Sporting Madness

It looks like the Phoenix Coyotes are going to be around Glendale, Arizona for at least another year. TSN's Dave Naylor writes that the city council there voted 5-2 to give the team a $25 million subsidy if they haven't found a buyer by the end of the 2011-12 season. As Joe Yerdon writes, that subsidy should keep them there for at least another year, if not longer, and that means Winnipeg probably isn't getting a team this summer. Of course, that won't make everyone happy; it was only decided after a hilarious council meeting (described perfectly by friend of the blog Dennis Tarwood ) that featured plenty of comments both for and against the idea , and it's sure to meet with criticism from the Goldwater Institute , many Canadian hockey fans and media outlets, economists and others. However, while there are substantial issues around hockey in Phoenix that still need to be addressed, keeping the team there is a good thing from this perspective. It's not that e...

I'm in Prince George at the moment for my cousin's wedding, so I probably won't have much time to write this weekend, but I appeared on the Davis Sports Deli Podcast this morning with Jon Santiago to discuss the World Cup, the NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant , LeBron James and Blogs With Balls 3.0 in Chicago. Check out the episode here !

The San Antonio Spurs are kind of good. They've won four NBA titles in the last 15 years and been a consistent threat over that time, but the interesting thing is that their identity has changed dramatically over that period; they started with the twin towers of David Robinson and Tim Duncan , then evolved into the Big Three of Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili , and now (thanks to Parker's injury) are perhaps in the throes of another transition. Parker's loss hasn't hurt them anywhere near as much as many would have expected, though, and one of the reasons why is the play of George Hill , who's the subject of my Stacheketball column this week. Hill's a fascinating guy, but not your traditional NBA star; he stands 6'2'' and weighs 180 pounds, and he went to the little-known Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Check out the piece for more background on him and a few thoughts on why he's a nice fit for the Spurs. Also, ther...

This story from Aaron Wilson of The National Football Post about the accusations of domestic violence against St. Louis Rams' running back Steven Jackson is horrifying. According to the piece(which picks up on a TMZ report), Jackson allegedly attacked his girlfriend, Supriya Harris , in March 2009. She was nine months pregnant at the time and gave birth 10 days later. Here's the key part: "In a complaint filed with the Las Vegas police department, Harris claimed: "Steven became enraged and pushed me to the ground, repeatedly." And she alleged that the Rams runner: "forcibly grabbed my arm and flung me against the door. I was crying and trying to protect my stomach from the blows, as I was 9 mos pregnant. .. continued to shove me against the door until his nephew ... interceded and yelled, 'uncle, she has a baby, stop.'" Harris said she was "bleeding heavily," after being smashed into a door handle." This is a horrifyin...

I'm starting up a Yahoo! fantasy basketball league with some of my fellow bloggers from The Rookies . We still have a few spots left, so if you're interested in joining us, the league id is 360797 and the password is neilyoung. You should be able to join us here . Our live draft will be Friday, Nov 6 at 5:15 p.m. PST (8:15 p.m. Eastern), but you can also autorank players if you're not able to make the draft. Hope you can join us!

Here's the second part of the 2002 draft comparison I started the other day , looking at the success rates of players in the NBA and NHL drafts. See that post for an explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish and a discussion of some of the limiting factors of this type of analysis. The format is almost the same, but the ratings are tweaked slightly to allow for the differences in each sport; full explanations are below. I've also included the ratings as a column in the actual spreadsheets to make it easier to see how players performed relative to their draft position. I have an analysis of the differences between leagues at the end of the post as well. NBA: [Table from Wikipedia ] System: 5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection) 4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season) 3 – Marginal (played in the NBA last season) 2 – One-off (played at least 100 career NBA games) 1 – Bust (played less than 100 games) Ratings: 5 – Ming, Butler, Stoudemire: three play...

