5 things annoying me right now

Here's my top 5 things that are annoying me the most in sports at the moment

5. Roger Clemens
Clemens need to decide if he wants to play before spring training. I'm sick and tired of his old ass getting special treatment from teams. Everyone else has to decide before then, why can he wait? I'm really hoping he is a complete bust and the Yankees spent 20 million dollars for a pitcher who will be there for a 3/4 of the season, and judging by his first start in the minors he may be headed that way.

4. Dice-K
I'm sick and tired of every single on his starts being ESPN's showcase game of the week. We get it! He's a Japanese pitcher that's good. Frankly, I was sick of the guy before he ever stepped foot in America. ESPN ruined yet another player for me. The worst part is the only reason they hyped him up so much is because he signed with the Red Sox, had he signed with any other team other than Boston, Chicago, or the Yankees he wouldn't be getting half the hype he is right now.

3. Horse Racing
Is it entertaining? No, not really. It's a minute and a half of guys beating the shit out of their horse urging it to win a mile long circle race. How come people complain about NASCAR being a sport, but they accept the Derby and all that crap as sport? Horse racing is nothing more than a huge gambling event. No one knows anything about these horses, at least not the average person. People wake up the day of the derby, watch ESPN, check the odds and place a bet. It's not a sport, it's a social tradition. The worst part is that the big horse every year finds a way to stay in the news for too long after it's over. Then there was Barbaro, I was so glad when the horse died so I didn't have to hear about his damn leg anymore.

2. America's infatuation with the NFL
I'm sick of hearing NFL talk all year long. It is completely overrated and is force fed to us by the major media outlets. Prime example, NFL LIVE is the only show on ESPN networking that is year long and pertains to a specific sport. What do they have to talk about in the offseason besides the draft and Free Agency? They nit pick stories that shouldn't be headline news because there isn't enough available and over emphasize every little occurrence in the league.

1. NBA Draft Lottery
I'm going to keep this somewhat short because I'm going to do another entry that's more indepth. Having said that, the Lottery recently crushed any chance the Grizzlies may had been entertaining of attaining that franchise player. The top two players this year, Oden and Durant, are can't miss superstars and the Grizzlies had a great shot at getting both of them. What happened? We wind up with the fourth pick, the worst possible pick we were eligible for.

Draft Lottery

As I'm writing this there are 1 day, 18 hours, 40 minutes, and 15 seconds left until the Grizzlies find out where they will be selecting in this years NBA Draft. I'm extremely nervous right now, because the Grizzlies have the opportunity to get one of the two biggest can't miss prospects in the NBA draft since Lebron and Melo in 2003. These prospects are Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

-Greg Oden is considered by just about everyone to be the next dominant center in the NBA. He had a phenomenal freshman year at Ohio State, even though he played one handed for the majority of the season. Oden's 7' frame, long arms, and leaping ability make him a monster on both sides of the floor. He is considered by many to be the number one pick in this year's draft, but may fall to number two.

-Kevin Durant is another freshman phenom who is entering the draft early. KD owned everyone in the college basketball world this year. He got voted freshman of the year, player of the year, and got named to every All-American team around. He's a 6'11 small forward who will provide many matchup problems around the league.

Depending on the bounce of the ping pong balls, the Grizzlies should be in line to draft one of these two players and get on track to turning the franchise around.

Commentators

After watching the NBA playoffs and baseball the past few weeks I've began to pay close attention to the commentators providing us with our play by play and sometimes insightful looks into the game. Some people who I have thought have done a great job are Hubie Brown covering the NBA playoffs and the always solid tandem of Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Hubie Brown constantly provides great analysis and reasoning behind every aspect of the game he covers. He's lauded as one of the best teachers of the game in basketball as a coach and the way he carries himself over the air really helps people to realize why he is known as such. Then there is Joe and Jon. They have the daunting task of trying to make baseball, a tedious sport to many, interesting to the public. I really admire the job these two do in the broadcasting booth. Joe Morgan is similar to Hubie Brown in that he is always providing analysis on swings, fielding shifts, etc. and trying to educate his listeners on the intricacies and the amount of strategy present in baseball. On the otherside of the booth, Jon Miller is more of the play by play announcer and handles himself in the most professional manner possible. He is always attempting to pronounce players names right, including accents on the foreign players names, and does a superb job of masking whether or not he holds any favoritism towards a particular ball club.

Anyways, watching Wednesday Night Baseball and the NBA playoffs made me start to wonder who is my favorite and least favorite announcer in sports? Well, I've thought about it and here they are.

Favorite:
For my all time favorite commentator the honor goes to Bill Walton.


