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the pre-season was rife with bold predictions trumpeted by sportswriters and tv commentators: the acquisition of shaq makes the cavs the premier team in the nba and at the least a shoo-in for the championship round if not the crown itself. you couldn't escape the noise. you would have thought they were david stern's own p.r. men so loudly did they beat the drum.
it turned out to be the blind leading the blind. here we are two games into the season and it is apparent that shaq is not the answer, that he is not the player he was seven years ago (though sportswriters still fail to acknowledge this. why i don't know given their great knowledge), that the cavs were exposed by orlando last year and did nothing to improve themselves in reality; in fact they have regressed.
sure yeah yeah. it's early in the season. but still this is the hand that the cavs have dealt themselves. but that's not really the point.
the ironic thing in all this is that all those sportswriters and commentators who trumpeted the cavs as champions have already jumped ship and are writing columns reflective of the reality that is the cavs like they knew it all along. actually, what these geniuses don't realize is that anyone with any real knowledge of basketball saw this coming though the sportswriter chorus shouted them down. it's shaq and lebron together! they told us. how can it miss?.
now it's where did you people ever get that idea from about the cavs being so great. it's clear the cavs are not the class of the nba. lebron will have to carry them night after night. surely not from us, the wise sportswriters and commentators.
say what?
i ask: why didn't you morons listen to people like me. and why don't you go learn something about the sport you are covering and commenting on?
i remember you are the ones who told me two years that the great kobe was going to steamroller the celtics in the championship. how did that work out?
give it up. you've been served. the emperor, it is clear, has no clothes.
i don't know what all of you plan to do but i am writing letters
Talking heads on ESPN and the sports writers are wrong more often than they are right. My favorite from a hometown prespective is when the Bears played the Saints in the NFC champ game a few years ago. 12 out of 12 on the "panel" of experts picked the Saints. The Bears won by I think 3 touchdowns. It was awesome.
That gets an "I'll say." It's the result of the sports themselves taking a back seat to marketing and ratings concerns. The people pulling the sponsorship strings don't see the same sports that genuine fans do...and they don't believe things should be treated the way fans want them to be treated. Thus, an endless string of manufactured "controversies," predictions that change with the wind, and calls for trades and/or free agent signings that will never happen.
it's the same type of media chicanery that takes someone like sarah palin and shoves her down your throat 24/7, then reports on an insatiable appetite by the public for information (a media frenzy) about her when in truth most people would just like to see her go away which the media can accomplish immediately but choose not to do.
they never see or claim to see that it is all their creation. they believe they are only meeting some need.
As all this relates to basketball, the media here in New York spent the off-season quietly insinuating that fans should be forgiving of the Knickerbockers. (The franchise may now be headed in the right direction, but undoing what Isiah Thomas hath wrought will not happen overnight). All good and well. But are we going to continue to see this considerate tone if the Knicks should start the season at, let's say, 5-15? You may bet your last dime that we will not. There will be immediate calls for a new coach, and almost incessant whining the rest of the way--including many self-congratulatory statements from TV, radio and newspaper pundits about how they "saw this coming from the beginning," which, in fact, they did not.
the pre-season was rife with bold predictions trumpeted by sportswriters and tv commentators: the acquisition of shaq makes the cavs the premier team in the nba and at the least a shoo-in for the championship round if not the crown itself.
I am going to be honest here; I don't remember hearing any commentators saying this sort of thing. I remember a LOT of skepticism about what good Shaq would do in Cleveland. I remember people saying he would do nothing to defend the pick and roll that did the Cavs in (hell, even I said that during the off-season).
While it is absolutely adorable that you want to lash out and talk yourself up; I really think it is unfounded.
Shaq and Lebron if they were both in their primes today wold be great, but it's apparent that Shaq is too slow, and is ready for a rocking chair. Only his large contract keeps him from retiring. I think this is his final year of that contract. I bet Phoenix is glad they found a sucker to pay him off this final year of his contract.
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