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Weekly briefing for Monday, June 9, 2008 |
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June 08, 2008 |
≡ 7 Days ≡
 West: Called Mr. Clutch for a reason! |
= To Our Readers =
You can now find us in two different places on the Web: in addition to The Sports Examiner, we now write three times a week on Olympic sports for the World Championship Sports Network site, WCSN.com in a column called “Inside the Rings.”
Here at The Sports Examiner, we have changed our format to include a weekly intelligence briefing, with commentary, for the astute sports fan called “7 Days” on Mondays and a bonus posting called “Fun & Games” during the week. Thanks again for your continued support; please ask your friends to sign up for the Tip Sheet and the free newsletter.
= The Top Story =
>> Atlanta, Ga.: It might be time to start making something of 26-year-old Chipper Jones’ gaudy .420 batting average after 64 games of the Braves’ season. He’s well ahead of Ted Williams’ 1941 pace.
The Red Sox didn’t reach the 64th game of their 1941 season until June 27. At that point, Williams was hitting .412, on the way to playing in 143 of Boston’s 154 games that season. So, Jones is eight points ahead at this point in the two seasons.
However: June was Williams’ worst month of the season: he hit “only” .372. In July, he hit .429 followed by .402 in August and .397 in September to finish at .406. Jones still has a long way to go.
= The National Pastime =
>> Chicago, Il.: Think the era of colorful sportswriting is over? Check out these doozies from Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti:
“To predict a Cubs championship under any circumstance is like investing in the future of Amy Winehouse, who sings very well but could wander into a gutter in her underwear at any moment.”
“[I]f a recovering drug addict with 26 tattoos can be on the cover of Sports Illustrated – a wonderful story, Josh Hamilton – and if the Marlins and Rays can be more than smelly fish, then why can’t the Cubs have the best record in baseball?”
On White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen: “What this city msut expunge, as it attempts to win the 2016 Olympics and polish its image for the world, is the embarrassing cloud of stench accumulated by the Blizzard of Oz with his relentlessly profane attacks on human life around him. If he is so deathly unhappy managing the Sox, as he has commented at least twice in a three-week period in which his team has risen to the division lead, then my only suggestion to him is to leave town for his sake and ours. And if he won’t leave, then Ken Williams and Jerry Reinsdorf should fire him.”
= The NBA and WNBA =
>> Boston, Ma.: There’s no doubt that Kobe Bryant will go down as one of the greatest players in the history of the NBA and one of the most dangerous fourth-quarter players ever.
However, it’s unlikely that he will ever be even the best “clutch” player in the history of his own franchise. That’s because he plays for the Lakers, who had the original “Mr. Clutch” in Jerry West.
Bryant just completed his 12th NBA season and has a glossy career scoring average of 25.0 points per game and a career .453 shooting percentage from the floor. In the playoffs in the 11 seasons, he’s averaging 24.5 points a game and 44.6% shooting, not including the current Finals series with Boston.
West played 14 seasons with the Lakers from 1960-73 and averaged 27.0 points per game (remember, no three-pointers!) on 47.4% shooting from the field. In the playoffs, however, he had another gear: in 13 seasons, he averaged 29.1 points per game and shot 46.9%.
West played 153 playoff games in his career, averaging 41.3 minutes a game; Bryant has played 148 through Sunday night’s game, averaging 39.0 minutes. Kobe is a great player; but there’s a reason why West is – and should always be – the league’s logo.
>> New York, N.Y.: League officials and television executives are thrilled with big increases in the NBA’s playoff ratings so far this season. ABC is up 28% so far, ESPN was up a monstrous 38% and even the always-strong TNT was up 14%. And that doesn’t include the heavy ratings that ABC will get for the Boston-Los Angeles final series.
>> New York, N.Y.: The first game of The Finals between the Lakers and Celtics last Thursday was a predictable hit. According to Nielsen Media Research, the average of 13.38 million viewers during the game was a 45% increase over last season’s Game 1 between San Antonio and Cleveland. It was also the highest-rated first game of a Finals series since 2004, coincidentally the last time the Lakers were in the championship round!
In Los Angeles, the game drew a 22.8 rating, 40 share and 2.09 million viewers; in Boston, the game had a 21.7 rating, 37 share and 712,000 viewers.
Last season’s Spurs-Cavaliers series set the all-time ratings low at 6.2. The 2004 Pistons-Lakers series averaged an 11.5 and the all-time Finals ratings champion was the Chicago-Utah series in 1998 which did an 18.7 for NBC.
>> Seattle, Wa.: How bad is it in Seattle? Thanks to the Associated Press getting ahold of the transcript of the 13-hour deposition of SuperSonics lead owner Clay Bennett, here’s how bad:
Bennett said that the club lost $23 million in 2004 and $29 million in 2005, the last two full years under the ownership of Howard Schultz and 57 other Seattle-area investors. Bennett bought the club, with others, for $350 million in 2006.
