Say it ain't so Matrix!

The relative quiet of the Suns off-season was broken today, just a few days before the start of the training camp, by a disturbing trade request from Shawn Marion. He says he is upset at the unending trade rumors and the Suns refusal to extend him beyond the two monster contract years he has. He says the Suns almost tried to force him to Boston and he didn't like that at all. I kind of see his point regarding the trade rumors. It is kind of disrespectful. Of course ultimately all of this is about money. I am sure he will be happy if they extend him at whatever price he wants. He wouldn't be this bothered by the trade rumors if he gets paid. From the Suns side, there is no way they extend him. They just don't have the money to pay the luxury tax and thats the only reason he is even in half the trade rumors in the first place. It's not like the Suns really want to get rid of him. Essentially, it's more of a money issue on both sides.

I am upset that there's always something the last 3 years with this team. There is never a smooth season with the Suns even with all this talent and potential. If it's not Amare's stunning injury, it's trying to integrate him back. If it's not Amare, then it's Matrix asking for a trade. I am sick of this and it almost feels like their is a curse around this franchise. All this team is missing after almost 40 futile years is a catchy name for the curse. Matrix says he will show up and play if he is not traded and I totally believe him. I think he will be the same Matrix when he plays and he is just not wired to be a trouble-maker. But you got to wonder what this does to the already fragile chemistry of this team. If Nash takes care of that and Matrix doesn't go "operation shutdown" a la Derek Bell, I think the Suns will be fine. Matrix might actually have his best year this season because he will be playing for a contract. So I hope the Suns keep him and win one finally.

The trade rumors and options are flat-out scary. It's apparently either Lamar Odom or Andrei Kirilenko. I love both these players, but I just realized I didn't love them enough to replace the Matrix with them :-) The problem with both the guys is that they are injury-prone and the Suns don't have the depth to deal with that. I don't remember watching many Suns game without Marion and that'll not be the case with either of those guys. AK-47 will fit this style and will be awesome defensively but he can't shoot to save his life. Odom is a better offensive player and shooter than Marion but can't run. If somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to pick between these 2 options, I might go with AK-47 only because he is athletic and better defensively. Lamar is just not reliable or consistent. But the Suns lose something either way with these trades though both are younger and taller than Marion. There is only one Matrix and AK-47 is the closest imitation. Life will not be the same for the Suns fan without the Matrix.

Interesting weekend in both NFL and college

One of the interesting games in the NFL this weekend will be San Diego visiting Green Bay. I will be visiting cheese country and will be at this game to check out Lambeau field and Brett Favre and I am psyched about that. Plus, it's a San Diego team that needs the W badly against a Packers team thats a surprising 2-0. I would expect the Chargers to win, but you never know with Favre on the field. The Chargers are 1-1 after playing 2 tough games. I sure hope LT gets untracked since I own him in one of the fantasy leagues and have gotten nothing out of my NO-1 pick. He has had problems against 2 top defenses the last 2 weeks.

The best game in the NFC is Dallas visiting Chicago. Defense V offense at Soldier field. These are the top-notch teams in the JV conference also called the NFC. I am really interested in seeing how Romo and TO handle the Bears D. Cincy at Seattle should also be interesting with both teams at 1-1. There are 2 other match-ups between a couple of 2-0 teams that should be one-sided despite what the records suggest. Niners visit Pittsburgh and Indy visits Houston. I can't see the Steelers or the Colts losing, especially the Colts if Houston receiver Andre Johnson is out.

In college, Texas A&M got handled by Miami today 34-17. That should take care of the 20-Th ranking A&M is enjoying right now. This is especially bad for A&M because their Big-12 rival Oklahoma just dismembered Miami 2 weeks back. This weekend has few other match-ups involving some big name schools with not so much of a big game - Michigan State @ Notre Dame and Penn State @ Michigan. Penn State should take care of Michigan easily and one can just hope Notre Dame scores an offensive TD finally.

The game of the week should be the Ole' ball coach Steve Spurrier taking his Gamecocks to LSU. Tough one for South Carolina because LSU looks awesome, but they have to prove they are worthy of the 12-Th rank even in defeat. SEC also features another great top-25 matchup as 22 Georgia takes on No. 16 Alabama on the road. This could be Nick Saban's breakthrough game of the year.

Chargers lay an egg

The unpredictability of the NFL was on full display in week 2 as the football World turned over upside down over and over again. Good games ended up being bad, expected blowouts went to overtime and bad teams won while good teams lost. The biggest surprise was how one-sided the Chargers-Patriots game was. I knew the hooded spy will get his team ready and the Pats will win, but I was expecting more from the Chargers than a 38-14 drubbing. Pats scored first and they intercepted Phillip Rivers the very first Chargers play and the game was over soon after. The Chargers just could not stop the Pats on offense and they were pretty bad on offense themselves. Moss had another great game. The luckiest guys are those who got Randy cheap in fantasy drafts. His stock has dropped the lost 2 years and he was drafted pretty low this year. Those fantasy owners who "gambled" on him now have a top 3 receiver on their hands again. Chargers need to re-group and the Pats may just win the Super Bowl this season.

The greatest game of the week was actually the supposed dog of a game - Cincinnati @ Cleveland. Cleveland had shipped out Charlie Frye after a horrible week 1. Now they were supposed to tolerate Derek Anderson while waiting for Brady Quinn to get ready for the big show. Boy did Derek Anderson have other ideas. He came out swinging and throwing bombs to match Carson Palmer dart for dart. He may not have seen too many 51-45 games even in the Pac-10 at Oregon state. This game saw crazy scoring with very little defense and Palmer ended up on the losing side despite 401 yards and 6 TDs. Anderson had 328 and 5 TDs. Awesome game for the fans as Ocho-Cinqo had 209 yards and 2 touches for the Bengals while Braylon Edwards had 146 yards and 2 TDs for the Browns. I am sure the Browns fans were as shocked as anybody to see their team play like this and win.

Houston, Detroit, Green Bay, Washington and San Francisco are all a surprising 2-0. Keep an eye on Matt Schaub. This dude can play some QB and he has got a great weapon in Andre Johnson who had 120 yards receiving for Houston on 7 catches. Brett Favre is doing what he does best leading the Packers to 2-0 as the Giants fell to 0-2 despite Eli Manning suiting up and playing. Kitna lead Detroit to it's second win as he went out with a concussion, but came back and showed some serious leadership. This team might be the real deal. Again, he's got a stud in Roy Williams to goto anytime he is in trouble. I am not so sure San-Fran is the real deal despite a close 17-16 win over the Rams. Alex Smith looked horrible again and the Niners won again behind a crazy TD by Frank Gore on a 4-Th and 1. Gore didn't dominate either, but that big play took care of the game. Niners were out-gained 392-186 by the Rams, but the Rams as always hurt themselves with crucial turnovers. Washington is 2-0 after beating Philadelphia 20-12 on Monday night. They might have exposed Phily and Donovan McNabb. McNabb looked terrible and the Eagles are now 0-2. By the way, the most shocking 0-2 might be the Saints as they lost against Tampa Bay. Where are Brees and Reggie Bush hiding?

Arizona shocked Seattle with a 23-20 win. Seems like Seattle is going nowhere this season as they let Matt Leinart have a decent game and let Edge rush for 128 yards on 24 carries. As I had predicted, the NFC West games were close, but both games had different results than what I had expected. This is a mediocre division right now and is up for grabs. Oakland surprisingly took Denver to OT despite Josh McCown passing for just 73 meagre yards. Lamont Jordan carried the Raiders with 159 rushing yards and the D scored a late TD to give them a chance to win. Sea-bass kicked a long 52 yarder through in OT, only to see it wiped away by a timely time-out by Mike Shanahan. He made Janikowski kick it again and sure enough, he missed it this time. Denver got the ball back and moved the ball well to give Elam a 23-yarder to win the game. Elam doesn't miss too many of those. Only the Raiders can lose games like this after celebrating what they thought was a winning field goal.

It's all going down in Bean-town

As much as I don't like the East coast bias in the media and the whole New Yrok-Boston nexus, I have to accept that the centre of the Sports universe this weekend is Boston. I am told there's a Nascar race somewhere up there in New England, which I really don't care about. But I do care that the Yankees are playing the Redsox and the biggest game this NFL weekend is San Diego at New England. The NFL schedule is kinda weak this Sunday and this is THE game. Patriots looked awesome last weekend and they'll always be better coached than the Chargers under Norv Turner. Thats just the truth with the video-spying hoody at the helm in New England as much I don't like to accept that. The Chargers themselves won against a very good Bears team last Sunday, but they didn't do it in style. They are on the road here and I am afraid I have to pick the Pats. Vegas agrees since they have made the Pats a 4 point favorite. I just hope the Chargers have home field and win the game in the playoffs when these 2 teams meet again.

NFL schedule is otherwise soft this week. The other mildly interesting games are actually between NFC West rivals - Seattle @ Arizona and SF @ St. Louis. That might either be because the NFC West is so evenly mediocre or because of my West coast bias :-) But this game along with the Minnesota @ Detroit game do have the closest lines with 3 points. No other games are closer and most are at 6 or more. That proves my point about week 2 match-ups. So it might be wise to keep an eye on the Yanks-Sox game featuring Clemens and Schilling. Two talented, old pricks going against each other. These kind of pitching mach-ups rarely stand up to the hype. So lets see how this shakes out. The Sox won the game Saturday behind Josh Beckett's 19-Th win after a classic heart-breaking, late-inning choke job Friday. It was typical Redsox V Yankees because like clock-work, they gave up 6 runs in the 8-Th to blow a 7-2 lead to lose 8-7. Their bull-pen studs Okajima and Papelbon exploded spectacularly and crushed the Boston faithful's heart for the trillionth time in the history of this rivalry. It's amazing to watch this again and again and it never gets boring.

Speaking of baseball, I am cynic at heart as the very name of this URL should suggest, and even I got caught in the whole Rick Ankiel comeback story. How stupid and naive for me to fall for this as the inevitable steroid link comes out just a month later. He apparently got a year's worth of HGH (human growth hormone) and he is now part of the new wave of HGH accusations that are flying around involving a whole bunch of players. It's sad, but should I really be surprised? Baseball is tainted beyond repair right now and I shouldn't be believing or trusting anybody in the sport. I usually don't since I consider myself fairly smart, I am a cynic and I am not into the emotional, mushy, girly stuff that most of our Sports media shoves down our throat. But I really wanted this Ankiel story to be genuine because he seemed like a good guy and he had gone through so much trouble, mostly mental, and to overcome that is impressive to say the least. But this story is tainted beyond repair. It seems like a small injury and a minor surgery have become great excuses for MLB and NFL players to get HGH and explain it away as part of their recovery regimen. What a scam this is becoming.

