I am not nearly this excited for the Winter Games. They have inspired me to read. Seriously.

It seems my wife can sense this emptiness and is looking for ways to keep me from self-medicating my Sports Affective Disorder (the new winter SAD) with hard liquor or by re-watching all the seasons of Lost.  She found one hell of a time consuming diversion by giving me, “The Book of Basketball” by the man who knows no brevity, Bill Simmons.  Knowing that this book was able to stop a bullet from a hand gun, reading it felt like a tall task.  Despite having nothing better to do, I still needed something to come along and prod me into picking up this monster and digging in.  It would have to be a special event, one that doesn’t come along every year, and one that would move my TV indifferent wife into couch potato mode cutting me off from Simpsons/Lost re-runs.  Enter the Winter Olympics and a choice.  TBOB or evenings filled with pairs figure skating?

The Winter Olympics and the TBOB have quite a bit in common.  Both are loaded with filler.  The Winter Olympics showed a piece on Canadian Polar Bears while Simmons riffed on what would have happened if Leo strapped on a 12 inch foam rubber schlong instead of Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights.  Neither add anything to the overall narrative and only one is mildly entertaining.  Both are self-indulgent.  The Winter Olympics have Jimmy Roberts working himself into a lather with a puff piece about cancer or curling.  The prologue to TBOB finds Simmons drawing himself a warm bath, pouring a glass of red wine and rubbing one out to the Larry Bird era Celtics.  If that image disgusts you try reading it for 30 pages.  The guy takes his time.

What is going to win out:  The tape delayed Olympics with sports that I know and care very little about or a meandering manifesto about professional basketball?  Since Sunday I have read about 200 pages of TBOB.  It’s destroying the Winter Olympics as we stand today.  Simmons writing style is engaging, his humor comes easily, and the information download in the book is extraordinary.  The guy knows a lot about professional basketball and if he’s wrong I’m in no position to contradict him.  Prepare yourself for a fair share of Celtic fellatio, a good amount of pointless movie references, and a hell of a lot of your free time wasted.  If you can get past that you will learn a lot and enjoy yourself along the way. 

The Winter Olympics, on the other hand  remain one of my least favorite sporting events.  Downhill skiing is fun for about an hour, bobsled and luge look identical regardless of whether the 1st place finisher or the 38th place finisher are hurtling down the hill, snowboarding was added to increase American medal count and figure skating holds no appeal for me whatsoever.  When you add the fact that NBC shows about 15 minutes worth of events in a given hour and teases events in primetime that were decided up to 12 hours before they were broadcast, you have a global event that feels like a global let down.   

I can take solace that every dark day of the sports abyss draws us closer to the end.  There were four magic words that were uttered today that will help my SAD more than any other.  “Pitchers and catchers report.”   Hurry up baseball, I need you.

This used to be Paul Shirley's claim to fame. It won't be for much longer.

The baffling theme behind this article is that Haitians have the means to provide themselves better lives but choose not to do so.  It seems that he believes that their lack of infrastructure is a reflection on the people and not of a corrupt government, political unrest and a complete lack of an economy.  Do Haitians prefer shanties over earthquake resistant modern construction?  Probably not.  I think they live in shanties because that’s what they can afford.  The idea that these people can try harder to have a better life is an incredibly simplistic and arrogant notion, especially from someone who was fortunate enough to play a game professionally and parlay that into writing about music for a living.  He’s someone who probably isn’t qualified to discuss hardship.

There is something to be said for trying to be a contrarian and offer a thought provoking look at the other side of an issue.  I would have gobbled up an article about opportunistic celebrities or media.  If he had wanted to write an essay talking about how donating after a disaster doesn’t help Haiti long-term without investment in infrastructure or means for a sustainable economy, it would be a piece that could have some effect.  However, it’s quite another to make light of a Humanitarian disaster and chide a poor and downtrodden people for being poor and downtrodden.

