take bets. Or take it to me. Hear that Cleveland. Take this bet to me. I will give you great odds.

“If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to Cleveland…

Ok, but what if I thought you were a terrible ownership group who wouldn’t fire a bad GM, and was basically winning and selling out because they happened to get the number one pick in the best draft of the last 20 years? What then?

...I can tell you that this shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own has shifted our "motivation" to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.”

True. You could tell me that. And I could tell you that getting a C in physics has motivated me to become an engineer. The fact that I can tell you it doesn’t make it any less of an irrelevant non-sequitur.

As for LeBron’s shameful display of selfishness and betrayal, I really don’t think we can blame him. This free agency summer has been hyped since like 2006, and not because of David Lee’s potential walking situation. What a jackass LeBron is for using that hype to raise millions for the Boys and Girls club. Why couldn’t he just have signed the contract and moved on? It would have saved the University of Phoenix so much!

(One more aside…everything is relative, so I’m assuming he means levels never before seen in Cleveland when he says this has ‘shifted our "motivation" to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.’ Unfortunately, even if he isn’t lying, and he is, that still probably means that likely means that he will give a little bit of a crap, instead of not giving a crap at all and letting LeBron carry the team to 50 wins a year.)

“Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there...”

That quote probably looks confusing out of context. You probably know what it means, but think that it looks weird when standing alone, leading you to wonder how he set it up. Unfortunately, it looks just as weird in context, since it is sitting alone, seemingly at random, right below the last quote. Something that does NOT make sense.

“Sorry, but that’s simply not how it works.”

Wait, that is how it works? I can’t tell with the modifier in lower case like that. Let me read it again….

Oh, okay, that is NOT how it works. Glad we cleared that up.

“This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown "chosen one" sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow-up to become.”

Yeah. Never leave for an opportunity where you can actually accomplish your goals.

Since I don’t have anything to add to that sentence, and the ‘think of the children’ BS basically makes fun of itself, allow me to digress. I thought that LeBron wasn’t good enough to win with two all-stars. You even guaranteed that your crappy franchise was going to win one first. So why are you so pissed? Are you going to be this pissed when Jamario Moon leaves? Or is this just how you react when guys sign with other teams? Maybe he did the same thing when Devin Brown signed with the Hornets, only no one cared.

“But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "curse" on Cleveland, Ohio.”

Yeah, that is good news…wait, what? Forget ‘Open Letter to Fans,’ this should just have been called ‘Rich guy goes crazy with constant stream of non-sequiturs.’

(Just for fun though, if it is only a so called curse, why does it need an antidote, and even if so called things need solutions, wouldn’t an antidote be better for a so called poison? Wouldn’t he want a so called counter curse or a so called witch doctor or something? Forget CNN, TMZ, 911 and the New York Times, someone call JK Rowling. And by the way, is that really all that it can serve to do? If there is a curse, wouldn’t it serve to be an example of said curse, or to further it?)

“The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does "right" by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.”

James needs to ‘do right’ by Cleveland and Ohio. He should say he feels terrible, making himself available for a 45 minute interview explaining his decision to the world. And the USA. And Ohio. And Cleveland.

Also, I watched the entire interview, and I missed the point when LeBron decided that he was giving up the nickname that SLAM Magazine gave him, and declared himself the ‘former king.’ Anyways, it is a good gesture of humility by him to take away that title and leave it in Cleveland, all though it is probably overly gracious of him to take the curse, which doesn’t actually exist if I understand the meaning of the phrase ‘so called.’

…

God, my head is spinning. I can’t take that much stupidity.

Anyways, Gilbert is just one example. Everyone from my friends to my favorite writers seems to be freaking out at this kick in the teeth that LeBron supposedly delivered to our nation. Maybe I am just over caring about selfish athletes (I am wearing a Dany Heatley t-shirt right now), but what LeBron did doesn’t seem that bad. He had every right to leave. We want him to care about winning, and right or not he went where he thinks he can. He took the time to explain himself, thanked the fans, and expressed how hard it was to leave. Isn’t that all we can ask for from a leaving player? And he did all of it raising money for a worthy cause. So what if he stroked his ego a little bit in doing so.

I’m willing to hear reasons if you want to tell me I’m wrong, just try to do a better job explaining it than Dan Gilbert did.

Crowded at the Bottom

Andy Roddick is a phenomenal tennis player. He has a skill set that compares to that of Pete Sampras. He has athleticism that rivals that of Bjorn Borg. The problem is simply the era in which he plays. His prime has conflicted with that of two of the greatest of all time, Roger Federer and Raffa Nadal. As a result, Federer is often left out of grand slam finals, and hasn’t had the results that you might expect with his skill set. Instead he has been relegated to a rung below the elite tennis players, with the likes of other players who are as good as Roddick, but who’s names I don’t know because they aren’t as charismatic, as American or as married to Brooklyn Decker, and I don’t know anything about tennis.