(Two of the greatest things together in one)

Walton is abhored by many NBA fans, but I put him on the top of my list due to his insight (or lack there of) and his comedic nature in broadcasts. Walton has become infamous for his numerous phrases he has pattened over the years. Phrases such as "Throw it down big man!" or his always comical "that was the best/worst play in the history of western civilization!." Just to give you an idea of the amazingness that is Bill Walton here are some more Walton quotes.

-"What a pathetic performance by this sad human being. This is a disgrace to the game of basketball and to the NBA. He played like a disgrace tonight. And he deserved it." (Walton throwing it down on Larry Johnson)

-Tony Parker makes a pass, which gets deflected out of bounds by an opposing defender. Spurs ball, no big deal... Walton roars: "Tony Parker just made the worst pass... in the history of Western Civilization!"

-"Greg Ostertag is one of the top centers on this planet!"

-"Steve Nash is the most unathletic player in the league."

-Whenever the refs aren't up to Bill's standards: “Why even have a rulebook?”

-Whenever Walton sees something that displeases him "That was a foul..."
partner "On who, Bill?"
Walton: "On the game of basketball!"(in a very disgusted voice)

These are just a few of many memorable quotes Bill Walton has been gracious enough to bestow on us during his years as the premiere NBA analyst in the nation and why he is the my number one sports commentator around.

Least Favorite:
I tried not to have an announcer from the same sport, I really did. I tried to convince myself people like Dick "I masturbate to the Duke Blue Devils" Vitale, Chris "I'm not that funny" Berman, and Lee "let me tell you something sweetheart" Corso were more annoying than this man, but I sadly could not do so. This man is Stephen A. Smith.


Smug bitch

Quite Frankly, this may be the most annoying man in the history of Western Civilization. The worst mistake ESPN has made in its years of existence was firing David Aldridge and hiring Stephen A. Smith as its new "expert" NBA analysist. They went from the well respected, spoken, and reasonable Aldridge to the moronic, babbling, screaming, joke of a man that is Stephen A. Smith.

The Stephen A. Smith mistake did not end there, unfortunately. Soon after he replaced Aldridge ESPN came up with the bright idea of giving Stephen his own show called "Quite Frankly." It sucks. People lauded ESPN for giving Stephen this show, he had become the first black man to have his own show on ESPN in its 25 years of operation. Big Mistake. The show originally got a prime spot aounr 9 o'clock, but due to Stephen A. Smith's inability to speak the show was quickly moved to the midnight time slot, soon after that it was cancelled. The worst part of it was that Smith tried to subtley advertise for his show by using the words 'quite frankly" in every segment he did on ESPN while it was still on the air. It drove me insane.

I thought ESPN was done with the Screaming A. experiment, but apparently not. In the past year he has been a fill-in on PTI (my favorite show) and has made it unbearableto watch, started hosting the NBA Coast to Coast, and has recently served as an anchor on Sportscenter. I can't get the man to go away. On top of his annoyingngess he also knows pretty much nothing about basketball. He does nothing but complain about race while he talks about the game and has no actual knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. This example I found on wikipedia sums up Smith's knowledge the best: "The pick makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, when you think how they traded away Vince Carter, virtually for nothing, again we sit here today, wondering, what on earth is Rob Babcock doing!" Charlie finished 2nd in rookie of the year voting that season. Comments like this have brought the NBA Draft, one of my favorite events of the year, down in the watchability scale. They really need to put the draft back on TNT with Charles and the gang.

So, quite frankly Stephen A. Smith is an annoying, arrogant, loud failure who has to intimidate people into agreeing with him by yelling. And to top it all off, he's a Yankees fan.

Bruce Bowen and the Spurs

The Spurs play dirty? No Way! Why hasn't anyone brought this to my attention before?

Oh wait, this has been well known among NBA fans for years. Then why is it that it is the biggest story of the playoffs this season?

It's because no one has made a huge deal about how dirty the Spurs, mainly Bruce Bowen, play until now. Amare and the Suns finally went public on a major stage and called the Spurs out.

When this first happened I was glad someone finally called the Spurs on their style of play, but I was shocked to see the amount of people who had never noticed this before. All you have to do is watch one Spurs game and it's almost impossible not to notice Bowen undercutting a player, elbowing, or any other variety of dirty tactics. Still, I was glad that people were beginning to notice things like this. However, it has recently blown up and more and more people are complaining about the Spurs. While I hate the Spurs as much as the next person I am sick and tired of all these people complaining about how the Spurs play. They've been doing it for three years, it's nothing new, yes it sucks but everyone cheats or plays dirty in the NBA they just do it the most and usually get away with it.