In the 2007-08 season just concluded, the Sonics had their worst record ever (20-62) and lost $32 million.
If the club is required to remain in Seattle, it will lose another $61-65 million before moving to Oklahoma City. However, if the Sonics are able to leave now, the club would make about $19 million over the next two seasons.
Bennett said, over and over again, that he expected to have a new arena built in Seattle and once completed, would likely have sold the franchise at a profit. That, he said, would demonstrate that his ownership group could be trusted with a franchise for Oklahoma City. The trial over whether the City of Seattle can force the team to play the remaining two seasons on its lease for Key Arena is scheduled to begin on June 16.
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: Winning makes a difference, as do Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker.
The Los Angeles Sparks, the league’s doormat last season, are now expected to challenge for the WNBA title this season and it shows at the box office. Friday’s home opener, a disappointing 85-79 come-from-ahead loss to Phoenix, drew 13,142, a 46% improvement over the 8,962 that showed up for last season’s home opener against Minnesota. In fact, the 13,142 is the best Sparks crowd in nearly three years, since 17,769 came to a game against Washington in June of 2005.
In an unrelated (?) story, Sparks co-owner Carla Christofferson (also a partner in the giant O’Melveny & Myers law firm) has put her Hollywood Hills home up for sale for $5.5 million. Time for something bigger.
= The NFL =
>> San Francisco, Ca.: Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle noted that not much is happening with a new stadium, either in Santa Clara or San Francisco, for the 49ers. But he isn’t worried about the team moving to Los Angeles:
And don’t even start with the Los Angeles thing, Ed Roski’s claim that he can start building a football-a-torium the moment an NFL team commits to L.A. is a pipe dream, and contents of that pipe are probably illegal everywhere other than Mendocino County.
Ratto noted that a proposition supporting development on Hunters Point in San Francisco did pass, but there is no assurance that Lennar Corporation will build a new football stadium in its plan to develop about 720 acres there.
= On Campus =
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: In the ongoing melee at USC, there’s no denying that the hottest topic on campus is whether the school’s song girls are pretty enough, at least judging by the posts and comments to the Los Angeles Daily News’s USC blog!
One comment read, “From the late 1980s on, I donated to the fund for the Song Girls on an annual basis. But based on how unattractive and embarrassing they have been throughout this past decade (including the NUMEROUS incidents where they were cheering for the other team!), would I be able to request a refund?” Daily News reporter Scott Wolf replied, “Yes, you can. Direct all inquires to Rodney Guillory.”
Guillory, you may remember, is the man who allegedly was paying off O.J. Mayo on behalf of a sports agent over the last four years! There were also posts ratings which Song Girl squads were best and worst over the past few years.
Comment: Not to rain on the Trojans’ parade, but the issue of the best Song Girl or dance squad was laid to rest a long time ago. UCLA’s 1981 squad, which included future Miss USA Julie Hayek, was so good it was profiled in Sports Illustrated’s March 16 issue in an article entitled “Eight Beauties and a Beat.” Any other squads been profiled since? Game over.
>> Atlanta, Ga.: The SEC may not be the best conference in the country is every sport, but it is certainly one of the richest. During its spring meetings, the conference announced that it will distribute about $127.2 million this year to its 12 members, with more than $50 million coming from the league’s football television agreements with CBS and ESPN.
The Big 12 wasn’t far behind at $113.5 million and the Big Ten is reportedly between the two as the top-earning leagues in the country.
= College Football =
>> Baton Rouge, La.: LSU will open defense of its national championship at home on August 30 in Tiger Stadium. No problem, right? Maybe not. The opponent is three-time-defending Division I-AA champion Appalachian State. With dismissed QB Ryan Perrilloux no longer in the picture for the Tigers, the best quarterback on the field will be Armanti Edwards of the Mountaineers, who helped engineer last season’s upset of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
>> Knoxville, Tn.: LSU is not the only school with a tough opener; Tennessee has to go west again and battle UCLA in Rick Neuheisel’s first game as Bruin head coach on Labor Day at the Rose Bowl on front of a national TV audience. Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer is on the hot seat after a 5-6 record last season and will have to find a new quarterback of his own after four years with Erik Ainge. Fulmer’s Vols lost to Alabama and Tennessee by a combined 63 points last season and you remember what happened to the Vols at Cal in last season’s opener!
Fulmer is on the griddle this season, ranking no. 25 on the Coaches Hot Seat.com list of Bowl Subdivision coaches most likely to be fired. One positive: while the Bruin defense should be good, former coach Karl Dorrell left very little offensive firepower for Neuheisel to work with in 2008.
