If you’re the type of entirely hypothetical person whose fantasy team has degraded to the point that Steve Gradkowski is your starting quarterback — see that? We got our Kornheiser on right there — you might be particularly fired up for tonight’s Monday Night Football game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers. Otherwise? Well, it’s not as bad as Seattle and Oakland, but if you needed any more proof that NBC’s getting the great games on Sunday, and ESPN’s making do with what they thought would find halfway decent, well, it won’t be as much fun an open thread tonight as the Rutgers game was Thursday, we’ll say that.
That said, it’s still football on a weekday, and we’ll always take that. The Bucs’ season looks pretty much over, but the Panthers have a chance to catch up with the Saints soon and make everyone forget about yet another rough early start.
So, as always, if you’re sitting around tonight with some booze and want to make some friends, or just discuss old episodes of “Las Vegas,” pop in and stroll around for a bit. We don’t know who the celebrity guest will be either; maybe they’ll bring back Christian Slater, just for giggles. Be safe out there.
This video, captured yesterday, pretty sums up everything you need to know about the Washington Redskins’ season so far. Careful, kids; you might need those brains someday. Though probably not.
Tonight, about 8 p.m. Eastern, Japanese non-gyroball thrower Daisuke Matsuzaka could announce which team has won the bid to win the rights to bid for his services. The whole situation has been tinged with rumors of malfeasance in the bidding process, but the clubhouse leaders at this point: The Boston Red Sox, who have been considered favorites from early on in the process. Matsuzaka’s agent is Scott Boras, of course, so you know how that goes.
We were curious, though, if Matsuzaka, uh, has any idea what he’s in for. We don’t deny that Boston is as beautiful a place on earth to play when matters are going well, but when they’re not, well … we just wonder if Boras has taken the time to explain what exactly the history is of each of the teams bidding for his services. Not to say that Matsuzaka is clueless about American baseball, but, on the whole, we’re just hope he knows what he’s getting himself into. Not that Yankee Stadium wouldn’t be fun either …
Tonight, about 8 p.m. Eastern, Japanese non-gyroball thrower Daisuke Matsuzaka could announce which team has won the bid to win the rights to bid for his services. The whole situation has been tinged with rumors of malfeasance in the bidding process, but the clubhouse leaders at this point: The Boston Red Sox, who have been considered favorites from early on in the process. Matsuzaka’s agent is Scott Boras, of course, so you know how that goes.
We were curious, though, if Matsuzaka, uh, has any idea what he’s in for. We don’t deny that Boston is as beautiful a place on earth to play when matters are going well, but when they’re not, well … we just wonder if Boras has taken the time to explain what exactly the history is of each of the teams bidding for his services. Not to say that Matsuzaka is clueless about American baseball, but, on the whole, we’re just hope he knows what he’s getting himself into. Not that Yankee Stadium wouldn’t be fun either …
Tonight, about 8 p.m. Eastern, Japanese non-gyroball thrower Daisuke Matsuzaka could announce which team has won the bid to win the rights to bid for his services. The whole situation has been tinged with rumors of malfeasance in the bidding process, but the clubhouse leaders at this point: The Boston Red Sox, who have been considered favorites from early on in the process. Matsuzaka’s agent is Scott Boras, of course, so you know how that goes.
We were curious, though, if Matsuzaka, uh, has any idea what he’s in for. We don’t deny that Boston is as beautiful a place on earth to play when matters are going well, but when they’re not, well … we just wonder if Boras has taken the time to explain what exactly the history is of each of the teams bidding for his services. Not to say that Matsuzaka is clueless about American baseball, but, on the whole, we’re just hope he knows what he’s getting himself into. Not that Yankee Stadium wouldn’t be fun either …
Tonight two of our favorite teams to watch come together to do battle - Cleveland at New York.
So many storylines…
For CLE: Will the Cavs continue to play down (or up, but not in this case) to their opponents’ level? Will LeBron finally have a decent game at Madison Square Garden? Will Sasha Pavlovic ascend further up the tower of our favorite current Cavaliers?
For NYK: Will the Knicks continue to stink it up? Will…can…how…nah, that’s pretty much it, huh?
The Knicks are bad again - Isiah’s 2-7 start is exactly the same as Larry Brown’s last season. If they don’t turn it around soon, it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Thomas is out.
In his new Daily News blog, Knicks Knation, Frank Isola has a badly lit photo and pretty much states that the team has already stopped listening to Zeke and don’t have his sense of fight, so things don’t really look all that up.
We tend to agree - the only way the Knicks were gonna do anything was by becoming a scrappy, hard-working, never give up team. They’re not there.
