Larry Brown Sports

This off-day interview by TNT’s Craig Sager with Rockets forward Ron Artest was causing a nice little buzz in the TNT studios after the Nuggets/Hornets game. You Been Blinded summarizes the Ron Artest interview best: “In less than 80 seconds Ron says he’ll take Brandon Roy over Kobe and LeBron, calls out Roy’s defense, disses Charles Barkley, and claims Michael Jordan wanted to face him in his prime.” Yeah, that pretty much covers the entire interview. Turn the volume up and see whether or not you believe what you hear:

Yes, this is Ron Artest we’re talking about, so you can’t exactly put too much stock into anything the guy says. In case you couldn’t listen, here’s what he said “Roy’s probably the best player I’ve played against. He’s the best shooting guard. Defense, not on defense now … but he’s the best player I’ve played against.” And when Sager mentioned Kobe and LeBron’s names, Artest didn’t waver. That’s some pretty strong praise. For anyone who’s been watching the series, it’s easy to see where that praise is coming from — Roy’s played quite well and has been pretty responsible for their wins in the series.

Things got pretty bumpy in Atlanta Wednesday night. First, Dwyane Wade got caught up in someone’s leg and fell, banging his head against the floor. Later Wade went up for a layup and got fouled by Solomon Jones and a skirmish ensued, resulting in double-technicals. On the next play, Wade fouled Maurice Evans on a fastbreak and got hit with a flagrant one foul. As if that wasn’t enough, later in the second quarter, Al Horford came down after a hard foul and twisted his ankle. All three moments are encapsulated in an incredible way by Hawks radio announcer, Steve Holman, on the Hawks flagship station, 790 the Zone. The dude literally goes berserk on-air, bashing the “untouchable” Dwyane Wade in the process. Believe me, it’s hilarious.

Some of the classic lines:

“You can’t foul me when I go to the basket, I’m Dwyane Wade. I do commercials.”

“Look, I’m Dwyane Wade, you can’t call that!”

“Oh my goodness, the Heat have resorted to thuggery!”

I do believe that the term “homer” would be appropriate here. Even if Wade gets preferable treatment from the refs, the foul on Mo Evans wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Holman describes it. He wasn’t trying to hurt Evans, and yes, Wade was going for the ball. You can see a few of the highlights here to judge for yourself.

You knew it was only a matter of time before Alex Rodriguez got his name back in the news — and not because of his recovery from hip surgery. Selena Roberts’ book on A-Rod is set to be released in the near future, so to drum up some interest she’s leaked a few juicy details to the New York Daily News. One of the details is that A-Rod’s Yankee teammates nicknamed him “bitch tits” because that’s what he developed in ’05 (likely because of steroids use). The most important detail, the one I knew was going to come out before long, absolutely destroys A-Rod’s P.R. strategy for managing his positive steroids test from ’03. While A-Rod tried to say he only used while with the Rangers from ’01-’03, the book says he’s full of crap:

[Jose] Canseco said he believes Rodriguez’s steroid use goes back to his teens, when he was a high school standout in Miami.

“Was he on steroids in high school?” he said. “I think probably so. I worked out with him when he was 18. He could lift almost as much as I could.”

Rodriguez put on 25 pounds of muscle between his sophomore and junior years, and word was that his connection was a dog kennel owner. A former high school teammate told Roberts the future No.1 MLB draft pick was on steroids and his coach knew it. Another student said the son of coach Rich Hofman admitted he saw Rodriguez use steroids.

As for the people who aren’t bothered by steroids use, there’s an allegation that A-Rod tipped pitches to opponents, hoping they’d do the same for him when he really needed a hit to pad his stats. Classic A-Rod — caring more about his stats than his team. That says everything you’ll ever need to know about his character (as if we didn’t already know what a giant piece of crap he is). Anyone who believed that A-Rod’s roid use was limited to the Rangers years was naive and ignorant. Any high schooler who can lift as much as Canseco likely was on something. Oh yeah, this also destroys the notion that A-Rod’s a natural talent who’s been good ever since high school. There goes that argument.

Poor Juan Pierre. All the guy’s ever done was be Juan Pierre yet that’s not been good enough for the Dodgers. Between the signing of Andruw Jones, the acquisition of Manny Ramirez, and the emergence of Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, there hasn’t been much room for J.P., the Dodgers’ $9 million-a-year man. On Wednesday, for only the second time all season, Pierre was able to crack the Dodgers’ starting lineup because they sat Matt Kemp against Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. Problem is the team was slapping him in the face at the same time that they were rewarding him. Sort of. Joe Torre pulled a Tony LaRussa, batting Pierre 9th behind the pitcher. The logic was sound and apparently Pierre was OK with it:

“I’ve been threatening it, right?” Manager Joe Torre said. “It just seemed like a situation, with a player like Juan, he’d be freer to steal and stuff with [Rafael] Furcal hitting behind him instead of the pitcher. . . . To me, it makes sense with a guy with speed. . . . I just don’t want to take away some of his tools from him.”
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Pierre said he had no problem with the alignment, joking that he would bat 11th if that’s what it took for him to crack the lineup.

