At first it was NBC LA botching the Kings’ logo, then it was FOX’s Liz Habib butchering some highlights, and now it’s CBS’ turn to screw up something LA Kings-related.

CBS rolled some Kings mascot footage before showing Kings-Coyotes highlights from Game 4, but they used the Sacramento Kings mascot.

Disappointingly, the blunder gives CBS LA into repeat offender status.

H/T Marcus Vanderberg

Reporter Julie Tristan is becoming known this across the country, and it’s not for a good reason. The host of KSDK’s “Show Me St. Louis!” did a feature last week on Cardinals third baseman David Freese riding the new Mr. Freeze ride at Six Flags St. Louis. For some reason, Tristan took the opportunity to shamelessly hit on the the ballplayer repeatedly.

Some of her choice lines included:

“We’re going to hit on you, heavily.”

“I think what everyone wants to know is … do you have a girlfriend???”

“Do you prefer blondes or brunettes?”

“Last question: Do you think we’re pretty?”

“Isn’t he just the cutest? We look perfect together!”

Tristan of course capped it all off by saying of Freese, “I love you.”

Videos of women asking out professional athletes are cute when they involve a service person and a choreographed invite to a military ball, not an actual TV reporter. A word of advice for Tristan after that pathetic display: Express your crushes on your personal time, not when you’re supposed to be a professional on camera. That was disgusting.

Big thank you to Deadspin for sharing the video.

NHL play-by-play announcer Dave Strader ventured into a touchy area with his final call of the Predators-Red Wings series on Friday night. Nashville had just beaten Detroit 2-1 to win the series in five games, and Strader celebrated the moment with a questionable, and borderline racist pun.

“Honkytown has taken down Hockeytown,” was his call for the series.

Detroit is affectionately called “Hockeytown” because of the Red Wings’ success and the passion of the fans. “Honky” is a racist term for a white person, though there is a type of music/bar called “Honky-tonk,” which would be less offensive.

Let’s hope for Strader’s sake he was referring to Nashville as a honky-tonk bar/music town rather than a city full of honkys. Next time just play it straight, Strader, and don’t try to say something cute that can be taken the wrong way.

During an argument about the Thunder and Russell Westbrook, Rose got Bayless to admit he averaged just 1.4 points per game as a senior in high school. He also got Bayless to admit he played on the JV team as a junior.

Bayless, clearly embarrassed and frustrated, said “We’ll address that later.” He apparently never did, but he found a way to immediately turn the tables back on Rose.

Normally I don’t encourage pointing the finger and laughing at someone but, in this case, I do.

The criticism of Russell Westbrook has been persistent since the playoffs last year when many media members/wanna-be critics watched the Thunder play for the first time. They were horrified by what they saw — that Westbrook is a playmaking point guard who tries to score rather than distribute — and began hammering him mercilessly. Apparently the complaints have continued for brainless Bayless, who gets paid big money to play the role of the outrageous antagonist for ESPN, even though the Thunder have the best record in the conference and second-best record in the league.

Oklahoma City is 20-4 when Westbrook takes more shots than Durant and they’ve won those games by 12.4 points on average.

“We’re worse when I take more shots,” Durant said. “Like I said, that guy doesn’t know a thing. I don’t think he watches us. I think he just looks at the stats. And traditionally, a point guard is not supposed to take more shots than everybody else on the team. But we’re better when he does do that and he’s aggressive. And I’m better when I’m out there facilitating, rebounding, defending and being more efficient on my shots with less shots.”

I hate to even give publicity to Bayless, but he’s such a controversial personality it’s impossible to avoid him. The only thing I can do is repeat what Durant said and remind you that this guy is an actor who is not a real sports analyst. He is paid to say the most outrageous things possible just to irritate you. His opinion does not matter. He is disingenuous. He does not know sports. He is a professional button-pusher. Just keep all that in mind and ignore him. As long as athletes and fans continue to watch clowns like him and respond, he wins, and ESPN will continue to promote and employ him. If he is ignored and nobody repeats/debates what he says and nobody watches his show, then ESPN will take him off their programming. Only you have the power to get him off the tube, so exercise some restraint and help make it happen.

We wouldn’t put anything past the Knicks, but the report seemed like a stretch. The Knicks don’t have trouble selling out playoff games, so what motivation would they have to get more money up front? Do they really stand to profit that much from one month of interest? I can’t imagine that was their reason.

In reality, Lin, like any competitive player, didn’t want to commit to surgery that would likely end his season without exploring all options first. He saw several doctors, tested the knee well after the Wednesday playoff ticket deadline, and ultimately decided surgery was his best option. I think that’s the reason the announcement was delayed. What team tries bragging about devastating injury news? None of them do.

LBS called the Knicks around 4:00 p.m. ET Monday and they had no response to the report. A few hours later, both Madison Square Garden (MSG) and Cablevision sent statements blasting the Daily News.

