Wednesday, December 22, 2004
THE CLOWNING
Before I get started here in the usual fashion, I want to bring up two things.
One, there's going to be cuts at the Seattle Times. I originally saw a report on KOMO about this, and Connie Thompson (midday newscast) was at the desk reporting that there would be cuts, and the number 18% was given, as well as the word "sports." I think the last time I heard about sports getting curtailed in the Seattle media, it was KIRO cutting the sports segments on the evening newscasts to one minute in length. I think that happened somewhere in the weird transition phase between Tony Ventrella going to Q13 and Gaard Swanson being hired onto the KIRO payroll.
The second thing I wanted to bring up: maybe the Times should hike their ad price way up so they don't have to pink-slip anyone, or at least raise the ad prices for the Mariners. Have you read any of the sports stories at their page yet? These ads for the 16-game plans are at the top of EVERY article. Seriously, I've got nine browsers' worth of Seattle Times sports stories open right now and every one of them has the ad.
Technically I'm out of "things," but the Times also is running an article today where Ron Judd follows up on all the local Olympians he covered last summer. This of course includes Bremerton swimmer Tara Kirk. After getting two bronze medals at the Short Course Worlds in Indianapolis last October, Tara, in her words, "didn't do anything." Of course, that just refers to the pool. Taking classes at Stanford -- and if it's Tara, they definitely aren't easy -- definitely is far from doing nothing. Upon receiving her Olympic silver medal, she stored it in a sock, which isn't the most odd story I've heard of or seen involving a medal. I saw that a Canadian medalist had his medal somewhere in his car, hidden either in the glove compartment or beneath the seatcushions.
Now, the usual.
MARINERS
No new articles concerning the Mariners today out of the Seattle dailies. I guess I could wait a couple hours (it's 1:10am as I write this) and wait for the News Tribune to get their new stuff up. Maybe not. Maybe we should just pretend we're the ad wizards behind the Mariners' next ad campaign and toss out a bunch of ideas.
This isn't one of the commercial ideas, but Richie Sexson and/or Eddie Guardado absolutely MUST plant a clown inside Bob Melvin's office before they play the Diamondbacks. Then have one waiting at his car. Then his house. THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. Who's with me? They've got to think of something clown-related. In a related note, the caller on KJR's Groz With Gas Mails that played Bob Melvin being freaked out by clowns was priceless.
SEAHAWKS
Matt Hasselbeck has been playing hurt. He's battered and bruised, but as Trent Dilfer says, it's "no different than what any other quarterback is going through." In other words, tough. At least Hasselbeck's not whining about it. He's actually done quite well since the initial multi-week hangover from the Mother of All Charley Horses. Hasselbeck's playing hurt, but I think he may have learned a thing or two after being the understudy of Brett Favre, who in my mind is the most durable quarterback of our generation.
Jose Miguel Romero sits down with Maurice Morris. Romero grills him on the kickoff and punt return game, but then lets him off easy in the second half of the interview. What did I get out of the first half? The Seahawks' return game is utterly predictable.
Mike Holmgren says that no matter what, getting into the playoffs in itself is an accomplishment. Ken Hamlin suggests that it's an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. But even a playoff berth is far from sealed at this point. Jeremy posted the playoff scenarios yesterday if the Seahawks win the NFC West, which in the very least would be great because we all could get bittersweet 2004 NFC West Division Champions shirts out of it. Amidst all this playoff speculation there still exists a doomsday scenario in which the Seahawks lay down for their two remaining games and Arizona runs the table. Both teams would be 7-9 and Arizona would have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Seahawks by virtue of beating them twice. Of course, this may or may not depend on Saint Louis losing one of their remaining games, and I didn't want to think much beyond the second tiebreaker in the "three-way tie" scenario if they all ended up 7-9. I'll probably leave that to Jeremy. If you want to do all of this for yourself, do it here. You might want to pop up a couple of other browser windows too with a few teams' schedules and scores. Common opponents isn't the easiest tiebreaker to discern without the use of a pencil and paper or a mind that doesn't get cluttered easily.
But the real neat thing about the tiebreaker link is learning that the 12th tiebreaker in a tie for a wild card playoff spot involving three or more teams is a coin toss. I bet if the Seahawks got into that scenario, they'd be duped by a two-headed coin, something that would mysteriously fail to be ratted out, unlike on Friday Night Lights.
BASKETBALL
The Marvin Williams Watch
The Tar Heels beat Vermont last night by a score of 93-65. North Carolina is off until Tuesday, when they host UNC-Wilmington. Through ten games, Bremerton grad Marvin Williams is averaging 9.1 points and 6.1 rebounds in 21.8 minutes a game and leads Roy Williams' bench in minutes.
