There’s been a lot of big stories in the NBA lately, but last night served as a stark reminder that history will remember this season mostly for the genesis of Luka.  A fucking unreal hit by the Mavericks.  This dude casually transitioned from being a teenage EuroLeague MVP to being a teenage NBA star with no joke the top clutch stats in the league:

Just last summer, the Mavs top assets were Dennis Smith Jr, two semi-expiring contracts (Barnes and Matthews), and a #5 overall pick.  Somehow one year later we are a budding dynasty with the greatest teenage prospect in history teaming up with KP and whoever we acquire next.  It is just impossible to overstate how legendary Donnie and the front office truly are.  This feat is so incredible that we got to watch Giannis win the MVP last night and nobody cares that we passed on him in the draft for $400k in cap room.

The story is that on draft night 2013, Donnie Nelson was so adamant about how good Giannis would be and demanded to Cuban that we take him, but Cuban overruled in order to trade back and get about $400k in cap space to offer Dwight Howard a max contract.  To this day, the Mavs have quite literally never signed a meaningful UFA, but Cuban insisted that we pass on a future MVP just in case we had a shot at Howard.

To the layman’s eye, the decision makes no sense at all.  However, in retrospect, it was the right thing to do.  Dirk was entering the tail end of his career and we owed him the world.  Not only was (is) he our god both on and off the court but he also passed up nearly $200M in wages to keep us competitive under the cap.

That is a staggering sacrifice by our god.  There was only one morally correct approach to take through the end of his career and that was to look short term only and swing for the fences.  Maybe we only had a 1% chance of signing Howard, and if so then that was 1% past the minimum necessary threshold to pass on a future MVP.  Cuban and Donnie did their best to do our god right and I applaud them for it.

Besides, it’s not like it really mattered in the end.  We have the best front office in the league.  They got us someone else better anyway.

 

It’s been a wild 2019 for the lakers as they are now the official team of narcissism and AIDS.  According to Vegas odds and the mainstream media, AD was the missing piece in turning LA from a toxic and mediocre embarrassment to the very top contender in the league.  Rob Pelinka gets his employment lifeline for the mere cost of pretty much every LA lottery pick from the past and future.  As a New Orleanian, I’m feeling pretty damn good about the trade.

Watching AD on the Pelicans was very much like watching A-Rod on the Rangers – eye popping stats that mostly came in meaningless situations and rarely resulted in winning.  In the seven season of this era, we had one truly successful year that was more thanks to Boogie Cousins and Playoff Rondo than to AD.  He lacked any semblance of a killer instinct or clutch gene and there are exactly zero memories from his on-court play that NOLA will cherish.

Everyone likes to say that the franchise failed AD, and that is bogus.  Demps brought him assets to play alongside from day 1.  Sure, not all of them panned out and it was clear that the Pelicans lacked one of those rare superstar front offices that can create winners from almost any situation.  However, there were enough players around (see above) to produce way more winning than what AD delivered.  In the NBA more so than any other league, the anus is on star players to deliver results and quite frankly AD was an abject failure in that regard.

The biggest mistake in handling AD does not fall on the previous front office or even the training staff, but rather the fans and media for never taking off the kid gloves in his treatment.  It’s hard to blame a city for taking too long to turn on an asset like him, especially given the nature of NOLA’s good-vibe culture and the limited roster flexibility for small market NBA teams.  However, in hindsight, it really is astonishing how little accountability AD had during his tenure here.  He did have that quiet persona and ostensibly high character helping him out, but that image swindled fully down the drain over the spring.  This clip regarding his ‘That’s All Folks’ shirt is pretty much all you need to hear to understand what this guy is all about…

I could not imagine a better pea to Lebron’s pod than this bum.  Kick rocks AD.  Unlike CP3, we will most assuredly not be cheering for you in LA.  Zion generated more excitement to the city through one Commanders dinner with Gayle than you were able to in seven years – good riddance.  Oh and FYI, nobody ever liked your stupid unibrow.

Josh Hamilton got elected (or selected?) to the rangers hall of fame today and all of a sudden ranger nation had a workday of going through all the feels.  First of all I didn’t even know we had a team hall of fame. Apparently we do have one though and we took no time to wait in selecting (or electing?) our god who is undoubtedly the greatest legend to ever grace the Texas Rangers uniform. Unfortunately it was not an easy day of celebration for us but rather a moment that brought out a lot of mixed emotions.