Here are their statements, via IamaGM.com:

Cablevision Systems Corporation statement: “Today’s story in the New York Daily News is just another in a long list of articles and cover stories designed to provoke Cablevision and The Madison Square Garden Company. Mr. Zuckerman has engaged in a campaign of intimidation and extortion to effect a merger between Newsday and the Daily News. He has made repeated overtures to Mr. Dolan and his executives to combine the operations with joint ownership and shared printing and editorial expense. This proposal was rejected multiple times. In fact, at a Four Seasons lunch meeting on March 6, Mr. Zuckerman once again made his proposal, this time adding that “the bad press would end if we became joint owners” (a direct quote). Shortly thereafter, the Daily News ran a full front page with Mr. Dolan’s picture as a centerpiece for a skull and crossbones graphic that included the word “Toxic” in bold print. Today’s back page story is just another in a series of these defamatory extortions.”

The Madison Square Garden Company statement: “Today’s Daily News story is completely inaccurate, and serves only as another example of fabricated reporting by Mr. Zuckerman’s newspaper. The suggestion that the timing of Jeremy Lin’s injury report is in any way connected to a longstanding Knicks playoff ticket deadline is a malicious attack on The Madison Square Garden Company. Jeremy Lin decided on Saturday to have surgery now in hopes that he would be able to return in time for, or at least during, the playoffs. The Knicks have sold out 61 games in a row, including last season’s playoffs, and as standard practice we provided season ticket holders a first opportunity benefit to reserve playoff tickets before going on sale to the general public.”

Cablevision President and CEO and The Madison Square Garden Company Executive Chairman Jim Dolan said, “I understand that there will always be those who are critical of anyone who owns a controlling interest in three New York sports franchises. But, Mr. Zuckerman’s attempts to parlay this into a favorable arrangement for himself could not be more misguided.”

The Daily News printed a juicy story and it went viral. Unfortunately, the response from the Knicks probably won’t receive as much attention, though it’s just as important for their side to be heard. I tend to believe them more than I do the Daily News on this matter.

Shockey has said he has a strong relationship with Saints coach Sean Payton and that he wouldn’t rat him out. Shockey even suggested he and Sapp take a lie detector test and show it on TV. But his most powerful words came when he blasted Warren Sapp.

“Sapp can say what he wants about me, but if he really says that he’ll put his life on the line for his source, we’ll see,” he told Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports. “I’ve never been a guy who failed multiple drug tests. I’ve never been divorced. I don’t have four kids by four different women. I don’t lie. This attacks my character and it’s not fair.”

Wow, talk about a burn. It’s nice Shockey brought all that up about Sapp because many people don’t realize what a clown he is. We’ve tried to point it out before and we’ll do it again.

Sapp’s claim about Shockey is irreversible. Once the word gets out that Shockey is the snitch — which is exactly what Sapp did — that’s all most people will hear. They won’t know about Shockey’s denial (or they’ll dismiss it). They won’t do the research and realize that Shockey was upset when he first heard about the allegation several weeks ago. They dismiss the reports from Mike Freeman of CBS and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk who both say Shockey was not the snitch. Nope, most people from now on will think Jeremy Shockey is the reason the Saints got into so much trouble, even if it’s not true, all because of Sapp.

Sapp’s disgustingly irresponsible tweet is grounds for firing. Anyone with Sapp’s clout (or less for that matter) should never throw out a name unless they are 100% certain about their report and have evidence to prove it when it comes to such a sensitive subject. You especially don’t do that when you’re an employee of a league looking to clean up the game, not discourage people from ever stepping forward again. This was a colossal mistake by Sapp on several levels. The only proper response is for him to apologize for saddling Shockey with a snitch label for life and to be fired for his recklessness.

UPDATE: Shockey has tweeted a screen shot of a text conversation between him and Sean Payton which seemingly proves that there are no hard feelings.

If you have ever happened upon a big dance, we would like to hear from you. If you know someone who has had their ticket punched, please let us know. Has your bubble burst lately? If it has, perhaps you should consult a gastroenterologist or, barring that, maybe a shaman. For some reason, however, these trite expressions of nebulousness are dusted off each year around the first week of March in the NCAA’s Pavlovian way to drum up interest for its annual four-week basketball tournament.

Yes, folks it’s that time of year again: Everything is in full bloom, the swallows fly north, and thought-provoking discourse flies south. The NCAA begins its annual march into the forefront of the national consciousness, while brackets are busted and Cinderellas leave their slippers somewhere in Dayton, or East Rutherford.

During my enthralling college journey en route to a communications degree — in other words, a time of heavy chemical experimentation — I learned the seemingly meaningless concept known as the magic bullet theory (not to be confused with Plaxico Burress’ alibi). I didn’t know it then, seeing as how I only took on the major to meet the kind of women who had aspirations of becoming weather girls, but that theory has served me well since I am now using it in a treatise about sports no less. How many times have you watched an excoriation of the NCAA Tournament by some talking head analyzing the field or probable field, and the expressions “Big Dance”, “on the bubble”, “dark horse”, or “tournament resume”, among others have been used? You’ve undoubtedly stumbled across the anachronistic concept of March sports talk novelty. My friends, you have been shot with the magic bullet seemingly prophesied by my professor in Comm 10.

