Ding, dong the witch is dead (cont...)

Seattle is not pleased with the trade. Or, well, not clearly happy. Here are some quotes from Seattle sports columnists:

This is the cruelest and most unfair decision the Sonics' new ownership has made. From the standpoint of saving the Sonics from relocation, chairman Clay Bennett and his group have chosen the worst possible time to start over. They just yanked away the one hope, no matter how pie in the sky, optimistic Sonics fans clenched tightly — an 11th-hour franchise rescue spurred by a winning 2007-08 season.
- Jerry Large, Seattle Times

It is clearly a movement towards rebuilding. I read the Sports Guy's rant on ESPN.com, but I think Boston has less reason to cry than Seattle. I mean, what did Seattle fans really get?

At the moment, the Sonics roster is the hoops equivalent of Pam Anderson. It's going to topple over without some ballast and balance.

So any rational judgment about the biggest draft day in the Sonics' 40-year history must be reserved. More has to be coming.

Otherwise, Sonics fans would have to take owner Clay Bennett and general manager Sam Presti into the street and pummel them, and who wants to spend the impending holiday arranging for bail money?
...
Oh, yeah. Durant. He should be fun. But only the Sonics could manage to overshadow his acquisition with anxiety.
- Art Thiel, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Perhaps most damningly, there is this report from Frank Hughes, who is an excellent youngish reporter who will probably be stolen away by the NYTimes or the Washington Post in a year or two:

NEW YORK - Kevin Durant, whom the Seattle SuperSonics selected with the second pick in Thursday’s NBA draft, was walking from a television interview to a radio interview at the Madison Square Garden theater when he passed by a large flat-screen television.

He stopped, turned and watched as it was announced that his new team had just completed a trade that sent Ray Allen and the rights to the 35th pick to the Boston Celtics for the fifth pick – which was Georgetown forward Jeff Green – point guard Delonte West and shooting guard Wally Szczerbiak.

“Damn,” Durant said, shaking his head with realization that the team’s new general manager, Sam Presti, only 12 years older than Durant, was beginning to change the shape of a team that experienced its worst season in 21 years.
- Frank Hughes, Tacoma News Tribune

Eh. Allen's gone. I'm happy about that. For the same reasons that Zach Randolph should never meet Greg Oden, I don't think Allen should ever meet Durant. But, geez.

It's going to suck going out this way: For a proud franchise that dominated the NBA in the 90's, for a fan base that continued to pack the stadium throughout a miserable stretch of almost 8 straight no-playoffs seasons, for a city that loves basketball (four draft picks this year went to Seattle high schools) to watch its NBA team leave in sucktastic fashion? It's just sad.

I wanted one last playoff run. Sonics management basically killed that last dream, too.

Ding, dong the witch (Ray Allen) is dead

About three hours before the draft, we started hearing that Seattle was going to deal Ray-Ray for the fifth pick in the draft. I was thrilled.

"As long as Horford or Conley are there," I told my friend Dekay, "I'm 100 percent behind the idea."

I was operating under the assumption that if you're going to deal Ray Allen, a legitimate superstar, albeit one who never saw a loose ball worth diving for, you should get a guy with a ceiling one mile high. To watch both Durant and either of those guys mature would be worth the price of admission.

Whoops. Neither guy I wanted was there. Apparently, management didn't care.

While I'm now conflicted, I'm not 100 percent against the move either. I think Green is filthy, and I think he'll be an All-Star. His bust potential is lower than either Horford or Conley. Somehow, he seems stable. I saw something on ESPN.com that likened him to Brandon Roy. That'd probably play.

But, I mean, I hate Ray Allen (see last week's post), and even I feel like we gave up more than we got. The Sonics only have one more year in Seattle, and instead of having a ridiculous offense -- Ray, Rashard, Durant -- now we're going to have a ridiculous small forward position. In our last year, we're going to see the rookie seasons of one ultra-megastar and one very solid pro. And the team is going to suck. Maybe we'll get two more years out of the team, but we'll be so young, and the West is so good, I don't think the playoffs are likely.

