Fire Another Smith (and Raptors Republic for eating this crap up)

This whole story is ridiculous. And this is the last time I'll ever link to this toolface's blog. I bet it was ghost written by this kid. 

Accusations of story fabrication have followed Stephen A. Smith throughout his entire career since being let go from the Philadelphia Inquirer 15 years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this guy has been fired from every job he's ever had. Every talk show they've rolled out for him has failed within months. He single handedly brought down the CNN/SI network. Every serious NBA writer and analyst in the industry, including ESPN's think this guy is a joke and have not commented on this non-story because they have nothing nice to say. (Major points to anyone who corners Henry Abbott in an elevator and asks him what he thinks of this guy) Stephen A. Smith has been publicly dismissing Chris Bosh and the Toronto Raptors for years now (the inexplicable comparison to Manute Bol, deriding every draft pick the Raptors have ever made) 

Maybe Bosh snubbed him for an interview once. Maybe he has a possession of narcotics conviction and was denied entry into Toronto sometime during a strip clubs of North America tour. Maybe he just realized that if you're loud enough and throw enough bullsh*t around Peter Vescey-style, someone will lend you a suit put you on TV. If this were the New York Times, Smith would have been fired and the paper would be issuing an embarrassing apology and Oprah would have issued a fatwa. But it's sports media, where any move that passes the Trade Machine is considered a legitimate trade possibility. Where, if you can't prove a certain player will retire with his current team, you can't deny that he might be traded to 29. 

The fact that anyone is talking about this crap and making this toolface into a celebrity again for a week is just sad. Not sad in the dying puppy way, but sad in the Pauly Shore's career way. If, in the summer of 2010, the Raptors are still scraping by and there's an opportunity to go to a contender for a lesser but otherwise max deal, Chris will probably go. Otherwise he will stay. If playing for this obviously mediocre team (in which anyone with half a brain could realize they would be with a washed-up malcontent eating up a 3rd of the salary and a prize free agent 3 point shooter who can barely play the rest of the game) makes Bosh miserable, he'll ask for a trade publicly and be gone within a week. Maybe we'll go after Carlos Boozer. Maybe we'll relocate to St. Louis. Maybe who the fuck cares this is rampant speculation.

Stephen A. Smith is to sports journalism as Tia Tequila is to television. He's a giant toolface who made you believe he's important. I guess that makes you the bigger toolface.

This is fun though.

This is fun too.

It happened

I have deleted the grog from my Google Reader. Convince me to re-add it. Go on. Try.

Proof that there's no God

For He would never allow such a paragraph to be written:

Nice enough, though, and I can highly recommend The Honest Lawyer (no cheap shots about the name, I have friends who are lawyers) as a neighbourhood place to hang your hat, gobble a wing and gulp a cold drink while getting the lay of the land from the ever-helpful staff. Am sure we’ll strike out to other necks of the woods during the journey on our never-ending quest to spread good cheer to the people. All recommendations gladly accepted.

Idiot Beat Grunts Say What?

Did the McCown radio show and one of the topics of discussion – this being Canada and it being September 2008 and all – was – ta da! – hockey at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the role Wayne Gretzky would have with the team.

It's Easy, You're Useless

A question from the grog that I actually wanted to hear an intelligent answer for. My fault for having unreasonable expectations like Dougie might, ya know, get an athlete or trainer to comment.

Q: Doug, we've seen Michael Phelps wear two bathing caps to prevent water resistance from his goggles' strap and Walter Dix wear wind resistant sleeves in the 100m sprints. With all the focus on athletes doing "anything" to win and with placings in swimming and track coming within 100th's of seconds, do you know why some athletes insist on wearing heavy jewellery or "bling" during races?

Don W, North York

A: It’s easy: Vanity.

Guornalism

From Grog, Doug Smith when asked what Jamario Moon is doing in the off-season:

Moon? He’s doing what every other NBA player worth is salt is doing, working on his conditioning and every part of his game, presumably ball-handling and shooting. It’s not like these guys go home and don’t touch a ball or go to a gym all summer. They work at their craft.

