ESPN – Longtime Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio is closing on a contract extension with the club, a source confirmed to ESPN. Caserio’s contract is set to expire after the 2020 draft, and head coach Bill Belichick has cited his dual role in personnel and coaching as a “great asset” to the organization. Caserio, 44, has played a central role in drafting and signing players under Belichick, while also contributing to the coaching staff as a regular presence at practice and in the coaches’ booth during games.
After all the drama and rumors of Nick Caserio potentially leaving town to go work for the Texans, he probably saw Houston promote Bill O’Brien to Coach/GM and had a come to Jesus moment. Wait, I wanna go *there*?
This wasn’t just some media concocted story either, the Patriots literally filed tampering charges against the Texans last offseason. The former Patriots priest or character coach or whatever you want to call him Jack Easterby left the team because Robert Kraft may have allegedly gotten some hand stuff done to him. Easterby then got a job with the Texans alongside fellow former Patriot Bill O’Brien, which the Pats were “livid” about. Then Easterby came back for the Patriots Super Bowl ring ceremony over the summer and allegedly tried to poach Nick Caserio to come be the GM/Executive VP for the Texans. IN ROBERT KRAFT’S OWN BACKYARD. The Texans even went as far as to fire their own GM the day after that party and then requested to interview Caserio three days later.
So this is great news for New England with all the turnover this team has had over the past year and thats before we even get to the uncertainty around Tom Brady. We’ve seen Joe Judge, Brian Flores, Matt Patricia, and Bill O’Brien all leave the team in recent years. Although a lot of former Patriots coaches and executives have gone on to less than stellar results, sometimes stability is a valuable asset. Not to mention Caserio has done everything in this organization and is one of the few, if only, executives in the NFL that has a hand in coaching and is on the headset on game day. I would expect a new title as he’s been the Director of Player Personnel since 2008, but I suppose a generous raise may do the job.
ESPN – Major League Baseball is mulling significant changes to its postseason, including increasing the number of teams from 10 to 14 and adding a reality TV-type format to determine which teams play each other in an expanded wild-card round, sources told ESPN.
MLB is considering a move in which each league would have three division winners and four wild-card teams making the postseason starting in 2022, sources said. The best team in the league would receive a bye into the division series. The two remaining division winners and the wild-card team with the best record of the four would each host all games of a best-of-three series in the opening round.
Once the teams clinch and the regular season ends, the plan gets congested:
The division winner with the second-best record would select its wild-card opponent from the three wild-card winners not hosting a series.
The division winner with the worst record would then choose its opponent from the remaining two wild-card teams.
The final matchup would pit the wild-card winner with the best record against the wild-card team not yet chosen.
All of the selections, sources said, would be unveiled live on television the Sunday night of the final regular-season games.
I don’t like the idea of nearly half the league making the playoffs, but I do love that MLB is considering shaking *something* up. Baseball has been painfully slow to adopt any significant changes. Remember when they put in the rule that batters had to stay in the batters box and players immediately ignored it and MLB did nothing? Remember when MLB was testing a pitch clock in Minor League Baseball with the plan of then implementing it in the major leagues? That was in 2015. Whether it’s rules to improve pace of play or ideas of how to combat the culture of rampant sign stealing; baseball is afraid of change. So I am intrigued by this pretty radical shift in the playoff format. Baseball needs to become more like the NFL and try things out. Hell even the NBA tested a new ball in 2006, which was a complete and utter disaster, but the point remains; at least they tried something new.
My favorite part about this new format is it gives teams a real incentive to play for the No. 1 seed, which there isn’t really any of currently. Too many teams these days play out the string as they’d rather get their rotation set for the playoffs than try to win as many regular season games as possible. The new Wild Card format of the past few years has helped negate that a little bit, but a first round bye would have teams gunning for the top seed.
Another aspect that would be great is we would no longer have to hear the song and dance about how players don’t care who they’re playing in the playoffs. Bullshit! Now we’ll know exactly who you want to play and who you think is an easy out. Just imagine the Red Sox winning 100 games in 2022, 5 games out of the No. 1 seed behind the Astros, selecting the 90 win Twins for obliteration in the Wild Card round. How awesome would it be to see team officials cringe on live TV as their fates are sealed like an NBA Draft Lottery special? The reality TV aspect of it all just has me picturing Kramer hosting the Merv Griffin Show.
I am far from a baseball purist so count me in.
Not everyone is sold on the idea including Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer.
No idea who made this new playoff format proposal, but Rob is responsible for releasing it, so I’ll direct this to you, Rob Manfred. Your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball. You’re a joke.
To be fair though, this is the guy who got scolded (and traded) by Terry Francona for launching a ball over the fence after getting yanked from a game. Seems like a guy who doesn’t take it well when things don’t go his way.