Let me just start by that never have been more ecstatic after a sports play than that game 6 home run.  I was a premature victory joint deep already that had gone south in a disastrous manner before he resurrected my soul.  God damn it was so fucking incredible and should’ve lived forever as one of the most iconic plays in baseball and sports history.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I3e8S0u_Pb0

It was not his fault (and it is no single person’s fault) for the way that game ended up, but what happened happened and all of a sudden our surefire dynasty sputtered into irrelevance buffalo bills style. It’s hard to find a true comp for the emotions that we felt. Falcons fans had that Julio Jones catch in SB51. But I guess it was worse for them because we at least won basketball earlier that year and they’ve never won shit. That is chill I guess.

Unfortunately the legacy of our god took a nose dive from that point forward. By summer of 2012 he had attained a permanent apathy for his craft that only Barry Sanders could rival.

We were cruising to a first place season all year until a historic August collapse that culminated in three game series at Oakland. We were one game up on home field advantage and would’ve clinched the division at a minimum with just one single win in the three game series. Instead, we got swept and had to enter the wild card.  The key moment of the series was this horrendous error in game 162

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Fx4z0V2mY

The play-in game was against Baltimore, the same team that Hamilton had his iconic four dong against four months earlier.  He went 0-4 with two strikeouts on eight pitches.  Never have I seen someone in a 4 spot torpedo an offense that hard. It probably also ruined Yu Darvish’s career too if you really that about it.

He was a free agent that winter and by then it was an obvious decision to for JD to cut loose from the ass of the 2010 MVP and franchise icon. He signed with Anaheim and proceeded to siphon $125M out of Arte Moreno’s pockets.  The rest of his career was cashing checks and relapsing into rehabs.  I will admit that we do have to give him credit for ruining the Angels. Fuck anaheim and fuck that team so I am grateful he plunged that franchise to rock bottom.

Overall, as judgement day on his career comes upon us, I guess it is appropriate to appreciate the hopes our god brought us and to what game six could’ve or should’ve brought us.

Here’s to Josh Hamilton. Please toast your finest cup of ginger ale in his honor, or a beer or whatever. If I know him like I think I do, he probably doesn’t care anymore anyway.

Looking over the playoff field in the West I have noticed that every team’s legacy is an absolute joke compared to ours.  We literally outnumber every single team combined in Stanley Cups.  Okay the flames have one and they’re in first.  That’s right – the biiggg badd flames!!  They won their Stanley Cup (with our boy Joe Nieuwendyk) in 1989, back in the Soviet days when canadian teams were still capable of winning Cups.

Maybe it’s the sharks year finally.  After all you know what they say, 20^th time is a charm! Maybe the wild are gonna rise up and show their original team who’s boss.  How about the blues going on a big winning streak.  “We don’t need no football team!”

J! E! T! S! We’re – so – cold!!

The Blackhawks did have an outside shot at making it in, but the Stars whipped up on them today in a pretty easy win.  One of our best players got hurt in his first game for us and he’ll be out until the playoffs.  We’ll probably be alright though because we’re still in the playoffs without him.

Once we’re in the playoffs we’ll be looking much better than people think right now.  The field should be wide open to us knowing that we have a vastly superior postseason history than every other franchise.  Pretty good thing to have going for us!

I said in my last Cowboy’s post to watch the fuck out for sketchy officials in Rams playoff games and lo and behold did that come true to absolutely screw the Saints on Sunday.  It’s possible to be a smartass and cite any of the hundreds of variables that go into an NFL game and say it is not the refs’ fault the Saints lost, but anyone with a brain understands that to be false.

The Saints did not trail at any point of the game until the final kick.  Their hall of fame QB and hall of fame coach executed that final drive in a nearly flawless manner like legends do.  It was capped with a perfect play design that left a WR wide open against a shitty linebacker.  Unfortunately, it was undone by what was indisputably the worst referee call in the history of sports.  An absolute abomination.  This is the darkest moment the NFL has ever experienced, not only because the call was so inexcusable but because it is the exact result the league hoped for and it is more than plausible that the league tampered with this game.

 

Now I will say, I’m a big fan of conspiracies but never before this week have I thought the NFL would stoop to NBA levels of crookery and actually rig their games.  There’s been fabrications off the field like DeflateGate, forcing Kraft to release Parcells to the Jets, the Michael Sam draft pick, etc.  But for the first time in my life I find myself questioning the integrity of a game itself, and that is a sad look for the league.

Eyebrows started raising back in November for the MNF mega matchup between the Rams and Chiefs.  Kansas City rolled in unexpectedly sitting in first place and posed a serious threat to the Rams’ playoff home-field advantage aspirations, especially after a recent beat down in the Superdome knocked them out of the NFC pole position.