Is there any other reason he'd be that angry about a simple and innocent question except for the fact that Doug Smith obviously has no idea what Jamario Moon is doing this summer.

Doug Smith, circa whenever it is he experienced adolescence:

Kid: "Are you coming to Tina Goldstein's Bat Mitzvah?"
Douggie: "Ummm... Totally. There's going to be... dancing. And food, right? And I'm going to bring a gift. I was definitely invited. I know everything about Bat Mitzvahs"

Grog round up

First of all, Juan Mendez was cut from the Canadian national team for some dude named Ras. Denham Brown never showed up. Also Jamaal Magloire disappeared from the face of the earth, Steve Nash is aging and ticked and Jay Triano was hired last year to coach a practice team for Team USA. Can anyone make a strong case that we'll make it to the Olympics in the next 12 years?

Okay.

So much stupidity, so little time. I'm not linking to each excerpt but all the letters arranged into words arranged into terrible basketball reporting can be found here.

Q: Out of curiosity, are you into fantasy basketball at all?
If so, who are your top 10 picks for next season?

Aaron P, Toronto

A: Sorry, I have no knowledge and, frankly, little interest in fantasy basketball, reality basketball occupies too much of my time as it is. And my top 10 would be the usual top 10 players in the league.

Why post this question if you're not going to answer it? You shouldn't berate your faithful, Doug. Leave the assaults to us.

Q: I am a loyal reader and really enjoy your articles and your blog. While I usually agree with your views I have to ask the following questions to ensure that I am recalling your viewpoints correctly.
Only 6 months ago or so when there was the Calderon and Ford debate you used to say that Ford was #1 as he had more upside and could do things Calderon couldn’t.
Ford can still do things Calderon can’t but you seem to have changed your mind along the way – am I recalling your former viewpoint correctly? By the way, I am a big Calderon fan.
Last fall when asked about Ukic you felt that he would not be able to come over as the backup point guard without a fair amount of time as the 3rd guard. Now it seems that you are penciling him in as a 14 – 16 minute a night backup. Have you lowered the standards or just had a change of heart?

Carl M, Codroy Valley, NL

A: The more I watched Ford and Calderon, the more it became apparent to me (and this is not a universally-held opinion around here) was that Calderon had emerged as the right kind of point guard for this team. And as I’ve mentioned a billion or two times, on this roster, at this time, I saw Ford as a better backup, but that was never going to happen.

Last fall, Ukic wasn’t nearly ready, I didn’t think. After another year in a good Italian League and the Euroleague, he’s probably ready to take on a great role than I would have thought before 2006-07. It’s just that he matured as a player, nothing to do with my standards.

But what he should have said was:

My opinions surrounding the one professional sports team I am paid to report on reflect the status quo rubberstamping of any move they make with the right to change my opinions at any time to suit the PR needs of said pro team.

And it brings us to list time:

Four worst trades in NBA history

Vancouver for Memphis.

Let’s see, Stanley Park or Beale Street? The Pacific Ocean or the Mississippi? Duh!

Pau Gasol for, um, garbage

Maybe if Marc Gasol wins a ring before his brother does, this one moves down the list.

Oklahoma City for Seattle.

The Kells, Metropolitan Grill and Pike St.Market for, oh, I dunno, dust!

He Who Shall Not Be Name for a bunch of guys

This one hits close to home still, doesn’t it?

Exhaustive list.


Here’s three things to think about concerning the newly-constructed roster and “depth.”

It defines more clearly the role for Bargnani, who is now a backup four and five. No more questions about whether he should start or Rasho should, no more jerking him around and maybe that helps his confidence.

The swingman position has been narrowed. There were legitimate questions last year about whether Delfino should play more or Kapono should play more or Moon should play less or, yes, even whether Joey should get on the court. And we haven’t even touched on Juan Dixon. This way, there are three – Moon, Parker, Kapono -- with legitimate claims on playing time – and two – Graham and Adams – who can fight for a fourth position. But if they don’t do anything, there won’t be people saying they should get on the court.

The point guard position is settled.

You may not like the way things are shaking out because there is no question they didn’t address the lack of athleticism on the wing and that’s going to bite them in the ass more often than not, but that’s some of the logic behind the moves.