Our society is becoming more cynical and jaded all the time. Nothing is pure any more. You can't enjoy food without thinking about its calories and trans fats, you can't wholeheartedly support any political party when you're aware of their scandals and betrayals, and you can't even buy a coffee or a shirt without thinking about where it came from and who made it for you. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; after all, it tends to allow us to see the shades of grey I'm so big on and consider the consequences of our actions. Still, it makes it tough to feel sheer elation and exhilaration about anything. This transition from a shining ideological paradise to the dirty and grubby world of realpolitik has also happened in sports. Perhaps the best example is baseball's steroid era and the resulting Mitchell Report, the final illusion-shattering document I wrote about here . It's why people were so incensed about steroid use in baseball but willing to tolerate...

Much has happened since my initial post last week about the rumours of the Indiana Pacers potentially moving to Vancouver. The story's spread everywhere from CTV to Newsday to the Indianapolis Business Journal , with many sites claiming there's nothing behind it. Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini , the rumoured potential buyer of the team from current owners Herb and Mel Simon , gave a very interesting statement to CTV, though, saying he has "no immediate interest in purchasing an NBA basketball team." That's a pretty weak denial, especially considering the "immediate" part. Prospective owners of sports franchises rarely make their interest known publicly well in advance, particularly when relocation is involved. Moreover, the initial report stated that any deal was at a very early stage, so Aquilini could be telling the complete truth here and still purchase an NBA franchise a month down the road (if he had immediate interest then). As I ...

The Canucks may be out of the playoffs, but it may be a busy offseason for owner Francesco Aquilini . Kevin Nesgoda of Bleacher Report writes that rumours are swirling in Indiana regarding Aquilini's potential interest in purchasing the NBA's Pacers and relocating them to Vancouver. Nesgoda's initial report has been cited by some politically connected sites in the area, including Capitol Watchblog and Howey Politics , and the B.C. media are starting to look into it as well; Don Taylor mentioned the idea on Sportsnet Connected 's Pacific edition a few minutes ago. At first, this seems like a somewhat implausible rumour, but upon further reflection, it makes a lot of sense. First off, the NBA was not entirely a failure in Vancouver the first time around. Attendance was bad, but much of that was due to poor on-court performance by the team and ineptitude on the part of the management. The team also wasn't really given much time; they were only in Vancouver for six...

This story from Alana G (via TrueHoop ) is hilarious, but frightening. As most probably know, the NBA is holding its All-Star weekend in Phoenix over the next few days. Reporter Niki D'Andrea of the Phoenix New-Times wrote a cover story about a "tattoo cap" on NBA players that commissioner David Stern was supposedly thinking of implementing, which turned out to be based off a satirical story by author/blogger Con Chapman which was republished on his community blog page at Fox Sports. D'Andrea explains her rationale in a blog post here : "Though our knee-jerk reaction to the tattoo cap story was that it might be a joke, what it touted seemed possible. Commish Stern had already instituted a business-casual dress code for NBA players going to and from games -- in an attempt to thwart a trend toward hop-hop attire among some players. Also, Suns players we interviewed thought the tat cap story was true and complained about the alleged plan in our article. Cal...

Yesterday morning saw Manchester United see off Southampton rather easily [ ESPN Soccernet ] in the third round of the F.A. Cup. They were helped by the sending off of Saints' striker Matt Paterson in the first half and a questionable penalty call, but the class divide between the two teams was still striking. United started two players who have barely seen any first-team action this season( Jonathan Evans and Danny Welback ) as well as several others whose minutes have been limited of late ( John O'Shea , Nani and Gary Neville ), and the Red Devils also brought on rarely-used Darron Gibson and Rodrigo Possebon as substitutes, but these lesser lights still had little trouble with the Saints. It's interesting how quickly things change in soccer. Southampton has a long history of good, if not great proportions; they won the FA Cup in 1976 (reasonably recent by English soccer standards) and they reached Division I for the second time in 1978 and stayed there until 1992, ...