People who complain about changing the game forget just how much the rules have actually evolved, some faster than others, over the years. In 2011 the MLB added the new Wild Card format, the Astros changed Leagues in 2013, balls have been juiced and unjuiced, steroids were encouraged ignored then banned, the mound was lowered, and on and on we go. So testing out a little tweak to the playoff format is not going to have Branch Rickey rolling in his grave. It’s baseball, lets have a little fun.
ESPN – It was no coincidence when Phil Mickelson’s partners during the pro-am at last week’s Saudi International tournament happened to be three key figures in a proposed new golf tour that could potentially shake the foundations of the longstanding PGA Tour and European Tour and enrich the biggest names in the game.
A few days earlier, Mickelson had told reporters in San Diego that he was “intrigued” by a concept known as the Premier Golf League that would launch in two years’ time and potentially have limited fields, guaranteed paydays, $10 million purses and a team concept with ownership stakes.
New sports leagues sprouting up to compete with established giants that have been around since the 1920s is nothing new. We have the latest one in the XFL kicking off this weekend and now there are reports of a brand new experimental golf league looking to take on the PGA Tour; the Premier Golf League.
Wait, what?
The Premier Golf League is something that has been in the works for the past few years, but due to Phil Mickelson’s recent pro-am partners is starting to attract a lot of attention. This new tour would look to shake things up, consist of 48 players with 18 tournaments played weekly in the US and other countries.
“The events would be 54 holes with no cut and shotgun starts over the first two days to better showcase all the players during a television window.”
A shotgun start is intriguing because how often do you want to watch a specific golfer or two and they’re playing at 7 am and 3 pm respectively. Not exactly conducive to a neat and tidy TV (or streaming) broadcast. So having everyone tee off at the same time makes watching all your favorite golfers at once a reality.
Thats not even the biggest proposed tweak.
“There would be 12 teams of four players each, with a season-long competition that culminates in a season-ending event for players and teams.”
The PGA Tour tries to build this season long momentum with the FedEx Cup and a bonus to the individual points leader, but the team format could be interesting. Rather than rooting for just one or two guys that you like, with this concept you’d pick a team to follow all year long. I don’t know if that is too different from rooting for a specific guy, but the marketing power of four golfers coming together on one entity could be a windfall for awareness and merchandise sales.
Speaking of sales, the main driver behind this new league is of course money. Big money.
“The Premier Golf League is talking about $240 million, with a $10 million weekly purse for 17 events with a season-ending event. There would be $2 million paid to the winner, and a $10 million bonus to the overall individual champion. In addition, there would be a $40 million team bonus pool.”
That is some serious dough being thrown around, which is why this is starting to make some sense. Whether it’s realistic to launch a $240 million golf league from nothing remains to be seen, but I can see why guys would be listening. On the PGA Tour purses range from $3-$12 million with 1st place taking home anywhere from $500k-$2.1 million depending on the event. Not exactly chump change, but thats over the course of 50 events. Compare that to this Premier Golf League where in theory an elite golfer could be bringing in $1-$2 million *every week* for 4 months straight.
“Many in the golf world have declined to comment. They are sensitive to what the PGA Tour (and European Tour) has accomplished but also curious what this is all about. The reason? There is a sense among those in the game that the top players are underpaid.”
A guy like Mickelson “only” made $2.4 million on the tour in 2019, but he also raked in more than $40 million in endorsements last year. Lefty likely isn’t going to be winning a tournament a week at his age so I’d have to imagine there’s some serious equity investment opportunities being offered to make it worth his while.
However, all it takes is one top ranked player like Brooks Koepka to consider this new venture and it suddenly starts to become an uncomfortable conversation at PGA Tour HQ. Koepka made $9.6 million on the tour last year so in theory guys like him could double their take home pay with a strong four month stretch in this new league.
Thats one thing for the superstars of the game, but it might be a risk that players without gigantic endorsement deals to fall back wouldn’t be willing to take. Especially if it puts them at odds with the PGA Tour.
“As a member of the PGA Tour, a player agrees to certain stipulations, as expected. One of them is that you cannot play in competing events around the world. And since the tour has events some 48 weeks of the year, that’s a problem…To play the Premier Golf League, a player would basically have to leave the PGA Tour.”
If I’m a guy on the fringe of the PGA Tour, I’m probably happy playing golf for a living and taking home a million bucks a year. Why bite the hand that feeds you and risk your wellbeing on an upstart league that could go bankrupt before Labor Day?
That seems to be the selling point though as the PGL is aimed at making big bucks for the biggest stars, but not everybody gets to be Tiger Woods so they’ll need to assuage the fears of the other 47 guys they hope to sign up or this could wind up being a failure to launch.