Huskies
There's a chance that Brandon Roy won't play against Sacred Heart tonight, not that it should matter. Roy wouldn't have played if the Huskies had built up a substantial lead against NC State on Sunday, but that game was a tight one. As a result, the Huskies are left with Tre Simmons, who is averaging 16.4 points a game and pulling down 5.6 rebounds a game, the latter of which leads the team. Also, don't forget to see the map in Bob Sherwin's article which will answer the long-standing question, "Where is Sacred Heart University?"
Bulldogs
Jeremy covered the Gonzaga game, an 83-70 win by the Bulldogs over the Eagles from Eastern Washington.
Sonics
Meet former Husky and Kentucky Wildcat Mark Pope -- twelfth man and loving it. He's on the injured list for the Nuggets with one of those BS injuries, in this case, patellar tendinitis. Why does he like it? He's played 20 minutes over the past two seasons, he's made $1.3M, and the meter is still ticking. Absolutely insane. He's planning for med school whenever this whole basketball thing goes away. He's a well-learned man, this Mark Pope guy. He's also a well-behaved guy, well-liked among teams for which he's played and in the locker rooms he's inhabited. Such cannot be said for former UNC player and former Sonic training camper Joe Forte (a vestige of the Vin Baker trade), who has basically been blacklisted from the NBA since his ruckus with the Sonics (details were withheld as far as I knew), and justifiably so. I haven't heard of anyone liking Forte's locker room presence.
Here's to hoping the Sonics don't come out flat in the first quarter. They haven't played since Friday. I'm just hoping Ron Murray has learned the flow of the offense a little better in practice, because I think more and more that this team needs him to fill some of Ray Allen's minutes.
As said in both of the two articles, Carmelo Anthony will not play tonight. Danny Fortson (second link) suggests that the Nuggets play better and have better ball movement without Carmelo. In a peculiar note, Ray Allen, Antonio Daniels, and Jerome James all had the flu or flu-like symptoms. They are expected to play. Also, Rashard Lewis practiced yesterday.
Steve Kelley on the Vince Carter play-tipping story: big deal. In the NBA, chances are that every team knows what plays the other team is running. However, it's all in the matter of how those plays are executed that determines who gets the competitive edge or emerges victorious (insert cliche here). In somewhat of a personal story, my junior legion coach used to tell us that even if we told everyone and their mother at the field and in the stands that we were going to lay down a sacrifice bunt, it should still work if we execute it correctly. Hey, I thought it was a decent analogy. I'm trying here. In another note, someone forgot to spell-check Kelley's article, because the correct spelling of the Denver's head coach's surname is Bzdelik, as opposed to "Bzedlik." I know it's hard to spell, but it kinda rubs it in when it's repeated a bunch of times in the article.
Upcoming...
Tonight vs. Denver
Monday at Utah
HOCKEY
The more joyful news is that the World Junior Championships start on Christmas Day, with four games being played. Canada (composed mostly of WHL players) will play Slovakia and the USA (composed mostly of college players) will play Russia. Surprisingly, ESPN actually cares about this tournament, and will televise three of the preliminary games involving Team USA, and all elimination round games involving Team USA. Unfortunately, the CBC isn't televising the tournament, or else I'd be able to give you something similar to the World Cup coverage.
Todd Bertuzzi is taking the plea agreement for his assault charge, thereby avoiding trial and a jail sentence. Though he definitely still has the fans in Vancouver on his side, I can't help but think, as a Canuck fan outside of Vancouver, that perhaps they might be jaded in the same way that a lot of the fans of the Lakers still haven't soured on Kobe Bryant.
As somewhat of a dark commemoration, the Clip of the Night on Dan Russell's Sportstalk show out of Vancouver last night was the replay of John Shorthouse and Tom Larscheid doing the Canuck broadcast of the Bertuzzi incident. Quotes from Larscheid: "God, it makes me so mad when you see stuff like that" and "Everyone knows I love the game of hockey, but I hated this game here tonight." Something that will forever be completely overshadowed by the suckerpunch will be that Trevor Linden became the all-time leading scorer in the history of the Vancouver Canucks in that 9-2 defeat at GM Place against Colorado. I hope you like the way I set up that recap. Think "brick wall." The press conference the next morning was to announce deadline deals that the Canucks had done.
As for more immediate reaction from the Bertuzzi incident, here's Jeremy twice, along with columnists and bloggers. All the hoopla and the feelings surrounding all of this came back to me as I read through those posts after digging them out of the archive, and it was quite harrowing.
Upcoming...
no WHL or AHL games from the 19th to the 26th, NorPac is off the weekend of the 24th and 25th as well
---
Have a happy safe Wednesday, each and every one of you, the devil inside (cue the INXS riff).
