Best wishes to Le Gros Bill for a full and speedy recovery.

LINSANE IN THE MEMBRANE

What do The Grateful Dead, Google and Jeremy Lin all have in common? If you say they are all unexpected success stories you would be right and if you said absolutely nothing you would be even more right. However the one thing that I first noticed about Jeremy Lin when he entered my stream of consciousness earlier this month is that he was born and raised in the hotbed of unconventional yet extreme talent, Palo Alto, California. Jeremy Lin is more than a point guard, more than an overnight success story, more that the cause of Gotham’s Temporary Linsanity and more than a new way to sell jerseys. In short he is the answer to a riddle - Can an unknown and undrafted 23 year old Harvard graduate restore the Knicks into a winning team? Before answering that consider the following. Can an unmotivated jug band formed in Palo Alto define the psychedelic rock movement and create a cult following for half a century? Can two men and a complicated algorithm change the way the world’s population searches for information, books flights, gets directions, keeps in touch with friends, watches videos, reads the news and makes phone calls? The great town of Palo Alto seems to breed these unusual suspects.

After 10 days of Linsanity I finally decided to actually watch a Knick game to see what the hype was all about. I was expecting to see a point guard of back up quality at best hit a few open shots and watch the crowd overreact simply because he does not look like anyone that has ever started in the NBA shorter than 7’6”. At 6’3” I expected to see a kid with no scouting report playing in a soon to end fantasy camp. I expected to see an outside shooting “HORSE” player with IVY league ball handling skills unable to guard the elite point guards of the NBA and unable to feed his co-stars efficiently. To be honest prior to watching him play I never thought of him as anything more than publicity stunt. Even when my wife asked me last week if the Knicks would keep him I answered “of course, he sells merchandise”.

What I actually witnessed in the game blew my mind. I first turned on the game in the second quarter when he was on the bench and had I not known better I would have thought he was the water boy or the trainer’s son sitting in uniform with all the players. Then he re-entered the game and impressed me in a way that the cynic in me didn’t see coming. Just as I predicted he doesn’t have the speed, he doesn’t have the size and he doesn’t have the finesse. He does however have court presence and the ability to distribute the ball efficiently. More importantly he has a skill that Knick point guards have not had for over a decade – he makes the players around him better. Their sudden 9-3 run makes sense to me – when he is on the floor the Knicks are quite simply the better team. Yes he turns the ball over and yes he can’t always go toe-to-toe with his counterparts. The most important thing for a team though is to win and he seems to bring a winning formula to the table. In making the individuals around him better he makes the team at large better and as their starting point guard the Knicks are a force in the East.

AND THATS THE BRUTAL TRUTH!

Farewell to The Kid

This blog was created to vent about coaching decisions that I don’t agree with and players who are overrated in their sports. It certainly does not exist to discuss major issues such as illness or death, but every once in a while exceptions need to be made and today is one of those days. Having been born in 1978 I first started to be aware of sports stars some time around circa ’81. Being just 3 years old or so I only knew of one player from each sport that I watched and that player was as big as the game itself. Back then to me anyways, hockey was synonymous with Wayne Gretzky, tennis was John McEnroe, basketball was Dr. J., and baseball meant Gary Carter. As I grew older and realized that there were more than just one player in the league there was still something about The Kid that appealed to me. As I started playing the game myself and watched Major League baseball a little more closely, Carter stuck out among the other major leaguers as having something special that really spoke to me – he played the game like one of us. While the other stars of the era were at the ballpark doing their jobs, Carter was there playing a game with the same boyish exuberance and “its getting dark, next run wins” kind of attitude that was common to me and my inner circle of 6 year olds, but very rare in The Show. Professionals don’t jump up and hug each other the way kids do with each run scored, but as a Major Leaguer playing at the highest level, Gary had a way to celebrate the game in a way that  inspired an entire generation. It is no coincidence that there are a disproportionate number of professional or semi-pro catchers from Montreal that began playing the game in the late 70's and early 80’s, and it is no coincidence that if you Google Image the ’86 Mets, one of the most talked about teams in the history of any sport, the greatest algorithm available to man will undoubtedly return a picture of Carter jumping up and down with an expression of joy that is unusual yet refreshing to see on a grown man’s face.  The Olympic Stadium in Montreal may be one of the greatest architectural disasters in the history of western civilization as we know it, but that notwithstanding it still had its great moments over the years and The Kid was seemingly always in the center of them. From its opening in 1977 when Carter put on a show against the Phillies, to the Expos’ only playoff run in ’81, to his last game's standing ovation in ’92, and finally Gary Carter Day in 2003, Carter always put more asses in the seats than $1 beer night which says a lot in a City whose population remembers the O’keefe brand with more fondness than the Expos, and a stadium that was surprisingly built in an unpopulated, out-of-the-way and generally speaking run down part of town. That Stadium has been nicknamed “The Big Owe” for the financial burden it put on the city, but if anyone ever wanted to put a positive spin on that place they could rightfully and unequivocally dub it “The House The Kid Built”.  Having lived in both Montreal and New York I can tell you first hand that despite their geographical proximity you cannot find two populations more different from each other, yet Carter always related to both crowds.  From his youthful Joie de Vivre that struck similarities to  “the weekend starts on Wednesday” majority in La Belle Province, to his tireless work ethic that was respected by the 16 hour work day folk in The Big Apple, Carter was a fan and media favorite wherever he played. Carter’s passing earlier today is a reminder of the cruel realities that the Expos are gone forever and the Mets’ glory days are long behind them.  More significantly, two cities will mourn one of their favorites, and whether you followed baseball or not, everyone local knew and cheered for #8.

