The dumbest stories in sports (Part 2)

The NFL schedule for next season was released tonight, and apparently that is cause for much rejoicing.

The NFL Schedule will be released tonight. Block off your Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays accordingly.
— ESPN (@espn) April 23, 2014

So that got Mrs. Last Honest and I to thinking ... what sporting events would happen between tonight (April 23) and the first game of the NFL season Sept. 4? Here's what we came up with:

• The remainder of the NBA and NHL playoffs.
• More than four months of the Major League Baseball season, including the All-Star Game.
• The College World Series.
• The Little League World Series.
• The Baseball Hall of Fame induction.
• The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL drafts.
• The World Cup.
• The end of this Premier League season ... and the start of the next one.
• The French Open, Wimbledon and most of the U.S. Open.
• The British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship.
• The Indianapolis 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Grand Prix of Monaco ... all on the same day.
• The WNBA regular season. 
• The Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont.
• The opening of the Canadian Football League season (by the way, they announced their schedule in February).
• The Tour de France.
• The Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight.

But by all means, let's obsess over the NFL schedule.

Hollander's handbooks and a trip back in time

I don't really know why the New York Times decided to publish a story today about Zander Hollander, but I'm glad they did.

"From 1971 to 1997, Hollander edited sports yearbooks, brick-like tomes known as Complete Handbooks, which in the pre-Internet era were almost holy objects to a certain type of sports-crazed youngster. Here, in one glorious place, was information — statistics, team rosters, records, schedules, predictions for the coming season and more — freed from the restrictions of newspaper column inches and far beyond what a still embryonic cable system was providing."

I was actually thinking about the Hollander handbooks not long ago, remembering for some reason the story in the 1980 handbook (like the others I had as a kid, long lost to time and cleaning, so I'm working somewhat off memory here) about Nolan Ryan being the first player to sign a contract for more than $1 million per year, and how the story about his contract and all the others totalling $1 million fit on a single page, including the box listing all of them.

Actually, thinking of the handbooks I read as a kid reminds me of how different things were ...

... how they told you about every player in the NBA, right down to the last man on the bench, and the brutal honesty about them contained in a couple short paragraphs. Now, you can find out more about any end-of-the-bench player (I chose Fab Melo of the Celtics as an example) than you could ever imagine.

... how "fantasy football" meant the stories in my friend Kenny's NFL handbooks about a team of current stars playing a collection of greats from the past, or Super Bowls years in the future, including as I recall an American team taking on one from the Soviet Union.

... how the handbook was probably the definitive preview of your favorite team's season. Now, you can find previews everywhere, like the one my friend Rob did the other day on the San Diego Chargers that he asked me to review. (I told him, "You probably could have gotten away with five versions of 'Can they stop being undisciplined dumbasses?' and been fine.")

... how enthralled I was reading the handbook for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with the picture of an Eastern European team handball player soaring above a defender to shoot or a photo of the Soviet Union's Uljana Semjonova taking a hook shot. My preteen self wondered how a woman could ever be that tall. Now, people complain when the prime-time hours of the ungodly amount available on TV or online aren't live.

Thinking of the handbooks also made me think about how there has never been a better time to be a sports fan, and how that doesn't seem like enough anymore.

There are more ways to see more sports and read more about sports than there ever has been, and much like I think of my younger self as having lived in the Dark Ages, kids today will probably think of 2013 as a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

If you're willing to spend the time and effort, and sometimes the money, you can watch just about anything you want. During the Stanley Cup finals, I had a grand old time chatting with a Blackhawks fan from Chicago, and have struck up a Twitter friendship with a New England Patriots fan who lives in Miami.

Last night, after reading a terrific piece by Alyson Footer, I had a conversation with her about it. (To be clear, the Harwell example she gives is something positive, not part of the worst anyone did to her.)