And, really, that's not a very good way to go out. I think I'd prefer to see Durant's first ever playoff appearance to the formative years of an outstanding nucleus.

Oh well. At least I outlasted Ray. The bastard.

NBA: Why I'm More Excited About Tonight's Draft Than Any Draft Ever

Well, the MAIN reason is Bill Simmons. I haven't missed a column in months, and the NBA draft has been his number one focus. I even followed yesterday's Mock Draft with Chad Ford live for a couple hours. So not only am I excited about the draft, I also feel more knowledgeable about the draft pool than ever before.

Having said that, here's the top few things I'm looking forward to tonight.

1. Watching the draft with my brother. I think it says something about a person if they watch an entire draft alone, even the 2 round NBA draft. I don't want that said about me.

2. Finding out where Demetris Nichols will be drafted. According to John Hollinger's fascinating statistical ranking method for collegiate players, guys who make a ton of threes and shoot a high percentage translate well to the pros. Nichols' 41.7% wasn't quite high enough to warrant mentioning by Hollinger, but couple that with his outstanding draft workouts and he seems like a lock at this point to get drafted, though perhaps not as much a lock as the Orange were to make the NCAA tournament this year. Too bad the 2007 NCAAs never happened.


3. Seeing if the Hawks blow the draft and take anyone other than Horford or Conley with the third pick. Chad Ford says GM Billy Knight likes Horford, so that probably means Horford is going to be a bust. I completely buy into Simmons' take on Yi Jianlian, which is quite negative, and Ford notes that Hawks ownership wants to grab him. So if they do reach past Conley for Yi, it won't be Knight's fault.

4. Seeing where Conley goes. Hollinger's ranking loves him. Simmons loves him. I think everyone loves him. I hope he goes to Memphis at 4 to throw alley-oops to Hak Warrick.

5. Seeing who the Celtics pick. I think they'll trade this between now and the draft, despite what Ainge is saying. If not, I'm rooting for Simmons to get the guy he wants in Corey Brewer who I buy into as a defensive whiz if not an all-star.

6. Seeing who the Bulls take. If I had to pick a favorite NBA team, it would be the Bulls, from following MJ growing up. I like them now with ex-Dukies as well as the likable Kirk Heinrich. The right pick tonight could boost their championship chances. A trade might help them even more.

Gold Cup Champions

I wish I had a laptop, so I could have kept minute-by-minute notes during the Gold Cup final.

Let's pretend I did. It would have gone like this:

Minute 1 - Kickoff.
...
Minute 90 - Sorry. Game way too intense to take notes, or type game diary. Spent most of match biting fingernails, hugging head, pulling hair. Typing? Not likely. No time for that.

If you haven't seen the score by now, the USA beat Mexico, 2-1. It was our fourth Gold Cup Championship. (The Gold Cup, as I had to explain repeatedly to my roommates, is to soccer what the Big East Championship is to college basketball. Only teams from North/Central American compete).

I have so much to say about our team, though. This Thursday, of course, we start Copa America (We got an invitation to the South American conference tournament. We're bringing our 'B Team'), but let's digest the Gold Cup first. There have been a few revelations this tournament, most of them good, some of them troubling, but -- in the end -- my optimism shines bright.

First and foremost: Landon Donovan (25 years old) is a stud. He is cleary our best player. When he is dribbling at people anything can happen. Bob Bradley's invention this tournament, and it was something Bruce Arena never did, was move Donovan outside. Ronaldo dominates for ManU from the wing. Robben dominates for Chelsea from the wing. England is best when Cole is running. Ditto, now, America. We need Donovan running at people. Period.

Pushing Clint Dempsey (24 years old) inside is a good move for the MNT (men's national team). Dempsey is classier than Donovan, and operates better in tight crowds. He might be our second best player. Unfortunately, Dempsey doesn't like playing inside. It's clear from his body language -- whenever he got pulled from the game, or whenever the play wasn't flowing like he thought it should -- that he's unhappy with some MNT developments. This worries me. We need Dempsey.