But what would make fans feel the need to watch this new league? What would it do differently than the standards the PGA Tour have put in place? Golf Digest pointed out the answer could be in the league’s initial investors:
“We’d be remiss in forgetting the gambling element to golf. It’s worth noting one of the early partners is the Raine Group, which was integral in funding venture capital rounds for daily fantasy site DraftKings. It’s not a matter of if betting will be involved, an agent told Golf Digest, but to what extent, and how much of the cut will go in the players’ direction.”
Now we’re cooking with gas! Imagine a golf league with gambling fully baked into every broadcast? I was already screaming at the TV as Tiger cost me $1,200 bucks with his vintage win at The Masters last year. Imagine a broadcast with live updated odds, prop bets, and the commentators discussing fading a guy after he junks a couple of tee shots? Now THAT sounds like a great Saturday afternoon.
These upstart sports leagues fail way more often than they succeed, but there are success stories over the years. The key to those success stories is always innovation so it’s imperative for the Premier Golf League to shake things up if they want to stick around. We’re still a couple of years away from this launching, if ever, but I will be watching this like a hawk because who doesn’t love a little chaos?
ESPN – The kneecapping of the Houston Astros went off Monday in exquisite fashion. Big names were fired. Draft picks were revoked. A record fine was levied. Pounds of flesh were exacted from egregious cheaters. The optics worked. The Astros’ comeuppance was here, and it was severe. Major League Baseball was righting an obvious wrong.
As the day rolled on and people around baseball pondered exactly what had happened, a less obvious version of the story emerged. It was all so tidy, all so clean, so carefully orchestrated and meticulously calibrated — like something the Astros, ever lauded for their efficiency and ruthlessness, might concoct…As much as MLB played the big, bad monolith in delivering the ruinous news from on high, this was not some unilateral punishment for the Astros. It was a sneak peek inside the sausage factory of power and the anger that Crane’s relative acquittal caused across the league…Multiple ownership-level sources told ESPN that dissatisfaction with the penalties had emerged following a conference call with Manfred, in which he explained how the Astros would be disciplined, then told teams to keep their thoughts to themselves..”Crane won,” he said. “The entire thing was programmed to protect the future of the franchise. He got his championship. He keeps his team. His fine is nothing. The sport lost, but Crane won.”
It’s a long read, but I definitely recommend you check out Jeff Passan’s whole story because it is a pretty fascinating peak behind the curtain. My first reaction to the Astros news yesterday was that they got absolutely HAMMERED by the league. The other owners don’t seem to agree. While I completely understand owners around the league still being bullshit at the Astros, this Passan story just shows how out of touch these team owners have become. What the hell do you want Manfred to do? He fined the Astros the largest team penalty in league history at $5M (and the maximum allowed under MLB rules), banned the GM and the manager for a year and took 1st and 2nd round picks from the team for the next two years. I know, I know the Astros will recoup most of that $5M, if not more in money saved from not having to pay those four draft picks.
With all things considered, thats still pretty, pretty savage. Especially for an organization like MLB that is basically setup like a franchise model thats comprised of franchisees operating their own businesses. For all his faults, Manfred is working with what he’s got here and a lot of that is playing politics amongst 30 billionaires. These owners have no idea what it takes to appease a boss, let alone 30 bosses that make 100x what you make annually, so to bitch and moan about the punishment rings hollow.
“Manfred’s report named Beltran as one of the players involved in the scheme, though the league did not discipline him because it gave players immunity in exchange for their testimony.
That choice registered publicly as another curious part of Manfred’s ultimate decision. What sort of disciplinary action clears players for a “player-driven” scheme? The answer is a practical one. Between the well-defined lines that held GMs and managers responsible and the fear of the Major League Baseball Players Association defending any discipline against active players and sending the cases into grievance hell, Manfred’s pragmatism here, though not satisfying, is understandable.”
Have these guys never watched a cop movie in their lives? Or an episode of The Sopranos? You gotta let some of the small time guys off the hook if you want to get anyone to talk about the Capos. This ain’t the NBA in the 70s where David Stern could just tell some bum owners what was going to happen and they had to accept it.
Now its just a matter of time until Alex Cora gets absolutely roasted himself. Passan cited two sources saying “the end of Cora’s time in Boston could be coming” Alex Cora got the axe from John Henry on Tuesday night. During the middle of the Jeopardy GOAT Tournament no less, which is about as big of a news dump as I can remember.
This came as no surprise because of the optics of the situation. There was no way the Sox were going to take that heat for a guy who in all likelihood won’t be able to work for *at least* the next year. AJ Hinch already completely threw Cora under the bus in the statement he released
“While the evidence consistently showed I didn’t organize or participate in the sign stealing practices, I failed to stop them”
I think any reasonable person understands sign stealing happens in baseball and the more technology you add the more sophisticated the sign stealing is going to become. Granted it’s my favorite baseball team that is embroiled in this, but as former Marlins slugger Logan Morrison has said, he knows first hand of several teams that do the same type of stuff.