Having less players that are good at basketball is excellent because it lets fewer players play more. The "legitimate questions" over playing time happened because no one was playing well enough to be a starter. Doug's argument is like saying it would be easier to decide which pair of shoes to wear everyday if you only had one pair.

100th post!

So it took a little bit longer than expected but we have reached our 100th post. Here are the thoughts of one brilliant AP writer, Tim Dahlberg, on baseball attendance.

...[T]he other thing that struck me was how many empty seats there were for one of the biggest games of the year in Minneapolis. It was Saturday, the Twins were riding a 10-game winning streak and the Milwaukee Brewers were in town.

A couple of weeks earlier, I noticed the same thing in San Diego. The hated Dodgers were playing the Padres, yet you could walk up just before the game and score a seat almost anywhere in Petco Park

So you went to two games and saw a lot of empty seats when you probably were expecting to see a few hundred more fans. Sounds like...

It's purely anecdotal, of course.

Well I'm glad you can admit to that. When you have two pieces of anedoctal evidence, it is very difficult to draw a broad conclusion. I hope you aren't about to do that.

But look around almost any stadium outside of Boston or New York and you'll see large chunks of prime seats going unused – whether the game is sold out or not.

Are you really claiming that by going to two games and looking at the seats on TV for a few more, you are able to know that baseball attendance is down (even though you acknowledge in this very article that MLB is expecting to set a record for number of seats sold)? So your theory is that people are buying tickets but then just not showing up for the games? And why is that?

...[M]aybe baseball isn't delivering on what brought fans back to the ballpark in the first place in the late '90s and touched off today's attendance boom: the big home run.

Glad to see your argument still makes no sense. To recap: People buy tickets and notice there are fewer home runs being hit. Decide to stay home in record numbers. Ya, of course. That makes perfect sense. Thanks for the insight Tim.

Clever vs. Not clever

Clever - Michael Grange blogging about a TJ Ford trade rumour:

Also a few emailers were eager to point out a rumour coming from Phoenix that would see the Raptors send T.J. Ford and the No.17 pick to the Suns for Boris Diaw.

Poked around a little on this and I don't see it happening. One reason is that while the Raptors have had interest Diaw and new Suns coach Terry Porter might have warm feelings for Ford dating from his time with the Bucks, if the Suns trade for Ford how can they be sure Steve Nash will adjust to coming off the bench?

Not clever - John Gibbons' managing strategy as described after he is canned:

Gibbons pushed the cause of some players to employ a more aggressive style of ball, giving more runners the green light to steal bases, sacrificing to move runners over and using the hit-and-run more often.

Flexing my critical muscle

There's really nothing about the following blog post by man of all seasons, Doug Smith that warrants the FDS treatment any more than any of his daily cybervomits. But I'm bored. And he sucks.

Late again, blame time zones.

Be back in Boston on Monday – maybe – and will be back to the regular routine.

Please note that in the era of shrinking newsrooms and closed-down international bureaus, Doug E. Smith (the 'E' stands for 'Mediocre') gets to fly from Boston to LA and back to Boston. That's like $4,000 that could be better spent feeding hungry orphans or renting a really kick-ass bouncy room.

Garbo's as good as gone and you have no idea how much we’ll miss him.

I guess we don't. Don't cry, DS!

Funniest guy on the team (maybe a tie with Rasho), fine player, good person but, you know what?, it’s time.

Garbo was average for the one season he played in the NBA. You could make a statistical argument that he was below average but we'll stick with average.

With all the stuff swirling around him, playing last summer’s Euros when the team didn’t want him to, the lawsuit against the federation over the insurance money, the fact he’s will have played only seven NBA games in 18 months when camp rolls around, his desire to play in Beijing this summer, sort of had a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind this day might arrive.

Any stock tips for me, Doug?

Financially, it’s not a huge boon to the Raptors, although there will be some luxury tax help when they finally come up with a buyout number, but it won’t give them any extra room to chase free agents, they’ll still just have the mid-level exception.

