tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63471519022698271262024-03-13T00:36:13.538-07:00The (Old) Sports GuyOnce upon a time, there was a sports column called... The Sports Guy. There still is, but this isn't that one. This is the old one. By a guy actually named Guy. Ergo, The Sports Guy. He's not old; the column is.Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-40831908854144690662009-07-17T09:52:00.002-07:002009-07-17T10:07:06.271-07:00The Continental Football League<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s172/boygenius88/SportsSector/CFLvsNFL.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 392px; height: 273px;" src="http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s172/boygenius88/SportsSector/CFLvsNFL.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />My fan has spoken. He asked for another installment of The (Old) Sports Guy; he's got it.<br /><br />As a sports fan, my interests are rather basketball-centric. Even when I was paying attention to other sports, it was my favourite by a long shot. These days, I don't even pay attention to anything else.<br /><br />Back when I wrote about sports, I had to follow the boring sports. At the time, I even semi-liked them. I don't know what I was thinking. Although I suppose if I were thrust back into sports writing, I'd be a pro and force myself to watch some other sports.<br /><br />Recently, a friend came over to the big city, family in tow, to watch a BC Lions game. Can you imagine? I mean, sure, if you happen to be here already and you've got nothing else to do, why not take in a game? But to purposely go out of your way and pay good money to watch the CFL? I don't get it.<br /><br />So this oldie but goodie goes out to him. (He also, coincidentally, happens to be the fan clamouring for more, or speedier, blog entries.) It's one of the very earliest Sports Guy columns, dating back to 1993 or 1994, back when it was in the West End Times.<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The Sports Guy<br /><br />by Guy MacPerson<br /><br />Don’t get me wrong. I like the CFL as much as the next fella. The problem is, the next falla could take it or leave it.<br /><br />You can’t <span style="font-style: italic;">give</span> away tickets to CFL games these days, and yet the league is acting like it’s the most popular sport on the planet. Vancouver, Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto are all struggling to stay alive and the league believes it has such a valuable commodity on its hands, it decides to expand.<br /><br />I can understand why the head honchos would want the CFL to grow. They’re trying to kickstart their faltering league. They know Canadians only truly appreciate something when it has been test marketed in the Excited States. What I can’t figure out is why on earth any tycoon who wants to remain a tycoon would want in. If the teams can’t draw well up here, where there’s a tradition of 3-down football, what makes them think they’ll do any better down there?<br /><br />Last year, Sacramento joined in on the fun. This year new franchises will pop up in Baltimore, Shreveport and Las Vegas. There’s even talk San Antonio, Orlando and Nashville might join in. There has been no groundswell of support for Canadian football south of the border. In fact, when CFL games were shown on NBC during an NFL strike a few years back, they were practically laughed off the air.<br /><br />Most Americans, and too many Canadians, feel that Canadian football is nothing but a pale comparison to the real thing. The players aren’t as big and strong as NFLers, and in their eyes might makes right. Of course they’re wrong. The CFL’s a totally different game – wide open, high scoring, exciting. Tex Cobb could beat Sugar Ray Leonard every time but that doesn’t make him a better boxer.<br /><br />Is there enough talent out there to warrant such expansion? Chris Flynn and his family might say yes. But people who have seen Flynn throw would say no way. As long as there are rich guys, there will be expansion. Everyone’s doing it. The APSL will be adding cities to its league this summer. The APSL? Hands up those who’ve ever heard of it. Well, Vancouver already has a team. Now the American Professional Soccer League will be expanding to Seattle, Toronto and Houston. The National Basketball League will be growing, too. Not the NBA, but the NBL. The one situated in Canada. Maybe it’s the climate. The league’s Edmonton franchise obviously believes enough talented unemployed professional athletes are out walking the streets. They are advertising in newspapers for players.<br /><br />The Western Hockey League has had inquiries from seven cities but have decided to hold off on expansion until they’re satisfied there’s enough talent to maintain the quality of play. Finally a group with sense. Mind you, this is the same bunch who hold best-of-9 playoff series.<br /><br />I think more people should watch the CFL, and I think Americans could grow to respect it for what it is. But we haven’t given a lot of good Canadian cities a chance. What about Halifax? Easterners love their sports. And the Maritimes, to me, <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> Canada. When I think of Canada, I think of a small fishing village in Newfoundland. Halifax may or may not be in Newfoundland. That’s not for me to decide. I’m a sports columnist. But I do know this: they all talk the same and they deserve a team. There have got to be other possible cities, only I failed geography so I don’t know them.<br /><br />Expansion to the States, though, is not a bad idea, per se. Americans worship football, from the high school level on up. Medium-sized American cities can’t afford an NFL team. They might very well rally around their very own CFL team. But how are we going to feel when the Grey Cup is held in Shreveport between Sacramento and Baltimore? No one in Canada is going to watch that. Nor is anyone from outside the cities involved. And the grand finale will be played in front of a stadium filled with people all related to each other.<br /><br />As Yogi Berra might have said, nobody watches the CFL anymore – it’s too popular.</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-57998900771846374032009-06-27T18:37:00.003-07:002009-06-27T23:45:00.006-07:00Silken Laumann: Official spokeswoman for Benadryl<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgUqagWALRLVlmNPvSKUJCaO1mQQPiePeFRaSqUOUMoM3eW1Avf78Azp6S88x7TM6sNwycGQvbV4DywfKm0QVdYM87d8-xoUSP58dxY7BSH0tBNUpyzOKcoEN2QPif-VkX6hIecLuBp1M/s400/laum4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 258px; height: 324px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgUqagWALRLVlmNPvSKUJCaO1mQQPiePeFRaSqUOUMoM3eW1Avf78Azp6S88x7TM6sNwycGQvbV4DywfKm0QVdYM87d8-xoUSP58dxY7BSH0tBNUpyzOKcoEN2QPif-VkX6hIecLuBp1M/s400/laum4.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>A couple posts ago, my regular two readers were somewhat surprised that members of the fourth estate would name Silken Laumann as a particularly bad interview. She's been a media darling for eons. What was it about her they didn't like? Well, while rooting through the (Old) Sports Guy archives, I came across a column I wrote a year earlier. Remember when dear Silken got in a bit of an ethical brouhaha at a rowing event? Her legions of fans rushed to her defense. I don't know about the rest of the media (who reads such drivel?) but I, being the clear thinker I am, looked at the situation more rationally. No doubt others did, as well, which may have soured her on us. Or vice versa.<br /><br />I have to say, I have no opinion on Silken as a person at all. While we went to the same university at the same time, and she was in one of my classes, I didn't follow rowing. All I knew was that she had very lovely breasts. A sexist comment, to be sure, but I was a college-aged young man and she never wore a bra. I always appreciated her entrances and exits into our English class.<br /><br />But as a journalist, I had to take a long hard look at the facts of the case. Here is that column from March 30 - April 6, 1995:<br /><br /><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span><br /></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">by Guy MacPherson<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />In sports, if a penalty or foul is committed, the offending player is penalized and the opposition is awarded compensation. Whether the foul is intentional or not is inconsequential. An advantage is gained and a price must be paid.<br /><br />In hockey, an unintentional high sticking gets the same result as one done with purpose. A player who tries for a steal in basketball and accidentally nudges his or her rival off balance is just as guilty as one who fouls out of frustration. Their intentions may be honourable but you know where good intentions can lead.<br /><br />Canada’s sweetheart, Silken Laumann who won the nation’s hearts with a bronze medal performance in Barcelona, found herself on that road to hell last week when she and her three teammates were stripped of the gold medals they won in quadruple sculls at the Pan-Am Games in Mar Del Plata, Argentina. Laumann was guilty of the egregious crime of taking a banned substance. Nothing like anabolic steroids that fellow Canadian athlete Ben Johnson was reviled for, but the seemingly harmless cold medicine Benadryl Decongestant Allergy.<br /><br />Now we know how those Chinese swimmers did it. With all that Asian flu going around, they were doped up on cough and cold medication.<br /><br />Maybe not. But the problem is that Benadryl contains an amphetamine-like drug called pseudoephedrine, which is often used for its stimulant effect by less-scrupulous jocks.<br /><br />By all accounts, Laumann was an innocent victim. Suffering from congestion and facing a long plane ride to Argentina, Laumann consulted her doctor about taking Gravol to help her sleep. He suggested Benadryl, which would clear her ears for the flight.<br /><br />She also checked with the Canadian team doctor while in Argentina. Doc gave her the go-ahead. After winning the single and the quad sculls, she reported to the doping control office that she took the cold remedy. She was up-front all the way.<br /><br />“I believe I did everything in my power to make sure what I was taking was not a banned substance,” she was reported as saying. “I asked the qualified team physician. I checked at the mission... Again there were no questions about Benadryl. I ask myself, ‘What else could I have done?’”<br /><br />Well, there’s always research, for starters. That might have taken five minutes.<br /><br />She gets full marks for honesty but loses points for knowledge of the subject. All Canadian athletes are given a booklet which lists banned substances. Granted, you’d think doctors would be informed enough to be trustworthy. (That’s assuming sports team doctors know more than any G.P. I’ve ever visited.) I find it amazing that not one of the physicians she consulted asked which of the Benadryl products she was using. Only one of them contains Pseudoephedrine. But still, she had the information available herself. And as they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse.<br /><br />Laumann admits to some negligence on her part. “If I had looked at the ingredient label, that would have helped,” she understated. “But I’m not a chemist.”<br /><br />No, she’s not. She’s an athlete. And athletes can’t be expected to read or make decisions on their own. The ingredients are clearly marked on the package. But if you can’t have clout and be pampered, you may as well go into journalism.<br /><br />Laumann is getting support from all over, including her teammates, fellow athletes, and even royalty – the head of the IOC’s medical commission, the artist formerly known as Prince Alexandre de Merode.<br /><br />And garbage sports competitors are rushing to her defense. Synchronized swimmer Carolyn Waldo said, “If two doctors told me it’s not a banned substance, I’d trust the doctors’ opinion.” I can’t imagine what kind of drug could ever aid a synchronized swimmer, except maybe one that makes them terminally happy and keeps their nostrils shut.<br /><br />Was Laumann treated harshly, as she herself said? If she is suspended from rowing for even the shortest period, then yes, I’d say she is being treated harshly. I agree with Rowing Canada that she was the victim of a professional mistake. Who’s to blame is irrelevant. And Pan-Am officials ruled that the concentration of the drug was consistent with the amount usually found in cold remedies and that the situation was the result of an error.<br /><br />But is she being treated harshly if she loses the gold medal and is let off with a warning? I don’t think so. Canadian doping officials say that pseudoephedrine is among the most innocuous of banned substances. Sure, next to anabolic steroids, it’s innocuous. But it didn’t become banned because it was hard to pronounce. As a stimulant that can improve performance, it has been used too frequently by athletes for non-decongestive purposes.<br /><br />Laumann may have gained a slight, albeit unconscious, edge in her race. Most likely she didn’t. At least, not twelve seconds’ worth – the margin of victory the Canadians beat the Cubans by. But we can’t prove that. All we can prove is that her body contained a drug that is known to enhance one’s athletic accomplishments. The amount, and how it got there, is insignificant.<br /><br />If an athlete were to show the smallest trace of steroids, it wouldn’t matter how compelling the story is, we would be quick to jump off the bandwagon. It wouldn’t be fair to the “clean” rowers from other countries she competed against if Laumann were allowed to keep her medal. If she got away with using Benadryl, then another athlete might figure she could snort Dristan nose spray. It might eventually reach the point where athletes were wantonly rubbing Vic’s Vapo-Rub on their chests before competing.<br /><br />Silken Laumann’s bandwagon, thankfully, is still full. While technically guilty, she’s innocent of the much more heinous crime of callously pursuing victory at any cost. We know it. The games people know it. The ad men know it. Everybody knows it.<br /><br />Don’t cry for Silken Laumann. She made a mistake and she’s paying for it. She’ll live to race another day and we’ll still see her on TV trying to sell us things we don’t want.<br /><br />But I bet Benadryl won’t be one of them.</span><br /></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-68469400693510959662009-06-15T10:57:00.002-07:002009-06-15T11:32:08.822-07:00Helmets: What are they good for?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/pq6b_amsterdam_bicycle_many.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 306px; height: 229px;" src="http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/pq6b_amsterdam_bicycle_many.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>On CBC radio the other week they were talking about the problem with cyclists. Finally, I thought, those damn cyclists were going to get their comeuppance, the way they take up space on the road, forcing you to wait behind their slow asses or veer into the next lane to get around them, the way they use the left-hand lane to turn left just like cars do.<br /><br />But no, the people were upset about cyclists not wearing helmets and doing things like riding on the sidewalk. I had to turn it off. I've long been a proponent that cyclists should have no rights whatsoever – for their own safety. It's the way I ride a bike. I agree helmets should be mandatory if you force the cyclists onto crowded streets and make them drive like cars. But take away one and you can take away the other.<br /><br />I wrote about this in 1995. And it went something like this...<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">THE SPORTS GUY – June 22-29, 1995<br /><br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />Attention all cyclists: You have 15 months to crack your head open on the pavement without the fear of penalty of law. As of September 1996, the wearing of helmets will be made mandatory for anyone riding a bicycle. Is it a good thing? Oh, probably. But that doesn’t mean I like it.<br /><br />I’m sure it will grow on me, just like the seatbelt law did. Thanks to Big Brother, I now buckle up each and every time I get into a car. It makes things awkward when I only want to vacuum the interior, but I just don’t feel safe otherwise.<br /><br />It’s odd that these laws are passed for our safety and not a peep is heard from opponents. The federal government tries to pass a law banning certain firearms and making registration of all other guns mandatory, and every kook out there takes it as a violation of their rights as neighbours of the shoot-’em-up U.S. of A. In Amerika you can ride free as an uncaged helmetless bird on a motorbike, for heaven’s sake. Where are the Reform nuts on this issue?<br /><br />And, irony of ironies, the helmet law is announced the very week that the feds have instructed police to stop charging people with possession of drugs. The citizens are permitted to mess their brains up with narcotics, but not with their bikes. Go figure.<br /><br />I like riding slowly, carefully, defensively, with the wind blowing through me, er, scalp. I realize I may be tempting fate, but I’ve been riding lidless for 25 years with no great harm to my person. I am aware of the dangers: a human skull can be shattered by an impact of 7 to 10 kilometres per hour; helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent and brain injury by 88 percent. That’s why I’m never in too much of a hurry on my bike. I ride on the roads when I feel it’s safe and take to the sidewalks when there’s too much vehicular traffic. I will never agree to follow the same rules cars must adhere to. The way I figure it, the chances of me getting scrunched by a bus are greater than me scrunching a pedestrian.<br /><br />I will always cede to a pedestrian the rights he or she has on the sidewalk. And at all times I establish eye contact across a crowded street with any human who might cross my path. I never assume drivers know the rules of the road. For instance, I will not take a left turn from the left lane. That presupposes too much on the part of the driver. For one thing, you can’t establish eye contact unless you have eyes in the back of your head, and for another not every driver is competent or pays full attention. One mistake by a reckless driver could cost you your life and him a small dent. I will always take the crosswalk to cross. Riding, of course.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3403/3332616649_f4da6bb1ec_o.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 316px; height: 211px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3403/3332616649_f4da6bb1ec_o.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">In Europe and Asia bikes can go pretty much anywhere they choose. They can ride on the sidewalks in busy downtown foot traffic, they can fit as many people onto the bike as they like, and they are not forced to wear helmets. Is there a higher percentage of head injuries? I don’t know, but I doubt it. There’s too many of them to think so. They have the right attitude, and that’s that cyclists have no rights at all. Old people don’t cower and topple over when a cyclist approaches on the sidewalk. They walk straight ahead, knowing that the bike rider will get out of the way. And on the road, the cars are king. That’s the way it should be. Might makes right.<br /><br />Of course, there’s the argument that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill when careless cyclists wind up with fractured skulls. No more, I suppose, than when a big fat guy who smokes and eats cholesterol straight out of the can winds up with a heart attack or when he develops lung cancer. I went to school with a kid who was fooling around with explosives in his basement and accidentally blew off his hand. Why should we have to pay for that?<br /><br />The argument is ridiculous. We obviously don’t live in such a puritanical society. People make mistakes, accidents happen, and we should help our fellow citizens when they screw up. Wearing helmets will not stop screw-ups. Defensive driving will go a lot further to preventing accidents and lessening brain damage than wearing helmets.<br /><br />I would encourage everyone to wear one, but respect their decision if they shoose not to. I choose not to. Just like I choose not to own guns, do drugs, smoke or eat right – all things that the government implicitly condones. The law should be made like the old NHL helmet policy (here’s the sports analogy for those of you who were wondering when I’d get to it). Anyone entering the league past a certain date must wear helmets. Before that, it’s up to the individual. For now, let’s set it at 25 years. Those who have been riding their bikes for 25 years or longer have the option of whether they want to wear a helmet or not. All others must don them.<br /><br />Children definitely should grow up wearing helmets. Just as they are not permitted to smoke or drink. The smart ones will continue to wear them through adulthood. Then we can breed a society of helmet heads that will healthy and productive lives until they die naturally of drug overdoses.</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-28450894746412739422009-06-02T13:04:00.005-07:002009-06-02T13:51:14.537-07:00Best and Worst: Reporters fight back<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.ohnozone.net/archives/060208c.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 412px; height: 285px;" src="http://www.ohnozone.net/archives/060208c.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>In keeping with the theme of the last post, I came across a little survey I conducted once amongst my peers a while ago. This column was from May 23-29, 1996. Rereading it, it's fascinating how the same athletes get mentioned on both the best and worst lists:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The Sports Guy<br /><br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />One of the worst frequently asked questions put to sports reporters is in the form of, "What is he/she really like?" The media get closer to Joe Millionaire than John Q. Public does, but most of the encounters are in artificial circumstances. Even if a rapport is developed between scribe and jock, the athlete is always on guard, fully aware that the reporter has a job to do and will pounce on any slip of the tongue.<br /><br />So to ask a member of the fourth estate an opinion on the personal nature of a particular player is folly.<br /><br />That's exactly why I did it.<br /><br />Giving interviews is part of an athlete's job. Analyzing this aspect of the job doesn't tell us exactly what a pro athlete is like, but it does give us a clue as to how various personalities react in quasi-social situations. I polled a number of local journalists on who they felt was the best and worst they have had to deal with.