Some more detailed accusations from Logan Morrison on Instagram, calling out the Astros as far back as 2014, as well as the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox for using technology to aid sign-stealing. pic.twitter.com/h7TySzpO1W
Manfred’s report directly references how teams like the Yankees were fined for doing the same exact thing in 2017. I mean Cora even joked about Carlos Beltran and how much he’s “helped” the Yankees after the Sox got bludgeoned by them in the London Series last season.
Here’s video of the Alex Cora soundbite we just played on @WFANmornings. This was following the Yankees’ sweep of Boston in the 2019 London Series. Check out the wink after he brings up Carlos Beltran’s name around :27 and unprovoked usage of the word “devices.” (h/t @Pacmangrig) pic.twitter.com/HgkglIoB7O
So lets not all start acting like this is someone stealing a $20 out of the Sunday School collection basket. This is a bunch of guys getting bagged doing something they should not have been doing and they knew it. This is not the 1918 Black Sox throwing a game and ruining the integrity of baseball.
Just take a look at the response Passan got when he asked an unnamed team president if he would take that hit for a World Series title:
“I don’t know that I would,” one team president said, “but I don’t know that I wouldn’t.” It was an honest answer.”
So everybody just pump the breaks on the hysteria train before you hurt yourselves.
With so many options to watch TV like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, Apple TV+, ESPN+ and more coming, its no surprise that a huge chunk of the shows below are not on cable. As they say, the Streaming Wars have begun.
This list is comprised of picks from the staff where we ranked our Top 15 shows with No. 1 getting 15 points all the way down to No. 15 getting one point. Rankings are based on each show’s aggregate score, which seemed like the fairest way to do it. Apologies to all the shows forever in my queue, but I haven’t seen some of the more acclaimed shows like The Wire, The Leftovers or Atlanta so that hurt their overall scores. So sue me, theres a billion shows to watch and I spend approximately half my time scrolling through just trying to decide what to watch.
Also it was a Sophie’s choice of TV to pick from so I made the difficult decision of ruling that any show on this list had to have premiered in 2010 or later to truly make it a show of this decade. So no Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Lost.
Now lets get to the Top 30 shows of the decade!
No. 30 – The Missing/Rick and Morty/Making a Murderer/Trial and Error
No. 29 – Crashing
No. 28 – Narcos
“If Game of Thrones put him on the map this is the show that launched Pedro Pascal into the next stratosphere. Just an excellent Netflix original about two DEA agents taking down Medellin drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.” – Red
No. 27 – House of Cards
“It’s easy to forget about this show at this point, considering how far it went off the rails and Kevin Spacey’s cancellation, but this show was a game changer. When a two-time Academy Award winner got involved with an online streaming show, that was a sign that streaming television offerings would be worthy of our attention.” – Big Z
No. 26 – Big Mouth
“One of the funniest shows on Netflix, Big Mouth is unapologetically filthy and does a great job capturing a very specific time in all of our lives.” – Big Z
No. 25 – Homeland
“This show emerges from the ashes of the height of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts and follows CIA agent Carrie Mathieson as she tries to stop various terror threats before it’s too late, all while keeping a fairly substantial personal secret.” – Joey B
“Think “Heat” but with a stock market genius that toes the line or complete disregards it and a US Attorney starving to nail him for it. All sorts of hijinx and side characters add quite the spice to this Showtime great.” – Joey B
No. 20 – The Leftovers
No. 19 – Vice Principles
No. 18 – Lovesick
“One review said Lovesick was “what How I Met Your Mother could have been” and I think that is deadly accurate. Basically a guy finds out he has the clap and needs to inform all previously partners. While he works through that list he simultaneously tries to decipher why love has evaded him so far.” – Joey B
No. 17 – Parks and Rec No. 16 – Stranger Things No. 15 – Shameless
“It has waxed and waned post-season 4 or 5ish but still delivers. The saga of the poverty-stricken but street smart Gallagher clan on the south side of Chicago will make you laugh and cry in the same episode.” – Joey B
No. 14 – Daredevil
“Hands down the best depiction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever put on TV. Now its worth noting a lot of those live action shows were hot garbage (couldn’t make it through the pilot of Iron Fist) and they all ultimately got cancelled, but I think that had more to do with the Streaming Wars than the quality of the shows. Daredevil is so good it will make you forget how much you hated that character after the disastrous Ben Affleck movie. Charlie Cox is the catholic with a conscience fighting crime facing off against Vincent D’Onofrio as the completely unhinged Wilson Fisk. Plus this show gave us the criminally underrated Jon Bernthal Punisher.” – Red
No. 13 – Peaky Blinders
“I consider this the best show currently on TV. Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow in “Batman Begins”) is a WWI vet who has returned home to Birmingham, England fairly recently and now runs his family crime syndicate using both brute force and his intimidating intellect.” – Joey B