Like I said, the move appears as an insult on its surface, but it actually makes sense. Just because the “standard” way of doing things involves the pitcher batting last doesn’t always mean it’s the right move. Torre’s correct — speed is a big part of Pierre’s game, and that bonus of his game is more or less nullified by the pitcher batting behind him.

Holy ****. You have to be freaking kidding me. Brett Favre, who said after his year with the Jets that he was done, requested and received his release from the New York Jets Tuesday night. Favre previously was on their reserve/retired list, meaning the Jets owned his rights. This whole move is curious by the Jets for several reasons pointed out by the NY Daily News: “they get no compensation if he signs elsewhere. The Jets would’ve held his rights for 2009 and 2010, the last two years on his contract.” So if Favre said he had no intention of coming back, then why would he request his release? So he could go sign a one-day contract with the Packers? I doubt it.

Back when Favre first got traded to the Jets, there was a poison pill if the Jets dealt Favre to one of Green Bay’s NFC North opponents — New York would have had to give the Packers three first-round picks. PFT, along with the rest of the football world, is speculating that Favre could go to Minnesota: “The next step for [agent Bus] Cook? He’ll start pestering Bevell and Childress to start pestering Brett to provide the final piece for one of the most talented teams in NFL history at every position except the one that counts the most.” I believe the Vikings would be better off with Sage Rosenfels over Favre, but the comedic aspect of good ole number four returning would be sensational. Brett, come back, we need something other than the Raiders to laugh at!

There’s a cool video making its way around the sports blogosphere and it features Padraig Harrington trying out the Happy Gilmore swing to see how it works. It’s another excellent video put together by the people at FSN’s Sport Science and though it’s long, it’s worth it. Sport Science also had the breakdown of the fastest release shot by Jason Kapono that we posted here not long ago.

In case you don’t have the time to watch it, Padraig averaged an extra 30 yards per drive with the Gilmore swing thanks to the run up that created a faster swinging speed. I doubt that any golfer will have the balls to use this method in actual tournament play, but maybe it’s worth a shot for someone looking to gain an edge. Thanks to Yahoo!’s Devil Ball Golf for the video.

One of the knocks against LeBron James early in his career was that despite all the hype, he wasn’t a big draw on TV. I guess all it took was a good team around him to change that because the Cavs posted the best local TV ratings the NBA had seen in a decade. According to Sports Business Journal, which has all the local numbers for every team in the league, the Cavs garnered an 8.76 average rating which translates to 134,000 homes in Cleveland. The Lakers were the only team to appear in more homes, averaging 250,000 homes per game. The Lakers earned a 4.43 share ranking them fourth behind the Cavs, Jazz, and Spurs.

The Hornets (64.7%), Hawks (38.6%), Heat (32.7%) and Blazers (29.4%) all enjoyed the greatest growth in ratings this year. The Kings (-40.6%), Warriors (-39.8%), Suns (-37.9%), Mavericks (-30.1%), Pistons (-20.6%), and Nuggets (-19.4%) all saw the largest drops in ratings. When you think about things, everything here makes sense; teams that had big dropoffs from previous years had poor ratings (with the exception of the Nuggets) and teams that improved saw their ratings correspondingly ascend.

Oh yeah, the Clippers (0.51%), Nets (0.52%), and Bobcats (0.56%) brought up the rear. Matter of fact, Bobcats were sadly only seen in an average of 6,000 homes a game. But if you want to know everything you need to know about the NBA, here it is: the Knicks with only a 1.18 rating still had almost double as many homes watching than the Jazz which had ratings almost five times higher. Unfortunately it’s all about the big markets. I’m glad that the Cavs and other teams are doing well locally — that’s a good sign for our business. Shows that the NBA still is a big ticket in some cities.

A moment of honesty: I was wondering why TNT chose to broadcast the Heat/Hawks game on Monday night instead of the Hornets/Nuggets which got relegated to NBA TV. I thought the Hornets/Nuggets would have been a more appealing series to a national audience, featuring recognizable stars like Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony, while the only star in the other game is Dwyane Wade. Looks like I was wrong and the TNT execs knew what they were doing. Maybe they passed on the game because they knew the Hornets wouldn’t show up. New Orleans got blasted at home, tying a record for losing by 58 points in Game 4, 121-63. The entire game and everything about it was laughable. There’s no possible excuse for playing so poorly and letting someone else walk all over you. Especially in a playoff game!

“That’s the worst game I’ve seen us play in the five years I’ve been here,” said Coach Byron Scott, who saw the Hornets go 18-64 in his first season, 2004-05. “I thought they tried to take us out of everything we tried to do on the floor. I thought they were physically ready for the game.”
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“This was a systematic beating,” said West, who made four of 10 shots for 14 points. “They have a lot of weapons in their arsenal. They just systematically beat us. They overwhelmed us with their ability to score.”

Teams usually bounce back from butt-whoopings in the playoffs, but I’m guessing the Hornets are done. This is a devastating loss, the kind from which a team does not recover. How long did it take the Mavericks to bounce back from losing in the finals to the Heat, blowing the 2-0 lead and the huge Game 3 lead? I’m not sure they ever recovered. Remember this game by the Hornets — it will be a seminal moment for this team. Will it mar them for good or will they bounce back? I think they’re toast.