The game was supposed to be in Mexico City at the expense of a Rams home game, but the NFL mysteriously decided to move the game back to the Coliseum in the week leading up.  The league had a plausible cover story citing ‘player safety concerns’ after photos popped up showing harsh field conditions from a recent Shakira concert.  However, that concert took place on October 11, over a month before the game.  Even before that, the NFL received regular reports outlining the risky field conditions and conveniently waited until it was too late to act on it. (Also those internet photos were not up-to-date and the field was playable, certainly better than the Oakland Coliseum)

Then in that same week, the league announced an unprecedented decision to switch out the officials for a special, hand-picked ‘all-star crew’.  Those officials went on to call everything under the sun against the Chiefs, including nine(!) first quarter penalties and let the Rams false start on every single play.  It was honestly impressive that the Chiefs still could have won when they had to play two teams at once.

Going forward from that game, it was buyer beware for anyone betting against Los Angeles.  Even the Chargers with their trash ass coach almost caught up to KC to win the west.  What a magical story for the city of LA and, given the timing, what an epic ‘break’ for the owners.

 

We know the NFL has spent decades longing for a legitimate fanbase in America’s largest market, hoping for a chance to disrupt the city’s relentless apathy to professional football.  A Rams Super Bowl win is likely the only opportunity to finally make that come to fruition.  That part is obvious, but this specific season (and playoff run) has more money riding on it than any in NFL history or even future for that matter…

Personal. Seat. Licenses.  In short for the uninitiated, season ticket contracts require large down payments for fans to ‘reserve their own seat’ before buying the actual tickets.  Through these payments, the owners rake in cash upfront while also locking fans in to renewing their season tickets in perpetuity to avoid forfeiting the license and letting that non-refundable check go to waste.  

The Cowboys and Niners PSL schemes raised over $500M a piece, and with those stadiums being publicly funded, the NFL laughed it’s way to the fucking bank.  However, the Inglewood stadium is different in that Kroenke is privately funding the project with bank loans stipulating a return of $4B in stadium revenue.  The NFL targeted for about 1/4 of that revenue to come from PSLs for both the Chargers and Rams.

In addition, there’s naming rights, sponsorship contracts, corporate suite sales, etc. etc.  Serious money is at stake.  New stadiums have worked out lucratively enough in every other NFL market, but to the surprise of nobody the league is finding itself in a pickle in LA.  The fanbases haven’t built up because LA is LA, and the Chargers especially have been absolutely shitting the bed in sales.  (It’s also interesting to note that these reports of struggling PSL sales came out shortly before the aforementioned MNF matchup, even around the same time as the Shakira show)

Deep playoff runs this year were imperative for revenue to catch back up in LA.  In a seemingly divine intervention for the league’s fortunes, Bill Vinovich and his crew ensured that and then some on Sunday by sending the Rams to the Super Bowl.  Crazy how the cards play out like that sometimes.

 

I will say, I am personally saddened by this but I cannot blame the league for what they did.  In fact, the fans deserve this.  The fans have been at war with the league for years now bitching about everything under the sun related to the NFL.  The fans took the bait from the president and his hillbillies last year and let a massive boycott blow up in the league’s face.  Worst of all, fans across America espoused the NBA(!) as the up and coming successor to our #1 sport.  The NBA, the most blatantly rigged organization outside of WWE.  Honestly good on the NFL for taking a page out of David Stern’s playbook.  I probably would’ve done the same thing.

Christian Pulisic signed with Chelsea yesterday in a landmark move that the American soccer community has never witnessed before.  It will be annoying as hell over the years listening to the fans on this side of the pond as Chelsea is the franchise for chode fans over here and it sucks that he’ll be on their team, but it’s still a move that had to be made.  Overall, there’s a lot of mixed emotions to process over this move as an American soccer fan.

From a marketing perspective, it was absolutely crucial for Pulisic to transfer out of Bundesliga and into the EPL.  It is by far the most accessible league to watch and bringing our wonder kid to the NBC streams can and should lead to an explosion in domestic viewers that was previously inconceivable outside of a World Cup tourney.

Chelsea also offers Pulisic the best opportunity amongst the elite EPL teams for immediate starting minutes, but they carry some organizational risk in the fact that they’ve had opportunities like this with many other recent prodigies and have found ways to shit the bed with most of them…

 

However, my biggest fear lies with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.  He is one of Putin’s richest cronies and now he owns our child prodigy.  It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Putin’s orders are to use the guise of Chelsea’s recent player development issues to stash Pulisic on the bench and block his rise to superstardom before 2022.  I mean the Russians have already tried ruining Star Wars for god’s sake; we cannot let this campaign they’re on to seep into our sports.