No. 12 – Jack Ryan
“This Amazon Prime show only started in August of 2018 and already skyrocketed up to No. 12 on this list because its that good. Granted 13 Hours and The Quiet Place helped people forget about John Krasinki as Jim from The Office surprisingly quick, but Jack Ryan turned him into a bonafide action star.” – Red
No. 11 – Banshee
“The best kept secret (who the fuck watches Cinemax but not for softcore porn?) of the decade. Basically a Gomorrah of blood, gore, and nudity based around a master thief who gets out of prison and assumes the identity of a bordering-amish country small town sheriff.” – Joey B
No. 10 – Boardwalk Empire
“This is a show that for whatever reason never got the same hype as a lot of other titles on this list, but it had some of the best writing on TV with The Soprano’s Terence Winter leading the ship. It stars a perfectly cast Steve Buscemi as a corrupt politician/bootlegger turned full blown gangster. Not to mention A+ performances from Michael Shannon and Michael Kenneth Williams as flawed, morally ambiguous characters on both sides of the law.” – Red
No. 9 – Black Sails
“I wrote a whole blog about Black Sails and how I believe it got no love because people assumed it was trying to ride GOT’s coat tails with the English accents and old timey-ness (it started the same year). Either way this television precursor to Treasure Island involving pirates and colonialism was an honest to God achievement.” – Joey B
No. 8 – The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story
“Even in the age of DVR this miniseries was appointment viewing. What could have easily been an extended SNL sketch featured some superb storytelling and acting. Sterling K. Brown’s performance was a highlight for me, but is was also probably John Travolta’s best work in a long, long time.” – Big Z
No. 7 – Broad City
“Broad City was basically Girls without all the preachy millennial commentary. Where Girls oftentimes embarrassed you to be a millennial, Broad City reminded you how fun it could be to be broke in the city with your best friend just getting into weird shit.” – Red
No. 6 – Watchmen
“This HBO original hasn’t even finished its first season yet and thanks to Papa Giorgio and I, its already made it to No. 6 on our top shows of the decade. Its that good. I never read the comic book, but if the 2009 Zack Snyder movie even vaguely interested you, this show is 100x better and worth the 9 hours. The show is helmed by Damon Lindelof, who I have absolutely FLAYED over the years for how badly Lost went off the rails at the end, but he has come back strong with The Leftovers and now has hit a grandslam with Watchmen. Lindelof learned from all the mistakes he made along the way to create another complex, political, downright weird world while still leaving all the breadcrumbs to tell a completely engrossing story. The penultimate episode even accomplished the rare feat of nailing time travel as Lindelof tells a story across multiple timelines in a completely coherent way.” – Red
No. 5 – Nathan for You
“Nathan For You is my comedy of the decade. It’s premise is pretty simple: Nathan Fielder presents terrible ideas to businesses with a straight face to boost sales/revenue. Fielder tricks real people into following along with his schemes and hijinx ensue. Whether it be convincing a realtor to rebrand as a “ghost realtor,” hiring a Michael Richards lookalike to leave a large tip at a restaurant to get the restaurant publicity, or conning a Best Buy employee into divulging company secrets in order to help a mom and pop electronics store sell TVs, Nathan For You is the perfect reality show we never knew we needed.” – Papa Giorgio
No. 4 – Better Call Saul
“Possibly the greatest spin off in TV history. Bob Odenkirk is outstanding in this fascinating look at Jimmy McGill’s transformation into Saul Goodman. This show moves a little slower than Breaking Bad, which means it would be great to binge if you haven’t been on board since Day 1. A benefit of that slower pace is a more thorough look at much of what was going on in the background on Breaking Bad. So while it’s not a thrill ride every week, it is a very satisfying character study.” – Big Z
No. 3 – Veep
“In a long history of comedy excellence at HBO, Veep might be its finest offering. Julia Louis-Dreyfus leads an outstanding cast and took home SIX straight Emmys for her portrayal of Selina Meyer. The show won three straight Emmys for best comedy and will be heavily featured when CNN gets around to the TV episode for it’s inevitable 2010’s miniseries in a few years. Veep also boasted some of the best insults in TV history.” – Big Z
No. 2 – True Detective: Season 1
“If there is one show that defined appointment TV before streaming completely took over the world it is True Detective. The first season was incredibly acted, directed, and told a story across timelines seamlessly. This was a show that Papa Giorgio and I started watching on a borrowed HBO Go account, which meant we had to wait an hour after it originally aired. But we became so enthralled with the show we couldn’t risk Twitter ruining who the Yellow King was for us. So we legitimately bought HBO the day of the finale so we could watch it live. And because it was a self contained anthology series you knew it was all going to come to an end after one season leading to the most fun I’ve had watching TV this decade.