Notre Shame!

Last week I asked how bad is Matt Leinart if he looks that much inferior to Alex Smith? This is the same question I have with Notre Dame. Hoe bad are they if they are losing 38-0 to Michigan? They look horrible right now and Charlie Weis should be in the hot seat, but he is not. For one, he is a good old boy who can talk his way out of anything. And also he has some goodwill in the bank after his first 2 years, except for the bowls that is. I wouldn't entirely blame the Domers for their Bowl troubles either. They just get invited to Bowl games way above their level just because they are the Fighting Irish and they end up getting exposed. It's kind of like how most people in corporate America raise up to their level of in-competence and not necessarily up to their level of competence. The Domers in Weis's 3-Rd are 0-3 and have had 2 bad blow-outs. It makes you wonder how good is his recruiting. Good programs drop-off, but never like this and thats all recruiting. You got to keep the pipeline filled and is Weis really doing that or did he just coach Tyrone Willingham's recruits to 2 good years? Makes you wonder.

The Big game of the week was USC going in to corn-country to face Nebraska. USC literally ran away with this game with 312 rushing yards. They won 49-31, but it was really not that close as the Huskers scored 2 garbage TDs at the end. 388 passing yards for Sam Keller, the ex-ASU QB now starting for the Huskers. Nick Saban's stock is rising now with Alabama at 3-0. Today his team beat the 16-Th ranked Arkansas team 41-38 with a great drive at the end. Bama lead big, lost it all, trailed at the end and came back to win. Saban is a factor again in college football. Another minor upset was Boston College beating 15-Th ranked Geogia Tech. But Boston college at 21 is a pretty good team. Fifth ranked Florida spanked 22-Nd ranked Tennessee 59-20. The better the Vols do, the better Cal looks since they beat them in week 1. The Vols look bad right now though Cal themselves took care of business today.

Ninth ranked Louisville lost to Kentucky 40-34 is a very interesting game. We know Louisville always plays high-scoring ball, but Kentucky one-upped them today. Few years back, Kentucky celebrated too early against LSU and doused coach Guy Morriss with Gatorade. But LSU quarterback Marcus Randall beat them with the last play of the game. This time that didn't happen as Louisville's stud QB Brian Brohm's 369 yards was not enough on this day. But the biggest upset of the day to me was UCLA losing 44-6 to Utah. Pac-10 has been looking good so far and then this happens to the 11-Th ranked team. To many turnovers killed the Bruins, but thats no excuse. As an ASU fan, I am happy a Pac-10 team is taking a back-seat, but still I don't like ranked Pac-10 teams losing like this. But I am happy this at least happened against another Western team in Utah rather than a East coast team from a big conference. Speaking of ASU, we beat San Diego state 34-13. So far so good for Dennis Erickson as Keegan Herring filled in for leading rusher Ryan Torain with two scores and 163 yards. Hope this keeps up in-conference.

Cheater busted!

After being busted for videotaping on the sidelines, the New England coach Bill Belichick was fined the NFL maximum of $500,000 Thursday and the Patriots were ordered to pay $250,000 for stealing an opponent's defensive signals. Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up next year's first-round draft choice if it reaches the playoffs and second- and third-round picks if it doesn't.

NFL rules state "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game." They also say all video for coaching purposes must be shot from locations "enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead." I think this is as clear as any rule can be. Anybody with an IQ over 45 should be able to read and interpret this right. So-called genius Bill Belichick says he always follows rules and in this case, only his interpretation was wrong. What the hell. How do you mis-interpret this rule? He also added "we have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress". Oh ok. That makes a lot of sense. So what was the video for? Was he making some short films for You-tube? Were they testing their new handy-cam? What is this dude talking about? I hate the Pats, Brady and the hoody and this is another reason to hate these guys. I love the fact there is this taint on this so called dynasty. They are good and they have run a good franchise, but I do believe both the hoody and Brady are way over-rated. Give me Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning any day.

NBA's off-season got worse as Greg Oden had a micro-fracture surgery on his knee and is not out for the season. Thats a shocker. Micro-fracture surgeries are coming out of nowhere these days. Amare's surgery happened 2 years back in the off-season without any warning just like Oden's. Oden went for a routine knee checkup and he is now out for the year. This is bad news for both the Blazers and the NBA which planned to showcase Greg Oden from day 1 against Tim Duncan. As bad an idea as that was - letting the whole World watch Duncan eat him alive on national TV, that season opener loses all lustre now. Wonder if the NBA switches it's schedule around because of this. This is real bad for the Blazers. Nothing to look forward to now.

Cards and Leinart

As a die-hard Suns, ASU and DBacks fan, I always wondered where exactly is my NFL allegiance. The Arizona Cardinals have been so bad for so long that they never got any attention when I lived in the valley of the Sun. They shared the Devils college stadium for years and I remember many, many weekends when the Devil routinely drew more people on Saturday than the Cards did on Sunday. There was really no reason to get too involved with this team as the biggest games of the year typically was when the old NFC East rivals Cowboys were in town and their fans filled the stadium. I even got involved with the DBacks who were not even in existent when I left town. They were still building that giant airplane hanger called BOB in downtown and we couldn't wait for the Baseball team to come to town. The golden years in the history of the Arizona Cardinals was when the local ASU boy Jake Plummer was in town making some serious noise. I loved those couple of years and I ditched the Cardinals again when they decided to ditch Jake.

They have moved to a spanking new stadium last year and I can't wait to check it out. Not so much the team. It's the same story with the team every year since Jake came to town. So much hope and so many people saying "this is the year" every August and so much heart-break and disappointment September through December. A new stadium, a rare big contract to Edge, great young wide-outs, young QB, new coach, nothing seems to fix this thing. This year was really supposed to be it and the league is even pushing Matt Leinart hard. But they started Monday night as always with a defeat - an ugly, inexplicable defeat. The Cards just make it hard for people like me to love them. They lost 20-17 to the Niners who had a grand total of 194 yards. Both offenses stunk it up and I don't believe either team's defense is all that good. It was just incompetent offense and ultra conservative play calling. The Niners spent a lot of money on their corners and they seem to do a good job on Monday containing Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. But the Cards passing attack was just lacking inspite of Edge rushing effectively for stretches.

At the end of the day it was a L for the Cards and they are 0-1. But my main concern is QB Matt Leinart. I have no idea what all the hype for this guy is about. He started the game with a bad interception and never played much better the rest of the way. I understand it's just his second year, but wasn't this supposed to be his breakout season? I have serious questions about his future given his lack of athleticism and arm strength. I also don't understand why the NFL is pumping this guy up like he is Peyton Manning's little brother! When did sleeping around with Paris Hilton in LA make you a great quarterback talent. Leinart better start playing some ball soon or else he will become a laughing stock in this league and end up in some bench sooner than later. I know I am being harsh on this guy, but he looked truly awful. He threw for 102 yards and was lucky to even cross 100 yards for the game. When you are a starting QB on the same field with Alex Smith, AND Alex Smith is having a bad day, AND he is still the better QB, you have some serious issues. Thats exactly what happened to Leinart on Monday. There are days when Alex Smith looks like a career backup and on Monday, Leinart looked like Alex Smith's backup! I sure hope he comes through for the Cards. Otherwise, they have another huge problem on their hands and that'll set them back another 3 or 4 years.

NFL off and running

Only thing better than the NFL is the NFL on high-def. As a new HD owner, I am just blown away by football on HD - both college and the NFL. The games look great and the hotties in the crowd look even better! Week 1 in the NFL was as usual interesting, eventful and gripping. No other league goes from season-opener to mid-season in literally hours quite like the NFL. The season is short, it heats up right away and there is no lull period in the NFL.

I was disappointed a bit with the final score Thursday night as the Saints lost 41-10. The game was close in the first half, but the Colts pulled away in the second. Peyton and the gang were impressive as always, but their defense surprised everybody. Colts D didn't take a step back like everybody had predicted. They look formidable and should be a true contender for sure. Bad news for the rest of the league. As for the Saints, I expected a lot more, but I think they'll be fine. Brees almost had the lowest passing average ever for somebody with that many attempts, but he won't be that ineffective every week. They are just 0-1 now and they should be fine in the NFC.

AFC is just going to be off the hook! The 3 best teams are all in the AFC. While the Pats and the Colts did it in style, the Chargers did it against a good team and a great defense. LT threw a TD and ran for another as the Bears were dispatched 14-3. I almost feel bad for the Chargers because I can see them again finding a way to lose to either the Colts or the Pats in the playoffs. Chargers and their new coach Norv Turner are known for losing games like that. The Pats milked Randy Moss more than any team has been able to in the last 4 years. Dude had 183 yards on 9 catches. Or you kidding me. Where was this last year and why do the rich (Pats) always get richer. Apparently the Pats are stealing signs and will be docked a pick or two in the near future. Nice! I like when bad things happen to bad people! I hate Bill Belichick, but he might just win another ring this year by the looks of it in week 1.

The other interesting game of the week was the Giants at Dallas. It was a shootout of epic proportions as Tony Romo and Eli Manning showcased their talents. I can't believe how good Romo is. That guy has got everything going for him in the sport and his life right now. Dude scored 5 TDs and threw for 345 yards to help the boys win 45-35. What a day for his fantasy owners. Speaking of fantasy, I won one league and lost the other. I won one because of Peyton Manning, but LT had a tough match-up and couldn't carry me all by himself in the other one. Unfortunately, LT has another tough match-up next week at New England.

There was a sad event in the NFL this Sunday in the Buffalo-Denver game which Denver won at the end on a Jason Elam field goal. Denver has a habit of losing season openers but they managed to steal this one at the end. But the story was reserve tight end Kevin Everett getting knocked cold after sustaining a cervical spine injury. It really saddens me to see these NFL athletes, especially bench guys who don't make much money, suffer such serious injuries. They are saying he may never walk again and I sure hope he recovers soon and somehow gets on his feet.

Week 2, same result for Michigan.