<br /><br />The questions:<br /></span><ol><li><span style="font-size:85%;">In your experience, which athlete(s) – local, national or international – give(s) the best interview(s)? Why?<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;">Which athlete(s), for whatever reason, give(s) the worst interview(s)? Why?</span></li></ol><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Neil Campbell</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Globe & Mail</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony</span>. He listens to questions and thinks about his answers. He is adept with analogies and uses them often to illustrate his points.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Barkley</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Joe Carter</span>. Barkley is too busy trying to be a clown to give intelligent answers, and Carter might as well offer a no-comment every time. He offers stock, cliché answers. He is the master of the verbal shrug.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Chapman</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Province</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Deion Sanders</span>. He speaks his mind on any and every topic. He may be arrogant, but he gives his opinion on everything; he's not afraid of anyone. He also provides witty and insightful comments on questions. He'll tell you – technically – what he has to do against a certain offense, then he'll crack you up with a colourful quip.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kirk McLean</span>. Mr. One-day-at-a-time-have-to-work-hard-and-play-good<br />-defense-and-give-110-percent. The Cliché in the Crease. He doesn't give detailed answers; just arrogantly offers generalizations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Darron Kloster</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Victoria Times-Colonist</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - 1. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kirk McLean</span>/<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dave Babych</span>. Both honest. Actually try to shed light and insight on questions rather than bathe it in cliché. Patient. Can answer same question ten times without losing their cool. 2. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Trevor Linden</span>. Actually returns phone calls.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - 1. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Steve Yzerman</span>. Cranky. Boy, does he want a trade! 2. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Pavel Bure</span>. Can't open up. 3. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ben Johnson</span>. Hates all media – even me! 4. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Silken Laumann</span>. Great when you don't have to go through her agent.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeff Rud</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Victoria Times-Colonist</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kirk McLean</span>. Always has time, no matter if he plays well or stinks. Gives thoughtful answers. Nice guy. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Wayne Gretzky</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Gordie Howe</span> are right up there, too. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Byron Scott</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony </span>of the Grizzlies get honourable mentions. </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kevin Garnett</span>. Basically because he refused to acknowledge my existence as a human being. Former Blue Jay <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ernie Whitt</span> for exactly the same reason.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dave Sennick</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Victoria Times-Colonist</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Wayne Gretzky</span>. Has time for you. Will explain and elaborate. Does not always give stock answers. Seems aware of your situation, too, i.e. deadlines, etc. Will talk good times and in the bad.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Silken Laumann</span>. Goes to great lengths to make herself unavailable. Fairweather interview (if controversy hits, she is gone). She doesn't want to do interviews.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Trevor Thompson</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Orca Bay Sports</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Barkley</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dave Benefield</span>. Each gives honest, thoughtful, intelligent answers to questions asked of them. Each also has a sense of humour and each will talk honestly with patience, win or lose. They smile, they're personable and people want to hear from them.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worst</span> - <span style="font-weight: bold;">Doug Gilmour</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dave Stieb</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Gary Payton</span>. Each has an ego so big it's a wonder they can squeeze their heads inside the arenas they perform in. When you treat others as if they aren't good enough to stand in your presence, and worse yet believe it to be true, you won't make very many "favourite people" lists. Each is intelligent and well-spoken. Too bad they didn't say something worth hearing every now and then. Does anyone even miss Dave Stieb? I thought not.<br /><br />I'll throw in my two cents worth. For the best interview, I'd have to say <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span>. The man will talk, good game or bad, about anything, whether it's sports-related or not. He actually listens and thinks before he speaks.<br /><br />Other good ones include <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jayson Williams</span> for his rapier-like wit, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Will Perdue</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"> for his honesty, </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">David Robinson</span> for his intelligence and patience, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Shawn Kemp</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"> f</span><span style="font-size:85%;">or staying the same since he was a rookie, and </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bruce Enns</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Don Horwood</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"> for their enthusiasm.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />For the worst, where do I begin? <span style="font-weight: bold;">Patrick Ewing</span> for his detachment, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Reggie Miller</span> for his unwillingness, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Scottie Pippen</span> for his attitude, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Mullin</span> for his uncommunicativeness, <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Starks</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Gary Payton</span> for the chips on their shoulders, <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Stockton</span> for his ton of stock answers (I think that's how he got his name), and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> for keeping all his good quotes in his head.<br /><br />"As an aside," adds one of the respondents, "I am compelled to say that a majority of sports journalists, both print and spoken, have poor interviewing techniques. So often you hear a statement instead of a question. And when questions are asked, they often are close-ended. In other words, questions that could be answered with yes or no. Those encourage cliché responses."<br /><br />Sure, sometimes we base too much on how an athlete responds to our often jejune questions. But it's all we can go by. It is these brief encounters that enable us to answer with certainty to anyone who asks that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Scottie Pippen</span> is a jerk.</span><br /></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-80186052718430500202009-05-27T23:57:00.010-07:002009-05-31T06:40:56.335-07:00The dumbing of our athletes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://thefearofcomplacency.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/kobebron.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 161px;" src="http://thefearofcomplacency.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/kobebron.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>This post addresses a couple of comments made by regular reader <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dan Jardine</span> of <a href="http://djardine.blogspot.com/">Cinemania</a> fame. I could just e-mail him, but let's pretend there's more than one regular reader. Humour me.<br /><br />1. Dan asks, <span style="font-style: italic;">"If you were starting a team up from scratch and both Kobe and Lebron were 18 years old, who would you draft and why?"</span><br /><br />No offense to Dan, but this is one of these ridiculous questions sports geeks love to throw around. They're both outstanding players. What difference does it make who's minusculely better? If I were a GM picking second in this scenario, I'd be ecstatic. How could you go wrong? You couldn't, that's how.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.underconsideration.com/random/bo_derek.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 158px;" src="http://www.underconsideration.com/random/bo_derek.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>I was in such a situation not too long ago. As the general manager of the West End Girls of the National Fast Break Association, I sucked so bad one year (okay, for several years) that I got to pick first overall the year <span style="font-weight: bold;">LeBron James</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Carmelo Anthony</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Bosh</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dwyane Wade</span> were eligible. My choice was between LeBron and Carmelo. Whenever given the choice between cornrows and no cornrows, I almost always choose no cornrows. I chose LeBron.<br /><br />But between LeBron and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kobe Byrant</span>? I dunno. What's the point in trying to say one is better than the other? So for me, it would come down to personal preference, like with the cornrows. Who has fewer tattoos? (Kobe) Who has fewer run-ins with the law? (LeBron) Who is more worldly and well-read? (Kobe) Who's funnier? (Uh...) So I'd flip a coin and be happy with whoever I got. I like them both as players. I like them both as people, as far as I can tell. Which brings us to the next comment.<br /><br />2. Dan asked, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Guy, you've had close encounters with all sortsa athletes. Are they (as a group--I know there are exceptions like Nash) as dumb as they sound, or have they simply knuckled under to their 'handlers' and become the well-trained speak-but-say-nothing-substantive media whores that their bosses, agents and sponsors demand?"</span><br /><br />Now we're talking. This is a legitimate query. My hunch is that they're no smarter or dumber than any other random segment of the population. But it's just a hunch. Sure, I've talked to plenty of athletes, but it's usually about sports. What can you learn about someone if all you're doing is asking them specific questions about a game they just played? I suppose you might get a sense of how they put their thoughts into words, and that would give you an indication of their relative intelligence. But if you heard me stammer and sputter, you'd have no way of guessing that I'm the proud owner of a Bacherlor of Arts degree obtained in only six years. So you never know. Sports talk is the great equalizer.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://anoddlittleplace.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/stupid_bush.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 173px;" src="http://anoddlittleplace.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/stupid_bush.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a>I remember getting into a political discussion with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony</span> when he was with the Grizzlies once. He loved a good argument, which I always take as a sign of smarts. Then again, he was an unabashed Republican so who knows?<br /><br />The truth is that sports reporters ask such mundane questions, and the same ones rephrased over and over again, that the athlete has no chance to sound intelligent. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span>, a very intelligent man, was also very tight-lipped when it came to answering dumb questions by dumber sports journalists. The first guy I ever had to interview on a regular basis was Canadian coaching legend <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ken Shields</span>, who went to the Abdul-Jabbar school of answering questions. Shields forced me to come up with more insightful questions. Because if I didn't, I was going to get a lot of one-word answers. And that's awkward.<br /><br />But this question got me to look back at a year of quotes I compiled. The year was 1996. A selection of them ran in a season-ending column in Sports Vue. The season being the Grizzlies. The quotes come mostly from that Grizz, but there are others from around the NBA. Looking over them now, it's interesting to see a few from former all-star <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jayson Williams</span>, who's <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jTAeZjUXCW_oRfJHy2m2dc4HlPhQD98EORA01">in the news</a> these days as prosecutors are trying to send him to jail for covering up a fatal shooting at his mansion in 2002. Williams, in his heyday, was known as the funniest guy in the NBA. I don't think he's laughing too much these days.<br /><br />Another quote jumps out at me. Shawn Kemp mentions his free throw shooting in the "new" Key Arena. New?! In 1996? This is the arena that ten years later was all of a sudden old and decrepit, eventually forcing the Sonics out of Seattle. I don't buy it. I went to games in Seattle right up to their last season and their arena was great. It was their team that was decrepit (although they were head and shoulders above our beloved Grizz).<br /><br />Most of these quotes were from direct questions I asked. Since I wasn't a beat reporter, I didn't work on deadline and could wait for the daily beat guys to ask their tedious questions then get in there to speak to players on my own. But some of them are from the scrum and were included (I'm guessing, anyway, 13 years later) to help illustrate what happened that year.<br /><br />You'll notice that there are some bright guys in the NBA. And some less so. Just like life.<br /><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span> – May 2-8, 1996</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />The real NBA season is just beginning. But for us north of the 49th, it’s all over. Here’s a look at my quotes of the year in the NBA.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“People are just friendly. If my car broke down I wouldn’t hesitate flagging somebody down. But if I’m in New York? And my car breaks down? You better call Triple A, or call home and let your family come get you. Nobody’s stopping. That’s the city. They say, ‘Shit, we got somewhere to go. We got places to be. You’re just stuck, buddy. It’s your tough luck.’ That’s about it. Everybody’s in a rush. Everybody’s trying to make a dollar.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anthony Avent </span>comparing Vancouverites to New Yorkers<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/314576.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193B3EA2C03450C94863942E9614340D083284831B75F48EF45"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 232px; height: 331px;" src="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/314576.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193B3EA2C03450C94863942E9614340D083284831B75F48EF45" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“Basketball is not a complicated thing. But you can make it complicated when you think too much.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“How are the Thundercats doing?”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> trying to take an interest in the UBC Thunderbirds<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“You should have told me. I would have been throwing behind-the-back passes, everything, to try and get one.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> after his first career triple double, when told he was sitting on nine assists for the longest time<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Obviously it’s disappointing but when I hit my hotel room, I forget about it and start concentrating on... who DO we play next?”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony </span>dazed and confused after a 94-88 loss to Chicago<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“No. I kind of like attention.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> on whether he has an entourage to ward off any fans<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s just hanging around these guys for a whole week. ... I’m sick of being on the road. I just want to lay in my own bed, cook my nice, good meal and relax. That’ll solve everything.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Robert Horry </span>on being in such a foul mood with his Phoenix teammates<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I have no idea, but I’m not complaining.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lawrence Moten</span> on why he thinks the fans have take<span>n to him</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />“I have a chance to think about a lot of things so I know what I’m going to say if I’m asked a certain question. And you just happen to ask those questions. So I’ve already rehearsed what I’m going to say.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span> on why he’s so quotable<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I have a lot of respect for those guys, but I’m glad we kicked their ass, though.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> on the Celtics<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I answered your question, man. Don’t try to put words in my mouth, all right? Any more questions, man? You can leave, please.”</span><br />The charming <span style="font-weight: bold;">Scottie Pippen</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I wanna go see a game up there. I hear it’s the best place in the world to see a hockey game.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Joe Dumars</span>, preferring to talk Montreal Canadiens hockey than Detroit Pistons basketball<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Let’s have a Blue haircut day.”</span><br />The bald <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> sounding jealous that Big Country Reeves had his own haircut day<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Country has a body that’s gonna change every year. I think next year you’ll see him be even a little more slim and more muscular. I can see it changing over the next three years. Three years from now you probably won’t recognize Big Country Reeves just because of all the physical things he’ll have to go through.”</span><br />Grizzlies coach <span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“Sometimes. I still answer to it but it’s going to get to the point where I won’t. I ain’t ever going to change it officially. I gotta leave my name Bryant. My wife’s gotta have something to call me.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Big Country Reeves</span> on whether anybody still addresses him as Bryant<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s tough, but my mother always told me to keep my head up. Things happen for a reason.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lawrence Moten</span> on how he’s handling sitting on the bench<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Oh no. I never use that word. I don’t think there’s such a word. I just think you miss shots or you make them.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott</span> in the midst of a s-l-u-m-p<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’ll take easy wins any day, I’ll tell you that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Byron Scott</span> on whether he prefers the nailbiters or the blowouts he used to get with the Lakers<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“He said something to me about next time he’s going to dunk it on me. I said, ‘Do what you gotta do. Whatever you do, you just bring it. You might do better than what you did, trying to just lay it up like that.’... I can’t remember when I’ve seen him dunk in a game, so it seems like that would be pretty hard for him to do anyway... And he won’t EVER dunk on me.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Byron Scott </span>discussing what was said in his face-to-face jawing with Gary Payton in Seattle<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“They have to have an injury. Whatever it is, whether it’s a hangnail or whatever, it has to be an injury.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> discussing the laughable NBA policy of keeping players on injured reserved<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We hug each other all the time. But how many times have you seen pro basketball players chasing another guy off the court?”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> after his buzzer-beating jumper against Philadelphia and subsequent dash into the lockerroom<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I guess now it doesn’t seem so off-the-wall to me because I know I don’t know all the hockey rules.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span> on the questions he gets from neophyte basketball fans<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“You worry about the people that you dive into more than anything. But I don’t think you can play this game walking on pins and needles.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Karl Malone </span>after going into the crowd and knocking over BCTV’s Michael Kennedy, separating his shoulder<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s a fast game shooting a slow shot.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gerald Wilkins</span> after his third game back<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“He said, ‘Are you sure you don’t get nervous?’ I said I get nervous but for $50,000, who cares?”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rob Carlson</span> after hitting a half-court shot to win 50 grand<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“In training camp I had to sing in front of them twice. A slow song. I can’t even remember the name of it. But I had to tell jokes and I had to tote the bags on the road. I had to do all that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Antonio McDyess</span> on life as a rookie<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“They came out and kicked our ass the first quarter... Don’t say it like that. They kicked our butts the first quarter.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony </span>censoring himself after a 91-85 loss to Denver<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“I like the weather. No snow.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“Of course I prefer the rain! I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all that sun down there in L.A. All that sun and warm weather.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Antonio Harvey </span>after being released by the Grizzlies and picked up by the Los Angeles Clippers<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“When I was with the Bucks, we kind of went at it. There was a lot of trash talking then. Just some players in the league you don’t get along with.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eric Murdoch</span> on his history of run-ins with Bimbo Coles<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Sometimes I hate having breaks. If I could, I would play a game every other night. But I don’t make the schedule.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue “Iron Man” Edwards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“If I had players that could run up and down and score a lot of points, I might run a lot more, too.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> on the slow-down style of the Bears<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I had a good rhythm going. Just the body and the stomach said, ‘That’s enough. Go sit back down.’”</span><br />A sick <span style="font-weight: bold;">Byron Scott </span>after scoring 19 points in only 23 minutes against Utah<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“You can’t play worrying about being traded. If it happens, it happens. You just pack your shit up and move on.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards </span>on the possibility of being traded<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“What am I gonna do? Write ‘em a letter and say, ‘Please don’t trade me!’? </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span> wanting to stay in Vancouver<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’ve been doing this since I was six. And even though I’m not an old man, that’s a long time. I figure another six or seven years in the league and I’ll just kind of go on out to pasture. They won’t even know who I am.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’d like to play the New York Knicks on the second night of a back-to-back after an overtime every time.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Brian Winters</span> after Grizzlies shock the Knicks 84-80<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’d rather put on a wooden beak and go out and pluck shit with the chickens.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jayson Williams</span> on the thought of playing for the Grizzlies<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“If the trade does come, then I just fail the physical. And I go right back to where I’m going. I’m untradeable.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jayson Williams </span>on what he’d do if he’s traded<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Today a peacock, tomorrow a feather duster.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jayson Williams</span> on the ups and downs of his career<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think everybody thought we would have a legitimate chance to win tonight, including myself, and sometimes when you get put in those positions, you almost get too ready to play and you come out and you’re tight. And I just thought we were tight as a drum.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters </span>on a loss to Detroit, number 17 in a row during the first big losing streak<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“In the long run, this will make everybody on this team better. I think any times you go through streaks like this as a player or a coach, I think it makes you a stronger individual.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott </span>after a 93-84 loss to the Pistons<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It was just one of those games where you couldn’t kick it in the ocean.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> after the Detroit loss<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It was a monkey on your back and it kind of grew to a gorilla and it’s nice to have it off my back and everybody’s back.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> after ending the first streak with a 104-100 win versus Portland<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“This is not a one-hit wonder. We’re not just trying to win one game every 19.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Darrick Martin</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I was just glad we won. I couldn’t believe it. Nobody wanted to be part of the record. Now we can start a winning streak.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Darrick Martin</span>, dreaming a little dream<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We kind of fell off the emotional cliff tonight.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> after a 116-85 home loss to Golden State, one night after beating Portland<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We found our team chemistry. Now we’ve lost it again.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> on the second losing streak<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t worry about the record. If the record happens, it happens. A record is a record. It’s not that big of a deal to me.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Winters</span> after Orlando loss, 13th in a row<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t really think about the 20 losses that much. It’s frustrating as hell. Yeah, you’d like to win, but all you can do is go out and give your best. Unfortunately, the best hasn’t been good enough for us.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“These are the dog days right now. And you have to be man enough to accept them and deal with them and understand that it’s not going to be like this forever.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t let anything like this make me not want to play basketball.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I will definitely remember all of these losses come next year. There’s gotta be payback.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eric Mobley</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Our goal for the second half is to go out and win at least as many games as we did the first half. I think that’s a reachable goal for us.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span>, said with a straight face<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Because we’ve had a lot of close losses, that’s motivated us to continue to work because we know that a win is just around the corner. Although we haven’t got to that corner yet.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards </span>in the midst of a 23-game losing streak<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“When you have people looking to you to be a leader, you gotta lead.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I kicked their ass from a personal standpoint. We didn’t win, but I kicked their fuckin’ ass.”</span><br />Ex-Grizzlie <span style="font-weight: bold;">Benoit Benjamin</span>, continuing his personal rivalry with the Sonics<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’ve had a difficult shooting year. But that’s not going to deter me from shooting a game-winning shot. In a situation like that I know that I’m going to do everything perfect. I guess it’s just an innate ability.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span> after hitting his third game-winning shot, this time against Sacramento<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Everybody that’s close to me knows that confidence is something that I’ve never lacked since I was three years old. I believe that I’ve been blessed with a lot of talent and I believe that at times I can do whatever I want.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Darrick Martin</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“You gotta be aggressive. You gotta shoot it. I mean, I went 0-for-9 tonight. I wish I had a chance to go 0-for-15.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards </span>after a 1-point performance in Seattle<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Maybe it’s the gym. I haven’t made a free throw since we’ve played in this gym. I mean, you can’t be perfect, man, and I realize that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shawn Kemp</span> on his troubles in the new Key Arena<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t care how many shots I missed, I don’t care what my percentage is, when the game is on the line I’m gonna shoot it. And nine times out... No, 10 out of 10 I’m gonna make it.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Game is on the line, gimme the basketball. I have no fear whatsoever that I’m not gonna come through.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’m gonna tell you something. No, I don’t. I’ve played a two-guard all my life.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gerald Wilkins </span>when asked if he likes playing small forward<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“X’s and O’s are fine but whoever has the shot should just go ahead and take it.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris King</span> on the tendency of the team to pass up good looks<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We got a lot of guys here who just don’t understand how to play the game. They got athletic ability, but they don’t understand how to play the game.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott</span>, showing frustration after a 2-17 start<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“No, I wasn’t happy sitting on the bench. Would you be happy sitting on the bench”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ashraf Amaya</span> after loss number 50, a 92-87 heartbreaker against Orlando<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think this team is starting to take shortcuts. We can’t afford to do that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> after loss number 47, a 94-80 setback to Indiana<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“For a situation like this you need more of an in-your-face type of guy, where when somebody’s not working hard, he’s gonna let him know about it. A lot of times that didn’t happen this year.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Eric Murdoch </span>assessing Brian Winters’ job<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“If I knew Brian well enough, when he tried to sub me I would have waved him off.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards </span>after starting off a game red-hot then being taken out<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think in college there’s not too many good players. Times change. Back then when I was playing, we had Ewing, we had Jordan, the first ten, twelve players were franchise players. But nowadays you get only the first two guys [who] may be franchise players.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mario Elie</span> on why there’s no more need for ten rounds in the college draft<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Why I gotta tell ’em? I mean, look at the stat sheet. It’s simple. I’m shooting 90. It’s as simple as that. It don’t take a genius to figure it out.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott</span>, the team’s best free throw shooter, wondering why he didn’t get the ball in a must-foul situation. Instead Greg Anthony hung on and missed the free throw that could have iced the game<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think the officials let him get away with so much. He’s the one who’s creating contact. He’s the one that’s fouling. But because he’s an all-star they let him get away with that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span> on ex-teammate Karl Malone<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“The thing that I like about these officials is, guys get on ‘em, curse at ‘em, call ‘em all kinds of names, they don’t take it personal. What you see a lot of times, with some of the established officials, when you show ‘em up, they get you on the other end to let you know that they got control, which is basically bullshit.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards </span>comparing replacement officials with the regular NBA refs<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It seemed like every time I look at the referee they have a tendency like I’m insulting them because I have this mean look that I’ve been playing the game with.”</span><br />The grim-faced <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dikembe Mutombo</span>, on why he gets so many T’s<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think they are neutral, but we’re talking about human beings. An analogy: a reporter probably should be more objective sometimes but the reality of it is sometimes we write and we’re a little more subjective because we have a personal stake in it or we have a personal opinion.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony </span>defending referees<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think I’m gonna start calling him Jaws Triano.”</span><br />Grizzlies radio play-by-play man <span style="font-weight: bold;">Don Poier </span>after his colour man Jay Triano was warned by referee Ronnie Nunn not to point his finger at him<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“A referee is supposed to be thick-skinned, is supposed to be able to handle things like this. To act as emotionally as he was in the latter stages of that game I thought was really unprofessional... I don’t care if that’s supposed to add colour to the game or not, I just thought that was bush, period.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Don Poier</span>, commenting on Ronnie Nunn’s antics<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“I felt that he tripped me purposely... I don’t think there’s any room for dirty play like that, you know?... I think theoretically he’s probably really a good dude. But when you do stuff like that you tarnish the things that you accomplish out there on the floor. And you also don’t get any respect from players because they don’t respect guys who go out and try to hurt you because basically we’re all out here trying to earn a living, and you’re going to kick somebody in their lower extremities, you know, you could tear up somebody’s knee. And that’s just not professional. I don’t respect people who do stuff like that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pooh Richardson</span> talking about Greg Anthony<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/1396922.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1939057D9939C83F1068B9FA9DBD7218AB45A5397277B4DC33E"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 328px;" src="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/1396922.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1939057D9939C83F1068B9FA9DBD7218AB45A5397277B4DC33E" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’m not going to sit here to answer his accusations. I fouled him, period. Period. I didn’t think it was dirty. You know, maybe that’s how they play out there. Maybe they don’t touch each other when they play basketball. I don't know. But I’m gonna hit you. And if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. That’s your business. I’m going to play the way that I know how to play, the way that makes me most effective. And if he doesn’t like it, then I suggest he address it.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony </span>on Pooh Richardson<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Even when he was in New York he used to come in and he kind of had the reputation of being, you know, borderline dirty.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards </span>on his teammate Greg Anthony’s rep<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s an emotional game and I’m an emotional player.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony</span> after a flagrant foul against Dan Majerle in a 98-90 home loss to Cleveland<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’m going to buy me one. I’m going to buy a box of ‘em and bring one to every game. I’ll just tuck it under my shirt and start giving out techs.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony</span>, thinking of buying some whistles and getting back at the refs<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I just didn’t want him in my face so I pushed him out of the way. The hockey fans are used to seeing that.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> after another altercation<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Any guy’ll tell you, you want to win, man. This is not tennis. This is not golf. You know, it’s a team sport. Bottom line is winning.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony </span>dismissing his good stats after another loss<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“That was what I call an aberration. It was one of those nights where we couldn’t throw a rock on the ground.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony</span> on a 33-point loss in Boston<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We could go out and beat Johnny Junior High and I would be thrilled because that’s what we play for, is to win.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Greg Anthony<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“A win’s a win’s a win. I don’t care if it’s against, you know, Sisters of Jehovah’s Witness. I just want to win.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Greg Anthony </span>after a 69-65 victory against Miami<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“An ugly game but a win is a win and it ain’t never ugly.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott</span> after the Miami win<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“When they put out in the paper tomorrow, when you guys put our record up there, 7 and 28 or whatever we are, you’re not gonna put an asterisk and say one ugly win.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Edwards</span> after the Miami win<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Charles is a great, great player and great person. I mean, he’s a character out there on the court. He really gives the fans their money’s worth because he’s an entertainer. He plays the game, he talks to the fans, he smiles out there, he has fun, talks to the referees, talks to opposite teams, coaches, he talks to everybody. You know, I think that’s how you should be. Just have fun and enjoy the game when you’re out there because this lifestyle’s not going to last too long.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott </span>on Charles Barkley<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Everybody’s been treating us bad, but you’re all gonna pay! You’re all gonna pay for all the bad stuff y’all said about our team! Everybody, not just the Grizzlies. Everybody!”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Charles Barkley<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“Get me some damn American beer, too. You all be drinking that strong stuff here. I need some light beer.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Barkley</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“They don’t dare ever talk about my family. If they ever say anything bad about me or my family, I’ll kill ‘em!”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Charles Barkley</span> on the media<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“The Canadians robbed us in 1983! They robbed us. They wasn’t that good. They just robbed us.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Charles Barkley </span>remembering when Canada beat his American team at the World University Games in Edmonton <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />“I like Edmonton, too. I went to a place, there was this little bar called The Library there. I told my mom every night I was going to the library. She didn’t know what I was talking about.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Barkley </span>holding court<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t think there’s any question. That’s like asking, Do you think Michael Jordan will help the Bulls?”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jerry Sloan </span>on whether Magic Johnson’s return will help the Lakers<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“He’s a guy who loves the game. Anytime you have that, it’s good for basketball. I think it’s important that guys think about the game and not necessarily just themselves. So that’s good for the game.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> John Stockton</span> on Magic Johnson’s return<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think any guy on that team that was threatened by him coming back is crazy. Because all he’s going to do is make you better.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott </span>on his old teammate Magic Johnson<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think they’re going to be pretty pissed off! We gotta understand that they’re gonna come after us probably from the get-go. If we show any signs of weakness it’s going to be a blowout.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Byron Scott </span>after sneaking past Seattle 94-93 in the first of a home-and-home series with the Sonics<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I was just trying to get in his head, basically. I wouldn’t do it if we were in Seattle. I’ll be quiet. I’m not going to mess with him there. Unless we have a 20-point lead then maybe I’ll say a little something.