Basketball Recruiting update

In my last post I talked about the great job AK has been doing on the court with the Rebels. I figured it's fitting to talk about how he's doing off the court in this post.

Coach Kennedy was brought in to replace Coach Rod Barnes, who people still defend as being a "great guy and a true representative of the University." Well, to them I say Coach Cut was a good guy, but you still all hated him. Ole Miss fans have a problem caring about anything other than the football team, and turn a blind eye to the success, or lack thereof, in the other programs. Basketball was a prime example. I had been calling for Rod's head for the past couple of years. I thought he was a terrible recruiter, let personal conflicts with players influence playing time (John Gunn and Jonathan Loe), was incredibly boring both on and off the court (big factor to lack of attendance) and that he was simply not that good of a coach. Unfortunately, his status as an alum, and his persona of a "good guy" kept him around longer than he needed to be.

Luckily, Pete Boone canned him one year after deservedly extending his contract for getting one SEC Road win (sarcasm button). My number one choice, Andy Kennedy, was hired and the fans saw immediate results (see article below). However, with one season under his belt how is the new kid on the block handling recruiting for a school with little tradition and dilipidated facilities? The answer is great!

Kennedy, with the help of former Lady Rebels Coach Carol Ross, has convinced AD Pete Boone to provide funding for a new basketball practice facility across from the Gillom Sports Center. This is going to pay huge dividends for Kennedy in recruiting, in which he is doing a fantastic job.

Kennedy entered last offseason with the task of trying to make his team more competitive and athletic. He was able to ink JUCO transfer Kenny Williams, FL prep star Eniel Polynice, and Rodney Jones who all had major contributing roles in the Rebels run to achieving a share of the SEC Western Division Title.

This offseason Kennedy is faced with that same task, but with the added challenge of replacing his three best players from last years team. So far, Kennedy has gone above and beyond the expectations of many fans in this recruiting class. With the departure of Ogide, Hansbro, and Hampton due to transfers and Abernethy, Doyne, and Sanders to graduation Kennedy had plenty of scholarships to handout. So far, his list of commits include Trevor Gaskins, Chris Warren, Zach Graham, Terrence Watson, Kevin Cantinol, Wesley Jones, and it is being rumored that UCLA PF may soon transfer our way. On top of these players, Flordia transfer, David Huertas, will be eligble to contribute.

Let's take a look at these recruits/transfers.

David Huertas
Huertas is a 6'5 combo guard who will see immediate playing time. He'll have two years left to play.

Gaskins:
Gaskins is a 6'3 point guard from Georgia who is considered one of the best kept secrets in the state. He is known for his ability to be a prolific scorer and was ranked the 18th best prospect in the state of GA.

Warren:
Chris is a scrappy 5'11 point guard who has drawn comparisons to A.I. due to his tough nosed style of play. He is ranked the 15th best prospect in the state of Florida and will probably see playing time as a freshman.

Zach Graham:
Graham may be Ole Miss biggest signee of the year. He's ranked the 37th best overall Small Forward in the nation, the 127th best prospect overall, and the 9th best player in Georgia. Graham will add much needed athleticism and size that was lacking at the SF position last season.

Wesley Jones:
Jones is a 6'7 tweener who dominated JUCO last season averaging 24 points a game. Jones is heralded for his ability to wreak havoc down low and stretch the court with his three point range.

Cantinol:
Cantinol is the mystery recruit this season. Not much is known about him but the fact that he is tall and athletic. Kennedy is trying to make the team more athletic and acquire big men who do not have to play with their back to the basket. Cantinol is one of these big men, but it is still unsure how he will perform on the next level.

Terrence Watson:
Watson is my personal favorite for best recruit of the year. Watson is coming to Ole Miss from Flint, Mi and recently won the JUCO National Championship with his team Mott C.C. Mott ran a 10 man rotation, a la Hubie Brown, so his offensive numbers are skewed. Despite sharing time with nine other players, Watson was able to garner JUCO defensive player off the year and be named to the JUCO All-American team. Watson is 6'5, but has a 7'1 wingspan that allows him to wreak havoc on anyone on the floor.

Kennedy went into this offseason with two goals in mind: replace the three seniors and make us more athletic. He accomplished both of these tasks this offseason and he still may not be done.

Coach Kennedy

The Rebel basketball team recently completed its first season under head coach Andy Kennedy, and to say the season was rewarding would be an understatement. Ole Miss was predicted by virtually every major magazine and sports outlet to finish dead last in the SEC West, however, the Rebels finished the season with a share of the western conference title at 19-11 (8-8), which is especially impressive considering the SEC ranked second in the nation in RPI. While the players did more than fair share of the work, I have to credit the turnaround this season to Coach Kennedy, current SEC Coach of the Year.

