Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Sports Notes

I defended LeBron James after "The Decision."

I'll still defend him, but he needs to do one thing: shut up. Once he announced that he was going to Miami, the best thing he could have done was go underground for a few months. Stay off the radar screen until basketball season starts. Let people vent all their fury (much of it entirely misplaced).

Then, instead of doing this ad, which is terribly clever but also unnaturally slick, he should've done something far simpler. Show 55 seconds of his freakish highlights, starting with childhood and arcing all the way to last season, and then, at the end, these words: NOW WE'LL SEE.

Simple, but defiant. He didn't need 90 seconds of blah-blah-blah. He needed the hammer.

The Heat got beat tonight by the Celtics, and the best thing that could possibly happen to them would be to get their asses kicked fairly regularly for the first 30 games of the season. The harder it is at first, the better they'll be at playoff time. What they don't need is to go 25-5 or something like that for the first 30 games.

I'm still a bit mystified that so many people hated him going to Miami. If a general manager pulled off a deal to get three superstars on the same team, with all of them agreeing to take less money, he would be called a genius. But if a player does it, he's selfish?

What is beyond dispute is that interest in the NBA has exploded. Just wait for the ratings of the Celtics-Heat game tonight. They'll be huge.

I'm also mystified by the outrage over the NFL cracking down on head shots. Why exactly should it EVER have been legal to tackle with a helmet, or deliver blows to the heads of defenseless players? Given the data that has come out in the last two years regarding brain trauma/damage for former football players, it's nothing short of insane to allow those hits to continue. Brain damage is not entertainment.

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