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Eric Mobley</span> on the trash-talking that was going on between him and Gary Payton<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I could just sit there and call time-out about every third play, but you can’t.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Brian Winters</span> after a 92-68 butt-kicking by the Sonics<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Let me compare this team to the Milwaukee team that I was on a couple of years ago when we won 20 games. We were fighting in the locker room, guys were not practicing, and guys were pointing fingers. And none of that has happened here.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards </span>after the Grizzlies break a 23-game losing streak with a 105-103 win against Minnesota<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We hung in there together and we stayed with this whole thing throughout the season. And we rode it out. We played hard, we played together, we won together and we lost together. And that’s a tribute to our team and to our staff.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Byron Scott </span>assessing the year<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“We haven’t played enough together to win. That’s something that’s going to come with time. But the sad thing would be for the fans to say that we quit, that we’re lousy players. It would be sad for management to say that we quit. I never would want a coach or management to question the toughness of this team or me as an individual.”</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Blue Edwards</span></span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-35804841097625022142009-05-19T23:48:00.004-07:002009-05-20T00:53:43.511-07:00Swish-ful thinking<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://x10.xanga.com/ef1064e637c33191475227/q106300796.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 289px; height: 289px;" src="http://x10.xanga.com/ef1064e637c33191475227/q106300796.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>Could it be?!<br /><br />Word was, last week, that the Vancouver Canucks owner was jonesing for an NBA franchise. The rumour was that he was interested in purchasing the Indiana Pacers and shipping them north.<br /><br />Not gonna happen.<br /><br />Not with the Pacers, anway. They may be bleeding, but how could the NBA justify taking a team out of basketball country? They couldn't. No way.<br /><br />So Francesco Aquilini, the owner of the Canucks and their home, GM Place, says he's not pursuing an NBA team at this time. But methinks he's interested in a roommate for his hockey squad.<br /><br />Wishful thinking? Perhaps. The NBA failed Vancouver the last time they were here. Despite what you may have heard, the Grizzlies were supported. Sure, their attendance dropped to just over 13,000 in their last couple of lame-duck seasons. Keep in mind the Grizz had the worst 5-year record of any team in NBA history. The worst. What city's fans keep coming back year after miserable year when their boys aren't the least bit competitive? For the product they put out on the floor, the Grizzlies were more than adequately supported.<br /><br />If this town had even a middling team, you can bet your bottom dollar (and that's what it's all about) they would be embraced. Sure, the puckheads are threatened. They seem to think being a sports fan is a zero sum game. But there's room enough for all sports at the table.<br /><br />Back when the Grizz were here, foreign born were a rare sight on an NBA team. I remember one guy got a look in training camp but didn't stick. Since some American players don't like to be outside the comfort of their borders, who needs 'em now? That is, who needs the ones who don't want to be here, because you can replace them with those that do and with foreign born players who would be glad to be in the NBA. But there was too much made of the few who complained about living in Canada. The vast majority of American players here had no problems. They were happy to have a job. A ridiculously high-paying job.<br /><br />Vancouver also didn't have any all-sports radio stations and all-sports TV was limited to TSN (aka The Hockey Network). These days, there's room for other sports.<br /><br />The Canadian dollar was commonly referred to as the peso at the time. Now the Canadian economy is weathering the economic storm better than the Americans, and our dollar has improved significantly.<br /><br />The Pacers are definitely out (I couldn't possibly support TJ Ford anyway), but there are other possibilities. The one I like the most is the Hornets, just for old-time's sake. Back in the 1940s, Vancouver had a professional basketball team in the Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League. Their name? The Hornets.<br /><br />Kismet, baby!<br /><br />C'mon, Francesco. Get on it. I'll forgive the NBA for taking away our Grizzlies if they'll steal us a team from some other city.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEh2eYpP2pCE0ljjowqYihhwriinA1udJz9G4u7urqlRRI67697Xw5PJJDBQ3h-4wAcPlFv62kTJDimyltZXWgJRzZzkzhaNhwkj69i6ui_RsV7n8YuLMa4knSEj2LkECmcxA6o4Sc5r0/s400/steve+nash.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEh2eYpP2pCE0ljjowqYihhwriinA1udJz9G4u7urqlRRI67697Xw5PJJDBQ3h-4wAcPlFv62kTJDimyltZXWgJRzZzkzhaNhwkj69i6ui_RsV7n8YuLMa4knSEj2LkECmcxA6o4Sc5r0/s400/steve+nash.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Today's (Old) Sports Guy offering is an interesting read in retrospect. It was an interview I did with Steve Nash just as he was coming out of college and preparing for the NBA draft. I wrote some nice things about him, but in reality I had no idea he'd turn into the player he did, let alone an NBA MVP two times over and millionaire several times over. I'm sure he didn't, either.<br /><br />I don't have the exact date, but it would be some time between April and June in 1996.<br /><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span></span><br /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />“it’s been a while since I’ve taken an elbow in the head from you.”<br /><br />So I nailed him in the head one more time for old times sake. Dropped him. Sure it was future NBA star Steve Nash and we were in the media dining area at GM Place. But I felt I had to remind him of his roots. He should never forget where he came from once he’s making millions in the NBA.<br /><br />Indeed, it had been a while – about four or five years – since I last saw the wee lad, since I used to school him on a regular basis in pickup hoops in Victoria.<br /><br />“I’d just like to say on record that that’s not true,” he said immediately following a rare Grizzlie victory. Of course he has to say that. If the NBA scouts found out the truth, I would be the one running around signing autographs here and doing interviews there with every breathing sports reporter.<br /><br />Nash had been in town all of one day and had already given interviews to virtually every media outlet in the lower mainland.<br /><br />“I had to do a couple of hours at the CBC and (interviews with) every TV station that’s here,” he says.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kfba.net/etc/playerpics/41.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 180px;" src="http://kfba.net/etc/playerpics/41.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">One would think it would get tiresome, answering the same questions over and over again, especially for a kid on holidays from the rigors of studying sociology in university. But Steverino is having a grand old time with it. His answers may be stock but like a polished stand-up comedian, it’s all in the delivery.<br /><br />“That’s part of the business. I always say it’s a relationship of reciprocity,” he says, proving that you can be a student and an athlete in the NCAA. “The media has to do their job and it helps you out as well. Give and take. You answer the same questions over and over. I just try to have fun with it, be myself and just answer the question as candidly as possible every time. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s tiring with all the different requests pulling you in every direction. But for the most part, I just try to have fun with it and enjoy it while it’s here.”<br /><br />That’s the perfect attitude to take. Too many celebrities-of-the-month feel burdened by their success. And as soon as their luck runs dry, and they’re down on it, they realize how good they had it.<br /><br />“It’s a really fortunate time,” says Steve. “I’m fortunate to be able to experience all these different things and be in all these different places. I just look at in the perspective that I get to have a lot of fun and be a pretty lucky 22-year-old. I’ve got an opportunity to work hard and maybe be successful.”<br /><br />Pretty lucky, indeed. It will be a huge lifestyle change for Nash. He’ll be living the good life, able to afford anything he wants, adored by millions. Is he ready for it?<br /><br />“Yeah, sure,” he says, like I’m from Mars or something. “I’ve waited 22 years for some money so I’m excited.”<br /><br />What was I thinking? Of course he’s ready. Twenty-two years is a pretty unreasonable length of time to wait for your first million. Most of us don’t have to wait that long.<br /><br />American universities go until June unlike their more progressive Canadian counterparts who finish in April. Had Steve done the honourable thing and stayed home to star for the UVic Vikings, he would have been finished by now.<br /><br />“Yeah, but if I stayed in Canada, my career would have been over, too.”<br /><br />He has a point. Maybe. But if I were in his shoes, I’d be finished either way. What’s the incentive to stydy now that he’s only weeks away from becoming so well-to-do?<br /><br />“Honestly?” he says. “Because I’ve come so far, I’ve done my senior thesis, kept up with all my studies and I’m just about to graduate. So I really want to get it done.”<br /><br />Nudge nudge, wink wink.<br /><br />During spring break, Nash was at home in Victoria visiting family and friends, playing ball every day at his old stomping grounds, UVic’s McKinnon gymnasium. He just spent four years playing against the best college players in the United States, a couple of weeks ago he was in New York City winning the NCAA 3-point contest. In the summer, he’ll be practicing with the pros, and come the fall will be playing with the best players in the world. But he still has time to play a little pick-up with hackers.<br /><br />“It’s been fun just going up (to Uvic) and messing around. I gotta play ball. I’m a basketball player. If I get hurt, I get hurt, you know? I just gotta play ball. I’m insured, so...”<br /><br />For me personally it will be a little strange to see someone whose butt I used to kick so often, playing among the elite.<br /><br />“It is strange,” he says. “But I mean I thought you would have foreseen it when I was killing you when I was 12. But I guess you didn’t notice.”<br /><br />Now it’s my turn to state something for the record. Steven Nash wasn’t killing me when he was 12. That’s ridiculous. And an outright lie. No 12-year-old can stop me. He was 13 and he knows it.<br /><br />But I didn’t foresee anything.<br /><br />“Well, you should have,” he says. And then he gets all humble on me. “It was probably because I was dribbling off my foot, throwing up airballs and getting nailed in the head all the time.”<br /><br />Hey, if you can’t stand the head wounds, get off the court, little boy. You teach ‘em when they’re young and it makes them better.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I’ll sharpen my elbows for when we meet again on the courts this summer. He’ll thank me later.</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-18114314264489838672009-05-16T17:08:00.004-07:002009-05-18T00:21:05.735-07:00General Managing for Dummies<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gbD%2ByjDnL._SL500_AA246_PIkin2,BottomRight,4,34_AA280_SH20_OU01_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 280px;" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gbD%2ByjDnL._SL500_AA246_PIkin2,BottomRight,4,34_AA280_SH20_OU01_.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>There's some fantastic reading over at <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index">the (Current) Sports Guy</a> lately. And (Current) Sports Guy-related readings elsewhere.<br /><br />Bill Simmons is making a push to be hired at the general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He lobbied unsuccessfully a year or two ago for the open position with the Milwaukee Bucks. One of these years, an NBA team is going to take a chance with the guy. Well, probably not, knowing the NBA. But I'm all for it.<br /><br />Simmons may be an outsider, but he knows his hoops. Sure, he never played the game, but did Bryan Colangelo or his dad? (I actually don't know the answer, but for now let's go with no.) So we can throw that qualification out the window. Did Rob Babcock? You don't have to have played the game to be a good or decent GM.<br /><br />But the real question here isn't would he be among the best. It's would he be the worst? It's doubtful. Could he be worse than Chris Wallace in Memphis, Mike Dunleavy in Los Angeles, or Babcock when he was in Toronto? Again, doubtful.<br /><br />Are all former players who have risen to the ranks of GM better than those that haven't? Isiah Thomas, Dunleavy, Chris Mullin, Wally Walker, etc. answer that one for you.<br /><br />In a <a href="http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/randball/2009/05/06/randball-qa-espncoms-bill-simmons-your-next-wolves-gm/">Q&A with Star-Tribune writer Michael Rand</a>, Simmons gives a number of great reasons why he's be an ideal candidate. He rails against the old boy's network that continually rehires basketball retreads who have failed elsewhere, he's thought long and hard about both the position and basketball in general (having just written <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Book-Basketball-NBA-According-Sports/dp/034551176X">a 700-page tome</a> on the NBA), which I can't wait to read), and Minnesota fans would be rejuvenated by the gimmicky hiring.<br /><br />He makes a compelling argument and I honestly can't think why a team – especially a sinkhole of a team – wouldn't take the chance. In <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?yrail">a fascinating <span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span> piece</a>, Canadian author <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/index.html">Malcolm Gladwell</a> just made the case that underdogs, be it in sports or war, needing to take different approaches in order to stand a chance at winning. If the T-Wolves aren't attracting the <span style="font-style: italic;">creme de la creme</span> of GM candidates, they should roll the dice on someone whose outside-the-box thinking might give them an edge. What have they got to lose? Their fan base? Their credibility? You can't lose what you don't have.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >The Case Against:</span><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sportsstuff/images/2008/06/02/billsimmons_copy_3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 429px; height: 315px;" src="http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sportsstuff/images/2008/06/02/billsimmons_copy_3.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> Simmons doesn't help his cause much, though. The NBA is an old-boy's network. This much he acknowledges. So why does he say things like this?:<blockquote><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>RandBall:</strong> Which three current GMs would you immediately try to fleece in a trade if given an actual GM job, and why?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Bill Simmons:</strong> First, Chris Wallace. It’s like becoming a star actor or singer and having sex with Lindsay Lohan — you just have to do it so you can say you did it, and it’s so easy, why wouldn’t you do it? Second, Ernie Grunfeld. He’s panicking and that whole franchise is panicking, they are a dumb blockbuster trade waiting to happen. Third, and most obviously, Mike Dunleavy. You cannot go wrong making a trade with Mike Dunleavy. You just can’t. He’s the perfect storm of fleeceable — bad at his job, unaware of the salary cap, ignorant of character issues with players, desperate to keep his job. What’s better? It’s like being served a good trade platter. “I’ll be your maitre’d, Mike Dunleavy, can I offer you an Eric Gordon to start?”</span></p></blockquote>I doubt Wallace, Dunleavy or Grunfeld would have much, if anything, to do with a fellow GM who denegrates them in public like that. And if they have friends around the league, they might conspire to shut out the outsider. That doesn't help the Wolves.<br /><br />And then there's the issue of Simmons' Celtics lust. A GM, like a politician, should be clear not only of conflict of interest, but the <span style="font-style: italic;">appearance</span> of conflict of interest. Even when being interviewed by a reporter in the city he hopes to represent, Simmons can't leave the Celts out of the discussion. On the subject of the Wolves' Al Jefferson (a former Celtic), he says:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">It’s no secret, we’ve had a one-sided bromance for years now and he’s my single favorite non-Celtic.</span> </blockquote>Simmons also offers to work for free in the first year of a 3-year contract so long as he's permitted to write a book about Season 1. While such a book would be a must-read, from what I gather, being a GM is full-time work. Even more than full-time. At the first whiff of failure, the grumblings would be out there that he's more interested in collecting material for his book <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/top10/gfx/bigcountry.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 206px; height: 166px;" src="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/top10/gfx/bigcountry.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>than in bettering his second-favourite team. Confidence would be shattered.<br /><br />All that being said, I'm still hoping for it. He couldn't do any worse than Stu Jackson.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWeXyD3SsQFaMQL8McbuseSimCunWLltHiFNI5hzpXCyKu8j2i9703GNO6oDr2jcKVog3-bT13d_I1s0FxAtgmeTU48p6Ic4v1jsrcTNQ8Y6KrpqfnNShiGwkQs7YgbuRVs6cooWk2ZX3j/s320/gladwell.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 154px; height: 231px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWeXyD3SsQFaMQL8McbuseSimCunWLltHiFNI5hzpXCyKu8j2i9703GNO6oDr2jcKVog3-bT13d_I1s0FxAtgmeTU48p6Ic4v1jsrcTNQ8Y6KrpqfnNShiGwkQs7YgbuRVs6cooWk2ZX3j/s320/gladwell.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Speaking of Gladwell, that brings me to the next bit of required reading from the (Current) Sports Guy. The author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324"><span style="font-style: italic;">Blink</span></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tipping-Point-Little-Things-Difference/dp/0316346624/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b"><span style="font-style: italic;">Tipping Point</span></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Outliers</span></a> is not just a egghead with a bad 'fro; he's an egghead with a bad 'fro who knows his sports. He and Simmons <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part1">exchanged e-mails</a> over the course of a few days and the results is interesting, thought-provoking and funny. It's in three parts so you'll have to navigate your own way past page one. Do it. It's worth it.<br /><br />And if all that reading has gotten to you, check out <a href="http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/">Gladwell's own blog</a> where he answers critics about his story on underdogs. And unlike most sites, the comments are worth reading, too.<br /><br />***<br /><br />I've got no scribblings from the (Old) Sports Guy today as we're on holidays and I don't have them with me. Just as well. I can't compete with what I've linked to, anyway.Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-25516015650649780212009-05-06T00:04:00.007-07:002009-05-18T00:22:53.489-07:00Pro ball returns<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iblhoopsonline.com/vancouverbc/images/titans_logo.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 264px; height: 162px;" src="http://www.iblhoopsonline.com/vancouverbc/images/titans_logo.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>Professional basketball is back in Vancouver, baby! And by "professional", I mean just barely. And by "Vancouver", I mean, of course, Langley. But hey, let's not quibble. The <a href="http://www.vancouvertitans.com/">Vancouver Titans</a> are in business.<br /><br />We are used to barely professional basketball here. We had the <a href="http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nba/vancouver/vangriz.html">Grizzlies</a> for five wonderful seasons, where they became the worst team in NBA history over a five-year period. And Langley is only a half-hour or an hour from various points in the city. A basketball junkie will gladly make the trek to escape the madness of the NHL playoffs.<br /><br />I didn't quite know what to expect. About anything. I had never seen a minor league professional basketball game before. Who would possibly be there ever, let alone on a night when the local major league hockey team is in the playoffs? I was surprised. Pleasantly. I don't know the official count, but my guess is there were about 300 people there to cheer on the mighty Titans.<br /><br />The facility they play in looks good from the outside. As soon as you enter, though, it's like you're in a backstage tunnel. In fact, on the way to the gym you pass the team's locker room. The door was open and you could see the players sitting around. Not something you'd see at an NBA game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17318060.jpg?size=572&uid=%7BBF09F311-182D-4BC1-AD52-418C4E0132FD%7D"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 178px;" src="http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17318060.jpg?size=572&uid=%7BBF09F311-182D-4BC1-AD52-418C4E0132FD%7D" alt="" border="0" /></a>As for the play, it was entertaining. There were some great passes, bad defense, and missed layups aplenty. But I could watch elementary school basketball and be entertained if the teams are relatively evenly matched.<br /><br />What I couldn't stand was the team's announcer. He was almost bad enough that I would consider never going to another game. I think they must have scouted him at the PNE. He had a ridiculous fake radio voice, cheerled during the game so you couldn't even talk to your friends sitting next to you, and had a cache of douchey stock phrases he'd pull out whether it had anything to do with the play or not.