Schtee Dump

A beautiful cross-section of subway life by Sam Boomz.

Because 5 hours of energy is for fucking pussies.

Oak Knows

Via Deadspin and Sports Radio Interviews:

On what he did say about the Knicks:
"I don't know."
On his message to Knicks fans:
"I just want to let the fans know I don't hate the Knicks. I love the Knicks. I go see them play."
On what is wrong with the Knicks today:
"My thing is, when you give someone $100 million, automatically they should be 41-40. If you give another guy have a max, 47. Two max guys should win you 50, 55 games. My thing is, I don't know the structure of what's going on. You can't play Around the World in the NBA, you've gotta go to the basket. … You've got enough talent that you should be .500 this year, easy."
On what he would tell Carmelo Anthony:
"I would say to make the decision for you and your family. I don't want to put something in somebody's head and then he looks back at me. I knew LeBron a lot better than Carmelo … but I like Carmelo. I don't know if he's playing with energy. He's a great scorer, now don't get me wrong. He's probably the best scorer in the league behind Kobe and Wade, just getting it done. But I don't know if he's got a sense of urgency."
On the Knicks not giving him tickets:
"I was in New York, I went to a Yankees game and I called and said, ‘Can I get tickets to the Knicks game?' They said, ‘We can't get you tickets no more to the Knicks game.' … They had tickets, but they said they didn't have no tickets for me. If they're going to tell the truth, tell the truth."
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Charles Oakley joined Sid Rosenberg on WQAM in Miami to discuss LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Scottie Pippen, his Knicks, and Isiah Thomas.

On where he thinks his friend LeBron James will play next year:

“I said maybe Chicago or Miami… I think him and Wade would be great together. I can’t tell him to go to New York. New York treated me bad… When I go to the Knicks games, do you know that they have somebody that follows me around to see what I say to the press?”

On Dwight Howard:

“Dwight Howard is embarrassing Patrick (Ewing) if you ask me. He doesn’t have a ball player’s mind. And they tell me he is one of the best centers in the game. He wouldn’t have even made the league ten years ago. He would be on the bench. They say he won’t listen. Dwight won’t listen. How can you not listen to Patrick Ewing?”

On if he blames the Knicks lack of championships on Patrick Ewing:

“When we lose, they only point at us, never point at Patrick. Patrick was our leader as far as press and people who are watching TV, but the Knicks were made of a lot of tough guys and a lot of heart. I think that sometimes we let our heart get in the way instead of playing the game. A lot of times when we play the Bulls, decision making, Pat Riley was a great coach, but sometimes he didn’t make the best decisions. Sometimes players on the court, we didn’t make the best decisions. It was everybody why we didn’t win a championship. Pat was a our main leader. We stand behind him 100%. Patrick could have been more vocal for the team, but he wasn’t. I think that hurt us a little bit.”

On Sid Rosenberg, the host, admitting to being friends with Isiah Thomas:
“Not too many people like Isiah these days. You ain’t gay are you?… If you see a man kiss me, I better be in my casket.”

On Scottie Pippen:

“He’s the best athlete all-around ever to play in the NBA. Tell me somebody who can do what he could do for 48 minutes on the basketball court. He was the best all-around. He could play three positions, four positions, rebound, assists, steals… Michael was the singer and Scottie was the drummer. The didn’t need no backup singers.”

And on the possibility of a lockout in the NBA:

“With the product you got now, you better hope somebody watches you next year… The league’s bad.”

Why the &$%# Not?

If someone's willing to pay the price, why stop at $45,000 FOR 300 LEVEL (YES, YOU READ RIGHT, ONE LEVEL BELOW NOSEBLEED) TICKETS TO WATCH A DISINTERESTED 'BRON DROP A 28-4-5 IN A 30-POINT ROUT WHERE HE DOESN'T SEE THE 4TH QUARTER?

Teflon Donnie Walsh

 Even the 8 seed may be too lofty a goal for these New York Knicks. The last season the Knicks won a playoff game was in the 2000/2001 season, a first round exit to Toronto. Since then, every other team in the league has won at least one playoff game save the Charlotte Bobcats and the Memphis Grizzlies (at least Charlotte and Memphis have made the playoffs in recent years). Read that last sentence again. yeah.

The New York Post ran a poll Tuesday asking who is to blame for all this. Shockingly, "Teflon" Donnie Walsh only got 5% of the vote! What does he have to do to get raked over the coals for presiding over yet another underachieving team with no future? D'Antoni may indeed be a buffoon whose next coaching stop will be coaching A.I. in the Turkish League, but he didn't assemble this roster. Honestly, the only hope is that the Nets land 'Melo, finally move to Bucktown and usurp the 'Bockers.  Let em fade into Bolivia. 

