3:03 PM Thanks to an ankle injury to QB Ricky Stanzi, Northwestern beat Iowa 17-10 in Iowa City today to end the Hawkeyes' undefeated season. Stanzi's replacement, redshirt freshman James Vandenberg, went 9-27 as a passer for 82 yards and a pick.
2:04 PMNewsday's Alan Hahn was courtside for Knicks' embarrassing non-competitive loss to the Cavaliers last night: "Knicks down 51-25....boos come at a timeout. Quick, throw the Yankees back on the court!"
1:57 PM Iowa's QB Ricky Stanzi is out of the Hawkeyes' game against Northwestern with a right ankle sprain. It's doubtful he'll return against the Wildcats, who lead 14-10 midway through third quarter. Iowa's new QB is redshirt freshman James Vandenberg.
1:04 PMMike Florio reported this week that a source told him NFL players might be considering striking during the playoffs. Patriots linebacker Adalius Thomas did his best to marginalize Florio in strongly denying the possibility. Florio is a former practicing attorney, he ain't making stuff up A.T.
Switching gears from the normal “holy cow check out the details on this sports news story hey!” formula. It’s a Friday and we’ve got something different and interesting. None of the details have changed since 1991 - and even then, not materially since 1982. You call it “old news,” we call it “evergreen.” Semantics: good for business, good for you.
(Not seeing it yet? Just wait.)
The guys over at BOTH TEAMS PLAYED HARD recently started a study on ranking the NBA logos from worst to first (hey, it’s the offseason), and we expected to see the Clippers near the bottom. Sure enough, they’re at #26 - but is it warranted?
A fellow ShareBro over at SLC DUNK pointed out to us earlier today (and as BTPH also dutifully noticed) that the Clippers and Lakers had surprisingly similar logos. We looked at them next to each other - as shown above - then shrugged our shoulders and said “eh.” But there’s something to it, as a simple but elegant adjustment will show below the break.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder in sports crime - O.J. Simpson still hasn’t found his wife’s killer but we can’t be assured that Dirk Nowitzki’s baby momma didn’t have something to do with it - former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki is arrested for being the gunman who killed Newport Beach (Calif.) millionaire William McLaughlin. If you’re looking for more information on him, don’t check his former teams. The Patriots have already spiked his former alumni player page.
According to the ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, Naposki — who was the paramour of McLaughlin’s girlfriend, Nanette Johnston — shot McLaughlin six times in an infamous 1994 slaying that sent shockwaves through the Southern California socialite circles and the medical aristocracy, since McLaughlin was the man who invented the process to separate plasma from blood.
Naturally, the case is being buried underneath all the Vick attention, but it’s a truly stunning turn of events. This is a cold case 15 years old, and suddenly dual arrests, one of which goes to a guy who played for both the Patriots and Colts in the late 1980s? Didn’t see that coming.
Then again, who saw the Magic win coming, either? After watching Cleveland breeze through its first two playoff series, sitting at home while waiting for the Celtics and Magic to finish beating each other up. When they finally returned to action on Wednesday, they jumped out to a lead, though that didn’t do anything to give them a win. No, instead, the Cavs dropped their first game of the playoffs, raising serious questions over whether the cast around LeBron James can keep up with Dwight Howard and a Magic team that looks more and more playoff tested.
Speaking of basketball, the Lakers are still in the playoffs, but they’re hardly the biggest basketball story going on in their own city. Ok, maybe they are the biggest story in L.A., but the Clippers are stealing some of their thunder, for good and bad reasons. First, they win the NBA Draft Lottery for the right to pick Blake Griffin. Then, less excitingly for fans of the red and blue (are any left?), is this incredibly damning portrait of owner Donald Sterling, who looks like a bigger and bigger racist with each article that gets published.
The most recent accusations were lobbed by ESPN The Magazine, which we tripped across via DEADSPIN, and they go into scary detail about his slumlording and overt racism in granting the right to live in his shantytowns. Here’s your gratuitous over-the-top pullquote, courtesy Mr. Sterling’s written records themselves (no one told him about this new invention called a “shredder”?)
When Sterling first bought the Ardmore, he remarked on its odor to Davenport. “That’s because of all the blacks in the building, they smell, they’r enot clean,” he said, accoding to Davenport’s testimony. “And it’s because of all the Mexicans taht just sit around and smoke and drink all day. He added: “So we have to get them out of here.” Shortly after, construction work caused a serious leak at the complex. When Davenport surveyed the damage, she found an elderly woman, Kandynce Jones, wading through several inches of water in Apartment 121. Jones was paralyzed on the right side and legally blind. She took medication for high blood pressure and to thin a clot in her leg. Still, she was remarkably cheerful, showing Davenport pictures of her children, even as some of her belongings floated around her.
Can’t David Stern steal back the top pick? I mean, top media market aside, is it really worth putting a talent like Blake Griffin in L.A. if it means helping Sterling make money? We’re certainly not sure it is.
Meanwhile, it was only a matter of time until the floodgates about Milton Bradley conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork. Well, consider them here to stay, after two radio hosts on Chicago station THE SCORE debated whether Bradley was a good contributor for the Cubs. Not surprisingly, the takes of the two hosts were vastly different, though the boiled down to once major concern: Is Bradley a clubhouse cancer? Or is he just infairly maligned by the media?
The issue at heart is a legitimate one, since the media continues to trot out a ditribe about how Bradley brings only negatives to a team. According to analysis from MOUTHPIECE SPORTS, which we’ve always heard and read as well, Bradley is actually known as a terrific teammate, by Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Theriot and, most recently, Bobby Scales.