Week 2, same result for Michigan

Oregon went in to the Big House and Bicth-slapped the Michigan Wolverines. As a Pac-10 honk, I love that. If you think about it, I-AA Appalachian state beat them last week. So is it really a surprise that a 19-Th ranked Pac-10 team with a great offense like Oregon beat them? I guess the week 1 result could have been an aberration for Michigan, but they did look slow and ordinary. All those doubts were confirmed this Saturday by Oregon. That QB from Oregon Dennis Dixon is a great athlete. Michigan had no answer to him. It's funny how the Wolverines stayed close at 7-11 after the first quarter and even led 7-3 at one point. The fans were jacked up, but the wind was sucked out of them when the Ducks started scoring at will in the second quarter. It was obvious even to the faithful that Michigan is just not good, nowhere near the 5-Th rank they started the year with. Proof number 1758 that the college football pre-season rankings suck.

There were a couple of other big name games that ended up being blowouts as well. Miami lost at Oklahoma 51-13. I almost had to make sure it was not Miami of Ohio when I saw that score. The U stands for un-watchable right now. Notre Dame got crushed again, this time by Penn State - 31-10. The Domers suck this season and I am not complaining. Auburn lost to South Florida 23-26. Another win for the small guys. I am beginning to love this year's college football. It's almost like the NCAA tournament with all these upsets in this pre-season. Texas A&M at 25 almost lost one to Fresno State. You know I am always pulling for the left-coast teams! But A&M pulled it out in triple OT 47-45.

The other laugher was at LSU as Va-Tech lost 7-48. I was not really surprised because Va-Tech didn't really look good last week. They are over-rated at 18. Cal, took a step back after looking awesome in week 1. May be they had a letdown after that Tennessee win. DeSean Jackson had another impressive run on a reverse for a TD, but Cal just won 34-28 against Colorado State. Cal better pick it up when they play the Pac-10 teams. The other close game was the Ole' ball coach and South Carolina at 17 beating Georgia at 23 on the road 16-12. I think College football can use more of a successful Steve Spurrier.

ASU gave me a scare with a 0-14 first quarter. I like the 33-14 final score much better. Thats impressive to shut Colorado out the rest of the way after Q1. Only bad news of the day was the Arizona wildcats winning against Northern Arizona.

Draft number 2

I had my second fantasy draft yesterday. This is the league that I want to win desperately because I have some sort of a curse going in this one. I have done well, I have made it to the Super Bowl a couple of times, but I can never win the championship. I have won the other league twice and it's actually a tougher league in some ways and I have been playing in it for lesser number of years than this one. So I spent some time getting ready for this draft and still ended up with just a decent team, not a great one. Part of the reason is that this is a keeper league where we keep 2 players from last year. My keepers are Peyton Manning and Reggie Bush. Not bad, but I don't have that stellar RB. I have to retain Manning because only an idiot will drop him and last year, I went for broke with Tiki Barber who everybody knew would retire after the season. So I went in to this draft with an handicap in some sense. Also I went to the Super Bowl last year, which meant my pick was pretty low - 10 out of 12.

Given that most teams retained 2 RBs and I picked 10-Th, I was in trouble with the RBs. I think I recovered half way decent, but it might be a challenge. Thank God we voted the keeper out for next season. Anyways, here's my team in the order these fools were drafted, starting with my 2 keepers.

Peyton Manning
Reggie Bush
Clinton Portis
Cadillac Williams
Reggie Brown
Joey Galloway
Chris Cooley
Julius Jones
Deshaun Foster
Brandon Marshall
Robbie Gould
Jake Delhomme
Vikings D
Keary Colbert
Zach Miller

Can't wait for the Colts-Saints game Thursday night. Should be a great game given that the Colts are a little vulnerable after losing a bunch of starters. Should be a great game.

Christmas is here

Fantasy football is here and it might as well be Christmas! I am in 2 leagues and today was my first draft. It's one of the 3 or 4 days a year I wake-up before 9 AM on a weekend! This draft is always early and the other one is always late in the day. But both my leagues do the draft pretty late in the pre-season and I love that. It officially signals the start of the NFL season for me and I don't have to wait long between now and the actual start of the season. I know some fantasy leagues hold their drafts in July and I never understood that. I had a rare 1-St pick today and it was LT all the way. No ifs and or buts about it. The rest of the draft was obviously tougher with the draft snakin' it's way through and I didn't get to pick until 24 and 25 after number 1.

We do an online draft on Yahoo for this league and big-ups to Yahoo for hosting THE best fantasy site on the web - simple, elegant and powerful. I usually make one mistake every year during the draft. I am not talking about the quality of the picks (thats all up in the air at this point anyways) but just some mistake with the execution of my plan or the logistics or something. I won't click on the player before the time expires or have a brain freeze and don't check the bye week or something of that nature. Today's mistake was in the second round which is inexcusable. It's inexcusable for 2 reasons because it's way too high a pick to mess up and also I had so much time between pick no 1 and 24 to plan and execute. Luckily, it was not a costly mistake. I was going to draft a WR and a RB with 24 and 25 and the software picked a WR with the 24 while I was looking at a RB. No biggie since I ended up picking the RB with the 25-Th pick. The software also picked Carolina's Steve Smith as that WR. Not too shabby because Chad Johnson and Marvin Harrison were already gone. It was Smith or TO or Torry Holt. Normally I would have taken Holt, but was a little concerned about his knee surgery. Steve Smith's schedule is softer plus I ended up drafting Marc Bulger as my QB, which means Holt would have made my team too dependent on the Rams and I am glad it's more "balanced" now. So all in all, I am hoping Steve Smith comes through big for me.

I did make some bye week errors again and at one point it felt like all my RBs were off on week 7! I balanced it out later. The other issue was I wanted to protect LT with his backup Michael Turner. I was surprised when someone drafted him in the 10-Th round before I could get him. I thought he was taken too early for a backup. Or May be I messed up by waiting too long. I guess he is not just a backup but a good RB and I am considering trading for him right-away. Anyways, here's my team and it looks half-way decent decent.

1. LaDainian Tomlinson RB
2. Steve Smith WR
3. Thomas Jones RB
4. Marc Bulger QB
5. Jamal Lewis RB
6. Brandon Jackson RB
7. Darrell Jackson WR
8. Bernard Berrian WR
9. Joe Horn WR
10. Owen Daniels TE
11. Brandon Marshall WR
12. Josh Brown K
13. Philadelphia DEF
14. Adrian Peterson RB
15. Jeff Garcia QB

Great Start

I am truly, really, honestly excited that football is here. Had a great start to the College football season. I mean it couldn't have gone any better. First, Arizona State thump San Jose state 45-3. Dennis Erickson era starts off in style. His methods may be shady, but he can get you the results in the college game. I am a big fan of his and I have huge expectations for him. I am glad he replaced the over-rated Dirk Koetter and I can't believe Dirk landed an offensive coordinator job in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Devils were led by Ryan Torain rushing for 123 yards and three touchdowns on 17 carries and Rudy Carpenter completing 14 of 20 passes for a modest 197 yards and two scores. Dick Tomey can run from Tucson to San Jose, but can't hide from the Devils! Of course we all know his 8-5-1 record (including 4-2-1 at Tempe) against ASU is nothing but a fluke :-)

The biggest story of the day was the lowly Appalachian State beating the 5-Th seeded Michigan 34-32. No Division I-AA team had beaten a team ranked in the AP poll since it started in 1989. This was a stunner of gigantic proportions at the Big House. Is that sweet or what! I love a Big-10 giant being embarrassed like that though I would rather see Ohio State than Michigan experience this. I can't believe Lloyd Carr survives this. He should start typing up his resume for the off-season. Even Kirk Herbstreit is saying the Big-10 is probably the worst BCS division after what happened to Michigan last year at the Rose Bowl and this game plus what happened to the Suck-Eyes against Florida in the championship game. NCAA football is not known for parity quite like NCAA basketball or the NFL, but there's more and more parity these days. This upset by a division 1-AA team (or non-BCS sub-division of the super-regional or whatever stupid name NCAA has come up with this season) is another proof of parity after what Boise State did to Oklahoma in last year's Fiesta Bowl.

The other great result of the day was Cal beating Tennessee 45-31 at Berkeley. The Bears look FANTASTIC and Jeff Tedford is the man. He is building a legitimate program and has recruited some incredible athletes. His offense should be as good as any other team in the country. Get used to names on that like Nate Longshore, DeSean Jackson, Justin Forsett and Jahvid Best. I am not sure if that defense will hold up, but if it does, they are a legitimate threat to unseat USC. That late-season game in Berkeley should be awesome especially if both stay undefeated which I sure hope they do. Might even be a default national championship game. It was funny ABC also covered the "tree-huggers" in Berkeley who are living on trees to protect it from the University planning to renovate the Stadium. Only in Berkeley!

Of course Baseball kept pace with college Football with it's own big event as 23-year old kid Clay Buchholz pitched a no-hitter for Boston in his second career start. This would be big news anyways, but the fact that it happened to a RedSox pitcher and in Fenway just put it on the ESPN radar all that more. I am sure those chowderheads in Boston went nuts over it. They were all like "what Appalachian state? which Michigan?". Fenway was rocking all night as the kid just had 3 walks.

Football is here.

America's real past-time is here. I didn't mean football, I meant fantasy football! I can't wait for my drafts. I play in two leagues and both drafts are coming up soon. I have done very little research and I hope to get in some serious work before the drafts. I got the first pick in one of the leagues. LT time! Who knows what happens this season, but has there ever been a more obvious first pick than LT is this year? I mean the closest might have been LT in 2006. This guy is awesome. I love him as a player and a person and I am looking forward to having him on my fantasy roster.

It's good to see football again. The College season kicked off today with LSU mauling MSU 45-0. Tennessee is at Berkeley this weekend for a big week-1 showdown. I hope Cal upholds Pac-10's honor by taking care of the Vols and Ainge. The start of the college football season will be a bigger deal if there are any worthwhile match-ups early. In fact there are a few good ones this season with a rare early season Pac-10 showdown between UCLA and Jim Harbaugh's Stanford. But usually it's just cup-cake after cup-cake for the big programs the first 2 or 3 weeks and the college season ramps up much slower than the NFL. In any case, aren't we all glad football is here.