Bless ESPN. They have become a leviathan since their start-up operation unfolded in 1979 as a national network televising a group of old ladies playing hearts. Today, they are a multinational and multimedia corporation broadcasting much younger men playing cards, while setting up Joe Lunardi in a bid for President in 2016. They have also introduced the world to bracket-busting and a field of science known as bracketology.

If you’re not familiar with college basketball academia, bracket-busting is the time-honored tradition of a school from upstate New York turning your recently-completed NCAA predictions into a piece of paper more worthless than Confederate money. Bracket-busting can also refer to a slow weekend in February, when the folks at the Network can match up a team from Long Beach, California and Omaha, Nebraska an event coincidentally forewarned by the Mayan calendar.

Bracketology, on the other hand, is apparently a field of science meant to engender ill-will toward any talking head giving me advice on picking Murray State in the Final Four. Ostensibly, this field of science is worthy enough to merit a separate Wikipedia page. Lunardi coined the term and teaches an online course at Saint Joseph’s University on the subject. Some part of me wishes I was still in school to take such a class. Alas, my years of college were spent meticulously studying the history of the Beatles and fluvial geomorphology. (As for the latter, sorry but I thought geography meant state capitals.) If only had I been able to take “Fundamentals of Bracketology”, I might have actually been compelled to take the cellophane off my textbooks, especially if the titles included Homer Drew’s “Odyssey”.

Of course, bubbles being burst and underdogs triumphing (against overdogs?) are well and good but, lest I should forget, this delicious piece of triteness all falls under the auspices of March Madness. Remember the old days when madness was used as an unflattering description for those who had gone off the deep end? Well those days are about as dated as a Grant Hill flat top.

Now, madness — March Madness — has come to stand as a diagnosis for why nothing will be accomplished in workplaces across the country for the next four weeks from Thursday through Sunday. I consulted my doctor for clarification on the symptoms of this well-known disorder. Unfortunately since my doctor is WebMD — hey, health insurance isn’t cheap — the answer to my query was accompanied by an advertisement for Yoplait yogurt. I did, however, get an article letting me know that getting too involved in March Madness can trigger cardiac-related death. Therefore, I’d like to take time out to thank UCLA basketball for helping to save my life yet again.

Little did Charles Perrault know that, when he came up with the concept of Cinderella sometime in the late 17th century, he was setting the stage for one of the most hackneyed college basketball clichés the world has ever known. Sure it may be a more apt reference from that period than, say, Cartesian philosophy, but at least Rene Descartes encouraged people to actually think. Though, here’s assuming that he probably would have taken the safe bet and chosen Kentucky to win it all. I doubt that it will happen, but one would hope Bob Wenzel and Jim Spanarkel give a shout-out to the scientific revolution before they start singing “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”.

Welcome to the Big Dance, folks. Watch your step for busted brackets. Hopefully, your tickets have been punched. You know what? Nah, forget it. I may just have to sit this one out. I’ve never been much of a dancer, anyway. Unless we’re talking about the polka.

The players in question are Jonathan Vilma, Cortland Finnegan, and Vincent Jackson — three black players.

“Wow, they’re gonna spend all that money,” Sileo said while hosting his morning show on WDAE The Sports Animal.

Sileo’s co-host then razzed him, suggesting Dan was going to end up changing his mind after the Bucs got the players.

“And Dan’ll be like, ‘well, they’re not really that good.’”

But Sileo stood by his opinion, saying “No! No! If they get those three monkeys, I’m good! I’m ready, man. I’m ready. I want those guys. Those guys are great players.”

The audio is below, via Deadspin:

Sileo is a former Miami Hurricanes lineman who played 10 games with the Bucs in 1987. He’s had credibility issues in the past and was suspended in 2009 for claims about the Buccaneers owners.

We have no idea in what possible context his “three monkeys” comment could have been stated to make it benign, because that sounded awful. Recall that Howard Cosell got into trouble for calling Redskins receiver Alvin Garrett “a little monkey” on Monday Night Football in 1983. Cosell said that was an affectionate term he also used for white players, but he still left the booth after the season. We can’t imagine things go much better for Sileo. I’d like to hear his explanation for the comment.

UPDATE: Dan Sileo has been fired.

Some apologies are rooted in sorrow. Others are issued when people are forced. What San Diego TV anchor Ross Shimabaku did falls in the second category.

Last week, Shimabaku, an anchor for FOX 5 in San Diego, pretty much called Danica a b*itch on air. Here’s the video:

After his comments began receiving attention, complaints flowed in. Shimabaku apologized, but not to Danica, nor for calling her a b*tch. He apologized if he offended anyone:

Hey Ross, a good actor will at least pretend to care when apologizing. Try not to make it so obvious that you don’t.

Thanks to Off the Bench for showing the videos