By Joe House at
Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images
There are a number of incredible stories currently populating the sports pages here in the nation's capital. Obviously and quite appropriately, the heroics of His Holiness the Black Jesus Robert Griffin III predominate. Not only does he seem to win an award or set a new Redskins or NFL rookie record every game he plays, but, in the unlikeliest of unlikely turns, he also has this town dreaming about the possibility of playoffs. The Redskins host the Giants next Monday night, which will also mark the first relevant football game played in D.C. in December in almost seven years (to be truthful, it feels like 70).
The professional baseball team merely accomplished the best record in the major leagues, and key members won NL Rookie of the Year, NL Manager of the Year, and Executive of the Year honors. Imagine what they may be capable of if all of the team's best players are permitted to play this upcoming season (sorry, still bitter).
And then there is the local professional basketball team. Incredible and record-setting in its own right.
It’s never too early in an NBA season to judge a player or team’s performance — just ask Mike Brown. The season has just begun, but important trends are already emerging. Some are familiar; some are brand-new. In terms of scoring, as of Friday, NBA players had made 11,039 out of their 24,940 shots (44.2 percent), which is slightly down from last season’s 44.8 percent, which was slightly down from the 2010-11 season mark of 45.8 percent. Looking at scoring across the league on a team-by-team basis, some interesting things start to emerge. One of them is the disparity between two teams in the NBA’s Southeast division: Miami and Washington. It's been a tale of two cities. In one, we see unmatched offensive firepower. In the other, it’s a tale of woe.
We went back to simpler times on the BS Report today … you know, those days when there were two winter sports to discuss and we needed to split a podcast up into two parts to properly cover both of them.
In Part 1, Yahoo!'s Greg Wyshynski (of Puck Daddy fame) came on to discuss Alex Ovechkin's mysterious disappearance this season, Sid the Kid's comeback, the rejuvenated Bruins, his hatred for shootouts, his fetish for Russian goon videos, whether it is smart to have two good goalies, Tyler Seguin vs. Taylor Hall, whether the Maple Leafs are for real, whether hockey fans are the best fans in sports, and how weird it is that I suddenly have opinions on many of these things. Here's the ESPN.com PodCenter link and iTunes link for Part 1.
In Part 2, we called my buddy Joe House to have our long-awaited Red-and-Andy/Mexico hug about the end of the NBA lockout, then tried to predict what the next three weeks might look like even though it's been so long that we could barely remember who this month's free agents are and what the new rules were. We also talked about whether we like the shorter schedule, whether there's a guaranteed "smart" title pick for Vegas purposes right now, where Nene and Marc Gasol might be going, which teams might be able to sneakily improve themselves with a couple of shrewd signings, and whether House was even qualified to be appearing on this podcast after calling O.J. Mayo "J.J. Mayo." It's an action-packed romp and we're delighted to have the NBA back, even if I'm still pissed off that the league went away for five months. Here's the ESPN.com PodCenter link and iTunes link for Part 2.
