Spain suffered a damaging, and potentially fatal, blow as they prepare for the Euro 2008 finals against Germany. Striker David Villa will miss the finals thanks to a sore hamstring. Villa is the tournament’s leading scorer, and he has been dynamite both when he is scoring and when he isn’t, so his loss is a real blow to both the team’s chances and their confidence. Spain is still fairly heavily favored to win it all (surprisingly heavily, really), but Germany becomes an even more attractive underdog given this news.
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Author: T.O. Whentam
The NBA Draft has arrived. It is the last of the four major drafts that fall in an unofficial two month draft season. It seems like what I should do is to make a mock draft, but that’s pretty much a waste of time – I stand no chance of being right, and there have already been trades, and there will likely be more, that make an accurate prediction of what will happen practically impossible. Instead, I’ll just look at a few notes:
Novak Djokovic is an absolute moron, and I suspect that there is no one more embarrassed on the planet right now. If you missed it, he spent a great deal of effort last week telling everyone who would listen to him that Roger Federer was vulnerable. Since Djokovic was set to play him in the semi-finals at Wimbledon if they both made it that far, the clear assumption was that Djokovic was going to beat him. I have no problem with a claim like that. You have to back it up, though. Djokovic didn’t even come close. He came out in the second round of the tournament and fell in straight sets to Marat Safin. Safin used to be good once, but those times are a distant memory. Djokovic should have been able to win the match in his sleep, but instead he looked lethargic and unfocused. Even worse, he whined his way through the whole match. Terrible. This is one more reason added to an already large pile why I don’t buy into the prevailing theory that Djokovic is a future number one.
I’m not an American, but my Canadian basketball team didn’t make the Olympics (it’s hard to do when Steve Nash is your only decent player and he isn’t playing on the national team any more), so when it comes to Beijing I will have to make due with cheering for the Americans. As a bandwagon fan, then, I have to say this – if the team doesn’t win the gold medal they should all retire from basketball immediately. This team is ridiculously dominant. I know that the world is catching up with them (or has mostly caught up), but it is completely impossible for a team to be as deep as the one just announced as the next version of the Dream Team.
Continue reading “Is Olympic Basketball Gold a Foregone Conclusion?”
Wimbledon gets underway today and goes on for the next two weeks. For once, the mens’ side holds some intrigue. For the last five years Roger Federer has won the title, and he has done it with ease bordering in ridiculous. This year, though, things are a bit different. He hasn’t had the dominating year he has had recently, and people aren’t nearly as scared of him as they used to be. Bjorn Borg said perhaps the most ridiculous thing in history when he suggested that Federer was done and that if and when he lost at Wimbledon he would probably retire. Novak Djokovic is only the third best player in the world, and he hasn’t had any more success beating Federer than he Rafael Nadal, but even he called out Roger this week. Their is definitely the smell of change in the air.
The only question I have about the Mariners decision to fire their manager to day is why it took so long. I am embarrassed to admit that I thought that they would be the class of the AL West. Instead, they are the cellar dwellers in the entire league. It’s not like they are coming up just short, either. They have all sorts of talent, and highly paid talent at that, but they just can’t get anything going. This year is a total write-off, but hopefully this change coupled with the fired general manager last week will get the message across that this team can’t be this bad anymore. I have always liked the mariners, and I will continue to as long as they don’t make the decision to get rid of Erik Bedard this season. That would be painfully shortsighted.
Will the world end without Tiger? If you are the commissioner of the PGA you probably think so right about now. If you have been living under a rock today and missed the news, Tiger Woods will miss the rest of the season because he needs reconstructive knee surgery. Not that he needed, but he totally added to his legend this weekend – it turns out that he was not only playing with a torn ligament in his knee, but his leg had been fractured in two places when he was preparing for the tournament, yet he didn’t tell anyone and went out and won. It’s not a wonder he was wincing in pain from time to time.
I was almost right about the NBA Championship. I thought it would end in six, and I thought it would be pretty one-sided along the way. The only problem is that I thought that the Lakers would be the ones singing that famous Queen song when it was all over.
Continue reading “Wow! Celtics Win With An Exclamation Point”
The 2009 National Champions will be North Carolina. They clinched the title today.
That is, of course, a ridiculous statement, and I am sort of kidding, but it will be hard to pick a team that has a better chance for them after what happened today. All three of their top underclassmen who had declared for the NBA draft – Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green – hadn’t signed with agents, so all could and did withdraw from the draft at today’s deadline. That means that North Carolina, which was already favored last season, returns their six top players from last year, including national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough. On top of that, they add a top five recruiting class that includes five star freaks Ed Davis and Tyler Zeller. Outside of a notable injury problem with Lawson this was a team that had few holes last year, and that is even more true this year as the top six are more mature and hungrier than ever. The three who entered the draft learned what it will take to make the lottery, and all could potentially do it. Hansbrough has to be the happiest guy on the planet right now, and if he’s not it’s only because Roy Williams is even happier. Of course, for bettors it means that value on the Tar Heels is a distant memory.
Four rounds and 72 holes weren’t enough to determine the winner of the U.S. Open. In most tournaments that would mean that they played an extra hole or two and ended up with a winner. Not at the Open. Their playoff is at least 18 more holes, and more beyond that if needed. On paper the final is a total mismatch. On one hand you have the greatest golfer ever born, Tiger Woods (I make that pronouncement confidently and without qualification). On the other hand you have a 45 year old guy in Rocco Mediate who hasn’t won a tournament since the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic in 2002. Tiger has won 13 Majors. Mediate has four top tens, and before this year had never finished better than fourth. In the last eight Majors, Tiger has three wins and three seconds. Over the same stretch, Mediate has only played in two – a withdraw and a cut. Woods is ridiculously more qualified. It isn’t even close.
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