Trade Value

One of the interesting conversations in sports is analysis of trades and potential trades. It's always fun to sit in a bar and analyze how good or horrible a given trade is. But it's also one of the most difficult judgement to make. For example, there's a lot of talk about the KG trade or about the J-Rich trade for Brandan Wright in the Golden State land. But who really knows what happens in the future given that Brandan Wright is a rookie who has not played a single possession in the NBA or even with Al Jefferson who went to Minny in the KG trade who is so young. 5 years from now when KG is old and over-paid, Jefferson could potentially be dominating the league. Similarly, Brandan Wright could retire as the best-ever power forward or he could just flame out of the league in 2 years. At least with established veterans like J-Rich, KG and Ray Allen, you know what you are getting. But things get a lot more unpredictable when these trades involve rookies and draft picks.

Now, I am not saying we all shut up and stop evaluating trades. Fans and media definitely have to evaluate every move of the GM and the management and make them accountable. No point giving them a free reign. Plus, if we don't talk in hypotheticals and about the future, what else do we as sports fans get to talk about to show our knowledge and expertise? So thats not what I am saying. But I want fans and media to understand that evaluation of these trades can change wildly with time. Sometimes these trades go one way for 3 years and goes the other way for the next 10 especially if it involves young players. I started thinking about all this with this whole Michael Vick saga. A lot of fans and experts conveniently forget that Michael Vick was traded for Ladainian Tomlinson.

The Chargers in 2001 had recently drafted a QB very high in the draft, a QB named Ryan Leaf. That move had set the franchise back by about 5 years and made them the laughing stock of the league. So they were literally scared to touch another QB when they earned the first pick in 2001 and a QB named Michael Vick was the prize of the draft. As good as Michael Vick looked, the Chargers reluctantly traded that pick away to avoid another QB disaster. Boy, aren't they glad today they did that with this whole dog fighting deal today? But forget the whole dog fighting deal. With that in the picture, no team would even trade a cheer leader's outfit for Vick. So thats not the point here. Atlanta jumped on that deal in 2001 and sent San Diego the fifth overall pick in the first round, their third-round pick, their second-round pick in 2002 and wide receiver Tim Dwight. Never mind that even Tim Dwight for Michael Vick would look lop-sided for San Diego ended up drafting a RB called Ladainian Tomlinson with that 5-Th pick. The rest of the picks in that trade have not yielded anything spectacular for the Chargers to date.

A lot of experts were all over San Diego for passing up on an incredible athlete, a transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime, position changing player. That was the take even 2 or 3 years in to the trade when it became obvious that LT was going to be good and he had already erased most of his draft-day doubts. Some people still said that as good as LT is, he is no Vick. Vick is such a high impact player who was hyped to be even bigger than the NFL. He was a big business windfall for the league as well because of the hype, his street-cred and the fact that he is a QB. But fast-forward 2 or 3 more years and it's clear that trade did involve an incredible athlete, a transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime, position changing player. But thats LT. I am talking even pre-dog days of this summer. Even without his current set of problems, Vick for LT is lop-sided in favor of the Chargers. In fact, the Chargers ended up picking Drew Brees in the second round of that 2001 draft to play QB for them instead of Vick and I wouldn't even trade Brees for Vick, dogs or no dogs. Vick never really reached his full-potential. It looked like we were never going to get the QB of the new millennium, Dan Marino of this generation. LT is all of that and more at the RB position. Thats the reality.

The morale of the story, don't be quick to judge trades.

Steve Kerr with Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons is quickly becoming one of my favorite sportswriter. Dude is funny, very committed to the NBA and well-informed about league matters and it's 80's and 90's history. He almost convinced me with his article a few months back that KG for Amare is a good deal for the Suns before other Suns fans back knocked some sense back into me. But in-spite of that questionable call, I like Bill Simmons. He might be my second best sports media guy after Jim Rome, who I probably like more for his non-sports takes than his sports-takes. Sometimes I feel like actual sports-talk slows down Jim's show.

In any case, Bill Simmons had Steve Kerr on his show and I loved the conversation. Of course I wanted to listen to My Suns GM in the off-season, but it was also a great basketball conversation in general. It had a lot of useful tid-bits. First, the Suns conversation. Bill thinks the Suns are the favorite to reach the finals against his beloved Celtics of course. Even as a Suns fan, I don't know why we are the favorites and how we are going to beat the Champions Spurs. That too since we got smaller with the Kurt Thomas trade. Bill quizzed Kerr on this trade calling it one of the most lop-sided trades ever. Sometimes we don't talk enough about such low-profile trades, but Suns lost a lot in that deal. They gave up Thomas and 2 future first round picks for a conditional second round pick. Think about that. What kind of trade is that where you give a decent player plus 2 first round picks for a second round pick? Makes no sense from a basketball standpoint.

Of course we all understand that it's a salary dump and Kerr also noted how the Suns saved 16 mill counting the luxury tax. But one of the reasons the Suns have problem getting better and they have gotten older lately because they have traded away a tonne of picks the last few years and each time it was to save money. They traded away the picks that could have netted Luol Deng, Rajon Rondo and Sergio Rodriguez. Now two more first rounders are gone. Thats not good in the long-term. Kerr din't get too much in to the Suns and just said Grant Hill's addition would be great. He also noted how Steve Nash was playing pick-up soccer and he said soccer helps Nash's passing and how some of his passing angles are just awesome. Thats an interesting point. Kerr also noted how soccer players tend to take a lot of risks with their passes because the downside is low. Turnovers in soccer don't turn to points at the other end like it does in basketball. So players like Nash and Giniobli take lot more chances and that explains their high turnover numbers sometimes.

Kerr also was talking about his days with Cleveland and Bill said Mark Price was probably one of the most underrated players in the history of the NBA. Kerr noted that he was probably the first guy to split the double-team like Wade and a lot of others do these days. Price figured that if he dribbled low and went hard between the two guys, they had to either let him go or foul him. They also spoke about MJ and if 92 MJ was playing in 2007 NBA with the current hand-checking rules, both of them agreed MJ would be unstoppable. May be he'll score 100 in a couple of games. Kerr also noted how MJ and Tim Duncan were both champions and cared only about winning, but had 2 different approaches. He said MJ was real hard on teammates, while Tim always blamed himself for all losses even if he had 30-20. Both works in it's own ways. I guess teammates step-up for both guys because they love one guy and they fear the other!

The other thing that was interesting was how high Kerr was on Pippen. He says he was the ultimate team player and both Bill and Steve were sad that his refusal to go into the game in that playoff game kind of spoiled his reputation forever. I have always thought the 17 point choke job the Blazers pulled against the Lakers in game 7 of the 2000 playoffs has had a profound impact on NBA history. If they had won, they probably would have won the championship and would have prevented the Lakers three-peat. Given that Kobe and Shaq never got along, they might have even broken off early and who knows what happens then. But Bill brought in a new angle to that series. He says it altered how history perceives Pippen. If the Blazers had gotten to the finals, Pipp being their best player and leader would have gotten a lot of credit. Plus he would have done something without MJ and that would have cemented Pippen's Hall-of-Fame career. Now most people just think of him as MJ's side-kick. He was that but he was much, much more.

Streak over for Webb

Brandon Webb won his 14-Th game today (3-2 against the Brewers) but his scoreless innings streak ended at 42. It was recently voted on the Arizona Republic website as the most impressive streak ever in the history of AZ sports ahead of other streaks like the Suns winning 17 straight and 15 straight in the same season and Lute Olson taking his Arizona wildcats to 8 million straight NCAA tournaments or something. I guess the Republic jinxed it because the streak ended today, but I am thinking Webb is on track to win back to back Cy Young anyways. Peavy's 14-5 with a 2.21 ERA is still better than Webb's 14-8 and 2.63, but not by much. If the DBacks win the division crown and Webb continues his strong second half, he should have a good shot at the Cy. Damn Prince Fielder for driving in that run in the first.

The game of the day was in Baltimore as Texas beat Baltimore 30-3. Yes, you read that right. A Big league team allowed 30 runs to another. I bet the Baltimore Ravens will play many games this NFL season where they don't allow anywhere close to 30 points and thats in football. The Orioles have embarrassed themselves like no other team in 110 years of modern Baseball. They gave up 5 runs in the 4-Th, 9 in the 6-Th, 10 in the 8-Th and 6 in the 9-Th. Thats more runs in each of those innings than a big league team should be giving up in entire games. If you look at the 4 pitchers they sent to the mound, they gave up 6, 8, 7 and 9 runs respectively. Again, more runs than what these scrubs should be giving up in entire games. Where was the mercy rule when you needed it? I am amazed Texas managed to score all these runs. After a while, aren't you supposed to just swing wildly and try to hit just home runs every pitch? Hit out or get out. I guess not. I am glad they didn't bunt and move runners over in the ninth with the score at 28-3! Paul Shuey gave up 9 runs in the 2 innings he pitched at the end. This is not what he was hoping in his ripe old age! MLB's best name, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, hit 2 homers and had 7 RBIs. I guess he almost equalled all the good work Mark Teixeira has done for Atlanta since the trade in just one game!

Speaking of Mark Teixeira, he has been a great pickup for the ATL. Dude has 9 homers and 26 RBIs in 19 games for the Braves. This guy might single-handedly get the Braves to the playoffs. Of course Atlanta is still reeling from the Michael Vick story. Vick plead guilty and now will definitely go to the hole. The only questions is, for how long and when? Experts say the deal might put him in jail for 12 to 22 months. Rough stuff. He will probably be suspended from the game and that needs to be served when he gets out. So he'll most definitely be out for 2 or 3 years and will be 30 years old by the time he is back in the reckoning. Sad, sad story. Sick story too as more and more details of this dog fighting deal comes out. Bryan Gumbel and Real Sports on HBO had a shocking piece on dog fighting and you just wonder who the hell these people are and how did they ever get this sick? Really scary, screwed up humans doing stupid and disgusting things to train these dogs. I am shocked and upset and I don't even like dogs. I am scared to run into some of these dumb, disgusting people.

NFL is king in our country right now, but with all these problems, NFL better be careful. I am sure Roger Goodell understands this and thats why he is really tough with his personal conduct policy, but he has no other choice. Fair or not, White America views NBA as being too black, too ghetto, too hip-hop and too thuggish and thats why they stay away from it. I feel NFL is on the same track with Vick, Pacman, the Bengals, etc. etc. etc. They have had one problem after the other the last year or 2 and this might catchup even to the mighty NFL. These things don't happen overnight and NFL better be careful with it's image. The Vick deal is a big one because America loves dogs more than they love their family.