@LastHonestSport thank ya!
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport nothing that is of any significance. Couple dumb things said by men in their 80s. I've been incredibly lucky.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport when I first started out in PR, a few male reporters didn't want my help when they called. Didn't think I knew baseball.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport In late 90s, Ernie Harwell came to me for a few things when Tigers player Astros. Never forgot that. Felt like mill bucks.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

All of that is great, but I fear it has the effect of not much being special anymore. Maybe the Super Bowl (although that may be as much a cultural event as a sporting one) or a rare instance of going to a game, but because so much sports is available so often, it becomes disposable. Miss one game? There's another one on today ... or tomorrow ... or the next day.

So most importantly, thinking about the handbooks reminds me of how good we sports fans have it today.

If David Stern can't even do a fix right, maybe it's good he's retiring

As someone who believes the 1985 NBA draft lottery was fixed so the Knicks could pick Patrick Ewing, thinks Michael Jordan's first retirement could have really been a secret suspension for gambling, is convinced Aaron Craft was allowed to mug the Syracuse guards in the 2012 East Regional final to keep the Orange out of the Final Four and has a good friend named Cy Nical who believes everything anyone tells you is bull, I can appreciate a good sports conspiracy theory, especially if it has to do with someone you don't like.

And thus we have the "David Stern is fixing the Heat-Pacers series so the heat can get in the NBA Finals!" conspiracy. Dave Zirin even referenced it in a piece he wrote arguing that Pacers center Roy Hibbert should be suspended for saying "no homo" while talking to the press after Game 6. It also came up on his Twitter.

@EdgeofSports That is an issue "@Tuckyargh: @EdgeofSports If Roy Hibbert is suspended for game 7, I will have no doubt the NBA is officially rigged."

However, if Stern is doing his behind-the-scenes manipulations to make sure the ratings-drawing Heat make the NBA Finals, he has one big problem ...

... the San Antonio Spurs.

The Spurs are a terrific team. Tim Duncan is an all-timer. Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are outstanding. All they do is win year after year after year.

They are also ratings death.

Granted, the article linked above is six years old, but given that the NBA Finals since then have featured the Lakers and Celtics playing each other twice, the Lakers again and the Heat twice, I'm going to guess that these stats largely hold up:

• The 14 lowest-rated NBA Finals games since 1981 featuring the Spurs.
• All four Spurs titles being among the 10 lowest-rated NBA Finals since 1976.
• The Spurs having the two lowest-rated NBA Finals since 1976.

And this is the team that awaits the Heat-Pacers winner. Surely Stern the evil overlord should have done something about this and found someone to beat them beforehand!

Unless ...

Maybe, just maybe Stern is preparing for his greatest trick yet in his last playoffs as NBA commissioner. Perhaps he has an in with the Nielsen people and has gotten assurances that the ratings for the NBA Finals, no matter who the Spurs play, will be through the roof, regardless of how many people actually watch.

You know, just to prove he can.

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.

So why was Jason Collins a big deal when Brittney Griner wasn't?

There has already been a lot said and written about the news of Jason Collins' coming out yesterday (I recommend Adrian Wojnarowski's and Jeff Jacobs' pieces), so I'll just say these two things.

1. Bravo.

2. While I couldn't disagree with their views more, I want to know about the Tim Brandos, the Chris Broussards and all the others who hide behind anonymity on message boards and comment threads not just so we know how they think, but also as a reminder that for all the support Collins is receiving, what he did is not easy.

But I actually want to write about something that cropped up as I was reading about Collins, perhaps best-stated by Alysa Auriemma (yes, daughter of Geno, but her stuff is worth a read no matter who her father is).

@allyauriemma On one hand I am so thrilled for Jason Collins. But it makes me look at the dozens of lesbian athletes I know with a heavy heart.

@allyauriemma Because they were there first. And nobody gave a s--t. But not in the 'yay gay is cool!' sort of way. In the 'women don't count' way.

I think there are a couple reasons for this, why Jason Collins is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week and Brittney Griner made news, but not nearly as much, in the almost off-hand way she recently came out as a lesbian.

First, there are all the qualifiers in describing what Collins did, that he is the first active male athlete in a major U.S. professional team sport to come out as gay. In other words, he's "the first athlete with teammates to worry about who's supposed to be tough in a sport that American fans really care about and wants to keep playing it" to come out.