That sure makes it seem like Bradley is the victim of unfair media criticism, though who really knows with a guy so volatile he rips an ACL while arguing a call at first base. Not third or home, first. Yet that in itself seems to prove that he’s got a lot more passion that he’s getting credit for, so we’re not sure what Matt Abbacatola was talking about. Do you?
Evidently Larry King’s “Shattered Glass”-esque story about horse racing was only the latest episode in his career of lying about famous sporting events and moments. Paging you, Mr. Sandy Koufax.
Is it possible that Tony Kornheiser is just a jerk? We all know that Joe Theismann hated him. Did Mike Tirico burn out on him, too?
Speaking of Theismann, we’re sorry, but we can’t get enough of this whole Keyboard Cat fad, and if we don’t use this now, we’ll never get a chance to. Sure it’s macabre, but then there’s a cat! Playing a keyboard!
SI decides hockey is just relevant enough to compile a list of the sports most rugged players. Thanks SI. Of course, it is a pretty solid list, considering the fact that Owen Nolan is near the top. That’s all we needed to know.
And, just for good measure, the first triple play of the MLB season. If you had the Texas Rangers in your pool, congratulations. You probably got good money on them, too.
There have been many opinions about Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling during his time running the team. The most common one being that Sterling is cheap and couldn’t care less about whether or not the team was winning, just as long as he was running a profit. He never signed the big free agents, or kept any of the team’s young talent anytime they began showing some promise.
Sterling has quieted some of these complaints in recent years by trying to re-sign players like Elton Brand and bringing in others such as Baron Davis. Then after essentially firing longtime general manager Elgin Baylor last October, he was hit with another criticism after Baylor filed a lawsuit against Sterling saying that he was a racist and that he had a “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure” within the organization. Well, Elgin’s lawsuit just took a pretty big blow. The NAACP is honoring Sterling with a lifetime achievement award.
Throughout most of the country our schools are named after important people in history like Presidents and generals with a poet or writer thrown in here and there for good measure. If not a person, then the school is usually named after the town it’s in or the township. Well, it’s like that in 49 of the 50 states anyway. Florida, it seems, would rather name their schools after sports figures.
We learned about some Florida schools that were going to be named after Dwyane Wade until he became a sex partyin‘, STD-givin‘ machine who didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. And now today we learn there’s a high school in Tampa named after New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Well, you can’t have a high school named after a sports figure without sports teams, and those teams need a mascot, but what exactly do you pick as your mascot when your name is Steinbrenner? The Yankees? The Disgustingly Rich? No, you name yourself the Warriors.
Want to make a lawyer’s ears perk up? Use the phrase “history of racial discrimination” around them, and it’s like asking a dog if they want to go for a walk. If you’re short on breath or time and want the same effect, however, worry not; mentioning Donald Sterling’s name will do just fine as well. As the LOS ANGELES TIMES reports, the owner of the Clippers was just sued by longtime Clippers GM Elgin Baylor, who accused the franchise, Sterling, and team president Andy Roeser of employment discrimination. The NBA’s mentioned too, but it’s Baylor’s allegations about Sterling that should (finally) place the Los Angeles-area real estate mogul under the national scrutiny he so richly deserves.
(Elgin Baylor, probably just hating Sterling, life)
If Donald Sterling’s name rings a vague bell to those outside Southern California, it’s probably due to his reign as the owner of the Clippers, where prior to the past few years he was notorious for maximizing profit at the expense of his teams, routinely unloading players before their level of play would force him to pay top dollar. It worked - for him. But according to Baylor’s lawsuit, Sterling’s motives may not have been strictly monetary; Baylor alleges that what Sterling really wanted, and this is an alleged direct quote, was “the Clippers team to be composed of ‘Poor Black boys from the South’ and a White head coach.” Oh, it gets worse. So worse.
The NBA season starts tonight in SoCal, with the Lakers playing the Jazz in Anacrime in a preseason money grab game. Up the 5 Freeway this afternoon, the Clippers, like most of us at the moment, are tightening their financial belt by eliminating the NBA’s only million-dollar mascot (wait, the Phoenix Suns Gorilla makes what?!!).
Team GM Elgin Baylor was cut loose by club owner Donald Sterling, and he’s none to happy about it. Why, I have no idea, as Baylor has been on the free money gravy train for many, many years. He has been the team’s General Manager for the past decade in title only, and had about as much positive impact in the Clips’ court affairs as O.J. Simpson just did in Vegas.
Baylor to the LAT:
“There is a dispute, and on the advice of my attorney they did not want me to discuss it,” Baylor said. “That’s all I can say.”
There’s no truth to the rumor that Baylor has drafted Yale Galanter to make his case in the dispute.
It is kinda sad though that Baylor, who has his former Laker #23 hanging in the Staples Center rafters, won’t be around for Clips games this season. He was a fun, elder statesman type. And a pretty good dude, at least in my dealings with him. And most importantly, symbolic of the lovably futile nature of the NBA’s saddest sack franchise.
So here in L.A., we’re all waiting for the Jojers and Fightin’ Phils to crank it up on Thursday. Today on local sports talk radio, there was a lot of crowing going on by Dodgers fans as they happily dumped on the fallen Angels. Out of that discussion, I heard the first funny thing come out of Tommy Lasorda’s mouth (kinda) since he claimed he didn’t patronize prostitutes. Read more…