Santastic!

Johan Santana was amazing today. He struck out 17 guys in 8 innings as he totally dominated the Texas Rangers. The Twins won a 1-0 gem of a game. Santana's pitch count was high and he didn't go out in the 9-Th. Joe Nathan closed the deal as he added 2 more strikeouts. Millwood was not too bad for the Rangers either as he gave up just a run in 7 strong innings. But Santana was the story. He was in total command and all his pitches were working. He apparently didn't shake off catcher Mike Redmond even once in this game and why would he if everything is working to perfection? You could tell how fooled the hitters were as they started flailing at everything in the late innings. They felt like they had no other choice. Johan Santana may be the best pitcher in the game right now.

Speaking of the Twins, they got their closer a couple of years back from the Giants when Brian Sabean traded away Joe Nathan. That dude is now one of the best closers in the game. It's almost like Toronto looked at this and said, "OK, lets turn this other pitcher we got from the Giants and see if he can close too. May be Sabean and the Giants can't spot closer talent and they give them away". So Toronto turns Jeremy Accardo into a closer after B.J.Ryan gets injured and he has now got 24 saves with a 2.28 ERA. Brian Sabean should be pissed. It's not like the Giants could have used a good closer the last few years :-)

Carlos Zambrano signed a 5 year 91.5 million contract to upstage Zito's 18 mill by 0.3 mill a year though Zito's contract is for 7 years. I guess thats the going market for good pitchers, especially if someone pays 18 a year for Zito! There's no way true aces are now going to take less than 18! It's amazing how things work out. With all the hype for Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, nobody even looked at Zambrano few years back. But with those 2 occasionally getting out of the DL to play once in a while, Zambrano has become the ace and the face of that Cubs rotation. Today he pitched 3 scoreless before rain wiped out their Sunday nighter against the Cards.

Great excitement in Yankee-land as 2 kids came off the bullpen to help them finish a game. This dude Joba Chamberlain can hit 100 on the gun and he pitched the 8-Th. Edwar Ramirez pitched the 9-Th and Yankee-fan finally saw some young blood on the mound. They have been missing that for a while. But San Diego was happy with it's golden oldie as Maddux won his 342-Nd with a strong, one-run outing. His ERA is now down to 3.90 and has been pitching well lately. Unfortunately, the Padres bats have been silent and he has had 2 losses and 3 NDs in the 5 starts before this one despite giving up 3 runs or less in all of them. I love watching this guy win. The only thing better might be watching my DBacks ace Brandon Webb continue his shutout streak. It now stands at 42 innings and thats just awesome. His latest outing was a 4-0 shutout of the Braves on Friday as Webb pitched his 3-Rd straight complete game. That's unheard off in this day and age.

Bambino in da house!

Micah Owings is one of those home-grown talent contributing to the DBacks this year. Today, at Atlanta, he had a 4/5 stint at the plate with 2 long home runs. He drove in 6 and scored 4 times himself. This was in front of a friendly crowd for Micah as he grew up in Georgia and had a whole bunch of his peeps at the yard. But here's the story. He is a starting pitcher who also won the game giving up just 3 runs in 7 strong innings. Thats Ruthian stuff and he said it was his greatest game ever. That could be the under-statement of the year. Dude already had hit a homer this season and now has 3. Not bad at all. He is not having a great year pitching with an ERA around 4.70 and a 6-6 record, but you know what? If you can drive in 6 runs, you have every right to give up 4 or 5. I can't complain. Micah helped extend the DBacks lead in the NL west to 5 games.

Yanks are 5 behind the Sox as they have beat the Tigers to lead the series 2-1 with a game to go tomorrow. Today, Clemens lucked his way to a win and showed once again why he is a punk. 20 year old rookie Cameron Maybin hit his first career home run off Clemens and Clemens couldn't let the kid go. He came inside and hit him later in the game. Real tough guy! The Yankees are good though. They are just half a game behind the Mariners. Thank god the Sox had a strong first half of the season. If not, the Yanks will be running away with that division. Looks like the Yanks are going to make the post-season after-all. I want to enjoy a couple of years when both the Sox and the Yanks don't make it to the playoffs. ESPN and some other outlets might stop covering baseball if that ever happens!

NFL is still dealing with Michael Vick. He is supposedly going to take a plea deal on Monday. All his co-defendants have struck a deal and Vick is in a real bad spot. The feds now have 4 solid witnesses and all 3 of his co-defendants have plead guilty. So it's Vick -V- 7 plus the Feds! Reminds me of that great "walk-off" run and TD he had against the Vikings in OT. If he goes to trial and gets convicted, he could be in jail for 5 years and come out after doing maybe 85% of that time. Thats long. If he takes the deal, he is potentially looking at 12-18 months and might get out in 9-12 months. I wouldn't be surprised if he takes the deal even with his millions and access to top lawyers. Thats how bad a soup he is in.

One question thats hard to answer is, how is dog-fighting so bad, but hunting is so normal? Everybody from the vice-president on down goes hunting in this country and kill deers and other sweet animals, but you can't kill a dog without being treated like the second-coming of the devil. I am not condoning what Vick did and he is a sick dude, but it's amazing how hypocritical our culture is. We shoot a deer dead and jail Vick for fighting dogs.

Plea time

It's plea time as the difficult summer in Sports is winding down. Tim Donaghy is expected to plead guilty tomorrow and this means we will get to know exactly what the charges are and what he is accepting. In Michael Vick's case, he is rumored to be negotiating a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. This means he is really in trouble. If his high-profile lawyers don't think they can fight it, the feds should have quite the dirt on Vick. They are supposedly negotiating jail-time under a year. Experts think he will be in jail for multiple years if Vick goes to trial. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I never thought I would see a millionaire celebrity like this spend any kind of serious time in the hole - Robert Blake being the only exception.

The NBA apparently is happy with Donaghy's guilty plea. They want closure on the matter and they will move closer to it with this development. The NBA off-season is kind of slowing down now with the KG trade done. There is a lot of stupid noise about washed up oldies trying to come back. Apparently the Celtics want Reggie Miller back and I don't know why. Alan Houston is saying he wants to come back and I hope somebody asks him "what for?". There is even talk about Charles Oakley coming back. That might be worth it because Oaks will start a few fights and spice things up. Plus, he is the black Yogi Berra with quotes like "If it ain't broke, don't break it." and "posses are like contracts. Everybody's got one. Some are just bigger than others."

Interestingly, the media always asking the Suns if they are interested in all these guys. I guess thats their way of saying the Suns are a contender, they are close and they can use a little veteran help. But I am glad the Suns are really not chasing these guys. They just need a big guy, period. Unfortunately P.J.Brown seems to be the only viable option right now and even he is chased by multiple teams, including the Mavs who apparently want him just to screw the Suns. In other news, the Clips got a huge blow when Elton Brand ruptured his left Achilles' tendon. Thats bad for the Clips and the NBA, but good for the other Pacific division teams I guess. The Lakers may still not be the best team in LA as Kobe still has no help. Not sure what the Laker management is doing. They can't get anybody.

Good day in MLB as the Yanks lost 12-0 to the Orioles. I can live with that score everyday. A great game in bean-town as the Sox won 2-1 over the Devil Rays scoring both their runs in the 9-Th for a walk-off win. Fantastic duel between 23 year old lefties Scott Kazmir and cancer survivor John Lester. Unfortunately, the DRays bullpen blew the lead for Kazmir. Eric Gagne heard some boos in this game, but was solid today after a few bad outings. DBacks had a tough day as B.K.Kim lasted just 17 pitches. This is not the home-coming we were all expecting. The Bonderman-Sabathia duel went to the 10-Th innings as Detroit won at Cleveland 6-2. Bobby Cox got kicked out of the game for a record 132-Nd time against the Giants. No homer for Barry Bonds today, or for that matter Rick Ankiel!

Ankiel is back with a bang

Rick Ankiel hit 2 homers today and he now has 3 in 3 games. He was recently called up to the majors as an outfielder after doing really well in the minors as a hitter. We often hype up a lot of stories on sports for it's emotional and feel-good values, but this is a truly heart-warming story. If you don't remember, Rick Ankiel came into the bigs as a can't miss, flame throwing starting pitcher at the age on 20 in 1999. The guy had a heavy sinker and a devastating curve-ball to go with his 97 MPH fast ball. He was left-handed too. He even started game 1 of the playoffs in 2000 against the Braves and my man Greg Maddux, but mysteriously started throwing wild pitch after wild pitch. It was painful to see a kid with so much potential just lose it mentally and disintegrate on the mound. The Cards had to pull him out of that game and he couldn't regain his control the rest of that playoffs as he was tried a couple more games against the Braves and later the Mets.

More of the same next year as Ankiel's problems only got worse during the regular season. He was sent down to the minors and he never could regain his control at any level. He was sent all the way down to the rookie league where he regained some semblance of normalcy with his pitching. He was given opportunities couple more times by the Cards, but the ugliness never went away. The guy has had a tough life growing up. He had a screwed up dad who pushed him real hard to do well in baseball. The dad was also a criminal who had been arrested 14 times and convicted 6 times. When Ankiel came up to the majors, his dad was in the federal prison doing 6 years for drug crimes. Still the kid grew up to be a nice dude and may be was rushed to the majors too soon by the Cards given his unusual background. So everybody inside and outside the Cards wanted him to succeed, but he just could not get his control back except for a brief stretch in the minors couple of years back.

After several years of trying and failing, Ankiel decided he was going to quit pitching and become an outfielder. Ankiel was a decent hitter and a good athlete growing up. Even in the majors, he was one of the better hitting pitchers. He already had 2 home-runs in the bigs as a pitcher. So he decided to become a hitter full-time and sure enough, he did very well. So well that the Cards decided to call him up this week. He hit a home run his very first at-bat and Tony LaRussa had tears in his eyes. He said it was as exciting as winning the World Series last year. It felt almost scripted that he hit a home-run in his first game back. It's been curtain call time for Ankiel ever since. Today, he hit two more dingers and made a fantastic catch in the outfield. Great story so far. I have a feeling the pitchers will eventually figure this guy out given that he has been hitting seriously for just 2 years. But I sure hope this feel-good tale continues forever. I would love for Ankiel to retire an outfielder after having a solid 10 year big league career with 200+ home runs!

