I am officially breaking up with the Knicks.
It isn't that I don't like Melo, but if D-Will was available for a bag of balls, why didn't we send Felton, Gallo, and Chandler to Utah?
I don't even blame Thomas. Good for him for finding a billionaire groupie. Nope the problem is with the ownership and that ain't gonna change!
Any ideas on which NBA team I should start dating?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
A recovering Redskins fan on Dan Snyder
My name is Dave, and I am a Redskins fan. I say this with the same embarrassed but empowered admittance that one might have at their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But like anyone else taking the first step towards recovery, admitting that there is a problem feels quite liberating.
As the rest of the football world gears up for what will assuredly be one of the most epic battles in the history of the sport in Super Bowl XLV, our city's sports headlines are tied up with nonsense about how Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder is suing the City Paper over this article, which lambastes him top to bottom as a horrible owner and an unethical businessman, among other things. The lawsuit is on the grounds that the article libels Snyder, unfairly attacks his wife, and uses an allegedly anti-Semitic graphic at the top of the article. The lawsuit is yet another ridiculously bad PR move by the notoriously disliked owner who has turned one of the most beloved cultural icons of the Nation's Capital into the laughing stock of professional sports.
But it's the fans who suffer. Redskins fans, that is. What few of us are left, anyway. Not, say, New York Giants fans. They love Snyder.
Here in Los Angeles, a city that has not hosted an NFL game since 1994, I have received relentless criticism for following one of the most hapless franchises in football. The city that lost TWO football teams considers the Redskins a laughingstock because of Dan Snyder. One might have considered him the worst owner in professional sports long before The Nation labeled him as such. But now, the city that houses the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution watches on as one of its prominent citizens attempts to bully an alternative publication out of its First Amendment rights. Dan Steinberg addresses some of the allegations made by Snyder's legal team. They are outrageous.
But Dan Steinberg has admitted that he is friends with Dave McKenna, author of the infamous City Paper article to which I keep linking. The City Paper has responded to the lawsuit, even set up a legal defense fund to which anyone who hates Dan Snyder and what he's doing can contribute. They are holding their ground, and I believe they are in the right. Of course, I might be a little biased. I like the City Paper. They are off-beat, entertaining, and they voted my brother one of the best bartenders in DC. But surely large sports media outlets are also showing their disdain for the City Paper's article. Only sarcastically. ESPN jokes that putting horns and a goatee on Snyder is offensive to Satan.
The City Paper published the article on November 19th. Snyder ultimately sought action against the piece because according to Redskins COO David Donovan, "I will grant you, nobody reads the City Paper, all right? But that article's been linked to on the Internet a lot of times." Well, Mr. Donovan, that article has been read and linked a lot more in the last week. And you just might have put the City Paper on the map with all this attention.
Search high and low, and you will be hard pressed to find any sympathy for Dan Snyder. He overcharges for parking. He attempted to make it illegal to walk to FedEx Field on game day so he could overcharge for parking. He chopped down trees on National Park Service land to have a better view of the Potomac from his house. The business world decried the lawsuit as Forbes' Monte Burke asked "what is he thinking?" Brett Haber showed no mercy for Snyder in his editorial on WUSA, stating that his claims of anti-Semitism are "baloney" and stating his attempt to silence a media outlet were more suited for Russia. Said Haber, "It is a classic case of bullying and a man stepping on the First Amendment rights of a legitimate news organization because he doesn't like what they are saying about him." WUSA has set up a "First Amendment Petition" for Snyder to drop the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Die hard football fans will sit down to the ultimate showdown this Sunday as the Green Bay Packers face the Pittsburgh Steelers. These are two of the most successful franchises in the history of the NFL. And look at their owners. The Rooney family is a beloved institution in Pittsburgh. despite the fact that it has been a declining Rust Belt city much of the last 60 years, there are Steelers fans all over the US. The Packers, despite having the smallest market of any professional sports team in North America, are also popular across the country. Some would argue they have the best owners in sports... the 110,000 residents of the city of Green Bay.
Meanwhile, the few remaining Redskins fans will watch the Super Bowl in shame, being dragged through another tormenting embarrassment as the billionaire we depend on to provide football to a city that loves the sport behaves with the sense of entitlement I would have thought only existed on MTV reality programs about wealthy teenage girls. It is a lonely, embarrassing existence. And those of us that remember a time when the Redskins were the one of the only good things in this town that was geared toward the people who live here,one of the only things that was uniquely DC... well, we're bound to move away or die off at some point. DC has too much else to offer these days for Snyder to expect the unquestioned loyalty of a fan base he abuses and insults with impunity. And this is before even mentioning the fact that the Redskins have languished in mediocrity on the field since Snyder acquired the team in 1999.
I am pretty sure I'm the only die hard Redskins fan among my colleagues, many of them either rightfully disinterested in the sport, or transplants from another area unwilling to switch loyalties for a team so embarrassingly controversial. And the embarrassingly controversial Dan Snyder is only 44 years old. We're stuck with him for a long, long time. Cavan Wilk sympathetically invited me to the DC United home opener on March 19th, promising me a "really fun, Snyder-free pro sporting experience". I stopped and thought back on the finer moments of my 31 years of Redskins fandom. Resigned to the sad state of my NFL franchise and in need of healing, I answered Cavan, confident that my free speech would not be silenced by the likes of Dan Snyder... "¡Vamos United!"