Not to mention, if you’ve so much as tried to film an IG Story you can appreciate the creativity and skill it takes to pull off a SIX minute tracking shot. Meaning they used one camera for this entire action packed scene in one, continuous shot, going in and out of rooms and even over a wall in the middle of a massive shootout.” – Red
No. 1 – Game of Thrones
“This was never in doubt and if you’ve even glanced at The 300s over the last few years you shouldn’t be surprised as I’ve written tens of thousands of words about this show. Game of Thrones literally changed TV and it was the last water cooler show we’ll probably ever get. It was the last TV show that completely dominated pop culture and was something you had to watch in real time or risk Twitter spoiling it because we all were watching it at the same time.
It had its ups and downs including the poorly paced final season and the bizarre finale, but GOT changed the preconceived limits of what a TV show could accomplish. At its core though GOT was a show about politics and getting what you wanted either through smarts and wit or by brute force, but it never got away from the pursuit of power and what everyone was willing to do for that power. It created an absolute murderer’s row of iconic characters from the headliners to secondary characters like Petyr Baelish, and Ramsay Bolton, and even short lived ones like Oberyn Martell all lit up the screen with some of the best acting ever seen on TV. Along the way it won a ridiculous 59 Emmys including FOUR by Peter Dinklage for his tour de force acting. A show about medieval knights, long monologues, dragons, and snow zombies sounds like something that should have been cancelled after a month, but Game of Thrones became bigger than pop culture to truly earn its ranking as the best show of the decade.” – Red
Boston.com – Jackie MacMullan and Paul Pierce discussed the Celtics’ new leadership: After losing on opening night, the Celtics have embarked on an eight-game winning streak. The team appears to have a different “vibe” this season in comparison to the underachievement of last season.
During an episode of ESPN’s “The Jump” on Tuesday, former Celtic Paul Pierce and longtime NBA reporter Jackie MacMullan touched on the difference in the team’s leadership. Specifically, the departure of Kyrie Irving and the arrival of Kemba Walker.
“They got better leadership in there,” Pierce said. “Let’s just call it how it is.”
After ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols — the show’s host — offered a clarification that the leadership was simply “different,” Pierce jumped back in.
“It’s better,” reiterated Pierce. “Kemba, he’s known throughout the league as being a great leader. I mean, he played on losing teams, he stayed positive. He went out and played hard every night, and that can be infectious. That can be the difference between losing and winning and chemistry. That’s what he’s brought to the Celtics.”
If anyone knows the behind the scenes story of the Celtics, its Paul Pierce. The guy is a C’s legend, he’s tight with ownership, he’s someone the young players look up to, and is a media personality so he knows all the broadcasters. The man has an “in” in just about every area stories and rumors would pop up about his former team.
That exchange between Pierce and Rachel Nichols legit made me laugh out loud because Nichols is trying to smooth things over and say no no its not better its just different. To which Pierce channels his inner Stanley in response.
I don’t think its a personal thing because there has never been any story I can recall about Pierce and Kyrie not getting along. Its not like Shaq taking shots at a young Dwight Howard back in the day. This seems to be Pierce the Celtic or Pierce the fan genuinely psyched about how much better this team looks this year. Its quite literally the definition of addition by subtraction. Of course Hayward was playing great before his injury, but Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were playing more freely, the ball was moving all over the court, and the team just seemed more relaxed. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a mercurial boss who was your best friend one day and a powder keg waiting to explode the next day, but that grinds on you. No wonder the team chemistry was shit last year, no one knew what version of their team leader they were getting, not to mention when they might get chewed out on national TV for missing a shot.
I liked Kyrie when he first got here, and while I don’t necessarily hate him now, I don’t really want him on my team. Over time it became clear that he was basically the best player on your high school team or better yet your college intramural teams. Just a guy that is a complete dickhead to teammates because they aren’t doing exactly what he wants.
Needless to say the Kemba Walker experience is off to a flawless start though.
ESPN – Fatigue has long been a reality of life in the NBA, a league with teams that play 82 games in under six months and fly up to 50,000 miles per season — roughly 20,000 more miles each season than NFL teams and far enough to circle the globe twice. Over the 2018-19 season, the average NBA team played every 2.07 days, had 13.3 back-to-back sets and flew the equivalent of 250 miles a day for 25 straight weeks.