In other regular baseball news, my Arizona DBacks are on fire. They have won 17 of 20 as they have opened a 4 game lead in the NL West. Brandon Webb is a stud. He is riding a continuos, scoreless 33-inning innings streak. The reigning Cy Young winner might win one more this year. This guy came up in 2003 and has been the main-man for the DBacks ever since. The DBacks are looking awesome right now. They are young, exciting and more importantly, completely home-grown. Webb was a DBacks draft pick and so are 5 of 8 position players and the 6-th, Chris Young, has not played for any other team but the DBacks though was drafted by the WhiteSox. They also locked up Eric Byrnes long term for 30 mill over 3 years. Great signing. I have always liked Byrnes ever since his days with my other favorite AL team, the A's. The DBacks also got Byung-Hyun Kim back for old time sake! I have a felling the rest of the season will be good for the snakes. The home-grown hitters are not setting the park on fire, but they do enough to win and they'll improve. In contrast, the Brewers are still winning on the strength of their young hitting. They can also get to the playoffs if their pitching holds up.

Bonds and KG aftermath

It's been a day since Bonds hit his 756-Th and he has hit 757 already. This was his usual water shot, his 35 -Th in to the McCovey cove out of the 45 total that has reached the water out there. That brings up something I want to mention about Bonds. I have beat him up pretty bad over the steroids issue and everybody thinks the record is tainted. But I thought I need to mention 2 things that makes Bonds' achievements relatively impressive. First, his home ball park is brutal to hitters. Petco in San Diego is probably the only new park thats worse for the hitters than AT&T. When they were building this bad boy, people looked at the short porch on the right and said it's tailor made for Bonds to hit home-runs all day. But the park ended up playing much truer than expected. In fact, without that short distance to the right, this might be a graveyard for the hitters. Even with that, Bonds has hit 35 out of the 45 balls that have reached the waters. Visiting left-handers rarely reach the water because it's just too hard.

Not only has the Giants ended up with a beautiful ball-park which might end up as the Wrigley or Fenway of the next generation, they have also ended up with a very fair baseball park. But if Bonds was playing at any other park, you are probably looking at 5 home runs more each of the last 6 or 7 years. Secondly, the walks. Bonds is famous for his walks and one of the reasons for it is, how bad his supporting cast has been throughout the years. The Giants have done a horrible job of surrounding him with big bats. Jeff Kent was the closest thing to a super-star they have had batting around Bonds and nobody appreciated that guy anyways and he left town pretty much unwanted. If only Bonds had any kind of help, he would have walked far less and have seen a lot more good pitches. You can add another 5 HRs a year if the Giants had helped him out. Neither of these factors remove the taint on Bonds, but what I am saying is, he could easily be staring at a tainted 800 home-runs today if the park and the Giants had done him any favors.

The other guy who is getting a lot of flak lately is Kevin McHale of the T-Wolves. He is accused of striking deals with his friend Danny Ainge and transforming his bad T-Wolves team into the horrible Celtics team that Ainge dumped on him. He has definitely proven to be a bad GM lately. He is also an Ex-Celtic great and has about 7 guys on his rosters who have played for the Celtics the last few years. It looks and sounds like an inside job, but really it's not that bad. I agree the previous trade where he gave up Wally Szczerbiak, Michael Olowokandi and the first pick for Ricky Davis and Mark Blount was just stupid. The stupid part was really the first pick he threw in. He had no business doing that knowing fully well that his team sucks and that pick will probably be worth something. I guess he got carried away by the opportunity to give the Kandi-man away!

But I don't see what the problem is with the KG trade. First off, McHale got back the first pick that he should have never given up in the first place. Secondly, he got Theo Ratliff's expiring contract. On top of this, he got Sebastian Telfair, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green and Al Jefferson. What else did McHale have on the table that was better? You can't evaluate the trade in a vacuum. You got to look at his other options. He didn't have any. I am a Suns fan and would have loved for the Suns to get KG, but the Suns made it clear they are not giving Amare and as much as I love the Matrix, Marion and a bunch of scrubs is not better than what the Celts gave them. McHale could have gotten Lamar Odom and LA's scrubs and thats even worse! Except Kobe, there's nothing on that roster that I would even touch with a 10 foot barge pole. The Warriors probably had the best young talent to offer, but they didn't have the right mix of salaries to match up. McHale essentially had nothing else.

When you gut a franchise and give up a mega-star like KG, I always think a total re-build is a better way to go than trying to re-load. You are not going to replace KG with an Odom or Marion. You are better off going young and building from the ground floor again. Thats exactly what McHale is doing right now. It'll take them 3 years to get above water and may be McHale will be and probably should be fired by then, but he finally has a number of ways to rebuild his team. Young talent, good future picks and cap space. Even McHale probably can't screw this up. Or may be he will. In life who you know is more important than what you know. Danny Ainge is the best proof for that. He didn't do too well as a GM himself, but he knew Kevin McHale and looks like that saved his job. I understand that friendships always help in clinching such deals in terms of comfort level, but my point is, McHale didn't have too many options for KG.

Bonds 756!

Finally Bonds did what he was supposed to this year - surpass the home run mark. As expected, it happened at home. The Giants and the home fans put on a show. Ironically the ball ended up in the hands of a Mets fan who was in the crowd wearing a Mets jersey. Apparently he was on his way to Australia. Go figure. The game stopped for a long time for the ceremony. His entire family and Willie Mays were there as usual. The big surprise was a message from Hank Aaron on the jumbo-tron. There was a lot of talk about Hank not being there. But the classy Aaron sent the message and enhanced his image more than anything. Bud Selig also called Barry after the game and congratulated him. He was not at the game for some reason. Should have been busy working on the all-important Devil Rays-Pirates inter-league schedule for next year.

The guy who gave up the home run, Mike Bacsik, gave a real cute interview after the game. He seems like a genuine kid who had no problems giving up the record breaker. He tipped his cap towards Bonds during the game. He later said he wanted to challenge him and he also met him afterwards to congratulate him and got an autographed bat from Bonds. Apparently this guy's dad has pitched to Bond's dad and also pitched to Aaron when he was at 755. Barry wished this kid well in his presser. Bonds was also all praise for John Lannon, yesterday's starting pitcher, who not only challenged Bonds, but actually overpowered him. All in all, a great day for Bonds. There were a couple of questions about the "taint" and the controversy which Bonds summarily dismissed. He was clearly irritated by those questions and he said "this record is not tainted, period".

Bonds had a great story for the local TV audience in the Bay Area in one of their shows. There was a very memorable at-bat he had against Eric Gagne in 2004. Bottom of the ninth, Barry comes to the plate trailing 3-0 with Gagne trying to close the game for the Dodgers. They went one-on-one, pure gas versus bat-speed. He got one pretty good which just hooked foul. That was a 98 MPH fast ball. Then Bonds planted a 100 MPH pitch in about the same spot where he hit 756 today. Bonds told the story today that he and Eric had met in the past and they had this deal where Eric agreed to challenge Bonds if he faced him with a lead of 3 runs or more. Thats exactly what happened on that day in 2004 and everybody got to witness it.

With all this said, one cannot but smell the "asterix" in the air. Ironically, I was kind of OK with Bonds chasing the record and was not too bothered by him even surpassing the great Hank Aaron. But the "taint" hit me today when the Giants did sort of a tribute to the top 10 home run leaders - Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Sammy Sosa, Frank Robinson, Mark McGwire, Harmon Killebrew, Rafael Palmeiro and Ken Griffey, Jr. There are 5 guys from the current "era" and thats just way too many from one era. 3 of them are clearly tainted - McGwire, Palmeiro and Sosa. One possibly clean guy - Griffey and the other - Bonds, definitely tainted, but might be in the top 10 anyways. This is when it hit me that Mays and Aaron and Robinson and those guys should be really pissed. A lifetime of hard-work on their part is being erased left and right by a bunch of roid-heads from our era and nobody did anything until recently. Baseball collectively failed it's heroes and it's a crying shame. The real victims are the fans and the true legends of the game who are all being replaced by fake superstars.

Like I said, Bonds probably belongs in the top 10 list anyways, but he definitely doesn't break Aaron's record without the juice. He probably doesn't even get to Willie's 660 without Greg Anderson. Only thing we could say for sure about Bonds is, he was a first-ballot hall-of-famer with or without Balco, but all his home-run marks are definitely question marks. Bob Costas made this point that people are just wrong when they say that Bonds was the best player alive even in 1998 and so the steroids don't matter. Bonds was a first-ballot hall-of-famer even in 1998, but Costas says nobody was even talking about him in terms of all-time great players. In fact, he was not even in the all-century team and was not even in the top 2 or 3 notable misses in that team. So his home run numbers since 2000 definitely took him from "phenomenal" to the "super-human". Bonds hit more home runs after he turned 35 than Roger Marris hit his entire career. Enough said!

The post-steroids Bonds became one of the greatest hitters of all time and the jump he recorded in almost every offensive category after he turned 35 is other-worldly. A player who was already playing at a hall-of-fame level, got much better - almost 40% to 50% better, after he turned 35 years old. It's just unheard of. How do you explain that without some cream and the clear?

Milestone Weekend

The NFL hall of fame weekend and an emotional speech by Michael Irvin signaled the start of the NFL pre-season. So this might very well be the last weekend of undivided attention for MLB this year. MLB did have something good to offer this weekend. All the milestones we have been waiting for a while happened this weekend. A-Rod hit 500, Bonds tied the record with 755 on Saturday. Then on Sunday, Tom Glavine got his 300-Th win. The only thing remaining now is 756 for Barry. He is back home for 4 against the Nationals and as expected sat out the game at San Diego on Sunday. He had a long press conference yesterday after the game and the reason he gave for not playing on Sun I thought was weird. He said "I'll not be in the lineup tomorrow. I am going to celebrate with my family". What? Just say you have a sore thumb or whatever or just leave it to the usual "Bonds will not play day games after night games". I thought his answer was strange to say the least.

The San Diego crowd cheered the Bonds home run more than they booed. That was not really a surprise to me. Some experts made a big deal out of it saying it'll be ugly and nasty and all that. I thought American people are too nice for that. Eventually, I knew they'll just get caught in the excitement and respect the moment and let Bonds off easy. Thats exactly what happened. There were enough boos and "asterix" signs in the crowd, but most people cheered the feat and even gave him a standing ovation. May be it would have been a little worse at LA because of the rivalry, but the reception would have been pretty much the same in any other town. Bud Selig seemed to have more problems with it than the Sand Diego fans. He kind of just stood up and was completely stoic. He didn't even clap his hands.