>> Berkeley, Ca.: The newest feature on the University of California Web site is “Tedford Talk” from Cal coach Jeff Tedford, who says he wants to share his thoughts and feelings about the team with Bear fans.
Comment: If you’ve ever heard Tedford actually speak, you know that if he shares any information at all, it will be the first time!
= College Basketball =
>> Charlotte, N.C.: The News & Observer noted that Atlantic Coast Conference basketball teams recruited more McDonald’s All-Americans this year – eight – than any other conference. That’s supposed to be remarkable for a conference that has only a 19-15 record in the NCAA Tournament and one Final Four team in the last three years.
Comment: Say what? Despite Florida’s dominance in 2006 and 2007, the ACC remains the premier basketball conference in the country, with North Carolina and Duke almost certain to be highly ranked every year, at least to start the season. For impressionable young basketball players and their families, wouldn’t you be interested in the only major conference where the public perception is that its basketball programs are better (and perhaps more important) than its football programs?
What’s more amazing is that the Pac-10 ranked second, with five, with only UCLA steady and the conference’s other teams getting ready for a nosedive in 2008-09. The Big East signed for McDonald’s All-Americans with no other conference getting more than two.
>> Indianapolis, In.: The Indianapolis Star obtained a copy of the NCAA’s case summary in advance of the June 13 hearing concerning Kelvin Sampson and all those recruiting telephone calls he was on while he was at Indiana . . . and he was on a lot of calls! NCAA investigators have ten witnesses who said Sampson was on the calls and even Indiana’s former director of basketball operations said Sampson had to know about them in advance. That could put the Hoosiers in an even deeper hole than they are now, maybe even ineligibility for the NCAA basketball tournament!
If so, maybe local stations can screen “Hoosiers” instead?
= The Five-Ring Circus =
>> Oslo, Norway: Buried in the summaries of the sensational Bislett Games in Oslo last Friday was the third-place finisher in 11.26 in the women’s 100 meters: Yuliya Nesterenko of Belarus.
Doesn’t mean anything to you? She was the gold medalist in the 100 meters in Athens in 2004, improving her lifetime best from 11.29 in 2002 to 10.92 in 2004, setting three Belarus records along the way. She ran 11.08 in limited action in 2005 and essentially disappeared after that. Now she’s back?
Comment: Inexplicably, Nesterenko got a public pass on the doping questions in 2004, along with surprise Greek 400 Hurdles gold medalist Fani Halkia, who dropped from a lifetime best of 56.40 to 52.77 in one year!
There’s a lot of finger-pointing at U.S. athletes about doping, but what about these two? Drug-test these women before they show up in Beijing!
>> Athens, Greece: Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said Thursday that he’s setting up a special unit to monitor illegal gambling and match-fixing at the Olympic Games in Beijing. Rogge says the IOC will work with legal gambling companies and have them monitor the Games for any suspicious betting patterns. The IOC President noted that “You should not imagine our unit as people in an enclosed and secluded bunker with balaclavas over their head.” What’s a balaclava?
In an unrelated (?) story, London betting house William Hill posted a line of 12-1 that Jamaica’s Usain Bolt will won the Olympic 100 meters in a world-record time. American Tyson Gay remains the overall favorite to win at 13-8 while Bolt is 5-2 and countryman Asafa Powell is 5-1.
>> Beijing, China: A U.S. watchdog group called the Committee to Protect Journalists says that Chinese translators and staff assistants hired by media coming to cover the Olympic Games in Beijing could face after-the-Games sanctions if they are asked to set up meetings with activists concerning environmental issues, Tibet, the Falun Gong or other sensitive issues to the Chinese government.
That’s a real concern since many of the newspaper groups and especially the television networks covering the Games have cut back on staff being sent to Beijing in favor of hiring local staff in many cases.
= Potpourri =
>> Klagenfurt, Austria: Germany upped its national record in soccer to 12-0-4 against Poland, winning a 2-0 match in its opening game of the 2008 European Championships on Sunday.
Comment: The series against Poland dates back only to 1933, of course. However, the German national record against other opponents isn’t as good. Since 1914, Germany is 0-1 against the Soviet Red Army and 0-2 against the Western Allies (all-star team from Britain, France, the U.S. and Canada). Happily, the series against both ended in 1945.
>> Boston, Ma.: A June 1 event to raise money for cystic fibrosis featured “tag-team” eating that pitted Boston native Crazy Legs Conti against three couples in a hot dog-and-buns-eating contest over 10 minutes.
In front of a crowd reported as 40,000 for the charity event, it was no contest. Conti threw down a leisurely 20 while the most that any of the couples could manage was 13. At least the dogs were good!
~ Rich Perelman
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