Some in the league, from players and coaches to training personnel, have begun to suspect that the toll extracted by the NBA grind — the combination of the sport’s physical demands, the circadian disruptions, the six to eight months of travel across time zones — is not fully appreciated..Still, despite the league’s best efforts — lengthening its schedule in recent years, reducing back-to-backs for five straight seasons (down to an average of 12.4 per team in the coming season), eliminating four-in-five stretches, reducing the nationally televised games that tip off at 10:30 p.m. ET, creating more rest days — sleep deprivation remains what one high-ranking league source intimately involved with player health calls “our biggest issue without a solution.”
“It’s the dirty little secret that everybody knows about.”
…”You ask anybody in the room,” [Tobias] Harris says. “The thing I talk about is sleep.
“I think in a couple years,” he says, “[sleep deprivation] will be an issue that’s talked about, like the NFL with concussions.”
I debated actually going with the word “scourge” in the headline because I had to look it up myself, but it was how ESPN described it and its just so dramatic, so over the top, that I had to include it. A scourge is “a person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering.” So the great “silent scourge” of the NBA thats causing so much great trouble or suffering is not getting enough sleep. I feel like Charlie when Mac and Dennis are unsuccessfully trying to explain to him whats going on in Israel. Oh I don’t understand? Why don’t you crack an egg of knowledge on me buddy?
Our grandparents had the great depression and world wars to struggle with, but NBA players are sleepy soo its kind of a wash in who had it worse.
Look I totally get that playing on back to back nights in different cities sucks. Playing til 10 pm and then having to jump on an airplane and not getting to your hotel until the middle of the night sucks. Not having 8 hours of sleep in general sucks. But you know what?
Now if we’re talking about this in the context of achieving peak athletic performance then fine, but thats not what this article is about.
Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum began taking naps in high school and seeking nine hours of sleep a night. And in the NBA, he gets into bed as early as possible. “Lack of sleep messes up your recovery, messes up how you play, your cognitive function, your mindset, how you’re moving on the court,” McCollum says. “Sleep is everything.”
When the hell did people have time to take naps in high school? You’re in school til 2:30 and then at practice til 5. I would have to assume that means sneaking in some REM during algebra class.
I am lucky enough to only have to work one job these days, but for years I worked as a bouncer at a bar in Boston. On school nights no less! Working til 1 or 2 in the morning and then driving home only to get up at 7 am the next day and take the T all the way back downtown to my soul crushing 9-5. Thats a fucking scourge buddy.
Most of America works multiple jobs and doesn’t get enough sleep. Can you imagine saying this to a mom with a newborn baby? She literally might murder you where you stand. So while not getting 8 hours of sleep sucks, I would gladly trade a few hours of sleep here and there for $20M annual contracts handed out to even average NBA players. Not to mention you get the whole summer off like a goddamn kindergarten teacher. Sorry guys, but I refuse to feel for ya here.
Yahoo – The last two men in charge of baseball operations – Ben Cherington and Dombrowski – were shown the door quickly after winning championships, and those moves are painting the Red Sox in a very bad light, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney.
“These decisions loosely frame the industry perception of the Red Sox as a chaotic company, a miserable place to work. Boston owner John Henry needs to understand this, because it is why some of the people he’d probably love to consider as possible replacements for Dombrowski privately dismiss the idea out of hand.”
Olney writes that some potential candidates have no interest in working for Henry, because they “doubt he’d have the patience to back his next general manager through the difficult crossroads ahead.”… A wide-held view in other front offices is that the highly respected and well-liked Red Sox president Sam Kennedy stands as a thin buffer between the team devolving to the level of the Mets, the team generally regarded by rival executives as baseball’s model for dysfunction. “If Sam ever walked away,” said one official, “the whole thing would be a complete mess.”
Well thats sobering to read for a team with 4 titles in the last 15 years. Are the Red Sox a complete mess of a franchise that wins in spite of its values, philosophy, and culture, not because of it? 100% Thats what happens when you have finishes of 1st, 1st, 1st, last, last, 1st, last over the previous seven years. So that is two World Series titles and three last place finishes across two GMs and three managers in seven years. Not exactly a model of consistency. In fact, the Sox have finished 15 or more games out of first place four times since 2012 (including 2019), which is the first time they had achieved that level of mediocrity since 1998.
But even with all that said for Buster Olney, one of the most well respected baseball writers in the country, to report that Fenway has become “a miserable place to work” is still startling.
I feel like I’m living in Groundhogs Day. Didn’t this same exact thing already happen a few years back? Am I the only one that read Feeding the Monster? Or the Francona book?
Those two books could not depict the highs and the lows of this organization any better than they already did.
