Posts

Showing posts from June, 2009
Cover for Reach Past Your Limits

Get My Motivational E-Book "Reach Past Your Limits"
Click here for information on all of my books.

Smelling a Bust

I’ll be the first to say that I’m not a draft nik, and I’m not even one those guys who thinks he’s a draft nik. In fact, I have no desire to be a draft nik. But my gut and read on what others are saying about UCLA guard Jrue Holiday, who the Sixers drafted with the 17th pick of the 2009 NBA draft, tells me this was a mistake. Holiday is a 180-pound, 6-foot-4 freshman who just turned 19 earlier this month. He averaged 8.5 points a game, shot 45.0 percent from the field, and 30.7 percent from three-point range. According to the Daily News blog, Sixerville , he “played out of position at UCLA last season” in “deference to senior Darren Collison.” What I just read: he’s a little frail, very much a kid just out of high school, doesn’t shoot all that well, and wasn’t good enough to start at his position in college. But he’s good enough for the Sixers? (By the way, Collison was drafted after Holiday.) Worse, the Sixers don’t really sound excited. Tony DiLeo quoted by the Inquirer said, “We

College Coaches Crying, New 76ers Logo, Draft thoughts, more

It’s Hump Day. Time to remember that the oasis of two days a week without your boss isn’t so far away, and to look back (and maybe a little forward) at the week in sports. Week-in-Review: College coaches bitching about “1 & done.” Enough already from college coaches crying about the NBA allowing players to be drafted after one year in college. It’s not the NBA’s job to make kids go to class. If colleges are recruiting the mercenaries that have no intention of staying for more than a year and therefore blow off the second semester of their “freshman” year, it’s their own damn fault. It’s an absolute joke that they want someone else to make their programs have an appearance of respectability. Besides, how far have these so-called institutions of higher learning fallen for them to actually think having a kid play student-athlete for two years is more respectable? Universities need to find a way to make the kids go to school for four years and actually graduate – which is supposed to

Hump Day Sports Week-in-Review

No one reads the paper on Friday, or so I’ve heard. I’m guessing that refrain has been updated recently to simply say “no one reads the paper.” Lately, I’ve been wondering if the former is also true for blogs. So, in my ongoing effort to increase hits to the blog – and ultimately expand exposure of the website in my blatant attempt to increase commissions – I’ve decided to move my sports Week-in-Review from Fridays to Wednesdays, a.k.a. “Hump Day.” As your work-weary eyes flash that glimmer of hope knowing that you have made it through another week of, let’s face it, dealing with your jackass of a boss, please remember to check out my Hump Day Week-in-Review of sports. As you try to kill just a few more moments of the endless hours that you’re stuck in the office, take heart that you’re at least halfway to Friday and check out my quick-shot look at the stories from the Philadelphia and national sports world. Only half a week to review this time around since I did the last one on Friday

Bloggers versus Newspapers: The Ibanez Chapter

The ongoing war of words between newspaper writers and bloggers continued this week with a most unusual subject – Raul Ibanez, the Philadelphia Phillies left fielder. It also reached a new level of absurdity, which I wish I could call the “height” of stupidity, but I’m quite sure something even more absurd will come along soon enough. It’s probably impossible for me to take the side of the bloggers without being viewed as self-serving. That said, this seems to be a clear-cut example of a newspaper writer simply lashing out at bloggers. Someone most of us likely never heard of wrote a post at Midwest Sports Fans essentially detailing the hot start of the 37-year-old Ibanez, comparing it to his previous seasons, and doing little more than noting the speculation that was bound to start based on the current atmosphere in baseball. The Philadelphia Inquirer writer John Gonzalez brought the post, which the blogger admits was a response to a message posted in his fantasy league, to wh

Doug Moe, Part II? Westbrook hurt; Week-in-Review: Finals Prediction, Lebron, Barkley, more

Normally, even when I disagree with the hiring of a coach, I think the guy comes off well in his first day of media appearances with the new title. The fact is it’s rather hard not to come off well in what is a fairly contrived setting orchestrated by the organization. Besides, the coach hasn’t lost a game yet, so there’s little to get upset about. In fact, Doug Moe was the only guy that managed to sound like an idiot Day 1. I’m not quite ready to call Eddie Jordan an idiot, but this is closer to Doug Moe, Part II, than I ever wanted to get. In an interview on 950 ESPN with Jody MacDonald and Harry Mayes the man seemed to have little knowledge of the players he was inheriting, a Pollyanna attitude in general, and somewhat questionable confidence. (I used the podcast as opposed to other sources so I could take notes.) Below are some quotes from Jordan that concerned me. On first meeting Sixers GM Ed Stefanski when they worked together in New Jersey: “He walked into the board room and s