This is kind of like the 2010 Warriors, and it could cost us my goal of being terrible, getting our uninterested coach fired and picking up John Wall. We should be a great bad team.

Monte Ellis quit on the year before he was even back from his injury. We ditched Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, Baron Davis, Al Harrington and Jason Richardson from the only playoff team in the last sixteen years, and that was an 8 seed. Our most effective scorer played for a school with less than 2000 kids last year. Our second most effective player was undrafted. 2 years ago. Our center should really be a 4, but we play him there because we have a great college player who’s game doesn’t seem to translate at the 4, and because, hell, Biedrins is 6’11” and we don’t have a better option.

The problem is, in Minnesota, they saw our refusal to sign a star point guard by drafting 2, pissing off one, trading a franchise player for about 3 cents on the dollar, and basically doing the rebuilding equivalent of remodeling by taking everything out of a house, tearing up the flooring and walls, then saying ‘screw it, it is cheaper if we just live with it, and hope that we can clean this mess up as we go.’

The Warriors are only 5 games back of Minnesota in the loss column, but any realistic Warriors fan knows that they have done a much better job of putting an embarrassingly bad product on the floor. They are the Nadal of the NBA.

Then there is the Federer of NBA futility. Really, though, the Nets are more like Tiger without the scandal, Ali without prison and Jordan without baseball rolled in to one, crossed with Lemieux, Gretzky and Jesus. They are that good. At being bad.

The Wizards had a gunfight in the locker room, suspended their most talented player, traded two of their other top players, and they are 14 games better than the Nets! People talk about how John Wall might not fit on a team that has Devin Harris, which is crap. I know it is crap because Wall does fine at Kentucky, and they are a much better team than the Nets.

(This is an exaggeration, but come on…the best scoring point prospect since Iverson can’t start for a 7-63 team? Please.)

Anyways, that is where I stand with the Warriors. They seem deadlocked in the #27 seed, 5 games behind the T-Wolves, but 2 up on the Bullets. It could be worse, especially considering that they only need a top 2 pick to fulfill this goal. The lottery could yet be the savior. At the #3 seed, the Warriors would have a 15% chance of getting the number 1 pick, and a 16% chance at number 2. The third worst team has gotten the number one pick 5 times, although one involved a frozen envelope (little help, David!). We may be in an era with extraordinary competition, but I’m not ready to give up on our chances at Wall or Turner yet.

With new ownership coming next year (the story having been officially broken yesterday), the desire to get an A prospect becomes much more serious. This is not a sellers market, especially in a league that had dire, documented financial problems. That leaves the door wide open for the plethora of wealthy bay area people that would love to put a winner in Oakland. I mentioned it in passing, but the Warriors haven't finished higher than 8th in the past 16 years. They have become a dismal franchise.

I said a lot of stuff in jest, but with the ownership story breaking this may be a turning point for the franchise. Nelly was a great coach but the game has passed him by (you need to play defense these days). If an organization like SVSE (Sharks owners), or the Neukom partnership (holds the Giants) that has shown itself to care about putting out a good product, or one of the many Silicone Valley figures with money to blow who can hire the right people, they have an interested market. On top of that, there is a core of good players with Ellis, Morrow, Anthony Randolf and Curry. There is no reason that this can't be a playoff team.

I joked around about losing a lot in the last two columns. I am saying this seriously: The Warriors could turn around, and John Wall or Evan Turner could be the start. Go T-Wolves, Go Nets.

(And with that, I have reached my NBA quota…back to the NHL in the next few days)

Something New with a Full Tank

It is time to try something new. Screw it, while I’m here, it is time to try a couple of things…new. Believe it or not, I have a favorite NBA team. While they have never raked up there with the Sharks, Red Sox, Broncos (they of blue turf, not mile high), or Cowboys, I am indeed, a Golden State Warriors fan. You could have read this blog since its inception, and still have little or no idea that I have ever even seen a Warriors game, and the reason is simple. There are only so many hours in the day, and I have just never cared to follow the NBA like I follow the NHL, MLB, NFL or college football.

That isn’t to say I ignore the NBA. I will catch highlights from SportsCenter. I watch the occasional game when channel surfing, particularly if Golden State is playing. I even have opinions on a few teams and players. So I am going to embrace a couple of things I normally don’t really care for, and the first is the NBA. I am going to follow the Warriors for the rest of the 2010 season. It may seem odd to pick up a 19-48 NBA team in mid-March, but that actually brings me to the second thing I am going to give a try to.