Et Tu, Brutus the Barber Beefcake?

Possibly Racist Exclusion from National Geographic Manhattan Map/Puzzle; Also, Ronnie Wood is a Vampire.

Hell up in Harlem! Appears that the George Washington Bridge feeds into Central Park, and Central Park is where the island of Manhattan ends.
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 A few years ago, Ronnie Wood of the Faces and the Rolling Stones left his wife of 23 years for a young Russian mistress. His ex-wife's brother painted this masterpiece in retaliation.

Every Juinior High Boy's Dream: Sex with the X-Men (Well, with the X-Ladies, you get the idea)

A mad genius has fulfilled the wishes of junior high students everywhere with an RPG game called Marvel Brothel. Professor X decides that the only way to achieve mutant-human peace is through love. Love that you pay for. Via comicsalliance.com

Young Poppers

Andy Reid was a freakin' monster! Musta started rounding into coaching shape bouncing around assistant stints until learning from the Master himself in Green Bay, Mike "The Big Show" Holmgren.

Speaking of big head coaches, Eric Mangini is hardly recognizable anymore. Rex Ryan still has several satellites in orbit, but has lost a few pounds thanks to the miracle of the lap band.

Don't Fuck With Sparky Anderson

Must-peep. They don't make managers like him anymore.

"You, Us, We Now?"

new knicks ad

More like "You Know, We Blow"

or "First round chum for the Celtics or Heat at best"

What We Talk About When We Talk About Competitive Imbalance (Part I)

Baseball is like the anti-John Gotti, every charge sticks. Steroids? With baseball it became a congressional shitshow with ballplayers called forward to testify and out themselves in a witch hunt worthy of McCarthy. With football, no one questions how linemen have nearly doubled in size from prior generations while running and moving faster. Star NFL players get busted, serve a 4-game suspension and no one bats an eye.
And then with competitive imbalance, with baseball it's a CRISIS!!

No doubt, the lack of a salary cap allows those clubs with money to spend a decided advantage, a point Cannatar already examined in detail. But is it a crisis? And since when are small markets a protected class? Why is it worth more, or more attractive,if one of the 8 small-market hopeless teams in baseball wins rather than a big market team that wins once every 50 years?

Of course, it's worth pointing out again that baseball has more teams in big markets than the other sports. And let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees. When we talk about low World Series ratings we are not talking about people turned off from the sport because of imbalance. Has a salary cap made the NBA and the NHL explode in popularity or challenge the NFL? No.

And while the NBA has imbalance for different reasons (one star can carry a team to success), it's still worth pointing out just how hopeless it is for so many teams.

In MLB, only two teams have never appeared in a World Series, Seattle and Montreal/Washington.
In the NBA, here is the list of cities which have never appeared in the Finals:
Toronto
Charlotte
Denver
Oklahoma City (won in Seattle)
Los Angeles Clippers
New Orleans
Memphis
Atlanta (won in St. Louis)
Sacramento (won in Rochester)

To this list we can add teams that have never won, New Jersey, Orlando, Phoenix, Utah, Cleveland, Indiana and Dallas. That's more than half the league.

Put simply, the NBA offers the least hope of a championship to its fans. Sure, maybe it's not from payroll disparity (even though San Antonio is the only small market team to win a ring since the 70s), but the point remains that little hope exists for the majority of NBA teams. But again, which sport has the "CRISIS?"

Best GM since Cashen

I think Sandy Alderson was the best possible choice for GM. The Mets needed someone with enough age/experience/reputation to force the Wilpons to take a less active role in the baseball decisions. I don't know if Alderson will have relatively complete autonomy, but he has a much better chance of receiving it than Hahn, Byrnes, or Daniels would have.

It's been a long time since Alderson has been a GM, but all indications are that he'll be a modern, stat-friendly GM. Alderson was ahead of his time - an Ivy League grad without a playing/scouting background who was a GM well before that became a common resume for the position.

But, before we get too excited, I think it's important to realize that the Mets have dug themselves a decent-sized hole, and it won't be so easy to turn around the organization over night. Every other team in the division has at least one legitimate future superstar in his early 20s. In last year's rankings, Baseball America's top 3 prospects in baseball were all from the NL East (Heyward, Strasburg, Stanton). BA's mid-season rankings had the Phillies' Domonic Brown at #1. I assume the Nats' Bryce Harper will be joining him near the top of the list. Prospect expert John Sickels recently said about the Mets: "I am impressed with the depth in C+ guys. What the Mets lack are surefire elite types."