AND THAT'S THE BRUTAL TRUTH

SHORTER SEASONS, LONGER LIVES

In the first week counting down to next year’s NFL season I will discuss a topic that I typically avoid in my football conversations but feel it is an appropriate time to discuss. As a fan part of me wishes that football was played year round and like most of America I would enjoy an 18 game season with two fewer preseason games. That’s the fan in me talking employing the same greed as the owners in their quest for a longer season. Their greed is financially driven and mine is for entertainment but the spirit of the wish is the same – to benefit myself at the health risk of others. In the talk of 16 games or 18 games the most significant number to me is 55. That’s the age at which the average NFL player dies. That’s the average age at which the players we enjoy watching turn their wives into widows and their children into orphans. NFL players are not stupid (ok, some of them are) and just like police officers and fire fighters they understand the danger of their profession before getting into it, but as fans who benefit from their efforts we owe it to them to encourage a safer playing schedule. Fining James Harrison for hard hits will not increase the life of any NFL players but offering them fewer games to play in each year might. I am not a doctor nor do I pretend to be, but it seems to me that a 14 game schedule in the same 17 week season that would provide all teams with a bye week in each third of the season, would somehow reduce players battling through injuries. That would mean that in addition to taking fewer hits in a season they would also have more time to recover before feeling the need to tough it out for another week. Pain numbing drugs that lead to long term kidney and liver problems would be needed on a less frequent basis. Unreported head injuries would have an extra week to heal without being once again subjected to violent hits. Don’t get me wrong, I love the aggressive nature of football but as fans we would have to give up very little for a 14 game season. We would still be able to spend 17 straight Sundays plus playoffs watching football and aside from watching our favorite team less often and altering our fantasy strategy slightly we would for the most part be unaffected. Sure, the owners would each have to give up one home game but with the popularity and growth rate of the league they will undoubtedly find a way to absorb it. I wish I could watch my team play every week but in the end of the day the shorter season means longer lives.

AND THAT’S THE BRUTAL TRUTH!

Universe 3 – Boston 0; QB puts the ELI back in ELITE!

In the wake of Superbowl XLVI the most obvious consequence in my mind is that Wes Welker can now take his unwanted place in history along with Asante Samuel and Bill Buckner while Mario Manningham has Joined David Tyree and Mookie Wilson in one of New York’s most distinguished private clubs. All the talk about the two quarterbacks involved is true, that Eli is unquestionably an elite QB in the NFL and Tom Brady is still among the all-time greats but will never be in the class of Joe Montana. However, the outcome of the game was not a result of the two QBs, the defenses or the coaching. The most logical explanation of the outcome is that this result was dictated by the Universe, and more specifically that the Universe will never allow a team from Boston to beat a team from New York in a championship situation. How else can you ever explain what Red Sox fans have been pondering for 26 years of how a slow rolling ball that would be a routine play for any Pee Wee first basemen can roll through the legs of a seasoned veteran, or how floater out of the hands of Eli Manning can sail through the hands of an All Pro Ball Hawk like Asante Samuel, and most recently, how a possession receiver of Wes Welker’s caliber can drop a pass from Tom Brady in the most critical of times that he catches regularly without question.




Not to take anything away from Eli who has been superb throughout his career and especially in clutch situations and had he played in a different less critical market with a less recognized last name he would have been considered a Top 5 QB for quite some time now. Anyone that can list the best QBs in the game without mentioning Eli’s name is clearly following a different sport than I am. As for Brady, I can’t explain how his receiving core that has been solid all year dropped 4 straight passes in the 4th quarter. I cant’ explain how his “bend but don’t break” defense broke 3 times in the late 4th quarter to arguably cost him 3 Superbowls (in ’06 it broke against the Colts in the AFC Championship Game that would have lead to an easy win over the Bears). And I can’t explain how his supposed mastermind of a coach got out-strategized in 2 straight Superbowls. What I can say about him is that his 2-minute drill to end the first half was one for the ages and with the exception of Joe Montana he is the single greatest QB I ever had the privilege of watching. There was a time four years ago when I felt I would not have to make that distinction between him and Montana, and that sentiment briefly came back early in the 4th Quarter Sunday night, but WR and Defense let downs notwithstanding, number 12 did not pull it off when he needed to despite a great performance and therefore in my mind anyways he needs to settle for #2 of all time.



AND THAT’S THE BRUTAL TRUTH!