Henry Abbott of the excellent TrueHoop posted a link to a very interesting Los Angeles Times piece by Mike Bresnahan yesterday, in which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson said he didn't think his team could top his record-setting 72-10 campaign with the 1996 Bulls. The reason Jackson cited wasn't the absence of Michael Jordan , or in fact anything on the court. Instead, he suggested that the Lakers' West Coast location and the increased travel required because of this would prevent them from breaking the record. This isn't the first time a West Coast coach or GM has discussed the impact of travel on their team, but it's the first time I've heard it in the NBA. In Vancouver sports, this is a common theme, and others are picking up on it: Gregg Easterbrook of the always-excellent Tuesday Morning Quarterback has been tracking the miserable failures of West Coast NFL teams on the East Coast this season (they're currently 1-16 in games played in Eas...

As I wrote in my Out of Left Field post on the Sonics settlement earlier this morning, there are only two scenarios by which this abrupt reversal on the city's part makes sense in my mind. The first is that they've actually obtained a more substantial guarantee of a replacement team than was indicated in the settlement deal : the second is that they were hornswoggled into accepting a bunch of cash and a number of vague promises for the future in return for their franchise. This second, more depressing scenario, which I picked as seeming more likely at the moment, seems to be the predominant belief in Seattle for the present. As columnist Steve Kelley of The Seattle Times wrote today : "Basketball died in Seattle Wednesday afternoon. It died because too many people who should have cared didn't. It died of neglect. It died because all of the powers-that-be stopped paying attention. ... Basketball is dead, and don't look for any miracle resurrections. Chances ar...

Well, the details of the Sonics settlement have finally come out [Sharon Pian Chan and Jim Brunner, The Seattle Times ], and it looks like they will in fact be moving to Oklahoma City sooner rather than later in exchange for $75 million dollars ($45 million if the city gets another NBA team within five years). That's much better than the $26.5 million Bennett offered in February before the trial, but it leaves me with plenty of questions for the city. Their whole case revolved around the idea of "specific performance", the idea that money alone could not replace an NBA team. What about the passionate testimony from writer and fan Sherman Alexie? What about Mayor Nickels' testimony [Greg Johns, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ] about being an eternal optimist, where he said "A lot can happen in two years?" What about the testimony from economist Andrew Zimbalist, who said he couldn't put a dollar value on what the Sonics bring to the community? What ab...

Now that's highly unusual: The Seattle Times is reporting [Jim Brunner and Sharon Pian Chan, The Seattle Times ] that the Sonics and their owners have apparently agreed on a settlement, only hours before Judge Marsha Pechman was supposed to issue her ruling in the case. The timing of this is bizarre, as I don't see what either side has to gain by settling now. For the city, their aim throughout has been to try and enforce "specific performance" to make the team play at least two more seasons in Seattle, so it wouldn't seem to make sense for them to take a cash buyout at this stage when Judge Pechman might have ruled in their favour, and it's hard to imagine Clay "Buccaneer" Bennett agreeing to the Sonics staying in Seattle any longer than necessary. The other odd aspect to the timing is that both sides have already been fighting dirty: often, settlements are reached in cases like this one to try and prevent incriminating information from coming out...

Photo: Steven Pyeatt of Save Our Sonics. [Photo from http://stevenpyeatt.com/ ]. As part of the preparation for Judge Pechman's decision [Greg Johns, Seattle Post-Intelligencer ] later today on the future of the Sonics, here's the next installment of On the Ground, featuring an interview with Steven Pyeatt, the co-founder of Save our Sonics . Steven has been one of the most influential figures in the fight to keep the team in Seattle, working with co-founder Brian Robinson and the impressive team they've pulled together (including former Sonics star Slick Watts). He's helped organize rallies (including the one I covered ), e-mail and letter-writing campaigns, and much, much more. If the Sonics do survive in Seattle, his efforts will be a large part of the reason why. There's an excellent Seattle Times profile on him by Ashley Bach. Anyways, here's my questions and his answers. Q: What’s the mood like in Seattle? Do people still feel there’s a chance to keep...