<br /><br />Although there was comedy to be had. Every single time the Slam got the ball on offense in the high-octane fastbreak game, the announcer would scream into the microphone, "When I say D, you say Fence! D!" and then wait for the three people who were into it to shout back "Fence!" It actually made me cheer for a quick Bellingham basket. Nothing better than when he'd say, "When I say--" as the opponents would score on the break.<br /><br />More good comedy came from reading the players profiles in the program...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.pne.ca/playland/rides_games_food/images/musicexpress.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 219px; height: 219px;" src="http://www.pne.ca/playland/rides_games_food/images/musicexpress.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">STOP THE PRESSES!</span> I just picked up the program again and took a gander. Get a load of this, which I didn't notice until this very second: The announcer, Jason Cook, "... got a job at Playland where he was able to continue his dream of announcing while working on the <a href="http://www.pne.ca/playland/rides_games_food/rides/music_express.htm">Music Express</a> ride. <span style="font-style: italic;">He continues to work at Playland entering his 20th year</span>." (italics mine, for obvious reasons) Seriously, that's exactly what he sounds like, as I mentioned above. Every word he uttered (and he uttered lots – way too stinking much for my tastes) was said in the exact same manner he'd shout, "Does anybody wanna go <span style="font-style: italic;">faster</span>?!" at the PNE.<br /><br />... Okay, enough about him. Back to the player profiles. Without a media presence, and this being my first game, it's hard to know who was who. And I couldn't remember all the names. It set up conversations like this: "Oh man, did you see that pass by the guy who specializes in drawing portraits? He set up the guy whose mom cooks delicious Nigerian food beautifully!" Or "I can't believe the guy whose favourite movie is The Godfather is on the team."<br /><br />In the end, the Slam lived up to their name with not one, but two slam dunks in the game, handing the Titans their fourth straight loss after three straight wins. I'll go again. But next time I'm bringing earplugs.<br /><br />I didn't interview any player at the game, but I'm betting they'd all be engaging, which is more than you can say for some NBA players. Reminds me of the time I had a bit of a run-in with one of the 50 greatest players of all-time (or so they say). This column was from the week of December 7-14, 1995:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span><br /><br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />There’s nothing quite so disillusioning as meeting a hero and finding out he or she’s a jerk. You then have to reassess your values and judgments. This, thankfully, has never happened to me. I don’t like most people and my heroes are either long-retired or long dead.<br /><br />Another type of disillusionment, albeit of a lesser intensity, is when you meet somebody well-known whom you had previously disliked, and they turn out to be a peach. What do you do? Take for instance Michael Jordan. I’ve never liked him as a player. Don’t ask why. Can’t explain it. The only shoe salesman I like is Al Bundy.<br /><br />It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way I feel. The one time I ever had personal contact with him, however, he was kind and gracious is turning me down. I dind’t speak with His Baldness on his most recent trip to the Wetlands, as he was being mobbed by the adoring media every step he took. Who needs the trouble? But I did poke my head in the media scrum and noticed MJ sitting patiently, answering politely all the inane, unoriginal questions reporters love to ask.<br /><br />Why couldn’t he just be a jerk to justify my dislike for him?<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/230569.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1934A2752006EF5F0ED1FF931FA002F8ACB284831B75F48EF45"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 338px; height: 445px;" src="http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/230569.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1934A2752006EF5F0ED1FF931FA002F8ACB284831B75F48EF45" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Thank God for Scottie Pippen. He was another player I never cared for. I don’t deny he’s a great player. I just sensed something about him that I didn’t like. Maybe it was because his teams were always beating my Lakers.<br /><br />Scottie didn’t disappoint.<br /><br />I have no self-doubts about my abilities to pick and choose heroes in this case. Scottie’s no little softie.<br /><br />The last reporter left Pippen, while all the others were still hanging on every word at the stall next to his, where Jordan was repeating everything he has ever said on any stop in the NBA. I sidled up next to Pippen and settled in for my brush with grateness.<br /><br />It started out fine. He seemed like an okay chap.<br /><br />“I think we just played poor basketball,” he started out, explaining the surprising closeness of the Grizzlies-Bulls contest. “Not taking anything away from their team, but we just didn’t play up to our expectations.” Blah, blah, blah. He was in Bull Durham-style athlete auto-pilot.<br /><br />Then he opened up a bit more, perhaps by mistake.<br /><br />“I don’t see anything good about their team right now,” he said as my eyes popped out of their sockets. “I mean, they’re just a team that’s playing with a lot of pride and playing hard. You don’t want to call them a young team, but they’re a team that hasn’t had the opportunity to get together.” Yada, yada, yada.<br /><br />Hang on there just one second, I thought. Was he really being as forthright as I thought he was? Maybe he could clear things up. You don’t often hear an athlete outside of professional wrestling and boxing put down an opponent, even if he thinks the opponent is hopeless.<br /><br />“You don’t see anything good about the Grizzlies?” I asked incredulously, because you would have. This is when the mood of the interview changed slightly.<br /><br />“I don’t see anything good? Are you telling me something?”<br /><br />“You said earlier, ‘I don’t see anything good about the Grizzlies.’”<br /><br />“I answered your question, man. Don’t try to put words in my mouth, all right?”<br /><br />“That’s what you said, though.”<br /><br />“I don’t foresee them being no playoff team, if that’s what you asked me.”<br /><br />It was obvious at this point that I wasn’t going to be ghostwriting any book of his. But I had to get to the bottom of this.<br /><br />“What kind of positives do you see for this team?” I continued, asking the same kind of tired, moronic question that my colleagues were asking of Jordan.<br /><br />“They’re playing hard,” he answered. I mean, they’re struggling now to win a game, period.”<br /><br />And with that, my audience with the Pip was over.<br /><br />“Any more questions, man? You can leave, please,” he intoned.<br /><br />“Listen here, you arrogant snot. Don’t blame me for remembering what you said. Next time think before you speak, if that’s not too difficult a process for you to handle. And I’ll leave when I’m good and ready to leave,” I shot back.<br /><br />Only I didn’t use those exact words. What I actually said was, “I’m sorry sir,” and meekly walked away.<br /><br />The timing, as it turned out, was perfect because no sooner had Pippen dismissed me than the brilliant coach Phil Jackson dismissed the rest of the media pack.<br /><br />“Come on everyone, let’s go!” the pop-philosopher said. “They close down the border at 10:45.”<br /><br />I was almost going to tell him that this was a free country, too, and we can come and go as we please. But I thought better of it.<br /><br />This country isn’t big enough for Scottie and me. One of us had to leave. And it wasn’t going to be me.<br /><br />Not again, anyway.</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-22848550012910495642009-05-01T10:20:00.003-07:002009-05-01T11:46:53.546-07:00Basketball and Bikes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cavsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bulls-over-celtics.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 300px;" src="http://www.cavsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bulls-over-celtics.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>A couple of posts ago, I took the (Current) Sports Guy to task for penning 5000 words on the first-round NBA playoff series between Chicago and Boston. He called it "one for the ages", saying it could go down in the annals of sports as one of the most exciting first-round series ever. He wrote that after two whole games. I mocked him after game three was a blowout.<br /><br />Turns out he was right. The next three games have been unbelievably great. The best was last night, when da Bulls won in triple OT. No doubt after game 7 we'll be treated to 10,000 words of either how the refs screwed the Celtics or how this Celtics team is one of the gutsiest in history. Looking forward to it.<br /><br />Don't believe me? He's heading that way. After game 5, he wrote <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090429&sportCat=nba">6289 words</a>, many of them explaining why the hack-tastic Celtics point guard, Rajon Rondo, shouldn't have been punished for his cheap shot on Brad Miller. I'll let Simmons explain it: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">So when Rondo walloped Miller across the face on that climactic drive Tuesday night, it was his single smartest play of his phenomenal first round. He had no chance of blocking the shot, and he had to hit Miller as hard as he could to prevent the and-one, so screw it ... SMACK! (He even admitted this after the game.) Since the motion technically looked like Rondo was swiping at the ball -- even though his hand wasn't within two feet of it -- the officials couldn't call a flagrant and that was that. If Bulls fans want to whine about it, fine, just remember that (A) Boston's best clutch guy (Ray Allen) fouled out on two of the worst calls of the playoffs, and (B) Ben Gordon stepped out of bounds right as he got fouled by Tony "Why Am I In The Game Again?" Allen for three game-tying free throws in the final 30 seconds. Sweeping incompetence will eventually even out over time.</span></blockquote>You know you're dealing with a homer when he compares cheap shots with things like bogus fouls and stepping out of bounds. Let's imagine the Bull's best clutch guy, Ben Gordon, fouled out on two of the worst calls of the playoffs (oh wait, he did in game 6!) and Ray Allen stepped out of bounds (or more likely travelled) before hitting a big shot, and then Brad Miller clobbered Rajon Rondo in the face on a potentially game-winning or game-tying layup. Would Simmons justify it by saying he just evened up the incompetent officiating? Doubtful.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2009/0430/nba_g_rondo_hinrich1_sw_576.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 576px; height: 324px;" src="http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2009/0430/nba_g_rondo_hinrich1_sw_576.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>He later goes on to say that Rondo should be suspended for game 6 but won't be because the league has to keep the "illusion going that NBA referees don't suck!" He was right again. Then in game 6, Rondo throws an elbow. Will he be suspended for game 7, as he should be? And if so, will Simmons support it?<br /><br />Then Simmons goes into full crazed homer mode with this: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">On St. Patrick's Day, Doc Rivers and longtime nemesis Bill Kennedy got into such a staredown/screaming tiff that Doc was fined $25,000 and Kennedy was fined as well. Heading into Game 4, I was texting my Boston buddies, "The league needs this series to go seven, and they will screw us on the officials. You watch." One of your three officials? That's right ... Mr. Bill Kennedy. It was like seeing Ike and Tina get back together. I mean, why even go there? And that's before we mentioned <a target="new" href="http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/basketball/celtics/view.bg?articleid=1168322&format=text">the Boston Herald's report</a> that two of the three members of Kennedy's Game 4 crew live in Chicago and greeted families after the game who were wearing Bulls gear. No, really.</span></blockquote>"They will screw <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">us</span> on the officials." Even forgiving him the unforgivable personal pronoun in reference to a team he's not on, I don't think any Boston fan can ever blame the league for it being out to get them. The Celtics have probably received more breaks from refs than any team in the history of the game. The Lakers are a close second. Even if the league did "screw" them in game 4 because they wanted a game 7, you can rest assured, Billie, that the same league will come to your rescue in game 7. (There, I wanted to jinx them. If I put a prediction in print, it's almost certain to be wrong.)<br /><br />And can you imagine? Bill Kennedy greeted families wearing Bulls gear! He should never be allowed to ref another Bulls game! Because we all know that if you know someone who likes a certain team, you have to like that team, too.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/16/19592528_f6249ce932.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/16/19592528_f6249ce932.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Okay, enough of that. The vintage Sports Guy I'm running today barely qualifies as a sports column at all. It's from the week of June 8-15, 1995:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The Sports Guy<br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />I can’t walk past a rack of magazines without stopping to browse. There’s something about glossy paper that immobilizes me. Maybe it’s my fascination with shiny objects.<br /><br />I need my magazine fix. Even when I lived overseas, I couldn’t go without my periodical fix of periodicals, shelling out the equivalent of 15 to 20 Canadian dollars per issue. I enjoy a wide variety of publications, such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Sports Illustrated</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Inside Sports</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Sport</span>. Oh yes, I’m a regular renaissance man.<br /><br />But I also spend my not-so-hard-earned cash on weightier journals, from <span style="font-style: italic;">AdBusters</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Z</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Vanity Fair</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">FAIR</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday Night</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Spy</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Esquire</span> to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Economist</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">National Geographic</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">National Lampoon</span>. Each has a lot to offer: good writing, thought-provoking articles, and varied topics.<br /><br />Yet with all the magazines I’ve read over the years, there are still hundreds I’ve never even glanced at. <span style="font-style: italic;">Better Homes & Gardens</span>, for instance. Or <span style="font-style: italic;">Popular Mechanics</span> – an oxymoronic title, if you ask me. Did I miss that particular craze?<br /><br />While a sports fan, I have no time for all the endless specialty monthlies. Did you know they have magazines for divers, sailors, golfers, runners, and car racers? And they come out on a regular basis! How many different ways are there to line up a putt?<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-18818664.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B5540A5DE-8E69-4B85-98CD-E4899B049657%7D"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 480px;" src="http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-18818664.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B5540A5DE-8E69-4B85-98CD-E4899B049657%7D" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">On the heels of 'Ride Your Bike To Work' week, I decided to check out a specialty mag on the subject. Surprisingly there were a few to choose from. I picked <span style="font-style: italic;">Bicycling</span> because not only is it “The World’s #1 Road & Mountain Bike Magazine,” but it’s cheaper than the others.<br /><br />Presumably 'Ride Your Bike' week is there to remind us to quit using our cars so damned much. There is an us-versus-them mentality between cyclists and motorists, each claiming the others are road hogs (cars being the smellier of the hogs). Surprised, then, I was to see ten ads for automobiles sprinkled throughout <span style="font-style: italic;">Bicycling</span>. Talk about sleeping with the enemy. That’s like the <span style="font-style: italic;">Catholic Times</span> running ads for condoms.<br /><br />Overall, though, I’d say the magazine is first-rate. Not that I’m going to buy it again, but there was enough enjoyment there for this non-avid cyclist to get his money’s worth. And I’m not just talking about the four-page spread on hubs.<br /><br />In the June issue, there’s a fascinating story on an ultramarathon mountain bike racer who is a three-time winner of the Iditabike. You know you’re reading a specialty magazine when you come across a lede like this: <span style="font-style: italic;">“He’s the Ned Overend, the Juli Furtado, of his chosen discipline. But you’ve probably never heard of John Stamstad...” </span>No, I haven’t. But if he’s anything like Ned Overend or Juli Furtado he must be pretty good.<br /><br />In an article on Hammerhead’s disease (<span style="font-style: italic;">“your prostate and cycling – the start of a beautiful relationship”</span>), it is stated that under certain conditions, cycling can cause prostatitis, an inflammation or irritation of the prostate, which, in a worst case scenario, can lead to impotence. One of the six guidelines given for eliminating prostatitis is “try rear suspension”. You make up your own joke. I’m not going to touch that one.<br /><br />Funnily enough, this article follows one entitled "How To Stay Seated and Still Conquer Steep Climbs". Knowing what you know now, are you still in such a hurry to get to the top of that hill?<br /><br />(Incidentally, I rode my bike to work for months until three weeks ago when, during 'Vandalize a Bike' week, my seat was stolen. I heard that’s even worse on the old prostate.)<br /><br />There are other interesting tidbits throughout. In a feature called Tip Talk, readers contribute helpful cycling hints. This one comes from Spokane: <span style="font-style: italic;">“I store emergency money in the ends of my handlebar. It’s handy for snacks and emergencies, and won’t be discovered by dishonest people who pilfer seatbags.”</span> Not until now, anyway.<br /><br />And finally, there’s this bit of sage advice from the Swiss national cycling team coach: Rest as hard as you train. He says he and a team member went to Mexico for six weeks of altitude training, “and when we got back my boss ... looked at all the rest days and said we could have saved money by only staying four weeks. He didn’t understand the need for rest.”<br /><br />I hear you, brother. My regressive boss thinks the same way. I put in a strong 27-hour work week. He doesn’t understand that the 13 hours I spend asleep at my desk is for the good of the company.<br /><br />Maybe I should take up cycling.</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-42021592202628722472009-04-28T17:07:00.004-07:002009-05-05T10:57:59.259-07:00Hockey Fever vs the Swine Flu<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/2009/01/toddler-kissing-a-pig.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 425px; height: 319px;" src="http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/2009/01/toddler-kissing-a-pig.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">Tough choice for me. One gives you the chills, nausea and makes people want to avoid you. The other is an international pandemic.<br /><br />Ba-da-boom!<br /><br />It's hockey playoff time and there's no worse country than Canada to be in if you're not a fan of the pucks. Every other car has numerous hockey flags waving from it, newscasts stop scare-mongering with the latest on the pig disease in order to bring you our local heroes skating around, and, worst of all, everyone assumes you care.<br /><br />The other day, a mom at my son's preschool tried to engage me in the subject of the NHL playoffs. I told her I don't like hockey. In retrospect, I think that's a little harsh. It's not that I hate it; I'm indifferent to it. And because I don't have a rooting interest in any team, or the sport in general, I don't follow it or care one way or the other how things turn out.<br /><br />I mentioned that I had to go downtown one night last week and, wanting to know whether parking would be more of an issue than normal, had to ask my wife if there was a game on. My wife said there wasn't.<br /><br />There was.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">That tells you something right there, that two citizens of this hockey-crazed town didn't even know if a playoff game was being held in their own town that night. The mom said to me, "You do realize the Canucks won the series 4-0, don't you?", figuring that I at least got the broad strokes if not the finer points.<br /><br />I didn't.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q124/cdnuniguy/Canucks/canucksfanshalloween.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 800px; height: 492px;" src="http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q124/cdnuniguy/Canucks/canucksfanshalloween.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">With the internet now, I don't need to read the papers and sift through stuff I'm not interested in to get to what strikes my fancy. I don't have a day job where I have to go and interact with people on a daily basis, so I'm not privy to office buzz, and I listen to my iPod when driving rather than the radio. And friends know enough not to default to hockey talk around me lest they be greeted with blank stares. So how would I know these things?<br /><br />In looking back at an old <span style="font-style: italic;">Sports Guy</span> column I did in 1996, I see I wasn't always this way. But the writing was on the wall. I think my history as an all-purpose sports fan would be charted as a bell curve. And a skinny bell at that. It wasn't until I got a temp job as a sports reporter for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Province</span> newspaper that I realized I didn't really care about any sport except for basketball, which I didn't get to cover. From then on, I didn't define myself as a sports fan.