On the court? Well, I don’t think anyone had any idea what Garbo would have brought to camp so if there were no expectations, he’s not going to be missed a lot. If he’d been the 2006 Garbo, tough, smart, a defensive anchor, that would have been great. But if he’d been less than that, I’m not sure how big a role he would have played.

Average. Better on defense than offense but he was too slow to defend 3s. I'm racking my brain for instances of toughness... That beard was certainly tough.

It bites when things come to an end, it especially bites when they come to an end because of an injury; this departure bites an awful lot.

Or it means almost nothing.

Oh, and no, it won’t have any impact whatsoever on his buddy Jose.

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought Jose might break his own leg in support.

We’re sitting around the hospitality suite here late last night, swapping stories and doing what beat grunts do – a wee bit of complaining, a wee bit of laughing, a wee bit of imbibing – and of course they have NBA TV on all the sets

This, my friends, is classic.

(He posts a Red Auerbach instructional video clip, the kind that is on NBA TV 10 times a day.)
Doug Smith has never seen the channel devoted to the sport he covers before, I guess. Instead of those red-eye flights across the USA, maybe the Toronto Star should spring for some better cable for the Gruntster.

Well, now I can tell my grandkids I saw Candace Parker play basketball in person.

To satisfy personal curiosity, and because some friends from the league invited us to suite, took in the WNBA game between the Sparks and Detroit Shock last night.

Wow, Doug, you get into all the cool parties!

Now, I don’t want this to sound at all condescending because some people who know me know I’ve been a fan of the women’s game for a while, but the caliber of play was outstanding.

Fast, skilled, better shooting than I can remember from other WNBA games I’ve seen in person or on TV and Parker is the real deal. Even though she was in foul trouble and didn’t play an awful lot, you could just see how excellent she is.

Now I can tell her brother I know for a fact he’s not as good (I keed, I keed).

Pointing out every time you attempt to make a joke is a surefire indicator you are exceptionally funny)

And, let me tell you, was sitting along the baseline for a few minutes in the third quarter and I saw Cheryl Ford deck Lisa Leslie with an elbow that was every bit as nasty as any her father threw in his NBA career.

I've been meaning to ask how Karl Malone has a daughter who must be pushing 30. Was he 16 when he laid some of that seed down? Utah should have made the Mailman marry all of his baby-mamas.

(ed: Malone was 18 at the time of Cheryl's birth, I looked it up)

I know there’s not much chance too many of you will get to see a game in person but if you do, I’d recommend it for sure.

-

From the mail, and tomorrow’s mail day, don’t forget:

Q: You said in your blog today (June 11) that Basketball is the toughest sport to officiate. Why is that? What makes it so tough? What makes it tougher to officiate then soccer or hockey?

T S, Markham

A: Many, many reasons. The speed, the size of the athletes, the physical nature of the game, the compact size of the playing field and the fact there probably could be a foul called on every single possession.

You could put two of the best basketball officials in a room, show them video and they may not agree with each other on a handful of calls. There’s a lot of subjectivity that goes into officiating the game.

Hockey? It’s tough, sure; but the players aren’t as big and the playing surface is huge.

Soccer? Please. I’ve watched a lot of the European championships these past few days and, yes, the officials have to run and cover a lot of area. There are also times when two thirds of the players on the pitch are either walking or standing.

No other sport penalizes otherwise incidental contact. Done.

Oh, right, there’s a game on out here tonight.

Trying to figure out who’ll win? So are we. If Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett are merely average in Game 3, the Celtics win and the series is effectively over and it’s hard to imagine them both being that bad again tonight.

On the other hand, it’s quite possible that neither Lamar Odom nor Pau Gasol have any significant impact on the game.

That said, though, if Rajon Rondo can’t go – and there’s no word this morning on how his ankle is – I don’t think the Celtics have a chance. As we know. Sam Cassell’s done, Eddie House is a shoot-first guard and he couldn’t handle any measure of ball pressure the other night when the Lakers had Jordan Farmar guarding him and there’s really no one else.

That ambivalent enough for you?

That was actually ambivalent enough for you.

I’m thinking the Celtic win another ugly, low-scoring game.

The fact that you get to attend this potentially ugly, low-scoring game should be a human rights violation.