One, there's going to be cuts at the Seattle Times. I originally saw a report on KOMO about this, and Connie Thompson (midday newscast) was at the desk reporting that there would be cuts, and the number 18% was given, as well as the word "sports." I think the last time I heard about sports getting curtailed in the Seattle media, it was KIRO cutting the sports segments on the evening newscasts to one minute in length. I think that happened somewhere in the weird transition phase between Tony Ventrella going to Q13 and Gaard Swanson being hired onto the KIRO payroll.
The second thing I wanted to bring up: maybe the Times should hike their ad price way up so they don't have to pink-slip anyone, or at least raise the ad prices for the Mariners. Have you read any of the sports stories at their page yet? These ads for the 16-game plans are at the top of EVERY article. Seriously, I've got nine browsers' worth of Seattle Times sports stories open right now and every one of them has the ad.
Technically I'm out of "things," but the Times also is running an article today where Ron Judd follows up on all the local Olympians he covered last summer. This of course includes Bremerton swimmer Tara Kirk. After getting two bronze medals at the Short Course Worlds in Indianapolis last October, Tara, in her words, "didn't do anything." Of course, that just refers to the pool. Taking classes at Stanford -- and if it's Tara, they definitely aren't easy -- definitely is far from doing nothing. Upon receiving her Olympic silver medal, she stored it in a sock, which isn't the most odd story I've heard of or seen involving a medal. I saw that a Canadian medalist had his medal somewhere in his car, hidden either in the glove compartment or beneath the seatcushions.
Now, the usual.
MARINERS
No new articles concerning the Mariners today out of the Seattle dailies. I guess I could wait a couple hours (it's 1:10am as I write this) and wait for the News Tribune to get their new stuff up. Maybe not. Maybe we should just pretend we're the ad wizards behind the Mariners' next ad campaign and toss out a bunch of ideas.
This isn't one of the commercial ideas, but Richie Sexson and/or Eddie Guardado absolutely MUST plant a clown inside Bob Melvin's office before they play the Diamondbacks. Then have one waiting at his car. Then his house. THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. Who's with me? They've got to think of something clown-related. In a related note, the caller on KJR's Groz With Gas Mails that played Bob Melvin being freaked out by clowns was priceless.
SEAHAWKS
Matt Hasselbeck has been playing hurt. He's battered and bruised, but as Trent Dilfer says, it's "no different than what any other quarterback is going through." In other words, tough. At least Hasselbeck's not whining about it. He's actually done quite well since the initial multi-week hangover from the Mother of All Charley Horses. Hasselbeck's playing hurt, but I think he may have learned a thing or two after being the understudy of Brett Favre, who in my mind is the most durable quarterback of our generation.
Jose Miguel Romero sits down with Maurice Morris. Romero grills him on the kickoff and punt return game, but then lets him off easy in the second half of the interview. What did I get out of the first half? The Seahawks' return game is utterly predictable.
Mike Holmgren says that no matter what, getting into the playoffs in itself is an accomplishment. Ken Hamlin suggests that it's an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. But even a playoff berth is far from sealed at this point. Jeremy posted the playoff scenarios yesterday if the Seahawks win the NFC West, which in the very least would be great because we all could get bittersweet 2004 NFC West Division Champions shirts out of it. Amidst all this playoff speculation there still exists a doomsday scenario in which the Seahawks lay down for their two remaining games and Arizona runs the table. Both teams would be 7-9 and Arizona would have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Seahawks by virtue of beating them twice. Of course, this may or may not depend on Saint Louis losing one of their remaining games, and I didn't want to think much beyond the second tiebreaker in the "three-way tie" scenario if they all ended up 7-9. I'll probably leave that to Jeremy. If you want to do all of this for yourself, do it here. You might want to pop up a couple of other browser windows too with a few teams' schedules and scores. Common opponents isn't the easiest tiebreaker to discern without the use of a pencil and paper or a mind that doesn't get cluttered easily.
But the real neat thing about the tiebreaker link is learning that the 12th tiebreaker in a tie for a wild card playoff spot involving three or more teams is a coin toss. I bet if the Seahawks got into that scenario, they'd be duped by a two-headed coin, something that would mysteriously fail to be ratted out, unlike on Friday Night Lights.
BASKETBALL
The Marvin Williams Watch
The Tar Heels beat Vermont last night by a score of 93-65. North Carolina is off until Tuesday, when they host UNC-Wilmington. Through ten games, Bremerton grad Marvin Williams is averaging 9.1 points and 6.1 rebounds in 21.8 minutes a game and leads Roy Williams' bench in minutes.