DeMarcus Beasley (25 years old) is a classic American soccer player, and I mean that in the worst way. Although he is brilliantly quick, and he does some things well (including, surprisingly, crossing the ball), his first touch is garbage and his finishing is worse. There are entire men's national teams that do nothing well outside of first-touch and finishing, and they win World Cups. See: Italy, 2006. Soccer IS -- it IS - first touch and finishing. That is what the game turns on. I love Beasley. Other teams fear his speed. But come 2010, he won't be starting. He's just not classy enough. At least twice this tournament, he missed open net. You just cannot have that. Dozens of times, he turned the ball over in ridiculous fashion. I think the general consensus coming out of the tournament is that Beasley played well, and he did, but people who think he's the final answer aren't correct. Or, heaven help us, they shouldn't be. You can beat Panama with Beasley. Even Mexico, if Mexico's biggest threat is clearly suffering from a concussion or other brain injury, but Germany? England? The Dutch? I suspect not.

Benny Feilhaber (22 years old, Hamburg SV), Michael Bradley (19 years old, Dutch first division) and Ricardo Clark (24 years old, Houston Dynamo) are all excellent. They each have their own problems (Feilhaber's tackling is sub-par, Bradley's ball control is inconsistent, and Clark doesn't have much offensive imagination) and none of them is terribly fast -- although Clark is best here -- but they have time. Feilhaber looks Brazilian, or Spanish, with the clever little touches he uses to deke hard-charging defenders. Both Feilhaber and Bradley play balls that only John O'Brien, the infamously fragile #5, has ever done for us. All tournament, they were dropping balls behind defenders, and Beasley/Donovan/Dempsey were running onto them brilliantly. Neither Feilhaber nor Bradley is as complete as Reyna, but either of them could end end up being better than he was. By 2010, Clark will step in where Pablo has served us well. He also seems less of a card concern, but who knows. He didn't get enough time for me to be sure.

Our defense concerns me a little. When we played Canada in the semi-final, Canada's best offense was trying to pick-pocket our central defenders, who were too clever by half. Neither Oguchi Onyewu (25 years old) nor Carlos Bocanegra (28 years old) has very good ball skills, and Keller is becoming a train-wreck with the ball at his feet. The problems continued against Mexico, and I damn near had a coniption fit by minute 20 today, until we finally started just booting it up the field. Much safer. Phew. I think Gooch and Carlos have time to develop some touch, but it isn't there yet. Not by a damn sight.

Jonathon Spector (21 years old) looks promising as a right back, but it isn't clear to me how good he actually is. For instance, he makes mistakes that you wouldn't expect players from the English Premiership to make. If good soccer is about first touch and finishing, bad soccer is about making bad turnovers in bad places. Spector has both good soccer and bad soccer in him. Scary, then. Jonathan Bornstein (22 years old, Chivas USA) is another outside defender with promise, although his defending is shakey. As an offensive presence, Bornstein is incredible and I love him. Both Mexico and Canada exploited him mercilessly, though, and -- well, I mean, defenders need to defend. Right? We can only suffer so much exploitation. Bornstein is so young I think he'll be OK. But, geez. Between him and Spector, we've got a lot of 2010 promise, but a ton of 2007 concern.

We need a forward. Eddie Johnson (23 years old), who many fans seems to place great hope in, is awful. He has no first touch at all, but that's not his biggest problem. No. His biggest problem is that he has absolutely no desire to score. I've never seen a MNT forward make fewer "positive" moves. (Positive, of course, meaning: towards goal). EJ might work as an attacking central midfielder, or even as a outside midfielder, but it's basically impossible for me to imagine him working anywhere else. Playing him at forward is worse than playing with 10 men. Taylor Twellman (27 years old) and Brian Ching (29 years old) are OK and likeable. But they are not inspired. They are not even good. Simply put: They are not 2010 heroes. We've got to find a young buck. That's all there is to that. (Josi Altidore (17 years old), anybody?)