The reason? We would blame it on Stephon Marbury, but he is what he is. This is on Isiah, and we’re rooting for him, remember. Besides not being a great x-and-o guy, he simply has bad motivational techniques.
Not bad so much, but he uses them badly. Take the incident this weekend where he tries to fight Bruce Bowen of the Spurs and then screams at Gregg Popovich. Okay - that’ll work. The problem comes when Isiah then goes out of his way later to calmly explain that he was doing that as a motivational technique.
You can’t do that - people hate being manipulated like that. We had a boss that did that once - we felt like every time she spoke to us it’d been filtered through some book called something like “How To Get the Best From the Best and Do Your Best: The Ten Levels of Building an Effective Team Atmosphere (4th Edition - Now With Interactive DVD-ROM!)”.
You know - stuff like “Say “good job’ at a Level 6 Enthusiam, then pat employee on the arm twice. Smile for 2.3 seconds, then walk away while giving a Level 3 Enthusiasm thumbs-up.”
How do we know this is totally Isiah? As pointed out by a (drunk) reader over the weekend, Zeke is wearing a puzzle piece lapel pin this year.
Is it a symbol for some company? Representative of a dead relative or friend?
Recognize the important and outstanding qualities within your organization with the Crucial Puzzle Piece lapel pin. Presenting these to your organization will promote a collective sense of pride in that one employee does make a difference. Great for employee motivation.
Perfect - perfect, perfect, perfect.
Is this a pale imitation of Pat Riley’s “15 strong” cards? Does everyone on the team have these? Did they throw them away, and then Isiah dug up his copy of “How to Coach (Volume 7 - Now With Interactive DVD-ROM!)” to figure out his next move?
Will anyone tell Isiah he needs to come up with better motivational stuff than the same junk anyone can look up on the internet in 8 seconds and then use on 16-year-old retail store employees?
Will the Cavs go down by 17 early by letting Jamaal Crawford run wild on Eric Snow? Oops, that was our angry subconscious talking. We feel it.
The Cavaliers’ Sasha Pavlovic can play - we’ve been saying it for years (in private) and now everyone knows it for sure (in public).
Also in there - LeBron is going on Sesame Street and ridiculous Players Association head Billy Hunter makes $2.1M annually (imagine exclamation points here for emphasis of our amazement).
This, friends, is the new stadium for the New York Mets, still out in Flushing and expected to open in 2009. It is designed, like most stadiums are these days, as a throwback to the old-timey fields of the ’50s, with smidgens of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds mixed in with, you know, big skyboxes. The Mets understood that Shea Stadium was cavernous, huge and decrepit, and attempted to return to the roots of the baseball’s glorious history.
You can tell this devotion to aesthetic pleasures by the name of the new stadium, announced yesterday: Citifield. Citifield. Absolutely nothing gnarlishly corporate about that, nope.
It could have been worse. That’s the best I can say for CitiField, future home of your New York Mets, at this early date. I’ve been living with it for 24 hours — practicing it, imagining it, mulling it and wow, it gets less likable every time I say it.
CitiField. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to CitiField. The Mets return home tonight to open a three-game set with the Cubs at CitiField.
No, stay on the 7 and get off at the CitiField stop. I’ll just meet you at CitiField, OK?
This is going to take some time.
We, we’d say so. The deal is worth $20 million annual for the Mets from Citibank. We hope it’s worth it. At 20 million … it probably is.
If you’re the type of entirely hypothetical person whose fantasy team has degraded to the point that Steve Gradkowski is your starting quarterback — see that? We got our Kornheiser on right there — you might be particularly fired up for tonight’s Monday Night Football game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers. Otherwise? Well, it’s not as bad as Seattle and Oakland, but if you needed any more proof that NBC’s getting the great games on Sunday, and ESPN’s making do with what they thought would find halfway decent, well, it won’t be as much fun an open thread tonight as the Rutgers game was Thursday, we’ll say that.
Tonight, about 8 p.m. Eastern, Japanese non-gyroball thrower Daisuke Matsuzaka could announce which team has won the bid to win the rights to bid for his services. The whole situation has been tinged with rumors of malfeasance in the bidding process, but the clubhouse leaders at this point: The Boston Red Sox, who 
This, friends, is the new stadium for the New York Mets, still out in Flushing and expected to open in 2009. It is designed, like most stadiums are these days, as a throwback to the old-timey fields of the ’50s, with smidgens of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds mixed in with, you know, big skyboxes. The Mets understood that Shea Stadium was cavernous, huge and decrepit, and attempted to return to the roots of the baseball’s glorious history.