-Lala's Back: The Denver Post has announced that Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups and 3 guys that you haven't heard of since they played college ball have been traded to the Knicks for Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey Mozgov, the Knicks 2014 first-round draft pick, the Warriors' 2012 second-round pick, the Warriors' 2013 second-round pick and $3 million in cash. ESPN has been reporting that the Nuggets may package at least two of these players to trade to the Nets for two additional first round draft picks. All in all, the Melo trade could result in 3 first round picks. Ironically, since Melo was selected with the #3 pick of the 2003 draft (note: the first 5 picks of that draft were Lebron James, Darko Milicic (oops), Melo, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade-wonder what happened to all of those guys), the Nuggets have selected only two players in the first round of the NBA draft (2004-Jameer Nelson was selected but his rights were promptly traded to the Magic and 2005-Julius Hodge). Fast checkers will ask about former UNC point guard Ty Lawson- who was actually selected by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2009 draft but was quickly traded to Denver.
Now that Melo and Lala will be back in New York, she needs only one more thing to kick start her career: a time machine that could take her back to a time when the words Carson Daly and TRL meant something to someone.
Winners:Nuggets fans who would prefer to not just go to the playoffs to lose in the opening round, Melo, Patrick Ewing and John Starks- as Melo's name will now be synonymous with post-season failure in New York
Losers: Chauncey Billups, people whose cable box is stuck on VH1 who will now be forced to watch reruns of LaLa's Full Court Wedding
-Delaying the inevitable: Now that this is over, you can turn your attention to a real problem in the Denver sports world: why do our sports fiascos take so long to resolve. In just the last 3 years, Denver sports talk hosts have had to cover only 6 stories
-Will Jay Cutler be traded- February 2009-April 2009
-Will Brandon Marshall be traded- the entire 2009 season
-When will they fire Josh McDaniels- if you are being generous only week 7 to week 14 2010
-When will Tim Tebow start- April 2010-December 2010
-Where will Melo go- the day after "the Decision" in July 2010-today
-When is Dan Hawkins going to be fired- November 2008-November 2010
-Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers?- Since December 5, 2009 when time was placed back on the clock at the end of the Nebraska-Texas Big 12 Championship allowing Texas to kick a game winning field goal, God has been inundated by the following prayer from across the Cornhusker state: "Whatever you do, please let us beat Texas next season." However, all of these prayers were apparently unanswered when a top 10 ranked Nebraska team lost to a Texas team that failed to reach bowl eligibility 20-13 on October 16th.
However, flash forward to basketball season and Nebraska upsets #2 Texas in basketball on Feb 19th. This was the first victory against a top 3 opponent by the Nebrasketballers since 1994. However, the significance has likely been lost on such a football oriented state In fact, only 32% of Nebraskans even knew that the school had a basketball team.
When reached for comment on the irony of the situation, God could only say "Oh S***, you guys were praying about football."
-We'd rather not be #1- The top 4 teams in college basketball lost last week. This is the first time that this has happened since Nov 25, 2003. The downside is that now that Duke is number one in basketball, all of the alumni from America's #2 douchiest university (only because the editors of the list refused to allow Duke to be #1 at anything) probably won't shut up about it.
-Juiced- All of the talk about Albert Pujols contract negotiations this week reminded my of something that I have always found incongruent. Why is Albert Pujol's name not liberally thrown at the top of the list of possible steroid users? I should specify that I think that he is a good guy and am glad that his name is not commonly associated with steroids. I also hope that he is actually clean and can keep it together, albeit outside of the NL central, long enough to pass signed, sealed, and delivered steroid users A-Rod and Barry Bonds on the career home run list. But when you look at his history there are a couple of red flags:
-Undrafted out of high school in Kansas City and went to Maplewood Community College to play college baseball
-Drafted in the 14th round with the 402nd selection in 1999 but rises through the minors in only one full year and goes on to hit 37 home runs as a rookie in 2001
-Looks more like a centaur than a human being
-BIGGEST RED FLAG- He has spent his entire major league career with longstanding steroid apologist manager Tony Larussa. Larussa managed managed Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire for a majority of their careers and most notably during their most blatant steroid use. Why Larussa doesn't have his own chapter in the Mitchell Report is beyond me.
-Associates with TV cry baby Glenn Beck whose labile moods are also likely the result of steroid abuse
Please post in the comments other interesting stories from the past week.
I think there are a couple reasons Pujols gets left off the steroid watch list for the most part.
ReplyDelete1) Steroid allegations really get lobbed more at people who have big peak years or big surges in numbers. He doesn't fit that profile. If Pujols was a user, he'd have to have been a consistent user throughout his career.
2) He's too durable to fit the mold -- the only 162 game kind of guy who's been linked to steroids is Tejada. Juan Gonzalez, Giambi, Bonds, McGwire, Canseco were all guys who had a bunch of injuries throughout their careers or who became increasingly pathetic athletes as their careers wore on. Bonds went from being a track star to being immobile. Pujols has actually improved his athleticism by one measure (stolen bases).
This, incidentally, makes me wonder why more people don't think Griffey was a steroid guy. He definitely became increasingly Bonds-like and sullen over the course of his time with the Reds, he had soft tissue injuries galore, and he did have a pretty substantial home run spike for about five years, even though he was playing in the Kingdome. Then, by the time he joined the Reds, he couldn't steal bases anymore. (I understand that playing on concrete in the Kingdome is an explanation, mind you, I just think that if Ken Griffey Jr. had been anyone else, it'd have been their second choice to explain the falloff.)
The curious thing for Pujols is why the original theory died off so quickly. When he came up, there were a lot of people saying his mysterious arrival was due to the fact that he was about five years older than he claimed to be.
I'd recommend reading this: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153053/1/index.htm
I would counter points one and two with Alex Rodriguez who has consistently hit 35-50 home runs although spiked up to 57 while in Texas and has played in 140 or greater games in 11 of 15 seasons (the last 3 years of which he has not). The age argument has always been dumb to me. You would expect a 23 year old with baseball talent to look pretty great against high school and junior college competition and that he would have attracted more attention than he did.
ReplyDeleteI will check out the article that you posted.
Were there a lot of steroid rumors about ARod before the Selena Roberts book came out and he admitted to it? I honestly don't know. I know Canseco accused him of it, but I don't know how much else was said about it.
ReplyDelete