<br /><br />This column, from May of 1996, was co-written by my friend <span style="font-weight: bold;">Danny Mather</span>, as I mention in the piece. Turns out I have become him:</span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span>, May 9-15, 1996<br /><br />Sports are all around us. You walk into a restaurant or bar and you’re inundated with a wall of TV sets keeping us up-to-date on all the latest games. It seems every other person pledges allegiance across their chest or on their cap to a favourite pro team. You would think one would have to be from Mars not to follow sports. And yet, inexplicably there are people, otherwise like you and me, who are loathe to the mere mention of the word.<br /><br />These people have no interest in it and take great pride in their ignorance. They have to. It’s a defense mechanism. They’d get eaten alive otherwise.<br /><br />Many of my best friends are Martians. Sure, it’s hard to talk to them once the topic of the weather has been exhausted. But we make do. They know not to call me during <span style="font-style: italic;">Sports Page</span> and I know not to call them after 8:30 because these people have no lives. What’s the point of staying up if you absolutely, positively don’t have to find out who won the pre-season Lakers game?<br /><br />But I can relate to them because I come from these people. My family is not what you would call a sports family. As an adolescent, my father worked at the public library. Nuff said. We may be one of the few groups of humans in Canada who didn’t watch one single second of the 1972 Canada-USSR hockey series. Didn’t even know it was on.<br /><br />It wasn’t until 1979 when I underwent my metamorphosis into sports fan. No one, myself included, knows how it happened, but <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kafka</span> would have been proud. Consequently I am able to talk with total strangers about the equivalent of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Henderson</span>’s game-winning goal. And furthermore I can’t think of a thing to say to my family.<br /><br />Although lately with the increase in popularity of motor sports (he said oxymoronically) I’ve felt like my outcast Martian friends, feigning interest over the lamentable fact that Ford has overtaken that other car company (or was it the other way around?) in one of the major circuits.<br /><br />In such situations one feels totally helpless. It’s like being dropped in the middle of a foreign country, the only difference being that talking slowly and loudly won’t help you. And there is no Sportsfan/Non-Sportsfan dictionary and phrase book to fall back on. Although, if you read further, maybe there should be.<br /><br />I asked my friend <span style="font-weight: bold;">Danny Mather</span>, of Mars, to help me convey his angst to the sports-reading masses. The rest of the column is his:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“So how about those ’Nucks, eh?” the serviceman asked me as I unlocked the door for him.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“Sorry?” was my confused reply.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“The Canucks. You know, pretty lame, huh?” he again queried.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never paid attention to sports in my life, except for going to see </span>Rocky III<span style="font-style: italic;">, and I have reason to believe that most of all that wasn’t real.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t watch hockey much,” I ventured lamely, not meeting his eyes (my peripheral vision is all I need to pick up someone’s disdainful glances).</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">I let him into the area he was working in and then headed to my desk to phone my friend Rocky (no relation to the famous actor guy), who has to be a sports fan the way he’s always yelling when he’s watching T.V.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">“Rocky, I’ve got a problem. People keep trying to use sports to make small talk with me and I don’t know what to say back to them. This has been going on my whole life and that damned Raptors shirt that my brother got me for Christmas hasn’t helped one bit.”</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Rocky laughed in that crazy sports fan/stalker way he has. “Easy as cake, pal. Just say the following: ‘As long as we got Hirsch.’ It’s only relevant to hockey, but you can still try it. Anybody who doesn’t understand it doesn’t matter anyway. And hey, can I have my </span>Rocky III <span style="font-style: italic;">video back yet?”</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">I think it works. I haven’t actually tried it on anybody yet, except for a few test tries on people that know I don’t know diddly-squat about sports, but I’m pretty sure there were impressed anyway.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">If you’re reading this column, you’re probably some kind of sports fan. If it happens to be you that walks in when I’m working and starts making small talk about sports, just humour me, okay? Don’t start asking me tough stuff, like what team he plays on or what position or what his first name is. Because then I’m just back at square one. Then we’ll have to talk about the weather, or politics, or about the latest plane crash/natural disaster that killed a whole lot of innocent people. And that depresses me.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">The world is a nice place. A good place.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">As long as we got Hirsch.</span></span></blockquote></div>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-72994211575566757362009-04-23T19:35:00.009-07:002009-04-24T18:48:02.296-07:00War and Peace in Round One<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/images/uewb_10_img0685.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 228px; height: 279px;" src="http://www.notablebiographies.com/images/uewb_10_img0685.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >I wasn't going to post today, but I just finished reading... okay, skimming... the 5000-word story the <span style="font-style: italic;">(Current) Sports Guy</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bill Simmons</span>, just wrote on <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090423&sportCat=nba">the first round of the NBA playoffs</a>.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br />Seriously. Five-thousand words. First round. Two games in, yet.<br /><br />Yesterday, Simmons showed why he's the most popular sports writer of all time. <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090422">His take</a> on the mindless – and mandatory – sideline interviews with NBA head coaches during the game was fantastic. And funny. And needed to be said. Next I want him to take on the mindless and mandatory shilling of the NBA by the presumptively unbiased announcers on the NBA Cares program, wherein the millionaire humanitarians are ordered to come out from behind their tinted SUV windows and make an appearance in the community.<br /><br />Then today he hits us with a shark-jumping column on why the Chicago Bulls (of the wildly impressive 41-41 regular season record)-Boston Celtics (who else?) series was "one for the ages."<br /><br />Did I mention it was 5000 words? Here's what he should have written:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/26/3f/93b1228348a06569cbdad010._AA240_.L.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 240px;" src="http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/26/3f/93b1228348a06569cbdad010._AA240_.L.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >Oh, don't speak to me of the other teams. Perhaps I don't understand things, but they never</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > have wished, and do not wish, for war. They are betraying us! The Celtics alone must save the NBA. Our gracious green team recognizes its high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful squad has to perform the noblest role on earth, and it is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake them. etc. etc.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br />The defending champs, with a 62-20 record this season despite being without many of their aging prima donnas for many of those games, are not only a lock to win the series, but are one of the favourites to be the last team standing. Again. Why Simmons felt the need to tell us why this was the series to beat them all – <span style="font-style: italic;">and spend 5000 words doing so!</span> – is beyond me. Well, not really. The Celtics are involved. If he was going to tackle this series, how about this angle: The fact that a pretty bad (albeit improving) Bulls squad took the first game in Boston and lost a squeaker in game two, spells doom for the once-mighty C's. Maybe not in this series, but down the road. Instead, he builds them up the opponents thusly: </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">They are slightly more talented than a depleted Boston team.</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >Uh, sure, Bill. </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">They will be positively frightening at home with their crowd behind them. (I see them winning Game 3 by 20-plus on Thursday night.)</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >For the record, the Bulls lost by 21 in game 3. (For the record, I thought this column was over-the-top ridiculous this afternoon when I read it, before the Celts hammered Chicago.)</span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">This has a chance to be remembered as one of the most exciting first-round series ever played.</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >Ever? Really? Seriously?... No, didn't think so, either. </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">One thing separates him from other world-class rookies who preceded him on a big stage: As far as pure point guards go, he might be the best athlete we've ever seen. If you built the ideal point guard, like how you can create a player from scratch on "NBA Live," wouldn't you basically create Derrick Rose? Lord help us if he ever learns how to shoot 3-pointers. Regardless, after Games 1 and 2, the ceiling has been removed for Rose. I am prepared for anything over the next 12 years. Anything.</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Derek Rose</span> is a good rookie and he played a couple of really good games. But why the hype? Tonight his line was 9 points (on 4-of-14 shooting), 3 boards, 2 assists and 7 turnovers. They're reassembling that ceiling as I write. </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">All I know is this: Only a few current players can win two games per playoff series by themselves, and he's one of them. If the goal is to <i>win</i> the title and not just compete for one, then I want Ben Gordon on my team. It's as simple as that.</span> </span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >That's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ben Gordon</span>. Yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> Ben Gordon. There's Kobe, LeBron, Dwyane [sic] and, uh, Ben. </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">So, where is Rondo headed? I still believe a modified version of Magic's surreal 1981-82 season could be in play for Rondo down the road: Something like 16.7 ppg, 10.7 apg, 8.2 rpg, 2.5 spg and an All-Defense nod to boot.</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://indietravelpodcast.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/homer-doh-square.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 270px;" src="http://indietravelpodcast.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/homer-doh-square.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >That's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rajon Rondo</span>. Yes, that Rajon Rondo. D'oh!</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > I'm going to start calling him Homer Simmons. (If I watched it with any regularity, I'd be able to come up wit</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >h a killer <span style="font-style: italic;">Simpsons</span> reference.) It was either Homer or Leo Tolstoy. I mentioned it was 5000 words, right?<br /><br />So he builds up his boys (frustrating as hell but understandable, I guess). But why build up the very mediocre Bulls? Simple. By doing so, he's either setting himself up for the big fall or – and this is the big reason – he is able to show what warriors his hometown heroes are.<br /><br />Simmons also answered a question I had long wondered about. Finishing up a very funny section on why he hates everything about Joakim Noah, he adds parenthetically: </span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">(Of course, if he played for the Celtics, I'd love him.)</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I'll never understand that line of reasoning. It's like saying if some pop cultural movie character were to all of a sudden do something from another pop cultural movie... Okay, sorry. I can't do Simmons-like analogies.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">He also got a shot in at NBA reffing, a subject near and dear to my heart. The guy can rant with the best of conspiracy theorists when it comes to horrid officiating. But it rings a little hollow when it never occurs to him how many breaks his storied team has received over the years, not the least of which was last season.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Okay, got that off my chest.</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Let's get away from that subject altogether. Here's a little semi-rant on the subject of cheap corporate sponsors. This one is from the week of May 18-25, 1995:</span><br /><br /></span></span> <div style="text-align: center;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >The Sports Guy</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />It always amazes me what people will do for anything remotely resembling a prize. Have you checked out a Vancouver Canadians game lately? Yikes. Some kind of contest or another goes on between almost every inning. And they’re not giving away cars, folks.<br /><br />Let’s see now... There was the pitch contest after the top of the first. Throw a baseball through a hole and win a “beautiful door mirror.” I’m surprised every game isn’t a sell-out with prizes like that.<br /><br />At the bottom of the first, a contestant had the opportunity to knock down a bowling pin to win two hours of free bowling. Somebody pinch me.<br /><br />After one and a half innings, there was some kind of contest where the lucky winner picked up a Pepsi gift certificate. You should never look a gift certificate in the mouth, I suppose, but at this point I realized there was no thrill in watching others embarrass themselves for a bogus prize from some cheap corporate sponsor, so I didn’t pay full attention to the rest. I mean, <span style="font-style: italic;">Definition</span> gave away better prizes.<br /><br />I do remember, though, there was a T-ball contest, the Fox trot, where that hilarious C-FOX dog pretends to race a toddler, a horse race behind the left field wall with cardboard cut-out horse heads attached to long poles, and a game where a contestant is given the letters to Nat Bailey’s favourite restaurant and has to arrange them correctly in 30 seconds. The successful ones get a gift certificate to the White Spot. I’ll buy someone dinner at the White Spot if they get down on the field and arrange the letters to spell <span style="font-style: italic;">Spew It Hot</span>.<br /><br />Isn’t baseball worthy of watching without all the small-time hoopla? It’s as if they’re saying, “We realize the game is dull as dirt, but come on out to the ballpark for the excitement of watching fans stand on their heads for that magical chance of winning back the two dollars they spent to get in!”<br /><br />It’s not just the Canadians, or baseball. Commercial radio is the worst – although we expect it from the high school dropouts who make up AM radio. Some wacky deejay tells us, in a deep, resonant voice, to pollute the city with signs declaring radio allegiance, and everyone gets out their crayons.<br /><br />The newspapers aren’t innocent, either. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Province</span> has turned a weakness into free help by way of their Head Games ’95 contest. They’re giving away Canuck playoff tickets to the reader who comes up with the best Canuck headline. Presumably, since it is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Province</span>, the winner will have to use the annoying term ’Nucks.<br /><br />Contestants will have a tough time outdoing the professionals at the daily tab, who scintillate us six days a week with such gems as “Blues Breakers”, “Schumacher Shines” “Medvedev Marvellous”, “Perez Power”, “Prep Prodigy Poised for Pros”, and “Kamloops Wants Cup Keepers.” Do I detect a trend? All this time you thought the <span style="font-style: italic;">Province</span> writers were illiterate. In fact, they are <span style="font-style: italic;">a</span>lliterate.<br /><br />I think a potential winning headline, then, might be something like “New-look ’Nucks Neutralize Nervous Nords 9-Nothing in Northern Knockout”. Feel free to use it.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Vancouver Sun</span> is also giving away tickets. The sophisticated paper is holding a limerick contest. I’d like to have been in on that meeting. I don’t know if I’m more amazed that someone came up with the idea, or that someone above them actually okayed it. With a team nickname like Canucks, I wonder just how many verses will be printable. And if any of the players will be from Nantucket.<br /><br />I’m offering this one for anyone who cares to use it:<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">There once was a defenseman named Jyrke</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Who too often played like a turkey</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />He coughed up the puck</span></span> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />That over-rated Canuck</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />But the announcers thought he was the greatest thing since beef jerky.</span></span> </div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Oh, what the heck. I’m on a roll. Here’s one more:<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">There once was a goalie named Kay</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Who never got in to play</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />He thought that he should</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />But he just wasn’t that good</span> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />So he would sit on the bench and pray... to be traded to a team that would play... him but he definitely wasn’t going to stay... and he wrote insightful columns in the Province for pay... although someone else wrote his headlines, no doubt a layman... entering a contest, but that’s okay.</span></span></div></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-62206986120744795352009-04-22T19:51:00.008-07:002009-04-25T20:53:44.029-07:00Hooked on Sonics<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GzXYfK-lDG4/Rnu3ajBLLzI/AAAAAAAAA8M/V585SersrwY/s400/UFO.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GzXYfK-lDG4/Rnu3ajBLLzI/AAAAAAAAA8M/V585SersrwY/s400/UFO.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >The name <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sarunas Marciulionis</span> came up today. How, you ask? Trust me, old basketball fans love to throw out obscure names to make each other laugh. For example, I have an ongoing joke with a friend. Whenever I call his office and his receptionist asks who's calling, I'll answer with names like <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kyle Macy</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Mokeski</span>, or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Terry Duerod</span>. She tells him who it is, he immediately knows, plus he gets to come off like he's getting calls from all sorts of important people. It's a win-win.<br /><br />You can't just throw any old name out there. There's an art to it. My cover would be blown if I identified myself as <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Jordan</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Larry Bird</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Magic Johnson</span>. But at the same time, the names can't be too run-of-the-mill. So no <span style="font-weight: bold;">Steve Smith</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kevin Johnson </span>or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jim Peterson</span>.<br /><br />Similarly, they can't be too obscure. Even diehard NBA fans would be hard-pressed to remember the likes of <span style="font-weight: bold;">David Pope</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Franklin Edwards</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Keith Edmondson</span> (I just looked 'em up otherwise I wouldn't have remembered, either).<br /><br />And finally, they can't be too unique, nickname-y or ethnic, given the way I sound. I just couldn't convincingly pull off a <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kiki Vandeweghe</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sly Williams</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sarunas Marciulionis</span>. See how I bring things around?<br /><br />Hearing that name again today reminded me of the time the Seattle SuperSonics played an exhibition team in Vancouver in 1994. This was pre-Grizzlies days, although, as you'll read, they were conceived by this time. The city was pregnant with excitement.<br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >Re-reading the story today, I'm surprised at a few things:<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.rivalfish.com/rivalroom/uploaded_images/12557__oj_simpson_l-738751.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 270px;" src="http://www.rivalfish.com/rivalroom/uploaded_images/12557__oj_simpson_l-738751.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >1. I realize I wasn't exactly asking relevant questions, but would we hear these types of answers today? It seems unlikely. Maybe nobody is asking stupid questions anymore, but I find it hard to believe that players would be so open about controversial subjects. The players are so over-coached when it comes to dealing with the media these days that you hardly ever read any really juicy quotes.<br /><br />2. I made a quip about potentially being smacked upside the head, but at no time did I feel threatened. Or even cheeky. But reading my questions today, I feel like that was some young smartass, the kind of person I'd look derisively at today if they were asking the same nonsense.<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.world-mysteries.com/newgw/313c_top_10_list.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 154px; height: 206px;" src="http://www.world-mysteries.com/newgw/313c_top_10_list.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" >3. That was a small sample size, I admit, but were/are all NBA</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > players conspiracy theorists? As hard as it is to imagine, I don't think I even linked all their comments together at the time. But looking at it now? <span style="font-weight: bold;">O.J. Simpson</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">John F. Kennedy</span> and UFOs? Krazy.</span><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br />That was, incidentally, the first time I had ever heard of Roswell. Was Marciulionis ahead of his time or was I just not up on my UFO conspiracy theories? Who hasn't heard of it these days? No one, that's who.<br /><br />So here's the column from the week of November 3-10, 1994:<blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;">An era has ended. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Erica Ehm</span>, the lovely and talented veejay, left MuchMusic at the end of October. I, for one, will miss her.<br /><br />In her program, <span style="font-style: italic;">Between the Sheets</span>, she asked rock stars about the books they were reading. She felt that if the youth of today learns that their heroes have interests outside of their idolatrized professions, and even read books on occasion, then maybe kids themselves could be persuaded to develop good reading habits. It was kind of a <span style="font-style: italic;">Hooked on Phonics</span> for the acne set.<br /><br />As a tribute to the Divine Miss Ehm, I thought I would carry on her tradition of discussing great literature with role models – in this case, members of the Seattle SuperSonics. I call it <span style="font-style: italic;">Hooked on Sonics</span>.<br /><br />To break the ice I try to get <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sam Perkins</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kendall Gill</span> to comment on the Grizzly logo.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I haven’t seen it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Are you just being diplomatic?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I haven’t seen it, I’m sorry. What does it look like?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Well, it’s turquoise and there’s a bear on it. There’s some red and gold.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I can’t comment on it. I haven’t seen it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Okay, then. What are you reading now?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I’m reading <span style="font-style: italic;">The Chamber</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">By...?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Grisham... John Grisham?... <span style="font-style: italic;">The Chamber</span>?... You never heard of it?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Uh...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: What?! You’ve never heard of it? See, it’s possible you never hear of something or see something, okay?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Are you giving me a hard time?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: No, but you couldn’t believe I didn’t see the logo.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But you’re in the NBA. It’s your business.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: It’s the first time I’ve been up here.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It didn’t make the news down there?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Hey, I ain’t been with the team. It’s my first game.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Oh, yeah, you were away. What was the problem?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Don’t you read the news? See? Okay, then.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Okay. What else are you reading?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Magazines. I read <span style="font-style: italic;">Essence</span>, a black magazine. About black women. I’m trying to understand them as much as possible. The more I read the more confused I get. What else am I reading? <span style="font-style: italic;">Home Remedies</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What’s that?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: What to do in case you have a headache or bee sting or various things.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t you just run to the trainer when something goes wrong?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Well, you know, trainers always get you on medication or something like that, so it’s a good book to have.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A good, entertaining read. I’m waiting for the movie to come out.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Which one?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Home Remedies.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: The movie? I ain’t heard about that one. Um, what other books? I read <span style="font-style: italic;">The Client</span>... Oh, this book I read called <span style="font-style: italic;">And Deliver Us From Evil</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Murder, Madness and Mayhem in the Lone Star State</span> by Mike Cochran]. It’s a book on Dallas, Texas, all the happenings from <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Kennedy</span> to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Reverend Walter Railey</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So do you believe in the conspiracy theory?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Oh yeah, definitely, that was a conspiracy, no question. But there are different events that happened in the state of Texas they still haven’t solved. Like Walter Railey. You never heard of him?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Dang, where you been? You’ve been up here too much.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You played in Dallas for a few seasons.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Yeah, it’s a Christian-like city but [there are] a lot of evil things, that’s why the book is called <span style="font-style: italic;">And Deliver Us From Evil</span>. There are a lot of things that happen down there to be so Christian.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">They’re hypocrites, is what you’re saying. All Texans are hypocrites.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: No, they’re not all hypocrites. But they say one thing and do another.<br /><br />Let’s all think about that one for a while. It’s an interesting distinction, to be sure. I move on to Kendall Gill but keep Perkins in the conversation.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kendall, have you seen the Grizzly logo?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: No, but I’ve seen the colours. They’re nice.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: See?! See?!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What do you think about the name?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: The name is nice.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Come on, speak your mind.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Grizzlies? I’m speaking my mind.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You really like it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Yeah. What do you think it should be named?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I don’t know. I don’t have one. I can just sit back and criticize.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: I know. You’re a reporter. It’s in your blood.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Are you reading anything right now?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Right now I think I’m going to go get, uh, what’s that girl’s name? <span style="font-weight: bold;">O.J. Simpson</span>’s wife?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: Nicole.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Yeah, I think I might go get that book.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Do you think he did it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: No.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But the book paints him as doing it, doesn’t it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Yeah, but I mean the power’s in the paint. You know that, right? <span style="font-style: italic;">(laughs)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(To Perkins) You think O.J. did it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I don’t think so. Do you?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I don’t know. It’s got to be proved. But why did he take off?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: What would you do in that situation?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: What would you do? Go straight to the cops and let 'em take you to jail?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: You say ‘yeah’ now. And plus, he was black so what of it?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So what?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: I guess if you’re white, I guess you’ll say, “Here I am.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But he’s a superstar.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERKINS</span>: If he wasn’t a superstar the case would have been over. That ain’t got nothing to do with it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: So was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mike Tyson</span>, so was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Jordan</span>, so was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Jackson</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: They were all superstars and look what happened.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What happened to Michael Jordan? Did I miss that one?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GILL</span>: Yeah, you all ran him outta the game.<br /><br />I decided to get out of that debate before I got smacked. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Shawn Kemp</span>, aka the Rain Man, says he’s just finished reading the latest issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">GQ</span>, featuring his rival <span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Barkley</span>. As for books, he is a horror fan whose favourite author is <span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephen King</span>.<br /><br />But science fiction is no match for science fact. Or at least fact according to new Sonic, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sarunas Marciulionis</span>:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What are you reading?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: I’m very interested in all these UFO mysteries.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There are a lot of sightings in your country [Lithuania], aren’t there?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: No, in the States much more.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Do you believe in UFOs?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: Oh yeah, sure. You think there are just us in this whole space? You think there’s only we human beings?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: No. Wrong.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why haven’t they been better documented?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: They’re filmed. The thing is, we have to prepare society for all this news. The government, they don’t really want to publicize everything, because people would think that we’re an experiment on this earth. Nobody would feel good about that. This is hypothesis and it’s almost proven.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Have you seen one?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: Uh, not yet.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Aren’t a lot of sightings simply lights people can’t identify?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: No lights. No, this is what some scientists want to tell you. You know, lights, shadows, planes. I’ve seen tapes and it was pretty impressive.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Is this a hobby of yours?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: Yeah, kind of. I’ve been interested for the last 10 or 12 years. But in the former Soviet Union you weren’t allowed to think that way, so we didn’t have much information. People would stop working if they knew there was something more powerful, something stronger around.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What about the Bermuda Triangle?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MARCIULIONIS</span>: There’s gotta be some connection with that stuff – magnetic anomalies in the former Soviet Union and the Triangle. It’s very interesting.<br /><br />I leave the Sonic locker room secure in the knowledge that our children are in good hands with such well-read role models. Then Marciulionis catches up to me. He informs me that there are four aliens in a Roswell, New Mexico warehouse, having been captured in 1947. He tells me that you can learn more from such TV programs as <span style="font-weight: bold;">Montel Williams</span>.<br /><br />Maybe it’s just as well Erica is no longer on the air. Such discussions can be disillusioning.</span></blockquote></span>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-79763761830443317092009-04-21T22:09:00.005-07:002015-11-27T14:09:07.209-08:00The Dark Side<a href="http://stoprefabuse.com/images/referee.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stoprefabuse.com/images/referee.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 600px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 398px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;">I took a single, tentative step to the dark side on the weekend. </span> <span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"><br /><br />A few months ago, I read a story by </span><span style="font-size: 130%;"><a href="http://www.theprovince.com/" style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Province</span></a></span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"> sports scribe </span><span style="font-size: 130%;"><a href="http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/features/school_zone/index.html" style="font-family: times new roman;">Howard Tsumura</a></span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"> that the city needed basketball refs in the worst way (insert snide comment here). So what did I go and do? I sent the association an e-mail. Saturday was our first meeting. I went.</span><span style="font-size: 130%;"> </span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"><br /><br />I've been a long-time ref-hater. But at the same time, I've always enjoyed reffing any time I've done it. So you can understand my trepidation. What the hell, though. I'm a walking contradiction anyway: I love jazz music; don't like jazz fans. I love comedy; not that big a laugher. I'm a proud Canadian; have zero interest in hockey.<br /></span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;">Whether I follow through with joining the </span><span style="font-size: 130%;"><a href="http://www.bcboa.org/Home.htm" style="font-family: times new roman;">BCBOA</a></span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"> or not remains to be seen. We'll see. I think it would be fun. I can take the abuse from people like me. We'll have that special bond. We'll hate me together.<br /></span><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;">Today's offering is from the week of March 16-23, 1995. The headline <span style="font-style: italic;">Sports Vue</span> magazine gave it was, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 130%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">"The Big Hate – Refs or Coaches"</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 130%;">:</span></span><br />
<blockquote face="times new roman">
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sports Guy</span>, March 16-23, 1995<br /><br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />I don’t know who I hate more – coaches who spend the whole game complaining to referees, or the referees themselves.<br /><br />I make my rational decision on who to cheer for based on style and personality. What can I say? I was raised by a kind and loving television set.<br /><br />For instance, in hockey I don’t like players with missing front teeth. Nobody who looks more like a doofus than me should make more in a year than I do in a lifetime.<br /><br />Football players who break into dance are not among my personal all-stars, either. And in basketball, I cheer for teams with the fewest shaved heads. I think bald men look ridiculous. Can you imagine going through life with no hair?<br /><br />The team with the fewest of the above gets my gleeful support. Sometimes, though, an obnoxious coach can override my like for a particular team.<br /><br />I sailed to Victoria a couple of weeks back for the finals of the men’s and women’s Canada West university basketball championships. My decision to cheer on the UVic women and the Alberta men was made easy by the sideline shenanigans of their rivals’ coaches. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Misty Thomas</span>, head coach of the UBC Thunderbirds, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Guy Vetrie</span> of the UVic Vikes pay more attention to the officials than they do to their own teams. No call against their squads is just. According to them the refs are either incompetent or in a conspiracy to prevent them from reaching their goals.<br /><br />Thomas whined to the media about the neutral officials after UBC’s loss in game one of the best-of-three. Referees, being human and the big thinkers they are, read the sports pages. There’s no saying her words had an effect on them, but the T-Birds won game two. Game three was won in overtime by UVic.<br /><br />Coach Vetrie was constantly heckled by the three Alberta fans who made the trip. Each time a “bad” call was made, Vetrie marched onto the court, out of the coach’s box, to berate the offending official. When his two assistants joined him at mid-court for a discussion with the refs, the Golden Bear Supporters yelled, “It’s anarchy!” They were threatened with expulsion by a university employee for making too much noise.<br /><br />Where’s the conspiracy? I thought I was at a tennis match.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brett Westcott </span>is another example. The Spectrum high school girls basketball coach not only berates officials, but is reportedly so negative that it has reduced some of his players to tears. This could be true. When I coached a grade eight boys team with him years ago, he reduced me to tears regularly.<br /><br />This year he is not permitted to coach without a school administrator present.<br /><br />I went to the AAA girls championship game expecting to heckle Westcott the way those Alberta fans so bravely took on Vetrie. But for that one game, anyway, I found nothing wrong with his style. Of course he complained about calls. I’m not saying coaches should remain stoic when an official makes a bad call. But he didn’t ride them all game; just when they deserved it.<br /><br />And boy did they deserve it.<br /><br />The reffing was pretty bad. One referee seemed to make all the calls. Or at least all the close calls. The only reason they were close is that they were called at all. He was consistent, though. He made atrocious calls both ways.<br /><br />Referee supporters – and surprisingly there are many – will say you can’t take the human element out of the game. Referees are human – or so they say – and as humans will err. But unlike intelligent humans, the bad ones don’t seem to learn from their mistakes.<br /><br />The problem is that you can’t learn from what you don’t admit. Too many referees, like too many players and coaches, believe they can do no wrong, and when they get called on their mistakes, take things way too personally. When a player or coach screams at a ref, the ref should grin and bear it to a point. You can’t let your ego get in the way of the game. Participants in a competitive arena should be allowed to vent their frustrations.<br /><br />In my experience refereeing, I’ve had players scream at me and threaten me, but I let it pass. Eleven-year-old girls can get like that sometimes.<br /><br />Reputations should play no part in the decision of a ref to hand out a technical foul to a coach or player. Each infraction should stand on its own. Westcott, whome the refs know is a live wire, was whistled for a T for innocuously motioning for a travelling call on a Salmon Arm Jewel instead of the personal foul that was called on his player.<br /><br />Maybe Westcott felt the official had it out for him personally. But he got the last laugh as his fab five bested the number-one ranked Jewels of Denial in a great game. He could have been more gracious, granted, in victory instead of chasing the refs out the door while his team was celebrating on the court. But he’s probably trying to get a job coaching in university.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Simon </span>asks the musical question, “What is the point of this story?”<br /><br />Don’t know. I’m sitting on the fence. But ultimately, I think I side with the coaches and players over the zebras. They are who we pay to see. Officials are there to make sure the best team wins and the rules are followed. They are a necessary evil. They, and the leagues for whom they work, should lighten up when coaches such as Sonics head man <span style="font-weight: bold;">George Karl </span>metaphorically suggests that a certain referee be shot.<br /><br />Refs... you can’t live with ’em, but you can’t shoot ’em, either. But there’s a lot of room in between for argument.</span></blockquote>
Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-39935686341987953972009-04-17T00:27:00.002-07:002009-04-17T01:28:23.039-07:00Le RodmanThere's so much to like about the upstart <span style="font-style: italic;">(Current) Sports Guy</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bill Simmons</span>. Funny, smart, passionate. But damn, he can be frustrating to read sometimes if you grew up hating the Boston Celtics, as I did.<br /><br />I get it. He's not a journalist; he's a columnist and needs a voice. But enough with the cheerleading already.<br /><br />I absolutely love that he writes great, juicy long columns on the world's best sport, basketball, and the NBA. But sometimes he gets to me. Maybe it's because I never had a hometown team to cheer for that I can't relate to his unabashed glee at all things Boston. I used to bleed Laker blue during the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Magic Johnson</span> era. When <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ralph Sampson</span> hit that fluke shot at the buzzer to knock the Lakers out of the playoffs one year, not only did it knock the life out of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Cooper</span>, who collapsed to the floor, it physically and psychically depressed me for at least two weeks. Then I grew up and didn't feel the need to stick with that team forever. I still loved them after all the good players retired. I cheered for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Vlade Divac</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nick Van Exel</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eddie Jordan</span> even when they weren't making the playoffs, like all true fans should. I can root for a loser no problem. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Wally Cox</span> is my idol.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://thepiratesdilemma.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/underdog_300.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 355px; height: 300px;" src="http://thepiratesdilemma.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/underdog_300.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>But when the Lakers got the smug <span style="font-weight: bold;">Phil Jackson</span>, former coach of the despica-Bulls, things started to sour. How could I cheer for that guy? He's a front-runner, padding his stats by only taking jobs with contenders. I'm not clear on the chronology, but I think <span style="font-weight: bold;">Shaq</span> came next. Come on. Really? Who likes a Goliath? What fun is there in cheering for the mack truck who mows everyone down and shoots everything from two feet and in? I'll answer for you: None.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">piece de resistance</span><span>, though,</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>was the acquisition of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dennis Rodman</span>, formerly of the hated Piss-tons and then the aforementioned despica-Bulls, a human self-promotion machine who hustled like nobody's business but had almost zero basketball skill. That's it. I was outta there. I never looked back. Laker fan no more.<br /><br />So I always wonder about guys like Simmons who will stick with one team no matter what. I don't know how he felt about <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kevin Garnett</span> before KG joined the Celtics, but Garnett was another guy I couldn't stand. Sure, he's a great player, but I always disliked his phoney intensity and scowl. Had it been Garnett joining my Lakers, I think I would have bailed on them, too.<br /><br />But that's my problem. The question I have is this: Is there a player Simmons hates enough that he would stop cheering for his beloved C's if they acquired him? I don't think so. He's said some horrible things about <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kobe Bryant</span> over the years, but I'm guessing that if Mr. Bryant signed with Boston, Simmons would be his biggest fan. I just don't get that. (I know, I know, conjecture, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.)<br /><br />So now "his" team has Kevin Garnett <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephon Marbury</span>. Yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>Stephon Marbury, he of the tattooed, lightbulb-shaped head, hands-down one of the most selfish players in the game. You'd think it was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mark</span> freakin' <span style="font-weight: bold;">Price</span>, a choir boy, judging from Simmons. Is there not a point where you go, "I can't root for this team anymore"? Or do you blindly just keep on keeping on because, well, that's just the way you've always done it?<br /><br />I mention it being "his" team, with quotation marks, because Simmons does the absolute worst thing any fan can do, let alone a member of the fourth estate. He says "we" when discussing the Celtics. I've never understood that, either. Even when I was living and dying with every Laker victory and loss, I never once uttered "we" when referring to them. Check out Simmons' <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090416&sportCat=nba">latest column</a> on... surprise!... the Celtics:<blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Anyway, about four weeks ago, it became clear that <span style="font-weight: bold;">we</span> were headed for a Cavs-Lakers Finals unless Garnett came back.<br /><br />Was one title (and a memorable season) worth giving up Al Jefferson, a few first-rounders and Ratliff's expiring deal that maybe could have been used to trump the Lakers for Pau Gasol? Yes. Yes it was. The goal is to win the title. <span style="font-weight: bold;">We</span> won a title. I would do it again.<br /><br />This season, Garnett disappeared but Powe and Perkins stepped up, then Davis did the same when <span style="font-weight: bold;">we</span> lost Powe.</span></blockquote>So anyway, where were we? Ah yes, Sideshow Dennis. I wrote about him once. After ripping apart Simmons, I feel silly offering it to you. But feel free to rip it apart, too. Whatever. It was about 15 years ago. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivjW3L7K2v8P6-ekzZewkU1tWOnMDhfDh2WzHHSJ_xyyCHweUtN4wKQnbPjABd_kTQT9wSLjyQVJZTltyklumbC1RcSEtUJ4JXCXyrQMtiD0kfX0XdVB9A2evivUPnI7wE8LKGGuukplpN/s320/Dennis+Rodman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 318px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivjW3L7K2v8P6-ekzZewkU1tWOnMDhfDh2WzHHSJ_xyyCHweUtN4wKQnbPjABd_kTQT9wSLjyQVJZTltyklumbC1RcSEtUJ4JXCXyrQMtiD0kfX0XdVB9A2evivUPnI7wE8LKGGuukplpN/s320/Dennis+Rodman.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >The Sports Guy</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Sports Vue magazine</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />by Guy MacPherson<br /><br />I love opinionated people. It matters not whether I agree with them. It is my humble opinion that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Trevor Lautens</span> of the Vancouver Sun is the best columnist in the country. He has a beautiful way of phrasing and writing that is seldom seen in daily papers (you have to go to weekly sports publications for prose as proficiently proffered). He also has an annoying propensity for pomposity, which is expected in a person of opinion. Unfortunately, his opinions are directly opposed to mine 99 percent of the time. But what can one do? The man writes like a charm.<br /><br />The fun is in the argument. I’ve been called a devil’s advocate, among other things. Like <span style="font-weight: bold;">Robert Frost</span>, I never take my own side in a quarrel. I’m told it’s my French heritage (and you thought MacPherson and Frost were Anglo names).<br /><br />We French love to argue. It’s never personal. It’s just a way of life. If the rest of the world believed <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jerry Lewis</span> to be a comedic genius and auteur, we French would call him <span style="font-style: italic;">un imbecile</span>. See? That’s how it works. You don’t want us to do nuclear tests? Ha! We laugh in your collective <span style="font-style: italic;">visages</span>. Greenpeace is altruistic, you say? We spit on them. A little bit of reverse psychology would do wonders to get the French in line.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Mais je suis digress</span>. I was reading the other day about Dennis Rodman’s comments in a radio interview. He said his teammate, NBA MVP <span style="font-weight: bold;">David Robinson</span> can’t win a championship. He said he himself is among the three best power forwards in the game today, and should be paid thusly. He said he’s better than <span style="font-weight: bold;">Derrick Coleman</span> simply because he has won championships – neglecting to mention that he was on stacked Detroit Piston teams, while Coleman has played alongside such future Hall of Shamers <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dwayne Schintzius</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Benoit Benjamin</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Dudley</span>.<br /><br />My first reaction to anything Rodman says or does is to look down my snotty French nose (cold season, doncha know) and think, “This man has green hair at the best of times, pierced body parts I don’t even want to imagine, and tattoos as big as <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hervé Villechaise</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Il est tres amusant, mais un tres, tres freaky hombre</span>.<br /><br />Then the real Frenchman in me comes forward. "Hang on there just one second,” I’ll say to myself in perfect <span style="font-style: italic;">anglais</span> so as to understand what I’m saying. “Everyone hates Dennis Rodman. You are not Everyman. You are French-man. Do your people proud. Don’t go along with the crowd. The crowd is what gave you <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fresh Prince of Bel Air</span>, Denny’s, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kenny G</span>. What do they know?”<br /><br />I have a point, I tell myself reflexively. Rodman used to be detestable back when he was winning championships with the hated Pistons. It’s easy to loathe someone when they are on top (unless, of course, they’re your lover, in which case you shouldn’t loathe them at all. Take it from me. I’m French, remember?). Now he’s just an overall average player who, like <span style="font-weight: bold;">Colonel Sanders</span>, does one thing really well – rebound (the Colonel was one tough mother on the boards despite the greasy fingers).<br /><br />Rodman is no threat now. He’s old and needs attention. We will excuse his quirkiness (only don’t ever call him Your Quirkiness to his face).<br /><br />Rodman brings excitement to the land of dull locker room interviews. He speaks his mind, and that disturbs a lot of people. You don’t have to agree with him. Just appreciate him for what he is.<br /><br />He’s opinionated. He’s arrogant. He’s different.<br /><br />S<span style="font-style: italic;">acre bleu!</span> He must be one of us!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Vive le</span> Rodman!</span></blockquote>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6347151902269827126.post-29737488314026159962009-04-15T21:02:00.005-07:002009-04-16T08:47:58.936-07:00The Sports Guy is back!<span style="font-size:130%;">Well, not back in any sort of meaningful way. Allow me to explain.<br /><br />Look, I'm not in any way implying that <a href="http://search.espn.go.com/bill-simmons/">Bill Simmons</a>, aka <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index">The Current Sports Guy</a>, stole my handle. There's no way he could have. When I started </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >The Sports Guy</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> in a little weekly paper in Vancouver back in 1993 and subsequently moved it to an embarrassing weekly rag called </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Sports Vue</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> shortly thereafter, the internet was something only computer nerds, academics and <a href="http://sethf.com/gore/">Al Gore</a> knew much about. Hell, 99.9 percent of newspaper readers in Vancouver didn't even know about my little sports humour column. So the odds that Simmons would have stumbled upon it are even less than the chance of him writing a column without mentioning Boston, the Celtics, or a shitty movie from his misspent youth.<br /><br />Plus, let's face it, "The Sports Guy" is hardly an original moniker. I'm not claiming to have invented it. It was, in fact, my editor at </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >The West End Times</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> – and former high school classmate – <a href="http://voterossmclaren.ca/">Ross McLaren</a> who so brilliantly came up with the name. Brilliant, you see, because unlike Simmons, Guy is my name. The Sports </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Guy</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. Get it? See what he was doing? Sometimes it pays to have a generic name. Not that this is an example. I got paid the princely sum of 25 bucks per column.<br /><br />You'd think with a generic name like Bill, he or his editors could have come up with something more fitting. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sports Bill</span>? Probably not. <span style="font-style: italic;">Bill Me Now!</span> Meh. But something like that. It's not my problem.<br /><br />I'm just saying I was, if not the first, certainly </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >before</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Simmons.<br /><br />And let's get this out of the way lest anyone thinks I'm trying to say I was better. Not a chance. Simmons is hilarious and a must-read. I was okay. Better than some, I think, but that's about it. I haven't written about sports since the <a href="http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nba/vancouver/vangriz.html">Vancouver Grizzlies</a> skipped town, whenever that was. These days I cover comedy for various publications but mostly <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.straight.com/archives/section/13">The Georgia Straight</a>. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/basketball/2008/12/11/reeves_bryant_courtesy_260.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 390px;" src="http://www.sportsnet.ca/basketball/2008/12/11/reeves_bryant_courtesy_260.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>In that respect, the Grizzlies were the perfect training ground. I mean, <a href="http://www.hoopsaddict.com/2007/05/01/hey-whatever-happened-to-bryant-reeves/">Bryant "Big Country" Reeves</a> as your $65 million centre, replacing <a href="http://www.courttv.com/trials/jaysonwilliams/030504_ctv.html">Benoit "Big Mouth" Benjamin</a>? It doesn't get any better than that.<br /><br />With this blog, I'll dig out the gold (the yellowing newsprint has a certain golden hue) from the vault and reprint it here for your dining and dancing pleasure. They haven't been seen since their original publication date and they're sure as hell not going to be anthologized anywhere else, so this is as good a place as any.<br /><br />When I'm not running old... er, I mean "classic" columns, I'll write about any sports-related topic that comes to mind. That includes commenting on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >The Current Sports Guy</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> on occasion.<br /><br />To start with, let's go back to the very first <span style="font-style: italic;">Sports Guy </span>column. Sort of. They didn't give me much space at the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Times</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, so I expanded on the same subject years later when <a href="http://www.straight.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Georgia Straight</span></a> hired me to be one of a few pinch hitters for their sports columnist at the time, <a href="http://travelblog.bcaa.com/about/">Kerry Banks</a>, who was taking the summer off to write a book.<br /><br />Here it is, where I lay out explicitly my strict definition of what constitutes a sport. From the summer of 1999:</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">by Guy MacPherson<br />The weekend of bogus sports is over and it’s on to the real thing. Goodbye, you funky-knickered golfers and alcohol- and cigarette-sponsored race-car drivers. It’s time for the real athletes to take over: baseball’s pennant race is in full swing, as are Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, who continute to swing for the fence every time up to bat; ice-hockey training camps open throughout the land (I qualify <span style="font-style: italic;">hockey</span> with <span style="font-style: italic;">ice</span> for those stubbornly holding onto hope that field hockey will ever make it into print); and it’s only weeks before the NBA starts bouncing back into our consciousness. Kinda makes the impending darkness of autumn easier to take.<br /><br />The beauty of this time of year for Vancouver (motto: City of Losers) is that both the hockey and basketball teams are tied for first. The Canucks (motto: We Can’t Get Any Worse!), without the distractions of Pavel Bure and Mike Keenan, hope to rebound from a very forgettable season. The Grizzlies (motto: The Canucks Stole Our Motto) are going with a new look since general manager Stu Jackson learned that his title enables him to make trades. So it’s encouraging.<br /><br />It always amazes me that the dailies are expected to criticize some professional organizations but treat others like family. Attach a corporate sponsorship to your event and you’re guaranteed puff pieces and your very own supplement. Don’t insult the golfers or they’ll get their knickers in a knot and stay away. Half the racers don’t even speak English or read our papers, so I don’t see why they get treated with kid gloves in the local press.<br /><br />I realize there are those who will strongly disagree with my assessment of golf and car-racing as bogus sports. I’m willing to take the heat. Some of my closest friends are bogus-sports enthusiasts, so I’m used to it. In fact, I’ll anger a few more by lumping figure skating and virtually every other Olympic sport into that category. When ballroom dancing qualifies, you know there’s trouble. You want more? Just tune in to TSN at any time and flip a coin. Aerobics, darts, pro wrestling, fishing, bowling, on and on.<br /><br />This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I have been forced, through threat of nonpayment, to cover such events for various other “sports” sections and publications. Indeed my rants against what are considered sports by the masses have appeared elsewhere almost biennially for years. It may be getting old, but on the off chance you’re not a regular reader of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Hicksville Weekly Swill</span>, I humbly offer the set of criteriums (that’s how we wrote it at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Swill</span>) I came up with to separate the sporting wheat from the bogus chaff:</span><br /><ol><li><span style="font-size:85%;">The event must require athleticism. Key word: <span style="font-style: italic;">require</span></span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;">It must induce sweat from the activity itself rather than external forces such as the sun, engines, adrenaline, or being grossly out of shape.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;">It must provide a clear-cut winner.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;">Participants should accomplish the feat with their own feet (hands... what have you).</span></li></ol><span style="font-size:85%;">At the very minimum, a real sport should include all these. Extra points go to sports with numbered jerseys. Baseball fails number 1.but still qualifies under the numbered-jersey clause. (Bogus sports, by the way, are not to be confused with make-work sports like roller hockey, indoor soccer, arena football, and beach volleyball, which adhere to the criteria but which under no circumstances should be taken seriously.)<br /><br />By these criteria – and excellent set, I think you’ll agree – you’ll never need wonder again what’s what. Bowling? Not a sport. Korfball? Sport. Pétanque? Nope. Table tennis? Most definitely. Just follow the easy-to-use step-by-step guide. I’ll walk you through it.<br /><br />Golf isn’t a sport because it fails numbers 1. and 2. Some golfers are athletic, but it is not a requirement of the game in order to excel at it. And, folks, please remember: I love golf. In fact, I recently placed sixth in a miniature-golf tournament. I even took home the Spirit Award, so don’t accuse me of being anti-golf. It’s a great game. Kick the Can is a great game, too, but it’s not a sport either (see point 1).<br /><br />Racing enthusiasts disagree, but there’s no denying motor “sports” fail numbers 1, 2, and 4. They’ll tell you <span style="font-style: italic;">ad nauseam</span> about the physical strains drivers go through, the muscular effort required to brace their heads against the phenomenal g-forces that can, literally, take their breath away. Yeah, whatever.<br /><br />Figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and the like fail number 3. These are subjective events. Granted, they require athleticism, but so does ballet. We go to the ballet (theoretically speaking, of course) for the beauty of it, not to declare a winner. I don’t think anyone is served by having Karen Kain competing against Victoria Bertram for the prima-ballerina belt. And these events are, admittedly, beautiful. Admire them for what they are: ballet on ice, hardwood, and underwater.<br /><br />And don’t even get me started on curling.<br /><br />To further prove my point – and I don’t believe for an instant I should have to by now – consider the following inane exchange:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan A</span>: Do you like sports?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan B</span>: Oh, yeah, baby!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan A</span>: Yeah? What are you favourite sports?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan B</span>: Figure skating and ballroom dancing are my favourites, but I also love horse racing, the luge, and interpretive dance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan A</span>: Hey, interpretive dance isn’t a sport!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan B</span>: It isn’t? Why not?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fan B</span>: Hmm. Good point.<br /><br />If we accept this dialogue (Plato, eat your heart out), my grandmother is the biggest sports fan on the planet.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"></span>Guy MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10621018065400828882noreply@blogger.com5