Why he would sabotage his writing career by publishing this is as baffling as his premise here.  If you think he survives much longer at ESPN you’re crazy.  His ode to PM Dawn today will be his last at the World Wide Leader.   The internet will consume this story, it will soon be national news.  He won’t survive, who would defend him?

To think I thought his praise of Nickelback was the most offensive thing he could write.

If I had any photoshop skills Ben would have tweety birds circling his big dumb melon.

Ben Roethlisberger leans forward on a running play to get that one extra yard and maybe the first down. Derrick Johnson comes running in and Big Ben’s head strikes the linebacker’s knee. Now the defending Super Bowl champion’s QB is lying on the turf with donut glaze over his eyes and his 4th concussion in the last few years.

Flash to you, half napping in your living room with Ruffles grease on your fingers and a wife somewhere in the house bitching about your lazy ass watching football all day.  You see Big Ben go down and the heart starts racing.  Maybe your fantasy team is playing against Roethlisberger this week.  Maybe you face him next week.  But you do know one thing, he’s not on your team so this can be nothing but good for your chances at that fantasy trophy.

It’s an ugly sight.  Another soulless fantasy football team owner celebrating a possible career ending bruise on another human being’s brain.  We’ve all been there.

scha·den·freu·de (shäd’n-froi’də)
n. Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

Leave it to the Germans to have a word for taking pleasure in another man’s pain.  In something as fun and innocent as fantasy sports I just can’t stand having to deal with cheering for somebody to break a leg.  Too dark.  It turns you into an ugly monster.  I hate schadenfreude.  That stuff is bad for your karma.

But what can we do about it?  It’s inevitable, right?  Yep.  But I do try to minimize it as much as possible until that gleeful little devil voice is barely audible in the back of my head.  My favorite method?

Participate in as many fantasy leagues as possible.  Huh?  Seems counter intuitive, right?  Most people who care about your football problems would default to the wrong answer which is less fantasy in your life.  But there is a magical number of fantasy teams somewhere around 10 where suddenly you realize that you own almost every fantasy relevant player in the NFL, and simultaneously each week you are also playing against every fantasy relevant player in the NFL.  Suddenly most major injuries both help AND hurt you.  Big Ben’s concussion that is helping that work league win is also fucking you in the neighborhood league.  There’s a ying to the yang.

Now you can get down to watching football without huge rooting interests again.  Remember that favorite real life team of yours that you used to devote your life to?  Now you can quit walking that dumb line of cheering for your Colts but still wanting that other QB on the field to throw a couple TD passes.  Boom, you’re back to watching football like a real fan.  Except now maybe you cheer a little more for offense than defense.

Without incurring the wrath of karma.

You really gonna blame that weak ass performance on Casper?

The Oklahoma City Thunder have scary young talent on the court.  Kevin Durant should be enough to give Eddie Curry nightmares for a week.  But Frank Isola of the New York Times says the Knicks may have been more concerned with actual spectors…

OKLAHOMA CITY – The Knicks were afraid, very afraid. And it had nothing to do with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

For two days, several players had trouble sleeping because they were convinced that their downtown hotel is haunted.

“I definitely believe it,” Jared Jeffries said. “The place is haunted. It’s scary.”

Eddy Curry claims he slept for only two hours Sunday night because he couldn’t stop thinking about ghosts roaming the hotel.

For years, guests staying at the Skirvin Hilton have reported ghost sightings and strange noises. Legend has it that sometime in the 1930s, a woman jumped to her death while holding her baby in her hands.

“They said it happened on the 10th floor and I’m the only one staying on the 10th floor,” Curry said. “That’s why I spent most of my time in (Nate Robinson’s) room. I definitely believe there are ghosts in that hotel.”

Assistant coach Herb Williams teased Jeffries and Curry for believing that the Skirvin is haunted, but Curry wasn’t laughing.

“There are too many stories,” Curry said. “Something is going on there.”

Lots of questions here.  1) Why do the Knicks put Eddie Curry on a different floor?  2) What was he doing in Nate Robinson’s room?  3) Really?

I think you should be more concerned about the ghost of all those Isiah Thomas moves haunting your franchise.

