Crimes Against The Game

Words can not completely express the sheer disappointment and anger I am feeling towards the NBA at this moment but since you can’t see me pacing around the room, howling like a madman at the television, they will have to do. This might be the worst day I have ever experienced as a basketball fan. First of all, Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki won the league MVP award, an honor that was given to him only because of political reasons and a flawed system to determine the recipient. That news put me in a bad mood and was originally going to be the sole focus of this column, but the announcement that followed later that same day absolutely infuriated me.

The NBA, in its infinite wisdom, suspended Phoenix Suns forwards Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for Game 5 of the series against the San Antonio Spurs, essentially handing the Spurs a free pass to the Western Conference finals. Yeah sure, Robert Horry got suspended two games for his brutal body check of Steve Nash, but Big Shot Bob is just a role player, averaging just 4.8 points per game in the series. So at the end of the ...

The Pain of being a DC Area Sports Fan

I have lived within one hour of downtown DC and Baltimore for all of my life and ever since I could comprehend moving images on a television screen, I have loved sports. My family ingrained intense feelings for my home teams into my brain from a young age and those feelings are as strong as ever. I will be a fan of the Washington Redskins, Washington Wizards, and Baltimore Orioles forever, but as of late it has been quite difficult being a sports fan in this region.

Let me start with the Washington Redskins. I haven’t missed a game in years and have gone to watch training camp for the past several years, so don’t for a second doubt my devotion however critical I may be. But my God, the Skins are driving me nuts. They keep giving away their draft picks like they were handing out turkeys at the homeless shelter on Thanksgiving. The Skins gave up a third round pick for T.J. Duckett who left due to free agency and gave up a second pick to move up to take linebacker Rocky Macintosh last year only to stick him on the bench. And now there are rumors that the Skins might trade ...

Thoughts on the Final Four

This past weekend’s Final Four was one of the most over hyped, over analyzed, sub plot laden, sporting events in recent memory. The Oden-Hibbert match up, the famous fathers of John Thompson III and Ewing Jr, the rematch of Florida and UCLA, the potential rematch of the NCAA football championship, the potential for the first repeat champions since Duke in the early 90’s, were all stories that were beaten to death and then beaten some more. It was simply impossible to watch any sports program without mention of one of several of the aforementioned plot lines. After all the hype, all the anticipation, anything less than the most exciting, unbelievable games in history would have been a disappointment. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what the games on Saturday were. A disappointment. I’m not saying by any means that they weren’t entertaining, although UCLA tried to suck all the fun out of it again, but the two games fell way short of making ESPN Classic.

I was very much looking forward to seeing Greg Oden square off against Georgetown’s 7 foot 2 inch ...

The Death of a Bracket

March has been an exceedingly difficult month for me. Like every other American that has an ounce of interest in sports or works in an office with people who do, I filled out an NCAA Tournament bracket and participated in several bracket pools, all of which were only for entertainment purposes, no money involved, because that would be illegal and morally wrong. But for the sake of this article, lets say, hypothetically, that I had invested around $200 spread out around three different pools. As someone whose work consists of reading about and writing about sports on a daily basis, my peers had set the bar slightly higher for me. I ran head first into that bar. I come to you now as a man with literally no chance of getting one penny of that money back. I might as well have thrown darts at a map or flipped a coin to pick the teams I had advancing. I was completely, epically incorrect in almost all of my predictions. Now after a few weeks have past, I’m OK with my mediocre performance. However, in the time leading up to this column, I had been on a roller coaster of emotion that I must ...

Rollin’ West Coast Style

Last week I diagnosed the playoff picture for the NBA’s Eastern Conference, which was about as hard to predict as the ending to a romantic comedy. Six of the eight playoff seeds are pretty much locked up, with only the two bottom seeds up for grabs. There won’t be that many shake ups near the top, but with Miami’s Dwyane Wade out for at least several weeks, the race for the final spot could get interesting. The Western Conference is a little more tricky aside from predicting the number one and two spots. More teams are hovering around .500 than in the East and several of the top teams are within four or five games of each other. Time to put my clairvoyance to the test and see if I really am a certified hoops Nostradamus.

Northwest Division

The Jazz have had this division locked up since about the second week of the season. The only question about the Jazz is how high of a seed they can get. As it stands right now, the Jazz are the fourth seed in the west and are only a half game out of third place. I doubt they will unseat the Spurs from the three seed just because of ...

Ever since my entrance into this world, I have been enamored with the world of sports. I was the first child ever to exit the womb with a Redskins jersey on. I played team sports as a young child, soccer, basketball, tee ball one year, but quickly came to realize that my dreams of becoming a world class athlete would never come to fruition. I stopped growing when I was in ninth grade and needless to say, 5’7’’ is not the most desired height for high school basketball coaches so the dream was officially over once I was cut from the freshman basketball team. I didn’t stop playing sports casually, pick up games and what not, and I never gave up my passion of sports but as I got older I participated less and less, but observed more and more. My knowledge of all sports grew as my ability and talent waned and knew then that if I were to stay involved in the world of sports, I would have to do so off the court and in the press box. After all, what are sports writers and reporters but just failed athletes? As a collective, we were not gifted enough physically to make the team, but we are no less passionate about the games we cover than the statuesque ...

In case you were hiding in a cave, held hostage, or trapped under some heavy furniture and couldn’t get to a TV, the Indianapolis Colts absolutely smacked the Chicago Bears last night to become the 41^st Super Bowl champions of the National Football League. If for some reason you did miss the game, don’t feel too horrible because aside from the first quarter, the game was a bit of a snooze fest.

People who have read this column before can attest to my passionate, maybe even obsessive, love for football. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and several of the commercials were funny, but it was very much a grind it out, hard nosed football type game which is nice to see once in a while but after all the anticipation leading up to the contest anything but the best Super Bowl ever probably would have been a let down.

Then again maybe I’m just bitter over my gambling losses. No NFL official or executive will ever admit it, but gambling is an enormous factor in the league’s popularity and the two go hand in hand like Mike Holmgren and a ham and cheese sandwich. The commissioner of my fantasy football league was in attendance ...

Last week I made a promise to completely avoid any topic dealing with the NFL and I fully intend to keep that promise even if it means not talking about how much I have struggled through the bye week, not mentioning how watching football players answer the same questions 87 times annoys me so much that I want to stuff my ears full of cotton yet for some reason I watch every bye week press conference every single year, or not discussing how Peyton Manning is going to carve up the Chicago defense. I won’t bring up any of those things, because NFL football is strictly off the board. So without further ado, onto the column.

A few days ago, I received an email from one faithful reader who happened to disagree with my opinion about Gilbert Arenas deserving the NBA’s Most Valuable Player honor and also believed that Dallas Maverick’s forward Dirk Nowitzki is the only legitimate MVP candidate for this season. While there is no doubt that Dirk is an elite player and is certainly in the running, he is far from being the leader in the MVP race. Statistically, Dirk is having a great season, averaging 25.3 points and 9.6 rebounds per game, good enough for ninth ...