Bud is really pushing it. He seems to have some real issues with Barry Bonds as if it's all Bonds fault and is talking like he is making a major sacrifice by even being there. I thought his statement after the game was not gracious at all. He seemed to point to all the scandals and kind of gave Bonds a back-handed compliment. "No matter what anybody thinks of the controversy surrounding this event, Mr. Bonds' achievement is noteworthy and remarkable," Selig said, adding that "all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty." There's no need for this on this day. The only thing more ridiculous was when he said last week that he is making a herculean effort to attend these games. “This has been a tough experience, I don’t mind telling you,” Selig said. “I don’t think anybody can say I haven’t made a Herculean effort,” he said. “In fact, I have a lot of people who are stunned I’m still at it.” What?? I think he is growing senile. He needs to understand he is part of the problem and is fooling nobody with his "holier than thou" attitude. Did he forget that he is the commissioner of the game and the steroid dealers were running around his clubhouses right underneath his nose?

Bud didn't congratulate Bonds except for that stupid statement. Also, he apparently called to congratulate A-Rod for his 500 and openly said he would love to attend Glavine's 300-Th win. Bud just hates Bonds and I don't know why. Speaking of A-Rod, he finally got his 500-Th home run as a prolonged slump was getting a little ugly for him. The Yankees offense has been feasting on some bad teams the last couple of weeks. There have been games where they have scored 21 runs and 16 runs and another with 8 home runs. But A-Rod got to 499 and was kind of stuck there for a while. He went hitless in 21 at-bats after hitting the 499-Th home run on July 25-Th. There was some talk again about how this guy can't come through under pressure. Tabloids were on him again for not being able to perform when it matters the most. Poor guy, can't win even when he hits his 500-Th home run. I am sure he is glad the thing is over now.

Tom Glavine also got his 300-Th win and might very well be the last one to do it for a while. I know everybody said the same thing when Maddux got there a couple of years back, but we did know than that Glavine had a real shot at it. Now, I don't see anybody with a realistic chance except may be an outside shot for Mike Mussina who has 245 wins and is 38 years old. Randy Johnson is pretty close to 300, but is also pretty old and pretty injured. He may not even pitch again. So Glavine might truly be the last one. The Cubs fans were all love for Glavine. A classy superstar with a lot of talent, breaking great records will get mad love even on the road. Thats why I guess the whole Bonds deal looks so bad because that kind of hatred and booing is unusual when you are a superstar at that level chasing that kind of a record. You couldn't help but notice the contrast between the two scenarios, thanks to the classy Cubs fans. 300 is done now for Glavine and the biggest loser is ESPN! They can't show his beautiful wife Christine Glavine every 8 seconds anymore. She was a real cutie with genuine concern on her face whenever the Cubs scored runs and heart-felt tears in her eyes at the end. Baseball never looked this beautiful :-)

MLB trade deadline and the biggest move is KG!

Today was MLB's trade deadline, but the biggest trade of the day was Kevin Garnett moving to Boston. More on that later. First, lets analyze the MLB trades. The biggest winner were the Atlanta Braves who acquired Stud Mark Teixeira from the Rangers for Jarrod Saltalamacchia. ATL gave up some of their best prospects for Teixeira but he might be worth it since he is a pure power machine. Jarrod is expected to be real good and I can't believe Atlanta traded away the best name in baseball! Texas did well too as they loaded up on young talent. They also traded away Eric Gagne to Boston for some second tier prospects. Great pickup for Boston as Gagne will setup for Papelbon. I am sure the baseball crazy Bostonians are more excited about this trade than even Kevin Garnett! The other trades were not major in nature. San Diego got slightly better. They picked up Morgan Ensberg, who was shockingly waived by the Astros few days back. This dude was a MVP candidate just 2 years back. For some reason the Pirates helped the Giants dump Matt Morris's salary on them. Why Pirates are taking on an old pitcher's salary, I have no idea! I guess thats why they are the Pirates.

Now to the BIG trade in the NBA. The BIG ticket, KG finally ends up in Boston in a trade that sends forwards Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes, swingman Gerald Green, guard Sebastian Telfair, center Theo Ratliff, two future first-round picks and cash considerations to the Timberwolves. This is apparently the biggest trade in terms for 7 pieces going one way for just one guy. The previous record was the Rockets sending 6 guys to Chicago for Scottie. This is great for the Celts (and TWolves too). They got one of the best big-3's in the entire league and they will be formidable in the L-East. All 3 are above 30 and considered a little old, but KG and Paul Pierce easily have another 4 solid years left. Even Ray allen, the oldest and the most injured of the big-3, has another 2 or 3 good years left and Boston might have enough to compete for a while. They do have nothing around the 3 since they traded their young roster away. The biggest problem is probably the lack of a good point. I wish they had retained Delonte West. That guy might have been the perfect fit for a loaded team like this. They'll also have a weak bench, but you can't have everything. You got 3 future hall-of-famers in their prime and you got to make it work.

I am happy for Danny Ainge. I like him because of his Suns connections and he is also a clean-cut, good guy. He has taken a lot of crap for his moves and I have been critical of him too. He did make some good moves, but my problem was, some of those moves looked disjointed. They all were decent on their own, but they failed to convey a cogent vision. He went young and collected talent and even openly said one year how he would like his team to miss the playoffs so he can get a lottery pick. But then he would get a Gary Payton and a Wally Szerbiak for no reason. He traded away Antoine Walker, then got him back, then let him go again. All along he held on to Paul Pierce for some reason. Even the Ray Allen trade didn't make sense to me since he gave up a high pick to get him and he was not the perfect compliment to Paul Pierce. But if he had gotten him to just lure KG, thats genius. Part of that trade was also to convince Paul Pierce to stay and it sure looked like a panic move. But at the end of the day, Ainge is smiling. He recovered big from that disaster on the lottery night.

The problem these days is, no fan base will accept a 5 year re-building plan. It's an instant gratification society these days and you can't blame the fans either. They pay 200 bucks for 2 mediocre seats and it's really not fair to ask them to do that for 5 straight years so that they can see a winner eventually. Those days are gone. No GM can even hold on to a job for 5 years with such a rebuilding plan. So Ainge had to do some crazy moves just to keep a competitive team on the floor at times. Also with free agency and the modern superstar culture, stars want out if the team struggles for a couple of years. Given all these compulsions, Ainge did do well to pull this off at the end. If you really think about it, it was no rocket science. Ainge was collecting some real young talent and you either wait for them to develop, or parlay them to get proven stars. He ended up doing the later as the patience of the fans was running out. But he did draft some studs, especially Al Jefferson and he deserves credit for that. If they didn't have Al Jefferson, no Kevin Garnett today for the Celts.

As for the T-Wolves, this is a great trade. They have a really young team right now with a lot of hope for the future. Al Jefferson is a stud and I'll pay money to watch this guy any day. They got Gerald Green and Corey Brewer (5-Th pick in this year's draft) to go with him and they got 2 picks in this trade as well. Those are some solid assets. They also got an expiring contract in Theo Ratliff and he is the only guy older than 25 they acquired in this trade. On the day of the MLB trade deadline, the T-Wolves did the NBA equivalent of a baseball team stockpiling talented minor league prospects.

Hall Of Fame.

MLB has one thing that the other sports does not have - history. Couple of times a year baseball history comes out and distracts us from baseball's present which is for the most part is a steroid covered mess. With Barry Bonds chasing 755, these have not been good times for baseball. Sure the Giants are happy with their collection at the gate and probably their TV ratings as well, but MLB as a whole has looked more uncomfortable than a 60 year old white millionaire at a Lil' Wayne concert! But today's Hall Of Fame induction ceremony saved at least one day for baseball. Cal Ripken Jr and Tony Gwynn were inducted in what could be one of the best pair of people inducted into the hall in the same class.

The whole "class guy" moniker is thrown around recklessly these days in Sports. It would be interesting to dig up and document how many media honks called Michael Vick a "class guy" in the past 5+ years before the dog fighting deal. The point is, we don't know any of these guys, but Cal and Tony seem to me like decent human beings all around. They have always been considered good guys and have handled the media and the fans with dignity over the years. Especially Tony Gwynn, I love that guy. I have always felt Cal Ripken is just a bit over-rated because of his consecutive game record. Awesome record, but still a little over-rated because it's not really related to the game on the field directly. But I am sure he makes it to the hall even without the streak. As for Tony, no questions asked. He is a straight-up, first ballot hall of famer. And the special thing about these 2 guys is that they played for the same team their entire career. Thats becoming rarer and rarer in all of sports. Among the stars today, probably Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer and David Wright are the only ones I can think of who might play their entire career in one town (once Craig Biggio is done that is).

Almost 70,000 people showed up for the induction ceremony today. Thats a great day for baseball and Cal since most of the East coast crowd had come in for him. But starting tomorrow, MLB has to deal with Bonds again who is at 754. Bud Selig was probably hoping Bonds will break the record this weekend as he had a good excuse to stay away at the hall of fame ceremonies. Now he needs to show up somewhere to watch the chase.

Who's Never!

ESPN is getting a lot of flak for a stupid segment called "who's now". It's their way of filling in free time during the down-time in the Sports calendar. MLB is the only major sport on display during summer and it can get boring at time out there. So ESPN has come out with this idea of a 32 athlete bracket which matches sports stars against each other. You got to pick one over the other based on on-field performance and off-field buzz. You get mind bending match-ups like Tiger Woods - V - Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush - V - Danica Patrick! And most fans are watching this and going "what the heck?". For most people, it's one more proof of ESPN taking itself way too seriously. And who better to compere this circus than Stuart Scott? He may soon qualify for the title of the second most ridiculous ESPN personality behind the insufferable Chris Berman. The only thing that could have made this segment any worse is if they had Chris "BackBackBack" Berman running this thing with his contrived nicknames for all the 32 athletes.