Scottie Pippen dressed up in some kind of dragon costume getting hit in the head by a phone and getting the shit kicked out of him by a gang of midgets.  Yes, that is really what you just saw.  No, this is not some kind of Friday acid flashback or roofie slipped in your preparty cocktail.

I guess this is from some upcoming straight to DVD movie starring Gary Coleman called Midgets vs Mascots.  From what I’ve seen, it has to be garnering some early 2010 Oscar buzz.  Special thanks to the genius clowns on Boers and Burnstein on 670 the Score for bringing this to my attention today.

Taking a page from Karl Rove and other evil marketing henchmen, Scottie Pippen penned a late Friday afternoon press release distancing himself from the project. Evidently Scottie felt the need to explain that he was talked into doing a cameo, a fight ensued onset, he had no clue what was going on at the time, but he feels the need to deny the personal injury claim coming from one of the tossables.

Was that as weird to read as it was to type?

Wow. Just wow.

Horford unsurprisingly thinks the Bulls stink like arm pits.

INDIANA -4 over Charlotte +107

Houston +8.5 over DENVER +106

MINNESOTA -1.5 over Los Angeles Clippers -102

ATLANTA -9 over Memphis -106

Excuse me for a minute...

Sacramento +6.5 over PORTLAND +109

PHOENIX -2 over San Antonio +109

Toronto +7 over MIAMI -105

CHICAGO +9.5 over Los Angeles Lakers +107

New York +5 over CHARLOTTE -101

Durant and crew are throwing it up and slamming it down lately.

NBA picks are 4-7 in the last 14 days for -1.75 units.  Still working on the system and will be keeping it to flat 1 unit betting until we get the hang of it.  All lines and odds published are from matchbook.com and current as of the time of writing.  Home teams are capitalized and “against the spread” is often abbreviated ATS.

MEMPHIS +7.5 over Boston -102

The Grizzlies are 8-2 ATS in their last 10 against the Eastern Conference and 11-4 in the last 15 home games.  On the other hand the Celtics are 8-17-1 ATS in the last 26 games against an opponent with a losing record.  Memphis plays this one close and could even sneak out a win.

ORLANDO -12.5 over Indiana -102

The Magic are 5-2 in their last 7 ATS against Eastern Conference opponents and 4-1 ATS in their last 5 against teams with a losing record.  Meanwhile the Pacers are 3-10 in their last 13 games overall.  I’ll go with the Magic to have a big night tonight.

OVER 208.5 Oklahoma City at Denver -102

The over is a huge trend for almost every category for Oklahoma City in the last few weeks.  I smell baskets.

Jonathan Stewart thinks this 9 yard run is valuable. Why doesn't your fantasy scoring?

I am a fantasy sports addict.  Certain times of the year my wife can legitimately be called a fantasy widow, like during the August run for the baseball playoffs when I’m also doing my fourteen football drafts and working 80+ hours per week on getting fantasy football software ready for the season.

Playing in all these leagues every year not only tests her somehow infinite patience, but also gives me a good perspective of what I think works and what doesn’t.  Fantasy sports is not only a beautifully imperfect game, but also has the great privilege of being endlessly configured to personal tastes.  But sometimes rules that don’t make sense linger because of some warped sense of tradition or something.

Non-fractional scoring sucks in a points league.

Yet it’s one of the most common of the crappy rules whenever I join a new fantasy football league.  Chris Johnson breaks off a 9 yard run to ice the clock at the end of the game and you get 0 points for it.  If he had stretched for one more yard it would have resulted in 1 fantasy point.  The obvious question is:  Why was that meaningless extra yard so meaningful?

Valuing that last yard at one fantasy point and the previous 9 yards at zero fantasy points just seems flat out retarded.  In my somehow warped mind nine is 90% as good as ten.  That 25th yard passing is only .04 points better than the 24 yards before it instead of a full point.  I know the math is hard.