Huskies
There's a chance that Brandon Roy won't play against Sacred Heart tonight, not that it should matter. Roy wouldn't have played if the Huskies had built up a substantial lead against NC State on Sunday, but that game was a tight one. As a result, the Huskies are left with Tre Simmons, who is averaging 16.4 points a game and pulling down 5.6 rebounds a game, the latter of which leads the team. Also, don't forget to see the map in Bob Sherwin's article which will answer the long-standing question, "Where is Sacred Heart University?"
Bulldogs
Jeremy covered the Gonzaga game, an 83-70 win by the Bulldogs over the Eagles from Eastern Washington.
Sonics
Meet former Husky and Kentucky Wildcat Mark Pope -- twelfth man and loving it. He's on the injured list for the Nuggets with one of those BS injuries, in this case, patellar tendinitis. Why does he like it? He's played 20 minutes over the past two seasons, he's made $1.3M, and the meter is still ticking. Absolutely insane. He's planning for med school whenever this whole basketball thing goes away. He's a well-learned man, this Mark Pope guy. He's also a well-behaved guy, well-liked among teams for which he's played and in the locker rooms he's inhabited. Such cannot be said for former UNC player and former Sonic training camper Joe Forte (a vestige of the Vin Baker trade), who has basically been blacklisted from the NBA since his ruckus with the Sonics (details were withheld as far as I knew), and justifiably so. I haven't heard of anyone liking Forte's locker room presence.
Here's to hoping the Sonics don't come out flat in the first quarter. They haven't played since Friday. I'm just hoping Ron Murray has learned the flow of the offense a little better in practice, because I think more and more that this team needs him to fill some of Ray Allen's minutes.
As said in both of the two articles, Carmelo Anthony will not play tonight. Danny Fortson (second link) suggests that the Nuggets play better and have better ball movement without Carmelo. In a peculiar note, Ray Allen, Antonio Daniels, and Jerome James all had the flu or flu-like symptoms. They are expected to play. Also, Rashard Lewis practiced yesterday.
Steve Kelley on the Vince Carter play-tipping story: big deal. In the NBA, chances are that every team knows what plays the other team is running. However, it's all in the matter of how those plays are executed that determines who gets the competitive edge or emerges victorious (insert cliche here). In somewhat of a personal story, my junior legion coach used to tell us that even if we told everyone and their mother at the field and in the stands that we were going to lay down a sacrifice bunt, it should still work if we execute it correctly. Hey, I thought it was a decent analogy. I'm trying here. In another note, someone forgot to spell-check Kelley's article, because the correct spelling of the Denver's head coach's surname is Bzdelik, as opposed to "Bzedlik." I know it's hard to spell, but it kinda rubs it in when it's repeated a bunch of times in the article.
Upcoming...
Tonight vs. Denver
Monday at Utah
HOCKEY
The more joyful news is that the World Junior Championships start on Christmas Day, with four games being played. Canada (composed mostly of WHL players) will play Slovakia and the USA (composed mostly of college players) will play Russia. Surprisingly, ESPN actually cares about this tournament, and will televise three of the preliminary games involving Team USA, and all elimination round games involving Team USA. Unfortunately, the CBC isn't televising the tournament, or else I'd be able to give you something similar to the World Cup coverage.
Todd Bertuzzi is taking the plea agreement for his assault charge, thereby avoiding trial and a jail sentence. Though he definitely still has the fans in Vancouver on his side, I can't help but think, as a Canuck fan outside of Vancouver, that perhaps they might be jaded in the same way that a lot of the fans of the Lakers still haven't soured on Kobe Bryant.
As somewhat of a dark commemoration, the Clip of the Night on Dan Russell's Sportstalk show out of Vancouver last night was the replay of John Shorthouse and Tom Larscheid doing the Canuck broadcast of the Bertuzzi incident. Quotes from Larscheid: "God, it makes me so mad when you see stuff like that" and "Everyone knows I love the game of hockey, but I hated this game here tonight." Something that will forever be completely overshadowed by the suckerpunch will be that Trevor Linden became the all-time leading scorer in the history of the Vancouver Canucks in that 9-2 defeat at GM Place against Colorado. I hope you like the way I set up that recap. Think "brick wall." The press conference the next morning was to announce deadline deals that the Canucks had done.
As for more immediate reaction from the Bertuzzi incident, here's Jeremy twice, along with columnists and bloggers. All the hoopla and the feelings surrounding all of this came back to me as I read through those posts after digging them out of the archive, and it was quite harrowing.
Upcoming...
no WHL or AHL games from the 19th to the 26th, NorPac is off the weekend of the 24th and 25th as well
---
Have a happy safe Wednesday, each and every one of you, the devil inside (cue the INXS riff).
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