There are lies we tell ourselves about the Kentucky Wildcats and John Calipari — comfortable fibs, supported by deceptive history, that help us sleep at night. They certainly make it easier to imagine a national champion from outside Lexington raising the trophy in early April, and they preserve a Manichean black-and-white simplicity that stifles the unpleasant nuances of truth. They are:
1. A team led by freshmen and sophomores can't win a national title. Experience trumps ability in the tournament, at least to some extent. Freshmen-heavy teams like Kentucky will always falter in the big moment because they're not suited to handle the intense pressure to which older players have become accustomed. That's why even the superlatively talented John Wall-DeMarcus Cousins-Eric Bledsoe Kentucky team of 2010 couldn't beat West Virginia and star senior Da'Sean Butler in the Elite Eight.
2. On top of that, Kentucky is perpetually full of great athletes who can't shoot. They lost to West Virginia after going 4-for-32 from beyond the arc, and it keeps them from being truly great.
3. John Calipari's success comes with a price. He's a dirty coach who had to vacate two Final Four appearances — one at UMass and another at Memphis — and he's more of a snake-oil salesman than a true leader. No one doubts his recruiting acumen, but his lack of strategic excellence (and maybe a dose of karma — see Memphis vs. Kansas, 2008) will always deny him the coveted title.
It makes me feel good, reading these words to myself. Unfortunately, they're bogus, and Kentucky is going to win a national championship.
(Note: I have consistently jinxed college basketball teams after writing about them this season, a trend that continued when New Mexico lost to Colorado State last night just hours after I called them a sleeper to make the Final Four. So, if the Wildcats lose in the Sweet 16 this year, you're welcome.)
Victor Martinez out for the year with a knee injury? No problem when you have an owner who desperately wants to win a World Series and will spend whatever it takes to try and make it happen. The Tigers dropped $214 million on Prince Fielder, more than making up for Martinez's lost bat and reestablishing the Tigers as heavy favorites to win the division. But Jim Leyland's plan to shift Miguel Cabrera to third base could make for some ugly baseball along the way. It's hard to tell if the Tigers are prepping for 2013 with Martinez back at DH; if they're trying to prop up Martinez's trade value by pretending they don't have two other DHs in the lineup; or if they're just being delusional about a player nine years older and 30 pounds heavier (even after some major offseason weight loss) than he was when he broke into the majors. The Tigers could field the worst defensive infield baseball has seen in years … and still roll into October.
It's the time of the season when the competitions start to bleed together. In the span of only a week, connoisseurs of association football can dabble in the eclectic delights of the FA Cup, take in the seductive Champions League, slum it with Europa, obediently return to the Premiership, and then cap it all with Sunday's critically important/slightly meaningless Carling Cup final.
Somehow, the Men in Blazers manage to cover it all in this week's pod, even making time to analyze the latest big stories emerging from the Puerto Rican and Malagasy leagues for good measure. Their paramount concerns surround the London clubs in crisis — Arsenal and Chelsea. Michael and Roger delve deep into EPL management psychology as they consider the fates of Arsenal's bewildered wizard, Arsene Wenger, and Chelsea's very own Doogie Howser, Andre Villas-Boas.
It takes a lot to surprise Jay Kornegay. As the sportsbook director at the LVH (formerly Las Vegas Hilton) sportsbook, Kornegay's seen it all during his eight years at the helm of the city's bellwether operation — and made money for the casino in the process. When you run a book with the widest variety of futures and proposition bets available while simultaneously releasing those lines before anyone else in Vegas, you normally end up taking a lot of action. When we talked to Kornegay this past week, though, it was the absence of action on one particular line that shocked him. And that's just one of the five fascinating tidbits we took away from our chat with one of Vegas' foremost bookmakers.
1. Nobody's bet on the Charlotte Bobcats. Nobody. The LVH is renowned for having futures bets available before anyone else, so degenerates like myself descend on the book regularly to try and find a long-shot championship or conference championship winner before anybody else. And after the Mavericks followed years of disappointing playoff performances with a title win last season, it seemed like a sure thing that NBA long shots would be bet heavily in a weird, shortened season.
1. Deron Williams, A Chip on His Shoulder the Size of the Ritz
Nominated by David Jacoby for "trying to launch Williamsanity at MSG." Williams scored 38 for the Nets in their victory over their cross-river rivals, the Knicks. He did so with a gleam in his eye that looked like he was avenging a slight that took place LIFETIMES AGO.
2. LeBron James, Force of Nature I think it's a very useful thought exercise to sometimes just sit down and think about how LeBron James plays basketball like some kind of unholy combination of Magic Johnson, Shawn Kemp, and Khal Drogo.Watch this collection of LeBron's 10 best plays from just the first half of this season. Sometimes calling what he does "basketball" seems like it's underselling what he does.
As the public becomes increasing comfortable with the New York Knicks being a decent team and Jeremy Lin consistently putting up impressive numbers, a new Knicks-related issue has presented itself that no one seems to be able to wrap their foreheads around:
Does he even know that there's a part in his hair?
Why did he let a barber ford his Afro and let the oxen die atop his head?
I, for one, expected the unjust backlash to result in a hairstyle change by J.R.'s second game with New York. Thankfully, I was wrong. He was proudly sporting the same 'do Monday night against the New Jersey Nets. Upon seeing this, it became clear that this was no accident, no botched last-minute haircut, no failure to look in the mirror — this was simply J.R. Smith, on the heels of Fashion Week, in the middle of Black History Month, and during his first week as a New Yorker, making a statement.