Whatever little credibility ESPN had with this thing - which was close to zero anyways, they lost it completely when they trotted out Jessica Beil and Kevin James (the fat guy from "King of Queens"). to vote for round 2. It was a shameless plug for the movie "Chuck and Larry" that I am guessing Disney, which owns ESPN, is involved in some way. Shameless idiocy! I guess I am also a little bored in summer. Actually I don't hate this whole "who's now" segment (or Stuart Scott) as much as some of the other guys. But clearly it has enough stupidity built in to it. First, the name. What the heck is "who's now" ? What does that even supposed to mean? They spend the first 5 minutes every night explaining what the hell it means. Secondly Stu looks like he put the stu in stupid! Finally, don't tell me Jessica Biel and Adam Sandler should be on Sportcenter voting on this thing. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they trot out Ms.Biel for 3 hrs straight everyday on ESPN. That girl is FINE! But not for this reason.

In any case, looking at what's happening in sports this summer and this stupid bit on sportscenter, I thought a more appropriate contest might actually be "who's never". There are so many guys screwing themselves and the sports-world so much, it's hard to even find any positive news about any of the major sports the last month or so. Some of these guys are so over the top with their actions, they may never be worth anything the rest of their careers. So I am calling it "who's never". I don't quite have the time that ESPN has on its hands and I don't take myself as seriously as those guys. So this is a 8 person bracket with the guy who is worse off in his life advancing to the next round of "who's never". All the results are listed below so you don't have to wait.

Round 1
-------

(1) Michael Vick - The Dog Killer extraordinaire.
V
(8) Tour De France - I don't know any names in this sport, but all of them are tainted.

Winner - Michael Vick. Real brutal stuff from Vick and who cares about cycling anyways?

(2) Tim Donaghy - This 5''8" white guy might bring down the NBA all by himself.
V
(7) Barry Bonds - Tainted home-run chase. 756 never looked this dirty.

Winner - Donaghy in a landslide. NBA will trade it's gambling problems for MLB's Steroids problem in a heart-beat.

(3) Bud Selig - The worst commissioner in all of sports. Has no clue what to do with this whole Bonds thing and is mumbling and stumbling through the chase.
V
(6) David Stern - A lifetime's worth of good work might disappear in a month or two. I am sure he is pissed.

Winner - Bud Selig. David Stern could sell his league for 10 bucks and export it lock, stock and barrel to China tomorrow and will still be a better commish than Selig.

(4) Sergio Garcia - Choked away another golden opportunity to win the big one recently.
V
(5) Kobe Bryant - "Trade me. But don't trade me. I definitely want a trade. Wait, wait. Please keep me in LA".

Winner - Sergio Garcia. Kobe seems flaky, but at least he has a ring or 3 - courtesy of Shaq.

Round 2
-------
Vick V Sergio Garcia - Vick wins based on his unique brand of cruelty.

Donaghy V Selig - Donaghy advances. Even Selig can't make Donaghy look good.

Finals
------

Vick V Donaghy - Tough one. What a finals. Truly a dream match-up! I would say Tim Donaghy wins. His effects could be felt for years to come and he might have set NBA back by 10 years. Also I trust our justice system and Vick's 100 million dollars. He'll probably walk away from this like all rich people do.

Whos Never - Tim Donaghy

National Betting Association.

As if a betting scandal involving a referee is not bad enough for me as a NBA fan, it's also coming out that the tainted ref Tim Donaghy refereed game 3 of the pivotal Sun-Spurs playoffs series. I can't even imagine how bad I would feel if it comes out that he actually fixed that game. It was a poorly officiated game and here's a great Youtube video clip from a Suns fan.

Suns fans are already bitter about the game 5 suspensions that David Stern foisted on us by choosing a stupid rule over common sense. Now game 3 was fixed? You got be kidding me! Why is God so cruel to Suns fans? We are good guys really! This game 3 was the final game Donaghy officiated last season. Bill Simmons ripped the officiating just 2 days after that game and he now looks like a genius. Well, I think the "Sports Guy" is a genius anyways, but how ironic is it that he actually referred to the Cocaine era of the NBA while criticizing the officiating in this game? As it turns out, this is the biggest NBA scandal since the cocaine days and frankly much bigger than that.

It's one thing for some regular season games to be under the microscope, but if this playoff game is in question, especially the Suns-Spurs series which everybody knew was the de-facto NBA finals, it's a huge black eye for the league. Basically it means Donaghy determined last year's NBA champion. NBA has got a problem much bigger than the cocaine era or even the steroids issue in MLB. Gambling is the biggest fear of all sports leagues. Thats why Pete Rose is still outside looking in while the MLB hall of fame has it's share of racists, thieves and roid-heads. Thats why Vegas has no pro teams. Even a drop of gambling suspicion, and the NBA becomes the WWF (or WWE or whatever the hell it's called these days). Nothing threatens the integrity of a sport like a betting scandal. And NBA has got a juicy one on it's hands now. The only thing that can make it worse is if more referees and/or players are involved and if this game 3 was actually fixed. Heck, you look at the officiating in that game, you almost have to assume all 3 refs were involved! Bad call after bad call and only a few of them were actually Donaghy's.

NBA has multiple problems here. For one, it's already struggling with it's popularity due to a variety of reasons. Now this becomes another convenient and valid reason for NBA-haters to bash the league and stay away from it. The deeper this thing gets, the worse it is going to be for the NBA to recover. Just like the MLB with the steroids, you'll not see the impact immediately at the gate. People will still show up and have a good time, but the TV ratings and the general penetration of the game might not improve for years to come. It's already close to becoming a niche sport and the fear is, it might get there in a hurry and stay there for a while if this thing gets uglier.

The other big issue for the NBA is, the refs NEVER had any credibility in the first place. They were always viewed as guys who were implementing some external agenda by being preferential to the super-stars and the big market teams. The public rarely believed the refs called the game as they saw it on the court. You know what, I would agree with those doubters and the league is at fault for that. NBA is always subject to a lot of conspiracy theories and nothing in sports has lesser credibility than the NBA draft lottery. I don't buy most of these stories, but I have never been a fan of the officiating in this league. I hate the "super-star rules" and I have felt several games, especially in the playoffs, are manipulated to either help the home team, or push it to a game 7 or whatever. Even as a Suns fan, I can't forget or pardon the game 6 of the LA Lakers-Sacramento Kings series in the Western Conference finals in 2002. NBA basically gave that game to the Lakers so that they can all go to Sacramento and have a game 7 in one of the most entertaining series since MJ retired.

I am almost glad this scandal came out because everybody's eyes are on the NBA officiating and I am hoping desperately that the league will finally give their refs the rule book and ask them to call the game as it's meant to be. I met a friend from Bulgaria recently who said he used to play basketball growing up in his country. He told me the basketball rules are different in Europe and in the NBA. I was a little surprised and asked him which rules? He very innocently answered me "well they allow 3 steps in the NBA". I laughed and cried at the same time. This dude actually thought 3 steps was legal in the NBA. This tells you all you need to know about the officiating in this league. The league was apparently surprised that they couldn't spot anything wrong with Donaghy's officiating in their daily analysis of all officials and every call they make and do not make. My theory is, the NBA officiating is so uneven, incompetent and stage managed, it's hard to see when a ref is screwing up on purpose on his own. This is a wake-up call for the league. Call the freaking game like it supposed to be and may be you can spot such impropriety sooner than later.

David Stern and the league are also under fire here. Among other reasons, one reason Stern is facing the music is because of how steadfast he has been in supporting the refs and how quick he has been in fining people heavily for any criticism of the refs. What if Cuban and other guys were upset after some Donaghy games and what if those games were badly officiated or even fixed? Is the Commish going to refund those fines? One of last year's big fines was levied against the Magic coach Brian Hill after he criticized the officiating in a Donaghy officiated game. May be if the league had really looked at Donaghy's calls instead of figuring out how much to fine the coach, we wouldn't be in this mess right now.

There are a lot of fascinating facts about this coming out - from how inconsequential free-throws in a blowout can help the point spread to how the technical fouls can be used to go "over" rather than stay "under". There's also all kinds of theories on when exactly NBA knew about this guy's issues. Some stories say the league know about his gambling problems even last year, but just let him continue for some reason. Here's one of the article if you are interested.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07212007/news/nationalnews/best_bet_is_foul_play_nationalnews_mike_battaglino__post_wire_services.htm

It's just a bad time for all of sports right now. NBA and this betting scandal, Bonds and his big head chasing MLB's greatest record and Michael Vick slamming dogs and the Atlanta owner's hopes on the concrete floor. Thats the big 3 sports if you need 'em.

Bonds Closing in

Barry Bonds is really close now. He was stuck on 751 for a while and the seriousness of the chase was missing until he hit 2 home runs at Wrigley last week. Now at 753, people can feel it. Record number of fans showed for his games at Wrigley and Milwaukee and the tickets for next weeks home games at San Francisco are becoming pricier by the minute. Looks like the Giants might have managed this perfectly. He did not start 3 of the 4 games at Wrigley and now he needs 3 to break the record. With a game at Milwaukee and then 7 at home, you would think it happens at home. That was always such a big deal in this story and things look good now for Bonds and the Giants. On the road, people are there to see him do his thing, but they do boo him. It's not a real aggressive "boo", just a gentle one. Some people do bring some steroids sign for him.

The other part of the story is how Bud Selig is just confused about what to do. Looks like he wants to stay away, but just can't because most experts say he should go. Of course he should. He pretty much presided over the entire steroid era and how dare he pretend to take the moral high ground now? There is no moral high ground here and he better do his job. He is the commissioner of MLB and this is one of the biggest events in baseball and it's his job to represent. I am not a fan of Bonds or this steroid era and I do consider all these records tainted, but Selig is part of the problem and I am not going to let him even think about dissociating himself from this mess. He should have fixed this 10 or 15 years back. Apparently Hank Aaron is a close friend of his and he is really upset that Bonds is passing Aaron with all this steroid clouds hanging over his head. Well, tough luck Bud. You are the freaking commissioner of Baseball and who else can you blame for his debacle?

At the end of the day, the real loser is baseball and I don't think baseball even gets it. People just keep talking about how strong the game is and how the attendance is growing and how apparently all this steroid scandal has not hurt anything. But this historic chase has been completely devalued by the steroid scandal. In this day and age of 24 hour sports radio hype and hero worship, baseball could have milked this like nothing else, but the hype is muted because of who's chasing the record. It's going to be this way until they fix the steroid thing for good, which, by the way, could be impossible the way science is going. MLB probably lost a lot of revenue in terms of jersey sales etc. because of Bonds and steroids. All the talk is about steroids and not the chase. This chase could be the very definition of the word "tainted".