This Amare Stoudemire situation is very interesting. I was convinced that Miami was going to be his new home. I didn’t think that the Suns would be thrilled with getting Shawn Marion back, but they have no hope this season anyway, and his contract will be helpful in the massive rebuilding they are suddenly faced with. That all blew up, of course, when Marion oddly ended up in Toronto in exchange for Jermaine O’Neal. I don’t think that O’Neal will particularly help the Heat – he certainly hasn’t shown much health or interest in Toronto, and that was after saying how excited he was to join Chris Bosh. It’s a great deal for Toronto. They get the room to figure out what to do next to turn this into a contender. Their current path sure isn’t working. As for Amare, now I need to find a new home for him. I still think the best home is Phoenix, and I hope he stays there. If he goes anywhere, though, then I think it will be the Cavs . The Bulls have more to give up and might make more sense for Phoenix,but I still can’t figure out why they would make the deal for him now. The Cavs could certainly use him, Danny Ferry and Steve Kerr are buddies, and Amare would probably be happy because he’d have a very good shot at a title. The rest of the teams mentioned just don’t make sense to me. I don’t see why they would trade him to Portland to make a team in their own conference that much stronger, and I think that the rumors of the Lakers deal are stupid. The Suns would never help the Lakers, and Amare does not seem like a good fit for the triangle – especially with Andrew Bynum in town.

Continue reading “Friday Notes”

I obviously won’t believe it until the season starts next year, but the news of Brett Favre’s retirement has me positively giddy today. I’m excited for several reasons:

1. I don’t need to see a guy erode his legacy in front of our eyes when it is in his control to not do so. There is enough legacy-eroding going on in baseball these days that Favre doesn’t need to do his part any more.

Continue reading “Halle-freaking-lujah!”

I was worried for a while, but Marquette is finally living up to my expectations. They were the last team in the Big East to lose a game, but now that they have done it they seem to have developed quite a taste for it because they did it again. The first loss against South Florida was a bad lapse of concentration and focus. Tonight’s loss, though, was just a confirmation of what I have long felt about the team – they aren’t that good. They had no answer for Villanova’s offense, they could keep up with their own offense, and they just weren’t good enough. There will be plenty more opportunities to bet against this team in the coming weeks because their Big East schedule is back-loaded – they still have Georgetown, UConn, Louisville, Pitt and Syracuse left. I don’t see how they go better than 2-3 ATS over that stretch.

Continue reading “Tuesday Notes”

A-Rod is an idiot. It’s frustrating to think that he’s just another druggie when he was held up as an example of how to do it right up to this point. It is going to be very interesting to see what the long term impact of this situation is for the slugger. He obviously did something incredibly stupid, and that has been damning for several guys before him. Unlike Bonds, McGwire and others, though, he got right in front of the situation and admitted the whole thing. It took just a couple of days, and his interview with ESPN today was honest, forthright and reasonably complete. People have always said that they just wish that Bonds and McGwire would own up to what they did, so this will be a good test of whether that is true and all will be forgiven, or if that was just talk. I bet on the latter. It will also be interesting to see how Rodriguez reacts when the season starts. Opposing fans will be hard on him, and he hasn’t exactly be a model of rising up against adversity in the past.

Continue reading “A-Rod, and Other Notes”

We learned something today, or rather we had the obvious truth confirmed to us yet again – Michael Jordan is about as good at picking players as he was at hitting curveballs. His former number one pick Kwame Brown is wasting away in basketball hell, averaging 3.4 points per game for Detroit after not contributing to any team at any point before now. Now Adam Morrison, his first pick for Charlotte, number three overall, has been dumped to the Lakers for not much more than a couple of used basketballs. Morrison has been a decidedly underwhelming pro, plagued by injuries and unnecessary drama. He was obviously fun to watch at Gonzaga, but he peaked at 20 and has gone steadily downhill since then. His biggest legacy as a pro so far has been what he isn’t – Jordan picked him ahead of much better players like Brandon Roy and Rudy Gay. Anything can happen, but I will be shocked if Morrison plays any kind of significant role in L.A., just like I don’t have very high hopes for Vladimir Radmonovic, who went the other way in the deal. There will be big deals before the trade deadline, but this is not one of them.

Continue reading “More NBA News”

The Steelers might have the hardware, but the biggest winner in the NFL playoffs is unquestionably Todd Haley, the former offensive coordinator of the Cardinals. Heading into the playoffs few people knew his name, and he wasn’t mentioned with any regularity surrounding coaching vacancies. He put together a phenomenal playoff run, though, and all of a sudden he is the head coach with the Chiefs. Not only did he get the job, but they clearly held it open for him, because it all came about quite quickly. It’s not just that he landed a job, either – he landed a pretty good one. The team doesn’t have a whole lot to work with right now, but they are at least $45 million under the salary cap for next year, and they have the third pick in the draft, so lots can be done. On top of that, his new boss is Scott Pioli , the architect of New England’s success. The Chiefs were far from good last year, but they played with more pride than some bad teams, and there were a few good reasons to believe that the future was bright before this move and thePioli hiring. Now this has to be a team to be bullish about on the longer term. Haley takes over a team with promise, he has new facilities on the way, and that all means a bright future.

Continue reading “Revisiting The Cardinals”

  • I was very interested to see the Lakers play tonight. They were playing in Boston against a Celtics’ team that hadn’t lost in 12 games, and which clearly had L.A.’s number in the playoffs last year. It was also potentially going to be a real problem for theLakers to face a team that good without Andrew Bynum. The team has had lots of practice playing without Bynum, but he’d been playing so well recently that he could be missed. The bookmakers didn’t like the Lakers’ chances – they were seven point underdogs, which is significantly more than the home court advantage. As it turned out, the Lakers didn’t need any points at all. They were down by four after three quarters, but they got them all back in regulation time, and then won it in overtime. What was most impressive about the performance was how they made up for the loss ofBynum. Both Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom stepped their game up significantly, giving the Lakers three players with 20 points or better. They still miss out on what a true center like Bynum can bring to the team, but this was a pretty solid showing, and a very good sign for the Lakers. They have separated themselves as the class of the West, and they are making a good argument that they might be the class of the whole league. Sunday’s game at Cleveland is going to be particularly interesting. A win there would be huge for L.A.
  • Speaking of the Cavs, it is amazing how good both they are the Magic have been against the spread. The Cavs are 32-16 ATS, while Orlando is just a touch better at 32-15-1 ATS. That’s 66.7 percent for the Cavs and even better for Orlando. That’s a whole lot of profit for loyal bettors. It’s amazing how easy those two teams have made it for bettors – they are the best team in virtually every game they play, and they play like it. I respect that more than a team like San Antonio that is almost never any good against the spread even when they win regularly.I know for sure that I like Cleveland better than Boston in the playoffs, and I might even like Orlando better, too. Or at least I did with Jameer Nelson running the point. Tyronn Lue doesn’t give me the same feeling of confidence.
  • The other two standout ATS teams in the league are far less predictable – Oklahoma City and the Knicks. The Knicks aren’t very good, and the Thunder are truly awful, yet both teams consistently cover enough spreads to deliver a nice profit to their backers. So do Milwaukee and Charlotte, two more underwhelming teams. It’s all proves that you don’t have to be good to be a good team.
  • I am a Larry Brown guy. I don’t always respect his professional choices – I wish he’d just stuck with one team and seen what he could do. I think he’d have a fair bit of hardware by now if he had done that. Stilll, I am not convinced that there are more than a couple of guys – Phil Jackson and maybe Gregg Popovich – who are in the same class as Brown when it comes to knowing the game and how to handle players. All that being said, I am impressed by what Brown is doing in Charlotte. He’s winning about as many games as he should be, but they are playing tough and tight most games, as their ATS record indicates. I especially like that they are profitable ATS both at home and on the road. That’s a sign of a tough team. If Brown can keep his happy feet from dancing out of town for a couple of years then he’s going to get this team nicely turned around.
  • The Sixers are just 24-24, and now they have to spend the rest of the season playing without Elton Brand. This certainly isn’t how this was supposed to work out. I had high hopes for both them and the Raptors in the Atlantic division. Oops.

Most of the dust has cleared from signing day, and we have a pretty good sense of how things will turn out. As a Michigan fan I am reasonably pleased – we lost two defensive ends that we needed, but we gained three players we weren’t supposed to get including a promising QB prospect in Denard Robinson and a nice receiver. Given that we went an incredibly lousy 3-9 last year this is one heck of a class. We should end up about 7th overall. Rich Rodriguez never had a class at West Virginia anywhere near this strong, so I am feeling good. Hope things went as well for you and your team. Unless you like Ohio State, in which case I hope none of your recruits qualify academically, your current players all quit, and you are forced to use the tuba players in your band as the offensive line, and the drum major at QB.

Continue reading “Wednesday Notes”

The more I thought about the game last night, the more I realized something – I don’t really like the Super Bowl very much. Don’t get me wrong – and day of football is usually better than a day without football. It’s just that there are a whole lot of other football days that I would rather watch than that one. There are a bunch of reasons why, but here are seven:

Continue reading “I Don’t Like The Super Bowl”

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