So, anyway, those are my thoughts on that. We're good. We're quite good. We're even dangerous. But we've got holes.

Let's work on 'em.

Kevin Durant

I cannot believe he'll only be playing in Seattle one year.

I hate Ray Allen because Ray Allen doesn't seem to care. I hate Shaun Alexander for the same reason. I don't know a lot about Kevin Durant, but this is what the Sports Guy just wrote about his competitiveness, in relation to Oden's:

Like Michael Myers, Oden never changes expression, flips out or overreacts; only his heavy breathing gives him away. But would guys be afraid of letting him down the way teammates once were of Bird, Magic, Isiah and MJ? Probably not. Because unlike Michael Myers, Oden is no killer. He admits as much, confessing to wanting to be a dentist and settling on hoops only because of his size. But Durant is wired like Bird and the rest. He's cold-blooded, living to silence hostile crowds. You get the feeling that Oden's life will revolve around many different things over the next 15 years; Durant's will be all about basketball.

Man. I miss him already.

AFI Top 100

This is not sports related, but I know that a lot (read: a few) people who hear about the new AFI list are going to wonder what I think about it. If you didn't know, back in 2002 I knocked off the whole AFI 100 from 1998. Here is the old list. And if you haven't seen the new list , here it is. And now, here are my extremely lengthy thoughts...

• There are a ton of quality films on this list, and bunch of those quality films I discovered because of the list. I'd never watched Citizen Kane, but when I did, I decided it was NOT quality. I was not entertained, which I think is the number one criteria for judging a film. I also couldn't relate to the characters or the story. I wasn't particularly moved by the story. The acting didn't blow me away enough to make me forget that I didn't like the story. Most of all, I just don't get what's so great about it. Apparently, it was pretty innovative. But other movies on this list that I don't like, I get why people might think they're great. Gone With the Wind, for example. Maybe all those innovations merit a spot on the list. But a fictional biopic about a publisher (allegedly based on Hearst) is the greatest movie of all time? To me, the greatest movie should be ageless, should have mass appeal, should be tremendously entertaining, and be a landmark achievement in movie-making. In my mind, CK only fills the last of those criteria. This is why I actually think the IMDB top 250 is a better list. Not perfect, but better. CK is a more reasonable 23rd. OK, I'll stop.
• Godfather leapfrogs Casablanca to number 2. I don't have a problem with that, though I'm a huge Casablanca fan. I had it at the top of my re-ranking of the AFI's top 100. (Not my favorite movie of all time, that is, but my favorite out of those 100.) Since then I've backed off slightly - the action is admittedly a tad dated. This brings me to my other complaint with the AFI's list. It doesn't acknowledge that, despite the vast amounts of lowest common denominator crap churned out by Hollywood, good movies have actually gotten better over the history of movie making. Modern movies are better than older movies. I won't debate this. Technology, well-applied, makes a better film. So why shouldn't a best movies list be heavy on more recent films, as the imdb list is? I'll take a little of the "historical significance" criteria argument, but only so far. I liked Lawrence of Arabia. It's my favorite big budget film of that era of big budget films. But is it really better than Lord of the Rings? I think it's a safe bet that Lord of the Rings is probably going to have at least as big an affect on the history of movie making as Lawrence of Arabia. OK, I'll stop. Too much negativity.
• Into the top 10 go Raging Bull and Vertigo, replacing On the Waterfront and The Graduate which both fell sharply. I was just listening to DVD commentary on The Simpsons and Matt Groening et al were talking about how influential. The Graduate was to them. I think it was Groening who said that someone ELSE once said that The Graduate contains every type of humor there is. Which is something I'd NEVER thought was true about a movie that I consider a drama. Anyway, I think one great scale would be to measure how often the Simpsons have parodied these movies. Out of these four, The Graduate clearly wins that contest. Long story short, I don't approve of The Graduate dropping to 17 but I do approve of On the Waterfront dropping and Raging Bull rising. Speaking of The Simpsons, there was an entire episode that parodied Citizen Kane, brilliantly placing Mr. Burns in place of the title role. Great stuff.
• The two biggest jumps were City Lights and The Searchers. GREAT MOVIES. I discovered both via the AFI Odyssey. City Lights is Chaplin, and Chaplin is excellent and still amusing. But The Searchers is even better. Possibly John Wayne's best.
• Interesting stat: the AFI made a list of 400 movies to choose the 100 from. 43 of those movies were made after 1998. Which is just about right, if you assume there have been 100 years of film. The problem is, only 4 of those made the list. Titanic and Saving Private Ryan shouldn't have been 2 of the 4. OK, I've never seen Titanic. I once vowed never to see that movie in my life, but I might have to go back on that now that the AFI thinks so highly on it. How about this? If the Titanic is still in the top 100 in 2018, I'll go see it. Saving Private Ryan has the great Normandy invasion scene, and an equally excellent final 20 minutes, but when you think about it, the whole point of the movie is kind of small and has very little to do with World War II or war in general. You know what it was? I just figured it out! Saving Private Ryan was a western set during World War II! Think about it... rag tag bunch sets off on a thankless suicidal journey through wild territory. Bottom line: it shouldn't be rated above Platoon. However, Sixth Sense and LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring made the list. Two excellent selections. Sixth Sense is like the "All Star" of movies. They were both way overplayed, and Shyamalan and Smashmouth haven't again quite reached that pinnacle since, but when you go back and actually watch Sixth Sense and listen to All Star and you remember how you felt when you first saw Sixth Sense and when you first got the lyrics to All Star, you remember their greatness.
• Besides those four, there are lots of other new additions. The only one I've seen out of them is Toy Story. I approve of that making the list and I will get to work on all those other ones...
• Out of the films that were dropped, Thumbs Down to dropping... Amadeus, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, My Fair Lady, Patton, Giant, The Manchurian Candidate.
  