There's no sport in America, men's or women's, that approaches Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL in popularity. It's the same reason why Collins is on the SI cover and Robbie Rogers wasn't, even though Rogers is also American.

But I also think a woman athlete coming out isn't as big a deal is because any announcement largely falls on two groups of people, who for vastly different reasons, don't have their views affected.

For one group, it just confirms their biases that all women athletes are gay, anyway, especially the more "masculine" ones (read: muscles, short hair, deep voice or a combination of the three). They're probably not fans, anyway, so what do they care other than a chance to make a couple more jokes? After all, plenty of these people think Griner might be a man.

For the other group, they're fans of women's sports, have already factored in that some of the players they're watching are gay ... and just don't give a damn. Brittney Griner's gay? Whatever. Look at the way she blocks shots and dunks. Megan Rapinoe's gay? Who cares? Did you see that goal on the corner kick against Canada?


So while I understand the people who question why a male athlete coming out is a bigger deal than a female, I'm hoping that someday they're both ho-hum.

Suns and Hornets weren't much, unless you were there

In all likelihood, you probably won't even notice the Suns-Hornets game when you're checking out the scores in the newspaper, or there will be a short recap on SportsCenter that you have to sit through while you wait for the news you really care about.

After all, the only really noteworthy thing about the game was Steve Nash's 30-point, 10-assist performance (by the way, he's going to be 38 next week), which put him into first place on the Suns' all-time assist list. And, being classy, right after the game, he gave kudos to the guy he passed, Kevin Johnson, on Twitter, calling him "Historically underrated, one of the all time greats."

But my wife and I were at the game, so for us, it was a fun night out on our vacation.

Not being the high-roller types, we got the cheapest decent seats we could find, and I would say we did pretty well for ourselves.

Pretty darn good for the $13 or $14 we paid.

There was the fact that the Hornets, since it's New Orleans after all, had a house band.

That's the band, down in the corner, including the trombone, which you have to have.

A guy played the national anthem on a harmonica, and the intros had their share of indoor pyrotechnics.

I've never completely understood the indoor fireworks thing, but I guess it's better than outdoors in the daytime.

Each team had someone we were fans of from their college days, Emeka Okafor for New Orleans and Hakim Warrick for Phoenix. Plus we found a new favorite player, Gustavo Ayon of New Orleans, a 26-year-old rookie from Mexico who we hadn't even heard of before the game (not the only Hornets player with that status, by the way). According to the program, he had trouble earlier this year because his English was so bad that he couldn't understand the coaching staff's directions, but he works hard and is learning. Against Phoenix, he scored 10 points in the first half, causing multiple playings of the "Ole, Ole, Ole" song.

(They were actually pretty sharp in the game operations department in New Orleans. When Italian Marco Belinelli hit a three-pointer, they ran down one side of the arena waving Italian flags,)

My wife and I both have fairly skewed views on life, so we found it someone ironic that on the night the Hornets were having some kind of fitness promotion, they also had a shrimp-eating contest won by some guy who looked like he stuffed Chris Paul under the No. 3 jersey he was wearing.

Halftime featured a "world-renowned" handstand artist whose name I don't remember, but let's just say the dude clearly works out.

He's small, but he's mighty.

And the game actually wound up being a pretty good one. For the casual glancers, the 120-103 Suns win may have looked like a blowout, but it was close through 3 1/2 quarters until the Suns went on a big run down the stretch.

Too bad there weren't many people there to see it.

This was at the start of the game. The crowd didn't get much bigger than that.

The cheerleaders were doing their best to get the "crowd" into it.

All in all, it made for a fun night in New Orleans.

Who could possibly help Clifton Herring?

Sports Illustrated recently had a fascinating story by Thomas Lake on Clifton Herring, the man who has gone down in history as The Idiot Coach Who Cut Michael Jordan.

Except, according to the article, that's not exactly how it went down.