I love and respect individuality, but my only words of caution for J.R. moving forward is that he might be attempting to make too many statements at once. It might just be too much for the public to handle. I say this, because if you thought it was a simple haircut, you were sadly mistaken. In J.R.'s world, it's so much deeper.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
There are no more winless teams in Division 1 college basketball. Binghamton University became the last team to win a game this season, beating Vermont 57-53 and moving to 1-26 on the year. Interestingly enough, the win immediately made Binghamton the nation's best team. They beat Vermont, who beat Old Dominion earlier this season, who in turn beat South Florida, who beat Pittsburghtwice, who beat Tennessee, who beat Florida, who beat Florida State, who beat Duke, who beat Michigan State, who beat Indiana, who beat no. 1 Kentucky earlier this season, proving beyond argument that Binghamton is better than Kentucky and therefore the top team in the country.
Rodney McGruder scored 24 points as unranked Kansas State upset no. 3 Missouri on the road, 78-68. The win virtually guarantees a tournament spot to KSU, and insane Wildcat coach Frank Martin celebrated by angrily drinking a gallon of pig's blood in front of his players to teach them some kind of lesson.
Lost in the Jeremy Lin era was one of the luckiest beneficiaries of Linsanity: no, not Mike D'Antoni, James Dolan, or Tyson Chandler, but MSG (and ESPN/ABC) announcer Mike Breen. We talked about these last three crazy weeks for the Knicks and that dovetailed nicely into a bigger discussion about the 2012 NBA season and the fact that Breen calls Mark Jackson sobbing every night at 2:30 a.m., wondering what Breen did wrong. Then, at the 36-minute mark, my buddy JackO made his long-awaited return to discuss — what else — spring training, as well as the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Minka-Jeter romance and the eerie similarities between Bobby Valentine and a certain politician.
Dan Klores is a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and playwright and the founder of Dan Klores Communications. Here's his take on Linsanity.
Roy Hobbs has come to Broadway in the form of a sound and sweet basketball player named Jeremy Lin. So much has been written about the Harvard-educated point guard that even the one-woman dating service Kim Kardashian has taken a backseat in the media. But as the Knicks try to replay ’69, we must pause for a moment to consider the tricky media problems that must be addressed with finesse and intellect.
The NCAA tournament in March 2008 was so thrilling for us Davidson people, so consuming, so galvanizing, that it was next to impossible to not think grandiose thoughts. So now this is how it’s going to be.
Davidson hasn’t been back since.
The team the next year lost in the semifinals of the Southern Conference tournament, because that’s what sometimes happens, even with someone like Stephen Curry on the roster. The team the year after that won 16 games. Last year’s team won 18.
Once again, Jalen Rose came by the studio to record the show, slung his trusty baseball bat over his shoulder, and started breaking down the NBA. He reviewed the New York Knicks offense and discussed how they will incorporate all their new pieces into Mike D’Antoni's "system." He then explained that even though Kobe said he wished the Lakers front office would "come out and either trade [Pau Gasol] or not trade him,” what he really means is “TRADE PAU RIGHT NOW.” When the conversation turned to the All-Star Game, Jalen explained his grudge over the event. Unless you are Jamal Mashburn, I think you will really enjoy this pod.
It gets dark at 3:30 p.m., it's either raining, or freezing, and sometimes it's doing both. Every day looks the same because every day looks like you just stepped out of your house and walked into The Road. It's seasonal affective disorder. And it's enough to make you fire up the Leonard Cohen and pull the covers over your head.
NBA players, despite their seemingly enchanted lives, are not immune to the emotional perils of winter. Compound the blues that go along with the first few months of the year with the fact that this highly compressed season is harder on their physical and mental stability than any other year in recent memory, and it's no surprise that we're seeing a few guys start to crack. Let's dip our heads into the waiting room and see which NBA players are waiting to see their shrinks.
Let the multi-platform celebration of the life and times of Jeremy Lin begin. Broadway actor Kevin Yee has "created" a new musical called Jeremy Lin: The Musical. It is, according to Yee, a "fictional reimagining of the first time New York Knicks superstar Jeremy Lin proved himself on the basketball court." You want to know the song titles? Yeah, you want to know the song titles. Get ready for bangers like "American Basketball Hero," "Lin-ning It," "It’s Like Applying to Stanford and Ending Up at Harvard," "Math," and "Lin-sanity."
I … just don't even know anymore. Check out the video above for the show. (And shout-out to the very Seinfeld bass-slap musical accompaniment. I was waiting for that particular sound to unironically return to popular culture.)
Prince Fielder's gone. Ryan Braun might be gone for 50 games, pending his appeal of a suspension for taking a banned substance. Take that much pop out of any lineup, and you've got a team destined for meaningless baseball by August, right? In this case, not necessarily. The Brewers return plenty of offense. Even if Braun's suspension is upheld, Corey Hart is an underrated hitter with 20-plus homers in four of the past five seasons; Rickie Weeks is one of the best offensive second basemen in the game; new addition Aramis Ramirez should provide ample sock; even new first baseman Mat Gamel could surprise in his first go-round as an everyday player.
In mid-January, New Mexico dropped back-to-back games against San Diego State and UNLV, the two best teams in the Mountain West Conference. The losses snapped a 13-game winning streak, and relegated New Mexico to the back burner of mid-major discussions.
SDSU and UNLV were ranked 16th and 20th at the time, and when New Mexico had to repeat the two-game gauntlet last week, the Aztecs and the Runnin' Rebels had climbed to 15th and 11th, respectively. But this time, the Lobos won by 10 at San Diego and clobbered UNLV at home by 20 points. A lot had changed in a month. The wins earned them an AP Top 25 ranking for the first time all season (18th), essentially locked up a Mountain West regular season title, and directed our attention to the fact that this might be one of the 10 best teams in the country.
I'd say it's high time we had a good look at the 22-4 New Mexico Lobos, Q&A style.
