The reason you hate Sidney Crosby

I was listening to Felger and Mazz today, and with the Bruins-Penguins series starting tomorrow, they were talking about Sidney Crosby, particularly that they see him as being easy to hate.

He dives. He whines. He's a little dirty at times. He wants all the calls, just like LeBron James. Etc, etc.

People hating Crosby is nothing new. I've seen him called "Cindy" lots of times (because if we want to insult a guy, there's no better way than by calling him a woman, right?), and the great FakeWIPCaller calls for him to be crippled every time the Penguins play the Flyers.

I just hope that all the people who hate Crosby understand that they do it not just because he's a great player, and not just because he's a brat ...

... but also because he doesn't play for their team.

If Sidney Crosby played in Chicago, they'd love him in Chicago. If he played in Philadelphia, FakeWIPCaller (and the real ones he parodies) would love him. If he played in Boston, where they love the ... let's just say sometimes chippy ... Brad Marchand, they'd love him here.

And he's be a no-good, piece-of-crap little punk in Pittsburgh.

I don't condemn this. After all, we are all hypocrites. For example, Mrs. Last Honest and I get practically apoplectic at the sight of Skylar Diggins strutting, preening and acting like she gets fouled if you look at her with both eyes at the same time, but if she played for a team we liked, we'd love her spunk and her competitive fire.

So I understand it. Just be honest about it.

Just get over hating LeBron ... seriously

I wouldn't know Patrick Muldowney if I fell over him, but he wrote something genius on the Twitter machine.

@patmuldowney "Oh my god, Michael Jordan did it again!" - Everyone in 1998"LeBron won the game? Fire the other coach!" - Everyone in 2013

Of course, Patrick was referring to LeBron James' game-winning layup against the Indiana Pacers in the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals last night, and the criticism Pacers' coach Frank Vogel got for not having 7-foot, 2-inch center Roy Hibbert in the game.

Mike Prada of SB Nation breaks down the play to explain why Hibbert's presence may not have made a difference, and we'll obviously never know. Hell, for all we know, James might have dunked on Hibbert to win it.

Muldowney also fired off a series of tweets about the play, but it's the first one, combined with the one I cited above, that really sums up both the player and the reaction to the play.

@patmuldowney LeBron James. The greatest basketball player in the world.

What's sad is that even now, there are still people who haven't gotten over "The Decision," and don't fool yourself, that's what this is all about ... the residual, wrongheaded-outside-of-Cleveland bitterness (and it wouldn't be the worst thing ever for Cleveland to give it up, either) that LeBron ruined their fantasies of taking the hometown team to a championship by going elsewhere to play with better players and win one and doing a dumb TV show to announce he was going to do it.

(To speak of where I live for a second, all the people in Boston who hate LeBron and speak lovingly of Paul Pierce for having green blood running through his veins must forget that Pierce was going to demand a trade if the Celtics didn't get him acceptable teammates after they lost out on Kevin Durant and Greg Oden in the lottery. Then Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett arrived, the Celtics won a title and all was right with the world. Granted, none of them are LeBron James, but they're all surefire NBA Hall-of-Famers.)

So let me spell it out for all of you LeBron haters who are still out there:

1. He is the best player in the world. Let me say that one more time. He. Is. The. Best. Player. In. The. World.

2. He has four MVP awards in five years. He will probably win more, and by the way, one more catches Saint Michael, two more catch Kareem and three more mean everyone else has to try and catch him.

3. He has a championship. He has a decent chance to win more.

All this, and he doesn't even turn 29 until December. Barring his body breaking down (certainly possible, given all the miles he has put on it after coming out of high school), he could ... possibly ... if lots of things go right ... end up ...

... better than Jordan (shudder!)

So just deal with it.

Joba's not wrong just because he's Joba and Mariano's Mariano

Perhaps you've heard about the little dustup in Yankee-land yesterday between Mariano Rivera and Joba Chamberlain. The short version is that Mariano was doing an interview in the dugout, Joba was chatting kind of loudly near the dugout, Mariano asked Joba to pipe down, Joba took exception.

In truth, they probably both could have handled it better. Maybe Mariano could have grabbed Joba privately after all was said and done and explained that he was talking about an emotional meeting he had with families earlier in the day. Perhaps Joba could have said, "Sorry, I didn't realize I was messing up your interview" when Mariano first brought it up and quieted down or moved a little further away.

But from what I have read, the whole incident is Joba's fault because who was involved, and some of the comments on the Daily News piece linked above are classless, particularly the "send him back to the reservation" (Joba is a Native American) and referring to his family as "fat pigs in wheelchairs" ones, although someone did point out that it's pretty low to make fun of his father's polio.

On the one hand, you have Mariano Rivera, one of the classiest and rightfully most-respected players in baseball. If the guy has ever put a foot wrong in public, I can't remember it off the top of my head. He even resisted the urge to tell the entire city of Boston to perform certain anatomically impossible acts when they gave him a standing ovation for blowing two saves in the 2004 ALCS.  

On the other hand, you have Joba Chamberlain, he of the drunk driving charge, the trampoline-related injury ... and the disappointing career in pinstripes.

So, obviously, people are going to take Mariano's side, regardless of who was right and who was wrong.  I had two discussions on Twitter this morning based around that line of thinking, and you can read a blog post from one of the people I was conversing with here.

I know I'm in the minority on this one. Oh well.

Call me naive

I had this chat on the Twitter machine with Dave Zirin the other day about the recent releases of Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo.

@LastHonestSport @EdgeofSports In case I missed it, do you think @brendon310 and @ChrisWarcraft were cut for their political outspokenness? 

@EdgeofSports @LastHonestSport @brendon310 @ChrisWarcraft Not entirely, but utterly naive to not think it was a factor.

@LastHonestSport @EdgeofSports Do you think it was the general outspokenness, the particular topic or that their arguments are more liberal?

@EdgeofSports @LastHonestSport yes

It's the easiest line in the world to draw -- player is outspoken advocate on divisive issue (gay rights) ... player gets cut ... player must have been cut for that reason. It's not like Zirin is the only one who sees it a possibly more than a coincidence. Even Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton thinks so.

"I just think sports officials ought to be honest about what the heck is going on, same way I think public officials should be honest about what's going on, so that bothers me probably as much, if not more, than the actual decision," Dayton said.

The thinking may even have the added advantage of being true, but ... and I say this as someone who thinks Kluwe and Ayanbadejo should have been Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year last year ...

... how do we know?

First, let me state the obvious. Forget about supporting gay rights; Adrian Peterson or Joe Flacco could check every box on the gay stereotype list so much that the ghost of Liberace says, "Dude, ease up," and they'd still be gainfully employed.

But that actually sort of proves my point. For instance, Kevin Seifert of ESPN, who does think that Kluwe's advocacy, if it didn't outright get him cut, didn't help him, pointed out that he didn't have a particularly good year, is over 30 and would cost a lot more money than his likely replacement, rookie Jeff Locke.

As for Ayanbadejo, even he said he was cut because he was a 36-year-old special-teams player and there are younger, less-expensive players who do what he does (after an initial report implied he may think otherwise), and he acknowledged that the Ravens have always supported him.

In other words, Kluwe and Ayanbadejo are in that vast class of players who are good enough to be on teams, but can easily be replaced by someone younger and cheaper who does the same thing. It's the same thing that could work against Jason Collins in free agency.

Could a team hold Kluwe's or Ayanbadejo's politics or Collins' homosexuality against them while hiding behind age, salary or production? Of course they could. But unless someone in an organization comes right out and says it, or gives a damn good indication of it, it may be impossible to know.

Call me naive.