Welcome back, NESWers, to your weekly burst of rancor from your old pal DMtShooter, moonlighting from Five Tool Tool. Every week you can chew on some tasty dislike; we call it the Enemies List. And with that, let?s go straight to the hate.
5) Rick Adelman. I’m not sure, really, if Tracy McGrady is an outstanding basketball player. He’s never made it out of the first round, seems to invent injuries, and is likely to go to his fourth pro team any day now. But he is also a career 21.9 points per game scorer, with reasonable rebound and assist numbers — which is to say, a guy that you should be able to use. But not Rockets’ coach Rick Adelman, who responded to T-Mac’s latest return from injury to give him utter scrub numbers, leading to a public severing of team from player.
Now, you can blame McGrady for not just sucking it up and taking the bench minutes; that’s certainly going to be the most prominent reaction, especially when you consider Adelman’s salary against McGrady’s. But the bigger issue, really, is wasted resources. Rather than be straight with his ex-star and just release him in the off-season, Adelman attempted to have it both ways, by having McGrady around as an insurance policy / object lesson to his coachly authority. That’s not how the NBA works, or how you handle high-priced talent; you either cut it clean or hitch up the wagon. By doing this halfway nonsense, Adelman has minimized the return on investment that the team could get for him, and given the Association’s haters more fuel.
4) Albert Haynesworth. You’d think that a 7-year, $100 million contract would be enough to keep a football player quiet, but no. According to multiple sources, the Redskins’ not so shiny new toy was on the verge of organizing a player boycott due to his contentious relationship with defensive coordinator Greg Blache.
The problem with Haynesworth’s lack of worth isn’t that another high-priced Redskins free agent is going to go bust, or even whether or not Blache’s schemes are partly to blame for the late-season defensive collapse. It’s that he’s going to screw the pooch for other, better men in the trenches. Any number of lineman deserve more than they get in today’s NFL, especially when you consider the increased risk of concussion that you get from modern line play.
3) Decade wankers. In this decade, I more or less doubled my salary, became a homeowner and a father (twice), wrote three books and started my blog, moved three times and didn’t gain weight. Do you really care? No, of course not. Just like you don’t care about all of the end of the decade retrospectives / bloghole fillers that the Internets and sports networks are suddenly shoving down your hole.
Nostalgia is pointless. It’s even more pointless when it’s for a decade that will be remembered for terrorism, war, and recessions. Let’s all just move on, OK?
2) Jon Gruden. Look, I know that the World Wide Lemur’s coverage of live NFL games has always been regrettable at best. The current MNF crew is spectacularly better than the teeth-gnashingly awful Dennis Miller / Tony Kornheiser years, as well as the Joe Theismann / Paul Maguire super-positive yammer-a-thons.
But, um, still… rather than just be able to watch tonight’s wildly entertaining MNF overtime Bear win over the Vikings, countless millions had to hear yet another public fellating of Gruden’s personal lust object, Brett Favre. It didn’t matter that he stunk up the joint in the first half, or threw two probable picks on the game-tying drive, or that the actual game-tying touchdown was much more a credit to otherworldly WR Sidney Rice than His Favreness. Gruden’s take?
“People have no idea how tough he is.”
In the post-game wrap-up (yes, I am a glutton for punishment), Gruden continued the work by going on at length about how Favre used everyone in the second half to score 30 points. You see, that first half — including a fumble in which the Vikings QB was never touched — clearly didn’t matter, despite being, well, the margin of defeat for a team that’s well on its way to blowing its chance for home field and a first round bye. Please, Daniel Snyder, make the world bettter by bringing This Guy back to the sidelines and away from a mic…
1) Jim Caldwell. This isn’t exactly a brave or novel stand here, but the simple fact of the matter is that, by throwing the game for the Jets last weekend and costing his team their chance at perfection, the Colts’ coach:
a) Committed fraud by pulling his starters against the Jets, therefore giving his fans an exhibition game for which they paid full pricxe
b) Played favorites with the Jets, leading conspiracy theorists to wonder if there’s hanky-panky to get a larger market team in the playoffs, since they didn’t sit anyone against Jacksonville
c) Replicated the inexplicable playoff failure pattern that they established earlier in the decade
d) Allowed the freaking Perfect Douchebag Dolphins, who went undefeated against a shockingly cake schedule in a dramatically different era, to continue to shake their historic asses in everyone’s face for another year
Thanks, rook. Hope you lose your first playoff game…
Fellow haters, that?s all I got. See you next week.
Full story at http://neswsports.com/2009/12/29/the-enemies-list-vol-8/
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment