Maddux Sports Blog

It continues to amaze me just how bad the American tennis players are on clay. The latest disaster came today in the French Open when James Blake was beaten in straight sets by a 22 year old Argentinian qualifier making his grand slam debut. Mardy Fish is out as well after a first round setback to another Argentinian. The Americans have three players ranked in the top 22, and only Andy Roddick survived to the second round. It’s pathetic, really. Roddick has played in seven French Opens. He has lost in the first round four times, the second round twice, and once more in the third. This was Blake’s seventh Open. He has two first round departures, four more in the second, and one in the third. Fish has only made it as far as the second round once in four tries. That’s 18 tries combined without so much as a round of 16 to show for the effort. Over the same period the players have a grand slam win, five semifinal appearances, and 12 more quarterfinal showings in the other three slams. It’s pretty clear what the problem is – clay.

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It’s amazing to me how uncompetitive this round of the NHL playoffs is. I felt confident that the finals this year was going to be a rematch of last year, but I thought that Detroit and Pittsburgh would at least have to fight for their berth. The game this afternoon was so one-sided it wasn’t even entertaining. I actually felt bad for the Blackhawks. Yesterday was just as bad – Pittsburgh never gave Carolina a chance. You never want a team to look past their current opponent, but I’m certainly looking to the next round. I definitely like Pittsburgh to win it all – Detroit is beat up, and Pittsburgh’s top two players are playing truly spectacular hockey right now.

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This weekend doesn’t feature as many high profiles events as some have recently, but there is still more than enough to keep us entertained. Here are eight things that will keep my remote control busy today:

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It’s about freaking time that the Lakers looked like the Lakers. If it took them that long to get their act together this time, though, then I really have to wonder how they will fare against a tuned up and focused Denver team. They still obviously have to be the favorite, but the margin of error is much smaller than it has been so far, and they have been far from powerful up to this point.

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A couple of things have me scratching  my head this morning.

First, the Bulls are reportedly about to hire Doug Collins as their next coach. Huh? With the first pick in the draft and a pretty decent existing lineup the best you could do is pull a guy off the scrap heap? Surely the lure of coaching Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose would have been enough to hire someone who is, well, good. Collins has already been a coach for the Bulls, and not a particularly good one. He’s also been at the helm for the Pistons and he wasn’t very good there, either. Finally, he was reunited with Michael Jordan with the Wizards. How can we possibly forget what a rousing and inspiring success that whole era was? Overall, he has a decent but not overwhelming regular season record of 332-287, but it’s in the playoffs that he has shown hs true incompetence – 15-23. He didn’t manage to get anything done with the Bulls in the playoffs, but soon after he left the team won three in a row. This move is totally without logic for the Bulls management team. Or maybe not. This must be what they are thinking – Collins hired Phil Jackson as an assistant, and when Collins was fired for being inept Jackson took the helm and won six titles in nine years. Maybe management sees this as the easiest way to identify the next Phil Jackson. That’s the only thing that makes sense, because as a coach Collins make a decent broadcaster. I wrote earlier that I was very optimistic about the Bulls next year because of the first pick and their other tools. A lot of that optimistic will drain away if they go through with this ridiculous hire. It’s not just his record that makes it ridiculous, though. They fired Scott Skiles because he was loud and fiery and it wasn’t working for the players anymore. The mogical thing, then, is to bring in a guy who is loud and fiery and shouts at his players. That’s the ticket. If I was a Bulls season ticket holder I’d be on the phone to cancel them as soon as they hired this goof. I suspect that I would have to wait on hold for a while.

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Big Brown returned to the track sooner than expected yesterday after suffering a quarter crack injury. He was back again today with a solid gallop. As far as I’m concerned the injury isn’t going to factor into my handicapping of the Belmont at all unless something comes up between now and then to make me think otherwise.

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There are a couple big events happening this weekend. We’ll take a look at the Indy 500 tomorrow, and look at the French Open today:

Men’s Draw

I don’t see this half of the tournament being particularly competitive. There is always the chance that someone could break through – Nikolay Davydenko, for example. It seems by far more likely, though, that one of these three men will win it. If I were forced to pick, I would predict that for the third straight year Nadal would beat Federer in the final. Not original, but fairly safe:

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Mondays aren’t supposed to be busy days on the sports front, but this one certainly was. Here are five things that caught my eye today:

1. It was covered here by someone else earlier tonight, but I have to touch on Jon Lester again. Impressive on a couple of fronts – Boston having two no-hitters in less than a year, Jason Varitek catching both games, Lester’s story. It would be an even better story if it had have been against a major league team instead of the Triple-A adequate Kansas City Royals. Based on what I wrote here last week I’ll be taking a very close look at Lester next time out.

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