Now for as much as we dump on the Mets for being an absolute circus:
It would seem the perception of the Red Sox, despite all their success, is not far off. That is ENRAGING as a fan of this team because it has been and should be one of the top 2 or 3 jobs in all of baseball. You have more money than almost any team to spend, a fan base that shows up and pays through the nose to support the team, and a roster built around home grown talent. Yet somehow we’ve arrived at a point where nobody of note even wants the job.
That all leads us to the most pressing question of all; who the hell is going to take the reigns for the Red Sox moving forward? I think we’re all in agreement that Theo Epstein returning would be a wet dream for everyone in town….but that ain’t happening. Olney makes it sound like nobody wants the job because John Henry has created an absolute shitshow of dysfunction at all levels, which is ironic because it all started when Henry chose a nearly 70 year old Larry Lucchino over Epstein all those years ago. During the Epstein era the Red Sox were a team of efficiency and consistency. The team boasted one of the best farm systems in baseball for years and supplemented homegrown guys like Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buccholz with high priced free agents. There was always a balance and the team rarely pushed all of its chips into the middle of the table to sacrifice the future for the present. Sure, what Dave Dombrowski did was exactly what John Henry brought him here to do. I don’t fault Dombrowski because we knew who he was when he got here. The Sox won a title, but absolutely ravaged the farm system to do it. Boston now has the worst farm system in Major League Baseball. He’s basically the baseball equivalent of Thanos.
Now Peter Abraham is making it sound like the Red Sox are very aware of this negative perception around the league and are resigned to promoting from within. According to Abraham it looks like the Sox are positioning the pieces that would point to an internal candidate being the next GM.
Maybe thats a good thing who knows. Maybe having a guy thats been with the organization for years and already understands the internal workings on Yawkey Way will benefit the team in the long run. Instead of slapping a band aid on things with a big name. However, the Sox better have a plan in place. Don’t just promote someone from within just because you couldn’t do any better. Pick a guy, develop a philosophy, and stick to it. Most importantly, give the guy the power to make the tough moves. The last thing this team needs is another puppet that just does the bidding of his bosses.
Just don’t tell me you’re letting a homegrown ace walk because you don’t sign pitchers over 30 and then sign a pitcher over 30 to the biggest contract ever given to a pitcher a year later. Your move, John Henry.
ESPN – Kobe Bryant thinks Team USA might have to get used to a new reality of losing in major events…”It’s not a matter of the rest of the world catching up to the U.S., it’s that the rest of the world has been caught up for quite some time,” Bryant said at the Wukesong Sports Center. “And it’s to the point now where us in the U.S. are going to win some, we’re going lose some. And that’s just how it goes.“
When I first read that my initial reaction was straight out of Kobe’s old commercial with Kanye:
You win some, you lose some? This is the Black Mamba for christ’s sake. The guy who still has a blood feud with Shaq nearly 20 years later because he’s so psychotically competitive he couldn’t get along with his own teammate, despite being in the midst of a three-peat.
THAT guy is the one telling everyone in the United States that “eh shit happens, the rest of the world is also pretty good so you might win, you might lose.” Has Kobe gone soft? Or is Kobe just trying to pump the collective tires of every other country he may do business with in the future? Maybe sell a few more Mambas in China if he makes it sound like he believes China can win Gold at Tokyo? Or maybe he’s just trying to Inception LeBron and Anthony Davis to get off their ass and *want* to win Gold. That would be some diabolical subterfuge that only the Black Mamba could pull off.
I spent years coming around on you Kobe so don’t you go soft on me now. I respect the assassin attitude so I refuse to accept this at face value. When we roll out the new Dream Team at the Olympics I will be the first one to give Kobe credit for planting the seed of doubt in everyone’s brain.
A tale as old as time. As a star athlete, Sam Darnold probably has his pick of the litter in terms of females in and around the Met-NY area. And those females converging on said star athlete probably don’t only converge around only one. So the star athlete took a bite from an apple that happened to be poisonous and unfortunately, is now paying the price.
Sam Darnold has contracted the ol’ mono, which I thought only affected folks between the age of 14-20 as they’re more inclined to rambunctiously make out with each other, and is out for his upcoming showdown with Baker Mayfield and the Browns. And I know what you’re thinking, “this isn’t the only way you can contract mono.” And that’s true. However I doubt a millionaire professional athlete is in the habit of participating in other such activities such as sharing drinks. Imagine this scene:
Le’Veon: Hey Sam, the pumpkin spice lattes are on point this year, have a sip.
Sam Darnold: Wow, thanks man! Yum!
Ya, I don’t see it happening either. Darnold went and got himself mixed up with the wrong hoochie mama and now is going to miss a game or two. Hey, you live you learn. And it’s not like the Jets look like world beaters this year so wasting a Darnold-less game against Cleveland aint the end of the world.
Those two books could not depict the highs and the lows of this organization any better than they already did.
The 300s 