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• Michael Irvin almost meets his maker when he’s met by a mad motorist with a Magnum.
• A Kentucky ‘Cat goes Wild in a 54-point outburst versus the Vols.
• Isiah Thomas’ brother can’t pass a church without passing urine onto it.
• Michael Jordan wants to give you his tender, juicy meat.
It’s not a good time to be related to Isiah Thomas, notwithstanding all the free popcorn you can eat. First his 17-year-old daughter is thrown under the bus when he puts the blame on her for an accidental overdose. Now his ne’er-do-well brother finds himself in trouble for urinating on a church.
Police in Clarendon Hills, Ill., arrested Preston Thomas last week for public urination at Notre Dame Parish. Early theories include a misguided effort to participate in Isiah Thomas’ old IU-Notre Dame rivalry, or an attempt to emulate his younger brother in urinating all over something beloved by many people. The police report doesn’t mention alcohol, but it does give one mindboggling detail that we’ll attempt to break down, after the jump.
After throwing nearly $50 million away on Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry, Jerome James and Malik Rose, who may combine to contribute only Rose’s garbage time minutes, the Knicks are finally making a sound business decision: they’re recouping their Marbury costs, one game at a time.
Get your notepad ready, because a series of events this complex and asinine could only happen under James Dolan. First the Knicks told Marbury he wouldn’t play, but they’d still pay him. Then, shorthanded on Wednesday, they told Marbury he had to play, since they were paying him. He then refused to play, mad because they hadn’t been playing him. Now they’re refusing to pay for his refusal to play. Got all that? Now you’ve caught up on the last week of As the Garden Turns. (All this, plus Magic throwing Isiah under the bus, after the jump.)
There’s a new aria in the never-ending soap opera that is the relationship between guard Stephon Marbury and the Knicks. After weeks of agitating for playing time under new coach Mike D’Antoni, the team finally seemed to acquiesce with Friday’s trade of Jamal Crawford. Perfect fix right? Well, according to ESPN.com, now Marbury doesn’t want the minutes created by Crawford’s absence, even though New York was forced to play with a depleted bench after sending out three players and waiting for the arrival of their replacements.
(One of these guys no longer is in New York. The other is in the same seat.)
Welcome to Madison Square Garden, where solutions create more problems because you can’t get rid of enough misogynistic egomaniacs to function as a reasonable sports franchise. While Isiah Thomas has been busy throwing his daughter under the bus for his own attempted suicide, Marbury’s been agitating to get out of town, then insisting he’s staying, and then blabbing about a need to play only to insist he isn’t going to.
Well, it’s been one whole night since Philadelphia has won a major sports championship. I can’t imagine how Philly sports fans are dealing with the drought - based on Wednesday night, I’d guess getting hammered, overturning and then setting fire to a school bus full of children. If they are getting restless, the ticker tape parade is today, but the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS says mayor Michael Nutter has one simple request: don’t “be a jackass.” Next I guess you want Philly fans to stop rooting for the Phillies, Mr. Mayor?
Also ready to overturn things, but this time in anger - Fox Sports and MLB executives, after the Nielsen ratings showed that the 2008 World Series were the lowest-rated ever. But don’t worry - Fox and Commissioner Bud Selig both want you to know it was all the fault of the weather.
They weren’t necessarily rioting in the streets of Cincinnati last night - although Thanksgiving is coming up, and that does mean the legendary WKRP Turkey Drop is coming back to downtown! But, beating a ranked team does count for something, even if it was only No. 24 South Florida, who played like turkeys again. (Ha! See what I did there? Professional writer, folks.) I like Bulls’ head coach Jim Leavitt well enough, but another collapse in the second half of the season? Going 8-7 in your last 15 games against FBS opponents is not good.
What is good is being 21 and having $57.4 million in your pocket. That’s what Andrew Bynum has after signing a four-year extension with the Lakers on Thursday. All for a player who has started a whopping 80 games in his career and averaged a shade over seven points per game. But he has that infamous “unlimited upside potential” that Jay Bilas drives into your head each draft, even if this probably means the end for Lamar Odom in LA.
Yup, Greg Oden hurt his foot less than three minutes into his first regular season game against the Lakers. That’s not a punchline to a joke, but the sad truth. He played through the first half before throwing in the towel. ESPN.COM reports that Oden suffered a mid-foot sprain, which sounds like a made up injury you would use to get out of work, but apparently you can get if you are made out of peanut brittle.
Not that Oden was tearing the joint up. His stat line for the game: 0-4 from the field and five rebounds in 13 minutes. Which puts him about on par with the rest of the Blazers, as they were thumped by Los Angeles 96-76. As for Oden…he has a trip to the MRI machine scheduled for later today, or as he calls it, “The Mother Ship.”
Having a much better NBA debut was Derrick Rose, who scored 11 points and had nine assists as the Bulls stuck it to their ex-coach Scott Skiles by beating the Bucks 108-95. Meanwhile, that clanging you heard in Boston was LeBron James rattling free throws all over the place against the Celtics. He missed four of eight free throws, all in the fourth quarter, and Cleveland fell 90-85.
Here’s some more of last night’s news, but be forewarned: Bud Selig says that he has the power to suspend this after six links.
As somebody who grew up in Chicago during the years that the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons we battling in the late 80’s, and then the Bulls dynasty of the 90’s, I’ve never exactly been a big fan of Isiah Thomas. I don’t care that the high school he went to is a few blocks down the street from where I live, or that he’s a local product just like Derrick Rose. He was a Piston, so I hate him.
So like many other bloggers, I enjoyed Zeke’s time with the New York Knicks because it’s always fun to see people you don’t like fall flat on their face. Plus, I’m not exactly a Knicks fan, either, so watching Isiah help destroy that franchise was an added bonus. That being said, I’m not going to pile on Thomas for his overdose on sleeping pills. Whether he did it accidentally or he was actually trying to kill himself, I don’t know, but I’m not going to get on his case for it. I’ll just let Anucha Browne Sanders — the woman who got $12 million after suing Thomas for sexual harrassment — take care of that for me.
In the latest twist of this silly, stupid soap opera, Isiah Thomas’s story is now that the 911 call was for his 17-year-old daughter. First of all, capital move, Zeke. Father of the Year type stuff there.
(Courtesy the sick, brilliant minds at TIRICOSUAVE.COM)
But if you’re going to make public statements like that and they’re obvious lies, well, expect the chief of the police department to call bullpistons. According to ESPN, the local chief is somewhere between incredulous and apoplectic:
“It wasn’t his daughter,” Harrison Police Chief David Hall told The Associated Press. “And why they’re throwing her under the bus is beyond my ability to understand.” Read more…
The New York media has been breathlessly reporting all day that Isiah Thomas overdosed on sleeping pills, which caused a visit by police and a trip to the hospital.
(Ahhh, Isiah’s happier, fashion mishap days)
The NEW YORK POST caught up with Thomas this afternoon to ask him about the situation, and the former Knicks coach didn’t exactly confirm what had been previously reported.
WCBS and WABC in New York are reporting that Isiah Thomas has been taken to the hospital in White Plains, N.Y. with what is being described as a drug overdose. Thomas lives in the Westchester suburb of Harrison.
Police responded to a 911 call from a cell phone that claimed Thomas had overdosed on sleeping pills. It is not known whether or not the overdose was intentional or accidental. Isiah was relieved of his duties as head coach and President of Basketball Operations for the Knicks back in April.