• Thumbs Up to dropping... Dr. Zhivago, Dances with Wolves, the Jazz Singer, A Place in the Sun, Wuthering Heights, An American in Paris.
  
• Most of all, a HUGE THUMBS DOWN for dropping Fargo from the list. Are you kidding me? Is this a joke? Mom? Dad? Buzz? Is this a joke? Buzz? Buzz? (Home Alone should NOT make the list, but should be in the top 100 comedies, by the way.)
  
• Just noticed that Unforgiven shot up from 98 to 68... I had it in my top 5 for my re-rank.
• Just noticed that the two most recent movies in the top 10, Raging Bull (1980) and Schindler's List (1993) were both done in black and white. Both are great films, but I think that says something about the way this list is skewed towards older movies.
  
• OK, I'm going to finish up by picking five movies, one from each fifth of the list that I think everyone should see. These aren't necessarily my favorites. Rather, they are movies that I don't think most 25-year-olds have seen but that I think they should see AND might really enjoy.
  

1-20: We've already talked about a bunch of these. I'm going to assume many of my peers have seen the Graduate and pick Casablanca to recommend. (I was going to suggest Lawrence of Arabia until I remembered it was 220 minutes! Casablanca is only 105.)

21-40: Double Indemnity is the ultimate film noir. Snappy dialogue, trench coats, and a gret tale. At the very least, I guarantee you'll enjoy the way the main character lights a match.

41-60: Again, I'm assuming many have seen the Deer Hunter and going with Bonnie and Clyde. Good acting from an excellent cast.

61-80: Holy cow! I think I like this bunch of 20 better than any other. Unforgiven...Forrest Gump...Raiders of the Lost Ark...Shawshank...Butch Cassidy...All the President's Men... yup, this is the best group of 20. I like it so much, I'm going to pick two movies, both of which I went out and bought after I watched them during the original AFI Odyssey: American Graffiti, possibly George Lucas's best movie ever (yes, I know what I just said), and The Wild Bunch, my second favorite western after Unforgiven.

81-100: The French Connection is famous for its car chase scene, which still holds up. What stands out in my mind is the way this story is told with minimal dialogue, and the fact that the sweet hero doesn't quite win in the end.

