Matt Bonner is an unlikely candidate for a fan-driven NBA All-Star campaign. The San Antonio Spurs center is averaging just 3.8 points and two rebounds per game coming off the bench this season. But his shooting percentage from downtown — 48.4 — is surprisingly robust; even if he is playing just 11 minutes every night, Bonner is raining 3s as accurately as anybody in the NBA.
Because of his 3-point game, Bonner has garnered a small but significant following that is now soliciting the league to allow the 6-foot-10 shooter to participate in this year’s 3-point contest during All-Star Weekend. There’s an online petition at Change.org that currently has more than 250 signatures, and a Twitter hashtag — #letbonnershoot — that’s been catching on among indie-rock bands, including Arcade Fire. "There's so much injustice in the world that we can't do anything about, but this is something we can change. #LetBonnerShoot," reads a recent tweet that was RTed 300 times. (The campaign is reminiscent of the Let Shannon Dunk push in 2010. That one ended with an underwhelming Shannon Brown appearance in the slam dunk contest.)
This Saturday night, I plan on sitting in front of my television set for three-plus hours and praying that the Packers' pass protection is better than the 49ers' pass rush. Of all the variables that might possibly affect the outcome of the Packers-49ers playoff game, this by far seems the most important. And I’m sure that the pregame coverage, as well as the play-by-play announcers, will spend a lot of time analyzing it. But I also expect to hear about another story line that’s become standard for Packers games. It stars Aaron Rodgers, and it co-stars The Chip On Aaron Rodgers’s Shoulder.
If you watch the Packers every week like I do, you’ve come to regard The Chip On Aaron Rodgers’s Shoulder as an overly familiar chestnut of wisdom utilized by analysts to supposedly reveal deep truths about the reigning NFL MVP’s psyche. It is now officially the no. 1 talking point among football pundits for deconstructing Aaron Rodgers’s play and persona. What “he looks like a kid out there!” was to Brett Favre, “he sure takes things to heart!” is to Rodgers. If Favre was “the gunslinger,” Rodgers is the grudge-slinger.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
Field of Dreams
We are barely 12 hours from the end of the Washington Redskins' season. At the moment, I have no idea of the extent of additional injury (if any? *wishful*) to the knee of The Most Important Professional D.C. Athlete Since Gheorghe Muresan. The range of possibilities seems to begin with something like, "the already-existing sprain was more sprained and The Robert will be back in time for summer OTAs," and ends with, "a ligament was damaged and Black Jesus will be performing divine rehab all the way up to the start of the 2013 season, which means Kirk Cousins will be taking starter-snaps for at least the first couple games of the 2013-14 season." And the nagging, annoying hindsight-enhanced read of the situation is that it never should've come to that crappy, gut-turning moment in the fourth quarter, not after RG3 had shown through a full two-and-a-half quarters of ineffective play that he was so impaired as to be a hindrance to the team's best chances at a win.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
U Mad Bro?
The day after the Seahawks announced that Russell Wilson would be their Week 1 starter, I was driving to work and listening to someone — I can’t remember whom — lambaste the decision on sports talk radio. His argument was that after dumping a truckload of money off at Matt Flynn’s place, this move didn’t make a lot of sense. The Seahawks, he said, didn’t have a plan. And I nodded along in agreement.
Well, two months later, the Seahawks are 4-2, coming off the most impressive regular-season win in Pete Carroll’s tenure, and are three days from a game against San Francisco for temporary supremacy in the NFC West. The way they’ve done it is fairly simple — there may have been a lacking plan for Seattle’s offense, but on defense, their identity is as defined as that of any other team in the league.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
The Sure Thing
Sunday afternoon wasn’t Andrew Luck’s first game-winning drive. That was in Week 2, when Luck completed two 20-yard strikes before Indianapolis kicked a go-ahead field goal to sneak past a Minnesota team that hasn’t lost since. But what Luck put together against the Packers yesterday was a little more than two deep outs against coverage begging for them. Down five, with four and a half minutes left, Luck would face three third downs with at least seven yards to go, and he delivered on each.
The signature play came on the second of those third downs, just after the two-minute warning, as Indianapolis faced a third-and-12 from Green Bay’s 47. With Clay Matthews wrapped around him, Luck, falling back and to his left, delivered the ball over the middle to Reggie Wayne for what seemed like his 30th catch of the day. Luck hit Wayne again on the next play, another deep "in" that took the Colts down to the 14, and after a third-down scramble got Indy a first-and-goal inside the 10, it was Wayne who finished things off.