It is on us as a nation to monitor this situation diligently.  It’s on the press to raise alarms if Pulisic is kept off the pitch. It’s on us as fans citizens to ride the press and make sure our child savior gets the support he needs.  Even if you don’t care much for soccer, it’s your duty as an American citizen to stay on top of this.  Who knows how important 2022 will be.  A lot of people say we are losing respect around the globe as we slide away from hegemony.  There might be a lot of truth to that.  The next World Cup could and should serve as a symbol of our unceasing cultural and athletic prowess, and that shit can bleed over to politics as well.  Be on alert fellow citizens.  Protect our prodigy!

The Saints have a soft spot in my heart and I do feel a little bit bad for all my buddies in New Orleans who got their hopes up this year.  The Saints have had a good run but the clock struck Primetime on Thursday and the Cowboys graced the stage like a flagship franchise in a tone setting victory.  Saints fans should be very proud of this season and the MVP Brees will win, but anyone who saw what I saw on Thursday knows that hardware won’t be accompanied by Lombardi #2.

America’s Team hasn’t lived up to its moniker for awhile, but the foundation has always been there and the pieces are finally falling into place for us to be on track to the Super Bowl stage we belong on.  Our coach is still dog shit and there’s a chance he fucks up the Philly game on Sunday, but if we get through that then this train will be rolling too hard to stop.

The defense is turning into one of the best I’ve ever seen.  Byron Jones is basically impossible to complete a pass on and has reached young perennial all-pro status which is pretty sweet.  The pass rush is tops in the league.  When David Irving is playing it’s just flat out scary from all sides.  Fuck his girl.

The unit that makes me the hardest by far is the linebackers.  Leighton Vander Esch is basically a lock for the hall of fame now.  Aikman said so during the broadcast but I’m even more confident – he keeps playing like this and we’ll remember this beautiful mountain man as the best linebacker of all time.  Jaylon Smith plays right next to him and is also looking like a future hall of famer.  He was one of the best LB prospects of all time before the Rose Bowl injury, but he looks healthy and dominant now and it looks like we have one of the greatest draft coups in history on our hands.

It was Jaylon Smith who ran down Kamara on 3rd and goal to set up the crucial 4th down stoning that tilted the league’s balance of power our way.  Sean Payton had a chance to take three points and pull the game within one possession.  Who knows what the game would’ve been like if it was closer earlier on?  Fortunately, Payton made an arrogant call leading to a goal line stand that gave our team a confidence and swagger I haven’t seen since the 90s.  He’s made a legendary career out of those calls no doubt, but this one was a major backfire.  Maybe he won’t underestimate our defense in a playoff rematch, but by then it won’t matter.

The only thing and I mean only thing that worries me about this Super Bowl run is shady refs out in LA.  The PSLs and stadium sponsorship deals are big time money, but the Cowboys are big business for the league too.  I think we’ll get a fair game out there especially if it’s in the championship game and not LA’s first ever home playoff game, but this still remains my biggest worry.  Hopefully the bracket falls that way and then I’ll be pretty confident in booking west coast travel for the NFCCG and east coast for the Super Bowl and 2019 will be getting off to a hot start.  Gonna be dope

Tottenham continued it’s heroic climb out of the champion’s league grave today with a dope ass goal from Christian Erikson

https://twitter.com/JMcCarthyLIVE/status/1067896416570359808?s=20

Unbelievable tense game against an Inter squad that is lucky as shit to be ahead of us in the group standing.  After 80’ of domination and no goals it looked to be the same UCL story for the Spurs until this beautiful Danis mother fucken dawg nailed the back of the net.

The best part, tho, was that the goal was set up by a sick run from the sleeping superman himself Moussa Sissoko.  He hasn’t done shit for us in two years, but this clutch time run is all I need to see to know that his two year hiatus of world domination is over.  Watch out everybody else !

I speak for all relatively new Spurs fans (2014 ish) when I say we were rational to believe he was the best free agent signing ever after Euro 2016.  Look at this shit

He was amazing in that tournament.  All the speed we saw in Mbappe this summer we saw an equivalent skill of power in Euro 2016.  It was incredible to see.  So many strikes in the final spoiled by the greatest goalkeeping performance int he history of soccer (besides Howard), don’t @ me older soccer fans

Needless to say, for a team known mostly for frugality and not for big signings, it felt like we had cracked the code Pats style when we signed him from Newcastle after this tournament.  We saw these French people geek out over him while these British Newcastle bums bitch about his attitude.  Yeah right, attitude schmattitude I saw what I saw and that was a god who need to be unleashed in London.