Fortunately, the Mets have more of one thing than any other team in the division: revenue potential. So, while players like Ike Davis and Jon Niese will never be superstars, the Mets can hopefully plug enough positions with these cheap young guys that they can afford to spend big on a few top free agents in the next few years and start contending for real in 2012.

In the short run, I'm pretty pessimistic about the team's chances in 2011, so I'm mostly hoping that Alderson starts spending big on draft picks and young international signings. The Mets need to build a much better farm system.

As for making bold moves, the only valuable trade assets the Mets have that could be dealt for prospects are David Wright and Jose Reyes. I understand it would be a very tough sell to the fan base unless the Mets got an elite young talent back in return for either of those guys. If I was Alderson, I'd seriously explore what the market for Wright and/or Reyes is, but might be hesitant to pull the trigger unless I was blown away by an offer. Trading Reyes makes more sense because he's a free agent at the end of the season. I'm not sure what a realistic return for him would be - Casey Kelly and Daniel Bard from the Red Sox would probably be both too much for the Sox to give up and not enough to please the NY fans.

Master....Master! (Of Pitchers).

 In honor of San Francisco's 3-1 lead and Madison Bumgarner's gem here's James Hetfield of Frisco's greatest contribution to music, Metallica. (Other contenders for the top spot from the city by the bay include the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Rappin' 4-Tay). 

Ron Washington deserves to lose the World Series

Down 2-0 in the bottom of the 8th, bases loaded, 2 outs. Who do you want pitching? Your flame-throwing closer who had 71 Ks and a 2.73 ERA this season or a mediocre swingman who has just walked two batters and has yet to throw a strike?

Keep in mind, there's a day off on Friday and Feliz has already had 5 days of rest, so keeping him rested isn't an issue.

Well, the batter is a lefty and so is swingman Derek Holland. But Feliz has a reverse-platoon split. Career #s vs LHB:

Holland - .246/.318./.377, 39 K, 19 BB

Feliz - .136/.216/.233, 58 K, 13 BB

Did I already mention that Holland has just thrown 8 straight balls? AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Of course, Holland walks the batter on 5 pitches. 3-0 Giants.

Okay, the game's still within reach. Definitely time to take out Holland. Who does Washington bring in from the pen?

Mark Lowe.

Mark Lowe!?! Mark Lowe pitched a total of 3 innings for the Rangers this season. And he pitched poorly in those innings, with a 12.00 ERA. He pitched for the first time in the postseason on Wednesday and allowed 3 runs in 2/3 of an inning.

Basically, this decision says that Washington has given up on the game and doesn't mind going down two games to none.

Lowe walks a batter. 4-0.

Lowe gives up a single. 6-0.

FOX showed a shot of GM Jon Daniels and Joe Buck said "and Daniels wonders what's happened to his talented bullpen."

What happened is that your talented closer is sitting on his ass in the bullpen while some guy who pitched 3 innings for you all season blew the game.

You know the steelo, from New York to Puerto Rico You'll tell me bro... yeah, I'm Kool Keith chief You been out two weeks (or is it Chuck Berry?)

Disgusting Fast Food Ads

Who's hungry?

Yankee Schadenfreude

 I watched Game 6 of the A.L.C.S. with an old friend of mine who was a Met fan when we were children. He went to college in Boston and during the height of the nouveau rivalry became a Yankee fan. Thus, I couldn't draw much pleasure from Friday's epic denouement. The next morning, like a kid on Christmas morn, I awoke early at 8 to seek out the New York Post to revel in the Yankee misery. I would have no satisfaction. I ask you, why publish a same-day Post out here and charge $2 for it if you can't report on a game that ended around 8:30 PM P.S.T.?? It's all so very hollow anyway, what with last year's triumph. True, last year's Series win provides little comfort for most Yankee fans, but it certainly dulls the revelry of Yankee-haters like myself. And any excitement us haters feel must surely be tempered by the fact that Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford could be sporting pinstripes by the New Year. So I ask ya, what is there to really celebrate? There's one team that could unite New York as one and that's the Knicks. Peter Vecsey put them in their place with his Sunday column zinging, "They are two All-Stars away from being a contender."
Sincerely,
Debbie Downer

Russia, Belgium/Netherlands, Spain/Portugal and England Compete to Host the 2018 Fifa World Cup

 

I've got a column up at Epl Talk discussing the candidates to host the 2018 World Cup. USA in 2022!

I'm Not A Sucka So I Don't Need A Bodyguard, or I Hate Fake MCs

Gang Starr "Suckas Need Bodyguards."

or

Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock "It takes two."

Famous Footballing Brothers

Got a new piece up at EPL Talk discussing some famous and not-so-famous football-playing brothers.