Performance Enhancers at the US Open?

Did you hear? Witnesses spotted US Open champ Angel Cabrera inhaling Nicotiana tabacam, a plant popular in Cabrera's native Argentina. The plant contains a powerful drug that stimulates the release of dopamine, which helps a person relax. Apparently, the substance he was inhaling has more dangerous side-effects than steroids or HGH. Hopefully, the PGA Tour will act quickly, strip Cabrera of the title, and ban this substance. Apparently baseball players have been known to abuse the same product. MLB should follow suit.

I'm kidding. I don't really think the PGA or MLB needs to ban smoking. Still, it is interesting to wonder if tobacco helped Cabrera win the US Open, and if so, is it a performance enhancing drug? What is the difference between smoking to relax and taking amphetamines to get "up" for a baseball game? Or for that matter, taking HGH to help you work out more effectively or doping your blood to help you recover faster after biking for 4 hours?

The more I think about it, the blurrier the lines get. Congrats to "the Duck." The victory was well-deserved. Tiger Woods remains not as good as he was in the first 5 years of his career.

Notent Notables: U.S. Open Final Round Pre-Thoughts

Preview has the wrong connotations. I don't have a particularly interesting view. These are Pre-Toughts:

• First off, let me say that if Sports Illustrated writes a "little-known Aaron Baddeley comes out of nowhere to hold off Tiger and win the US Open" I'm never reading SI again. Badds is not little-known. He's 24th in the world rankings. He's won twice on the tour. And he's another one of these good young Aussies that golf fans have been keeping an eye on for the past four or five years, just like Ogilvy last year.
• That doesn't matter, because Tiger is going to win. Baddeley is a good player, but he'll make more mistakes than Tiger, and won't get away with them.
• Bubba Watson's ninth hole was doomed from the start. His swing on the tee was a classic "Holy crap, I'm suddenly leading the US Open on Saturday" swing.
• If I had to pick one guy other than the final group to win...I'm not sure who I'd take. Rose, Casey, Ames (+5) are all playing great. Big names like Furyk, Appleby, Toms, and even Singh are lurking.
• The guys who WON'T win...Watson(+5), Stricker(+6), Cabrera(+6), and Anders Hanson the Dane (+19).
• Winning score? +4, which is, I believe, exactly the score that Tiger predicted would win the tournament.
• Random guy who will shoot low early and somehow make the top 10? How about Nick O'Hern, the Aussie? He's currently T-26 at +11. And his scores have improved three straight days: 76-74-71.

Chelsea - On the cheap

Now is the time for national team glory, but let's spend a moment heralding the nouveau Chelsea: Players come to us and we don't spend a penny.

A few years ago, Paul and I debated whether or not Chelsea's spending pace could continue forever. I said it wouldn't. That would be embarrassing in a Yankees-sort-of-way, for one thing, but the stars were already in place. (This was before Sheva and Ballack, so perhaps I wasn't completely correct). The core has been built, though. Terry/Carvalho, Essien, Drogba up the gut. Cole/Robben on the wings.

So. Anyway. Now our backups are joining us for free. Ben Haim, Sidwell, etc. Alex (Alex!!) was technically already ours.

Mining for Gold

America cruised into the second round of the Gold Cup (basically the North American championship) last night with a 4-0 victory over El Salvador. There's a number of encouraging signs to note from the first three games of Bob Bradley's tenure that count.

• The U.S. has won their games 1-0, 2-0, and 4-0. If you extrapolate that out, we should win the championship with a score of 32-0. Fun times!
• Beasley got two goals last night. A dangerous Beasley is ingredient 1b to a healthy U.S. attack. He was terrible in the last World Cup, and brilliant in '98. He also had 4 goals when the U.S. won the Gold Cup in '95. (Ingredient 1a is Donovan getting lots of touches in the middle of the field facing the goal.)
• 6 different Americans have scored for the U.S. In the end, it would be nice to have a guy who is The Goal Scorer. But at least now there are more possible players to emerge in that role. And lots of goal scorers is a much better problem than no goals.
• The competition hasn't been too tough, but zero points in three games is excellent. Maybe the rest of the world isn't familiar with the phrase "defense wins championships" and America can make that our secret strategy.