Coach Kennedy inherited a team that basically resembled a good JUCO team. He had a solid, but slow point guard, a shooting guard that took the term too literally, a scrappy undersized small forward, and two solid post players. The bench wasn’t much better with players like Trey Hampton, Xavier Hansbro, and Brian Smith. Kennedy immediately hit the recruiting trail and brought in Kenny Williams, Eniel Polynice, Rodney Jones, and Andy Ogide. Kennedy didn’t just have an impact through recruiting, but he was able to convince key players like Dwayne Curtis, Brian Smith, and others to buy into his system and not abandon the program.

After filling the roster, Kennedy had to teach these Rod Barnes era players how to do a complete 180 and learn an entirely new system of basketball. Rod Barnes, while a good guy, was not the greatest coach and had his teams execute some of the most boring basketball in the league. Barnes prided himself on defense, not 40 minutes of hell type defense, but just solid half court defense. His offense consisted of passing around the perimeter, with little to no movement, for 35 seconds hoping to find an open Dwayne Curtis or taking a three-point shot.

Kennedy came in and told the players to forget everything coach Barnes had taught them about how to play. Kennedy wanted to play an up tempo style, constantly pushing the ball up the court, and implementing a stingy full court press, mixed with man, and zone. Unfortunately for Kennedy, he had not exactly inherited a team full of track stars. Todd Abernethy, the point guard, was a solid player but critics would often point to his lack of quickness as a major flaw. How did Todd and Kennedy fix this? The weight room and conditioning. Abernethy got to the point where he was strong enough to go head to head against any point guard in the league and beat him due to his strength advantage, he would often use his forearm to easily create space and give him that advantage when necessary. While Abernethy did not become the fastest player on the court, he did become the most durable player and could push the ball up and down the court for an entire game without showing a noticeable sign of fatigue. Abernethy’s hard work and Coach K’s tutelage transformed him into, arguably, the best point guard in the SEC this season. Dwayne Curtis is another player who could be considered the antithesis to AK’s style of play. Curtis is 6’8 280 pounds, slow, and cannot jump. He relies on the use of his body and angles to score and rebound. He was a great player for Rod Barnes style of play, but many questioned how effective DC would be in Kennedy’s up-tempo game. Curtis conditioned hard from a pre-season injury and hit the floor running, sort of. Curtis averaged 13 points and 8 rebounds a game this season, which is roughly the same as he averaged under Rod Barnes. Before Dwayne Curtis returned from his injury the team appeared to be flat, but Curtis return to full strength seemed to be the difference for the Rebels who began to go on a tear in the SEC.

Kennedy was able to take these misfits and turned them into a running machine. The Rebels scoring increased their points per game from last season 8.5 points to 73.5 ppg, the defense also allowed 68.9 ppg and forced 16 turnovers per game which was just as good as Rod Barnes defenses of the past. Turnovers were a crucial part to the Rebels success this season. They had a +4.6 turnover margin, which roughly equated to 8 more points off turnovers than the opposition. While many people thought the defense would take a hit with the departure of Barnes and implementing a fast paced offense, Kennedy proved the fans wrong and taught the boys how to play aggressive defense with active hands.

Kennedy and the Rebs are set to play their first game in the SEC tournament tonight against the 6th seeded LSU Tigers. The Tigers are coming off a hard fought overtime victory over the 3rd see Tennessee Volunteers. While the Tigers may not be the most ideal match up for Kennedy and the Rebs, they couldn’t be catching them at a better time. As mentioned earlier, the Tigers are coming off an overtime victory where Tennessee had them running up and down the court the entire game, a style of play that LSU is not accustomed too. To make matters worse for the Tigers, their best player, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, had not played in LSU’s last couple of games and played a total of 40 minutes. Davis was not the only player to log extensive time on the floor, three other LSU plays logged 39 minutes or more. One would hope that the Tigers are unable to rebound from this overtime thriller tomorrow night, and still show signs of fatigue from the fast paced game Tennessee put them through last night.

While Ole Miss may be the fresher team, they are still going to have their hands full trying to deal with a talented, underachieving LSU team. The focus for the Rebels will be trying to keep Glen Davis from getting on track offensively. This job will fall on the shoulders of the injured Dwayne Curtis (big toe), Kenny Williams, and Jeremy Parnell. If these three can find a way to contain Big Baby Ole Miss should win and win easily, and will get one step closer to an SEC title and hopefully a spot in the Big Dance.