While I don’t hate, but rather could take or leave the NBA, there is something else in sports that I am vehemently against. Losing. Sure, as revelations go, this is on par with coming out as “anti-cancer” or “pro-world peace,” but like everyone else, I have never been a fan of losing. Luckily, if you look at the list above, I have been lucky enough to not have to put up with a whole lot of it lately. By taking on the Warriors as team number five in my fan arsenal, I am going to take on a whole lot more of it. This seems like a bad thing, unless you read the first part of the column and have an idea where I am going with this.

Not only am I going to put up with the dismal ways of the Golden State Warriors, I’m going to embrace them. Obviously, I don’t have a choice as long as I am picking up a team that’s offensive game plan consists of “giving the ball to Monte or Steph and having him hoist a contested three,” and at the same time gives up 111 points a game (at least they lead the league in something!). There has never been a situation where I have rooted for a team to lose before. I have expected it, even accepted it, bit as mad as I may have gotten at the Sharks, Red Sox or Cowboys, I always hope they can pull the game out. Not so, in this experimental venture in to the NBA. I am going to pick up the Warriors and follow them, but rather than rooting for them, I will hope for them to lose.

Of course, I have rooted for teams to fail before. A baseball season isn’t successful if the Red Sox don’t win the pennant, but only a year like last year, in which the Yankees win it all can be considered a complete failure. I wouldn’t mind if the Ducks, as currently assembled with Cory “euro-fighter” Perry and James “scull cruncher” Wisniewski go 0-for- the next three years. This is completely different from that, as I hate those teams. The Warriors, on the other hand, I like. They are still my favorite team.

Nor is this masochistic. Rather, there is reason for my hoping for futility.

In a related story, it is bracket season. Despite an opening round filled with carnage on my bracket (which now contains more red than a Flames playoff game---I’ll be here all week), I am still in contention good with my Kentucky over Ohio State title game, with Baylor and Syracuse filling out the final four. There is one thing that leads me to the Ohio State-Kentucky final, and it is my hard and fast rule when it comes to filling out brackets. When it comes to talent versus experience, I’ll take talent, and I am not picking against the best guards. This year, the best guards, Evan Turner and John Wall are good. Really good. And I want one of them.

Wall is a rare talent, one that I have been somewhat enamored with when I started to check out his highlight real on YouTube 6 months before he even reported to Lexington. Evan Turner is a 6’7” guard who can run the point effectively, is quick enough to guard NBA point guards, and can score almost at will. He is also ‘the villain’ of Club Trillion fame. Wall and Turner are both special guards, but what makes them special isn't their game along the perimeter. Watch the take on Wall, and you can see that he has the size, hops and physicality to play in the lane. Turner, for his part, routinely pulls down 8-10 boards in a game. Guards who can run, shoot and even distribute are a dime a dozen. The versatility that these two bring makes them rare prospects.

So yeah, I want them. Both of them. Obviously, that isn’t going to happen, but we could get one. Sure, there is a lottery, but if the Warriors can just make up just 4 games in the loss column, that would put us in the Wall/Turner range. I know we have guards as it is in Oakland but please, with Wall, you make it work. Right now, all we have is an uninteresting, bad team that isn’t even going to get the chance to be smoked out of the playoffs by a 1 seed.

Is tanking wrong? Maybe, but I’m not really much of a Warriors fan yet, and I want to be. A guy like Wall or Turner, put with Monte Ellis, Steph Curry and…actually, never mind, they would probably still be a few years away. At least we could watch an elite talent, and I might be able to get interested earlier next year.

(In case you don’t believe me, watch this, and tell me the embarrassment of finishing in the cellar wouldn’t be worth it this year. That’s the kid in freaking high school.)

Just A Thought

It’s the busiest time of the year on the sports calendar, so you would think finding a column out of this mess would be easy. There is certainly plenty going on, but when it comes down to it, nothing jumps out. Between the NFL Draft, MLB season, NBA and NHL Playoffs and everything else, you would think that there would be something that absolutely demands at least 1000 words, but nothing really jumps out. Take a look; the NBA and NHL playoffs haven’t developed a theme or even an intriguing story line (yet), the draft was sort of wild with all of the first round trades, but the class over all was pretty bland, and lets face it, April baseball is pretty damn boring. That isn’t to say that I don’t have any opinions I want to write, just nothing that I feel demands an entire column. So, since it is all that I have, here are a few random thoughts, opinions, facts, stats and downright lies that I have on my mind right now.

I’m not sure if this excites or scares the hell out of me. If pressed, I’m going with both.

Joe Pavelski is a gamer. So is Matt Carl. I wish I could say the same about Milan Michalek, but I’m not so convinced yet (an understatement).

I’m frustrated with Doug Wilson right now. On an unrelated note, let’s check out this Joe Thornton player card. Acquired: From Boston in exchange for Brad Stuart, Wayne Primeau and Marco Sturm. Back to Wilson...I actually calmed down for some reason, moving on...

Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit. Jeremy Roenick deserves to be on the first PP unit.

After typing that ten times, I’m starting to believe it, I’m 90% sure Ron Wilson did the same thing.

I’m just kidding, I hit ctrl+c, ctrl+v, and I still don’t believe it. It is the first intermission of game 2 and Cheechoo would have had 2 goals if he was playing with Marleau and Thornton.

Niklas Hagman is a (expletive) who cherry picks and flies the zone when the other team has pulled the goalie IN A FREAKING PLAYOFF GAME. It doesn’t get any lower. Congrats on the 2 goal game all-star.

Out of 7, 2 Sharks first round games were on national TV. Out of the first 4, only 2 of the second round are scheduled to be. I hate Versus more than I hate Al Qaeda. This may be its own column...

I tried, I really did, but I can’t hate on the Campbell trade. Yet.

Screw it, we blew 2-0 leads the last two years, I’m sure the Sharks are just trying to reverse the trend in a nice, symmetric style.

Contrary to the content of this blog over the past few weeks, I am capable of non-Sharks-related thoughts. (I’ll even prove it, besides I need to save some thoughts for the Thursday column)


The Rangers were done (for the series, not the game) as soon as the Pens came back from the 3-0 deficit, even if it took a 5-4 OT loss to drop game one.

Sidney Crosby is going to get better, and fast. Once he learns to keep his feet moving a little bit more, he is going to be unstoppable as he already skates through checks as well as anyone in the NHL. Once he learns to turn the corner and get to the net, he will be the best goal scorer in the NHL, as well as the best playmaker.

Read that sentence again, Rangers fans, and try not to quiver.

The Eastern Conference circa 2008 is no better than the NL circa 2007, I am convinced of it. The only way that an eastern team can win the cup is if the Western playoffs prove daunting enough that by the finals, the best team is completely worn down.
The best part about that theory is that it can never be proven wrong. No matter who wins the Cup, I will have been right.

I felt bad for Ovechkin, but really, I was just happy that the Philly-Washington game ended in time for the Sharks game to start on TV.


I don’t know, I just can’t get excited for the baseball season while the NBA and NHL Playoffs are going on. Call me in July.

Brandon Webb and Danny Haran are the best 1-2 punch in the Majors. Haran’s trade went largely ignored, but if Derek Jeter tells the media that he got an e-mail from A-rod but didn’t respond it is front page news. How am I supposed to believe that there is no east coast media bias?

Brad Wilkerson is hitting .189, Frank Thomas is hitting .164, Jason Botts has played 14 games in left field for the Rangers despite hitting .147, Barry Bonds can’t find work and this isn’t collusion. Yeah, ok.

The Rays just swept the Red Sox to move into a tie atop the east. I wrote it before, this isn’t a fluke, the Rays are for real.

I can’t decide who I’m more excited about, Tim Lincecum or Clay Buchholz.


I’ll shut up if it is just me (I am a Warriors fan, after all), but shouldn’t the Nuggets have thrown their last few games if they didn’t want to be in the playoffs? At least for the good of the NBA, I mean come on.

Note to Gilbert Arenas: just be quiet next time. (on second thought, don’t, for humor’s sake, keep talking)

Everyone seems to be taking sides on the wild MVP race, so I may as well throw my opinion out there. Wait, I watched about 5 NBA games this year, so I’m gonna go with Michael Jordan.

Isiah Thomas is being forced out of the Knicks organization right now. He better work out a severance package before his entire reign is remembered as an embarrassment.

I’m worried about Isiah, it is gonna be tough for him to get a job after failing so miserably in New York, but I’m even more worried about Bill Simmons. He isn’t going to have anything to write about.


The NFL Draft passed this weekend. It was as hyped as ever (naturally), but once it started there were only two players I could really get excited about.
If in 5 years, Matt Ryan is better than Glen Dorsey and Darren McFadden, I will sink all of my money into Home Depot stock (that is a bet, Mr. Blank).

The above statement has nothing to do with my rejection from Boston College, I swear.

The National Clever Sports Headline Writers Guild would like to thank Chris Long, Jake Long, the Miami Dolphins and the St. Louis Rams for their easiest day of work ever.

The NCSHWG? Really? Conan O’Brian read that and went “come on, that’s a streatch.”
I don’t care what anyone says, I like Pacman Jones.

If you have questions for Mel Keiper Jr. or Todd McShay in the next 4 months, please send them care of the Waikiki Sheraton, Honolulu, HI.


Going to Pizza Garden, coming back and writing a column while watching the Sharks game isn’t better than going to prom, but it isn’t $300 worse.

One last thing, an apology... Couples of Kent School, I am sorry for walking in on / third wheeling you guys, I really am, it’s just that I really wanted to watch that game.