The biggest negative to the American efforts is that Eddie Johnson, a guy who was briefly The Goal Scorer back in World Cup qualifying a couple years ago, has a strained knee. That's brutal, especially since he had been playing the best soccer of his life in MLS.

Click here for the current situation and brackets in the Cup.

D-Nic...First Rounder?!?!

For those of you who aren't ESPN insiders, I'll illegally copy and paste some SU-related excerpts from Chad Ford's NBA predraft camp updates:


Day 1

Demetris Nichols, F, Syracuse
18 points, 4-for-5 on 3-pointers

Nichols made a name for himself with his sharpshooting at Syracuse this year, and he got off to a hot start, going 5-for-5 from the field in the first half.

He tried to put the ball on the floor more than usual and create for himself, which was good news to scouts. He's a little quicker and more athletic than some think but still pretty one-dimensional.

Day 2

Demetris Nichols, F, Syracuse
17 points, 6-for-7 shooting

Nichols has shot the lights out here and created enough buzz to bump his stock up seriously, moving him from being a possible second-rounder to a guy who could get a sniff in the first round.

The league needs shooters and Nichols has shown here that his range extends well beyond the college 3-point line. He's been the most consistent player in drills and games of anyone here.

Daryl Watkins, C, Syracuse
7 points, 9 rebounds, 3-for-4 shooting

He's got NBA size and an NBA body, and he's shown enough hustle here to pass the smell test.

He didn't do much at Syracuse, but big men always rise late in the draft.

Notent Notables

It's been too long... here's a couple for ya':

• "Carmelo Anthony is the only NBA player in the Giving Back Fund's list of 30 celebrities who made the largest public donations to charities in 2006. Melo, who ranked an impressive eighth, donated $4.2 million to various charities last year." From Jemele Hill, Page 2
• From the Page 2 homepage today... "Since 1990, only 16 times has a pitcher tossed 200 innings and allowed fewer than 10 (Greg Maddux did it four times, including 4 in 202 IP in 1994)." I'd like to see the whole list, but I am presuming that means Maddux did it the most in that stretch. 4HRs in a season is insane. Chris and I have an ancient hair-splitting discussion over whether Maddux was a "dominant" pitcher. Just from being a Mets fan, I think I appreciated how good Maddux was in the 90s more than any other pitcher of his generation.
• Beckham returned for England this week in a friendly against Brazil, triumphantly assisting on the first A-Team goal at the new Wembley Stadium. For a stretch in the 2nd half that culminated in the free-kick goal, England looked as good as I have seen them play since the 2004 European Championship. Beckham was brilliant. One play stands out in my mind. Beckham switched fields with a high cross over to Joe Cole late in the first half. The ball was delivered through the air with pinpoint accuracy. And because it was accurate, it was the exact right play to make at the time. It gave Cole a chance to run at defenders down the left. Few make that pass because few CAN make that pass. For Beckham, it is so routine that I called it even before he did it, but it was still such a fantastic pass that I cheered it. In case you didn't hear, his work in training got him back into the Real Madrid lineup, where he has played a key role in Madrid's drive for the Spanish title. I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S COMING TO THE US!!
• I never, EVER thought I'd say this, but the sport I've missed the most by living in London is the NBA. LeBron made the leap and I missed it.
• Finally, England heads to Estonia to play a Euro Championship qualifier. Estonia has yet to score in 6 games. England is in 4th place in their group. The pressure on coach and team is ridiculous right now. As much as I'd like to predict a 1-0 victory for Estonia, it's not going to happen. But vet keeper Mart Poom (Arsenal's 3rd stringer this year, now moving to Watford so he can play) will keep Estonia in the game. 2-0 England with one goal set up by Beckham off the head of Crouch, who makes a living scoring on lower class defenders. Gerrard gets the other goal. He's been the only Englishman playing fantastic.