Sports
stcynic | June 21, 2006At the beginning of the NBA season, I made some predictions. At the halfway point of the season, I was looking like a genius. I predicted that the Pistons would be better under Flip Saunders than under Larry Brown. I predicted that the Heat would start out as underachievers, that they'd force out Stan Van Gundy and Pat Riley would take over. At the all-star break, I was ready to claim the mantle of Nostradamus. I spoke a little too soon.
I never imagined a team with Jason Williams and Antoine Walker - classic team killers on and off the court - in the starting lineup could win a championship…
oracknows | June 17, 2006As I sit here marveling that, as of this writing, it's almost the summer solstice and the Detroit Tigers still have the best record in baseball (with the New York Mets not far behind, yet!) I come across this depressing news. Tiger Stadium is going to be razed this fall:
It's official.
After years of debate and false hopes, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has decided to raze Tiger Stadium, the historic but decaying home of Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg and the 1984 World Series champion Tigers.
In its place, Kilpatrick envisions a ring of retail shops and residential housing surrounding the…
jlynch | June 16, 2006So, yeah, Argentina whupped Serbia & Montenegro, 6-0. For your viewing pleasure here is Esteban Cambiasso's goal, the second of the six.
We're up to 28% of our goal and are third of the SBers for money collected. So let's keep it up!
jlynch | June 15, 2006Observation: ESPN soccer commentators are idiots who need to stop bringing everything back to the US/Italy game.
Observation: Trinidad & Tobago were unlucky.
Prediction: Neither England nor Sweden will advance past the Round of 16.
Prediction: Italy 2 USA 0
jlynch | June 13, 2006Just finished watching the Brazil/Croatia game. Certainly the first half was the best half of football in the competition so far - topped with a nice goal by Kaka. Second half wasn't as good - though still better than the France/Switzerland game - the Brazilians looked a little tired. Fair dues to the Croatians for not giving up, though.
Some thoughts. I've given up watching ESPN. I can't stand the inane commentary, lack of half-time analysis, pop-ups onscreen, and continued talk of the USA/Italy game. Univision is the way to go - even the crowd noise seems louder.
I basically watch soccer…
evolgen | June 11, 2006As I write this, Mexico is about to kick off against Iran in Nuremberg. Yeah, that Nuremberg. And that Iran. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony coincidence.
evolgen | June 9, 2006The Nature Newsblog is reporting that mathematicians have shown that scoring begets more scoring in soccer football association football. I don't have access to the Nature News article, but it appears that World Cup goals cannot be modeled as Poisson random variables.
Wondering why I called it association football? Do you know where the term 'soccer' comes from? Read on below the fold.
I had no idea why Americans play 'soccer' and Brits play 'football' until a few months ago when a football loving Englishman clarified it all for me. Depending on where you live, 'football' can mean very…
jlynch | June 9, 2006The first World Cup 2006 game is over, with Germany beating Costa Rica 4-2. Good game with some nice goals, including a wonderful forty yarder. I was surprised that Costa Rica stayed as close as they did.
Looking forward to rest of the competition - Poland v Ecuador is on in an hour.
evolgen | June 3, 2006The Los Angeles Lakers will be holding a fan vote to name their new D-League (minor league) affiliate. The options:
D-Dogs
D-Fenders
L.A. Caliente
L.A. Breakers
L.A. Next
L.A. Sensation
L.A. Buss
L.A. Evolution
I like the last option -- it beats the L.A. Designers. Given that they may be playing in Anaheim, maybe they should go with "Los Angeles de Anaheim". After all, that's what these guys should have done rather than the more cumbersome "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". Redundancy like that is only equaled by "The La Brea Tar Pits" (translated entirely into English, it reads "The The Tar…
evolgen | June 2, 2006The Colorado Rockies have found the lord-uh, Jesus Christ. According one of their owners:
"We had to go to hell and back to know where the Holy Grail is. We went through a tough time and took a lot of arrows," says Rockies chairman and CEO Charlie Monfort, one of the original owners.
Monfort did, too. He says that after years of partying, including 18 months' probation for driving while impaired, he became a Christian three years ago. It influenced how he wanted to run the club, he says.
Another holier than thou born again Christian. How fun. If I were on this team I'd stage an orgy in the…
drorzel | June 1, 2006A List of Things Thrown Five Mintues Ago is live-blogging the National Spelling Bee.
The Internet is large, and contains multitudes.