Well, after a couple years and a big bag of nothing to the table, our reserve midfielder decided to have his awakening party today and get back to dominating the world.  Suck it everybody else for every other team.  Start bending the knee to Pochettino’s Army !

The Stars lost an OT thriller on the road against Edmonton tonight.  It’s disappointing to not get the full two points against teams as bad as the Oilers, but we’re still holding serve through the end of this brutal road stretch (7 games in 11 days).  A win in Calgary tomorrow and we’ll be coming out hot on the other side.

The real story of this game was Hitch being behind the bench for the Oilers after a surprise hiring last week.  He’ll forever and always be a hero in Dallas, but we’ve still had a lot of mixed emotions about him lately and even for the past two decades for that matter.

After a messy divorce 16 years ago, we hired him last summer with the good times in mind.  We should always be thankful for the glory days that he led and never forget what it’s like to party like is 1999.  It also cannot be understated how important he was as an ambassador of hockey to the city and introducing this great sport to Texas.  However, in a tale as old as time, we remembered that exes are exes for a reason and getting back with them never works.

His leadership will always keep teams focused enough to not suck – we looked pretty awesome midway through last year!  At the same time, his tactics ultimately will leave teams far too short of goals and energy necessary to skate a cup.  Throughout last year’s horrific and historic collapse, we were reminded (again) of the same shortcomings that led three other teams (plus ourselves) to can him before us.

There were some positives from his short stay here.  For example, the team can play competent defense now and that is fairly important.  Seguin, like Modano before him, went from not giving a shit about defense to being a key cog in the penalty kill.  Unfortunately, learning all that defense under Hitchcock means forgetting everything you can do on offense, and that’s just not going to cut it in sports in 2018.

A few months, and only a few months, of Hitch might be the ass kicking that McDavid and the Oilers need for their development.  I hope it works out and he retires one last time this summer on a good note.  Ultimately, however, his chapter in the NHL needs to end before it gets ugly.

Edmonton is supposed to hate Ken Hitchcock because he made that city our bitch every single first round of the playoffs.  Don’t muddy up those memories – for us or for them.  Keep this stint short Ken.

Serena got her ass beat on Saturday night, which is no surprise to anybody who’s been watching her lately.  Yes, she’s been contending, but a simple eye test on her matches reveals a slow, apathetic player who looks like she’d rather be anywhere than on the court.  She used to carry herself with a ferocious competitiveness that only Kobe and MJ could rival in sports.  This summer, she has been the antithesis of that.

The Wimbledon final was one of the worst sports championship matches I’ve ever watched.  Serena was giving up on games left and right.  Unforced errors everywhere.  No motivation in her face, just dull eyes and a tired demeanor.  You wouldn’t know that if you had listened to the broadcast, however.  In their eyes, it’s okay that she dogged the final.  She had just become a MOTHER!

Angelique Kerber wins her first Wimbledon, and the entire ceremony is dedicated to Serena’s motherhood.  Kerber meets the new princess, and all the royals cared about was meeting new mother Serena afterwards.  It was embarrassing.  At that moment, I was certain that women’s sports had reached nadir.  Then Serena somehow made the US Open final and this happened…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo-GDzysQ9E

This right here is easily the most childish and immature display of sore losing I have ever seen.  And make no mistakes about it, this was clearly a show to mask how terribly she was losing in this final.  Yes, what her coach was doing is commonplace in tennis and it’s somewhat bush league to enforce that, but it also is technically against the rules.  And when you’ve already been docked a warning for sportsmanship, you can’t lose your cool and smash a racket in the middle of a championship match.  Old Serena would’ve known that; New Serena doesn’t care.

In the post-match press conference, Serena tried to turn this into a women’s rights issue.  Huh?  If respecting women means we’re supposed to respect this type of behavior from athletes, then I don’t care about respecting women in this blog.  Time for my real thoughts:

Any man who has ever been in a relationship will immediately relate to this video.  A woman fucks something up, refuses to admit said fuck up, and emotions take over as she lashes out of control at a man.  The man then has to quickly make a logical calculation and set his boundary at the right balance between life as a whipped chump vs life dominated by arguments.  It’s one of the most frustrating parts of life as a man.

Usually, sports is an escape from bullshit like that in life.  Up until this past weekend, women’s tennis even qualified as said sports escape.  A big reason for that is Serena Williams and her incredible career, but this New Serena is a major about-face from that.

If she’s going to continue to behave like this, then she needs to do what’s best for women’s sports as a whole and retire.  It’s probably best for her personal life as well.  After all, she is a mother now.