The decision to leave Jordan on jayvee as a sophomore was not an oversight. Herring and his assistants knew Jordan would ride the bench on varsity, so they put him on jayvee, and it worked out perfectly. When he got to varsity, he was ready to lead the team. Pop gave Mike his time but made him earn everything else. They would play Around the World after practice, and Pop was nearly unbeatable. Jordan hated to lose, of course, so he kept improving until the day he finally won.

As it turns out, Herring was a pretty darn good coach, but the story tells how the last few decades haven't been kind to him due to mental illness substance abuse.

It also tells something I've known for a long time -- that Michael Jordan can be a real jerk. From the night Jordan's number was retired (sorry about the long excerpt):

"There wasn't one coach that I didn't listen and try to learn from," Jordan said. "They all knew more about the game than I knew, and probably still know about the game, more about the game now, than even I know at this point. But I respect them for taking the time to teach me the game of basketball. Goes all the way back to Clifton Herring, who was the first guy to ever cut me."
That was Pop's big introduction, to nearly 20,000 fans at the United Center and two million more watching on TNT. The first guy to ever cut me. The new arena had been designed to amplify the roar of the crowd. Now there was a rumble, a swelling chorus of voices. The fans were booing Pop Herring for an imaginary crime.
Jordan continued.
"But I think what people never knew, and I never had the opportunity to express, and my mother knew, and my brothers and sister knew, the next year, he picked me up every day at six o'clock and took me to the gym to help me work on my abilities. Thank you, Coach Herring."
The fans reconsidered. They began to cheer. Jordan could have stopped there, but he kept going. He raised his voice and his right hand, seeming to point toward the coach. "He knew he made a mistake! He just tried to correct it."

In one of life's sad ironies, Herring was arrested right around the time the article appeared in the magazine. In his update for the print edition, Lake wrote:

Herring, 59, was kind to many people before he became sick almost 30 years ago. Were you one of them? Did you ever consider helping him? Now would be the time.

Yeah, Michael ... it would be.

Or are you still mad?

Jeff, with that attitude, go back to coaching

Reading an article on this year's NBA coverage, I came across this from Jeff Van Gundy about the possibility of a two-man booth with Mike Breen after Mark Jackson left to become coach of the Golden State Warriors:

"I'm one of those who enjoyed the three-man booth more than doing the two," Van Gundy said. "I really don't know going forward if ESPN/ABC has plans to fill Mark's spot or just leave it as is. Even though there will be more time available to talk, I just don't want to talk for the sake of talking. I want to make sure I don't throw too many hair-brained ideas out there. I don't want to just fill time."

If it was up to me, I'd take Doris Burke off the sideline and put her in the booth. She's outstanding, worked well with Van Gundy during the UConn-Baylor women's game the other night and he wouldn't have to sit in the middle seat.

But "I just don't want to talk for the sake of talking ... I don't want to just fill time"?

What kind of announcer are you, Jeff?

Welcome to my world

So you've found your way here. Good. So what can you expect?

Well, basically, it's anything in sports that gets my attention ... whether it's funny, ticks me off or just gets me to thinking. I hope you'll agree with my opinions. If not, tell me why I'm wrong, but be prepared to back it up.

As for the name, it's just a wee bit sarcastic, but it's partly based on my belief that we don't have a lot of honest discussion in sports (or in life, for that matter), because we refuse to acknowledge one basic fact.

We are all hypocrites.

I'm not saying that as a criticism, because for the most part, I don't think it's a character flaw. It's human nature. For example, I'm a fan of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and can't stand Kyle Busch. (The only reason Kurt Busch isn't the biggest tool in NASCAR is because his parents decided to have more children.) If Kyle spins someone out to win a race, I'm probably yelling at my TV how that dirty little #@*!! punk wrecked someone again, but if Dale does it, I'd be cheering like a madman.

Since we all bring our biases, let me give you mine. I'm a fan of the Yankees (which can be rough, since I live in New England) , the Chargers, Syracuse University, UConn and the University of Wisconsin (by marriage), Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, the Bruins, the Celtics and Liverpool. You can probably figure out who I don't like based on that list.

So that's a little bit about me. Thanks for coming to my sandbox. Let's play.