(Via a comment at Making Light.)
stcynic | May 20, 2006Someone sent this link to me and it's pretty funny - JailIsiah.com. Apparently some Knicks fans are getting might upset. But they've got the facts absolutely correct. When Thomas took over the Knicks in December 2003, they were a mediocre team with an $83 million payroll and were locked into several huge contracts with underachieving players. 2 1/2 years later, they're now a terrible team with a $125 million payroll. And while he's managed to pawn off every one of those awful long term contracts to other teams, he only did so by taking on still more awful long term contracts to players who…
oracknows | May 19, 2006They may have finished in fourth place with a record of 71-91 last year, but as of this writing, my hometown team the Detroit Tigers have the best record in baseball (27-13) after a seven game winning streak, and we're into the second half of May.
I realize that 6/6/06 is coming up, but this is ridiculous!
I don't know about the rest of you Tigers fans out there, but damn if I'm not starting to believe that these guys just might be for real this year. True, they could be setting me up for a June swoon and a big disappointment, as the Cubs are wont to do to their fans, but for now I might as…
stcynic | May 15, 2006ESPN is reporting that New York Knicks owner James Dolan is going to buy out the last 4 years of Larry Brown's contract ($40 million left on it, so you gotta figure it's gonna cost half that to buy it out) and that he is then going to name Isiah Thomas as coach. I'm almost giddy with anticipation of next season if this happens. There appears to be no truth to the rumors that he will then move the team to Washington and rename them the Generals, but only time will tell for sure. To paraphrase Huey Long, Thomas must have pictures of Dolain with either a live boy or a dead girl. Nothing else…
drorzel | May 12, 2006Last night was the third annual faculty-student basketball game, held as a fund-raiser for charity by a local sorority. This year the threw us a team that included five players from the varsity, including the only 2,000-point scorer in school history. Needless to say, we didn't win...
It was sorta-kinda close for a while, until a stretch of about 4-5 minutes in the third quarter when the guys from the team played really hard. They eased up on us later, but the official final margin of five points owes a lot to the scoreboard operator "missing" a few of their baskets...
My personal stats…
evolgen | May 4, 2006
Chad and I both listen to ESPN's Mike and Mike in the mornings. The last couple of days they've been trying to figure out what four athletes belong on the Mount Rushmore of sports (they settled on Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky). While I was sitting around wondering if they would even mention Pele, Chad thought it would be cool to come up with a Mount Rushmore of Science. I'm not going to tackle such a broad topic. Instead, I ask who belongs on a Mount Rushmore of Biology, which I'd like to call Mount Biodome. My suggestions are below the fold -- and, no,…
drorzel | May 4, 2006Since people have asked about the outcome of the Mike and Mike "Mount Sportsmore" thing that kicked off yesterday's post about iconic scientists, I made it a point to catch their final list today:
Muhammed Ali
Babe Ruth
Michael Jordan
Wayne Gretzky
They specifically put Jackie Robinson off in a special category of his own ("looking down from above"). Gretzky was apaprently the choice in a fan vote, beating out Secretariat, Jesse Owens, and Jim Brown. No mention of Pele at all, as far as I could tell.
Meanwhile, over in the "Mount Rushmore of Science" thread, the nomination geenrating the most…
drorzel | May 3, 2006On the way in to work, I was listening to ESPN radio's Mike & Mike show, and they were discussing "Mount Sportsmore," that is, the Mount Rushmore of sports. They had two of the four spots filled with Babe Ruth and Muhammed Ali, and were debating baseball players for the other two (which is stupid-- the other two are Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan).
This raises the question, though, of who belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Science: Who are the four most iconic scientists out there, who deserve to be memorialized in titanic stone sculptures, ideally on the Moon or somewhere similarly cool…
stcynic | April 27, 2006Two sports posts in one day? They're going to revoke my membership in the Association of Intellectuals. But hey, college basketball is one of my great passions. ESPN has been discussing and debating who would go on the Mt. Rushmore of college basketball for both coaches and players during the ESPN era (which began with the 1979-80 season, which means Larry Bird and Magic Johnson just miss out on being included). I'm going to give my thoughts on both the coaches list and the players list.
Doug Gottlieb offers up his list of the 4 players who would go on Mt. Rushmore since 1980. They are Larry…
stcynic | April 26, 2006And with the mess surrounding their lacrosse program, they could use some. Josh McRoberts, their only returning big man, has just announced that he will return for his sophomore season rather than enter the NBA draft. He was expected to be a lottery pick if he had gone pro, based purely on potential, but decided to stay at Duke instead. This is a huge relief for Duke basketball fans. Their inside game would have been decimated without him, after losing Shelden Williams to graduation and Eric Boateng to transfer. They have 7-footer Brian Zoubek coming in as a freshman and next week they'll…