As the rest of the football world gears up for what will assuredly be one of the most epic battles in the history of the sport in Super Bowl XLV, our city's sports headlines are tied up with nonsense about how Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder is suing the City Paper over this article, which lambastes him top to bottom as a horrible owner and an unethical businessman, among other things. The lawsuit is on the grounds that the article libels Snyder, unfairly attacks his wife, and uses an allegedly anti-Semitic graphic at the top of the article. The lawsuit is yet another ridiculously bad PR move by the notoriously disliked owner who has turned one of the most beloved cultural icons of the Nation's Capital into the laughing stock of professional sports.
But it's the fans who suffer. Redskins fans, that is. What few of us are left, anyway. Not, say, New York Giants fans. They love Snyder.
Here in Los Angeles, a city that has not hosted an NFL game since 1994, I have received relentless criticism for following one of the most hapless franchises in football. The city that lost TWO football teams considers the Redskins a laughingstock because of Dan Snyder. One might have considered him the worst owner in professional sports long before The Nation labeled him as such. But now, the city that houses the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution watches on as one of its prominent citizens attempts to bully an alternative publication out of its First Amendment rights. Dan Steinberg addresses some of the allegations made by Snyder's legal team. They are outrageous.
But Dan Steinberg has admitted that he is friends with Dave McKenna, author of the infamous City Paper article to which I keep linking. The City Paper has responded to the lawsuit, even set up a legal defense fund to which anyone who hates Dan Snyder and what he's doing can contribute. They are holding their ground, and I believe they are in the right. Of course, I might be a little biased. I like the City Paper. They are off-beat, entertaining, and they voted my brother one of the best bartenders in DC. But surely large sports media outlets are also showing their disdain for the City Paper's article. Only sarcastically. ESPN jokes that putting horns and a goatee on Snyder is offensive to Satan.
The City Paper published the article on November 19th. Snyder ultimately sought action against the piece because according to Redskins COO David Donovan, "I will grant you, nobody reads the City Paper, all right? But that article's been linked to on the Internet a lot of times." Well, Mr. Donovan, that article has been read and linked a lot more in the last week. And you just might have put the City Paper on the map with all this attention.
Search high and low, and you will be hard pressed to find any sympathy for Dan Snyder. He overcharges for parking. He attempted to make it illegal to walk to FedEx Field on game day so he could overcharge for parking. He chopped down trees on National Park Service land to have a better view of the Potomac from his house. The business world decried the lawsuit as Forbes' Monte Burke asked "what is he thinking?" Brett Haber showed no mercy for Snyder in his editorial on WUSA, stating that his claims of anti-Semitism are "baloney" and stating his attempt to silence a media outlet were more suited for Russia. Said Haber, "It is a classic case of bullying and a man stepping on the First Amendment rights of a legitimate news organization because he doesn't like what they are saying about him." WUSA has set up a "First Amendment Petition" for Snyder to drop the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Die hard football fans will sit down to the ultimate showdown this Sunday as the Green Bay Packers face the Pittsburgh Steelers. These are two of the most successful franchises in the history of the NFL. And look at their owners. The Rooney family is a beloved institution in Pittsburgh. despite the fact that it has been a declining Rust Belt city much of the last 60 years, there are Steelers fans all over the US. The Packers, despite having the smallest market of any professional sports team in North America, are also popular across the country. Some would argue they have the best owners in sports... the 110,000 residents of the city of Green Bay.
Meanwhile, the few remaining Redskins fans will watch the Super Bowl in shame, being dragged through another tormenting embarrassment as the billionaire we depend on to provide football to a city that loves the sport behaves with the sense of entitlement I would have thought only existed on MTV reality programs about wealthy teenage girls. It is a lonely, embarrassing existence. And those of us that remember a time when the Redskins were the one of the only good things in this town that was geared toward the people who live here,one of the only things that was uniquely DC... well, we're bound to move away or die off at some point. DC has too much else to offer these days for Snyder to expect the unquestioned loyalty of a fan base he abuses and insults with impunity. And this is before even mentioning the fact that the Redskins have languished in mediocrity on the field since Snyder acquired the team in 1999.
I am pretty sure I'm the only die hard Redskins fan among my colleagues, many of them either rightfully disinterested in the sport, or transplants from another area unwilling to switch loyalties for a team so embarrassingly controversial. And the embarrassingly controversial Dan Snyder is only 44 years old. We're stuck with him for a long, long time. Cavan Wilk sympathetically invited me to the DC United home opener on March 19th, promising me a "really fun, Snyder-free pro sporting experience". I stopped and thought back on the finer moments of my 31 years of Redskins fandom. Resigned to the sad state of my NFL franchise and in need of healing, I answered Cavan, confident that my free speech would not be silenced by the likes of Dan Snyder... "¡Vamos United!"
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
I spell it PHENOMENAL
Deep inside every hoops fan, there is a timer counting down the days until the All-Star Break. It's some subconscious stuff or maybe it's the id, waiting to be sated on unrelenting fury blessed with luck and timing, appearing some time over the weekend. We all know it probably won't be in the Skills Challenge. It could occur in the 3 Point Contest. It's more likely in the Slam Dunk Contest. The Rookie v. Sophomore Game will hold some magic. And the All-Star Game itself might hold the key.
Given history, I'm going with the Slam Dunk Contest.
And with that, go waste your time with this: http://hoopism.com/?p=961.
Given history, I'm going with the Slam Dunk Contest.
And with that, go waste your time with this: http://hoopism.com/?p=961.
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