The only reason I see for non-fractional scoring is that the whoever created the rules thinks that you are too stupid to be able to follow the final score of 89.8 – 103.5 and need it dumbed down to 86 – 101.  Don’t patronize me.  I can look at decimal points without breaking down in frustration.

What this rule does is force the fantasy sports players to pay attention to pretty meaningless milestones instead of the total of statistical effort.  Why do I need to care about making sure that Miles Austin gets yard stats where the number ends in 0 instead of 9?  It detracts, whatever minuscule amount, from the overall enjoyment of following your team when you need to pay attention to these abstract milestones for your base stats.  If you need this order in your life, I suggest looking into performance based scoring where you get points for your yards plus a BONUS when reaching milestones.  But keep that junk out of the base stats.

Every fantasy football league from here on out needs to use fractional scoring.  I’d include the other sports but football seems to be kind of unique in waiting until a certain threshold of stats before giving any points.  Most baseball and basketball points leagues have the good sense to reward each incremental value of a stat equally.  At some point in the past fantasy football made it common place not to and for no logical reason it stuck.  Stop it.

Reward .1 points for 1 yard instead of waiting until 10 yards for 1 point.  Please help rid the world of dumb fantasy football rules.

Bye Vinny.

The Bulls are about to slip to 7-13 and are on pace for their first 50 loss season since the beginning of the Skiles era.  This was after a thrilling loss (it was a loss though to team missing it’s best player) to the Celtics in the first round last year.  The perception was this was a team on the rise with an upcoming superstar in Derrick Rose and developing players on the roster.  The Bulls season opened with a promising win over the Spurs.  I attended this game and the most impressive thing, other than being hypnotized Manu Ginobili’s bald spot from my nosebleed seats, was that Vinny’s committment to defense seemed to pay dividends.  The Bulls held the Spurs to 85 points and were able to contain Ginobili, Richard Jefferson and Tony Parker in that game.  Was Vinny turning the corner?

Nope.  The circus road trip, one of the biggest cock-blocks in pro sports, rendered the Bulls limp and lifeless.  The Bulls are 2-9 since the beginning of the trip and are losing in blowout fashion most of the time.  The committment to defense is gone as the opposing team has scored over 100 points in 8 of the 9 losses, including the lowly Nets last night.  That’s the kind of loss that gets coaches fired.

It’s clear that Vinny has been tuned out.  The Bulls effort has been lackluster for a group of hungover teens completing community service much less a team of professional athletes.  The now infamous shoe-tying incident has captured this apathy and confusion perfectly.  According to Jarrett Jack the Bulls were so confused on defense that he simply stopped and tied his shoe while they caught up.  This kind of lack of effort cannot be tolerated and in the quick hook culture of the NBA is the surest way to lose your job.  The Gosselin’s have better body language around each other than this Bulls team does.

Vinny’s hiring was curious at the time.  He was a former player but was not coaching at the NBA level.  His background was in a front-office role.  The only qualification he seemed to have was the fact he was a former point guard and the Bulls had just acquired one of some note in Derrick Rose.  The biggest indictment of Vinny then is the fact that Rose is regressing in his second year.  Part of the issue is undoubtedly the ankle injury that Rose suffered in training camp and he doesn’t seem completely recovered from.  There is more to his struggles than just the ankle.  He is a terrible defender, poor long-range shooter, and reticent to taking over games when the Bulls are floundering.  Nobody else matters on this team other than Derrick Rose, if he’s not devleoping than changes need to be made.

We haven’t even touched on his horrible game coaching decisions, rotation patterns, and the fact he doesn’t know how to draw up a play in the huddle.  As Simmons has correctly pointed out on many occasions, he looks as befuddled on the sidelines as Shooter in Hoosiers.  If you are keeping score at home he is a bad game coach, his team has quit on him, his best player is regressing under his tenure and his closest coaching contemporary is a fictional drunk.  That seems like enough doesn’t it?

At this point, the only drama that remains is whether the Bulls will make their second straight Christmas Eve firing.  I’m going to the UC on the 15th to watch Kobe and the Lakers.  Here’s to hoping Vinny is gone by then.