Posted on January 19th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
USA Basketball has announced its preliminary 20-man roster for the 2012 Olympics, and once again, it’s quite an impressive list. Among the players with a shot at representing the United States in London are Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard.
We’ve come a long way since the 2002 World Championships and 2004 Olympics, when the U.S. turned in disappointing performances — finishing sixth and third, respectively — for the first international losses with NBA players. The entire system was overhauled, with former Phoenix Suns executive Jerry Colangelo being named USA Basketball chairman, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski being named coach and prospective players being asked for three-year commitments.
The result was an immediate return to the United States’ self-proclaimed rightful place, No. 1, taking gold in the 2008 Olympics and first place in the 2010 World Championships. But few, if any, observers had the nerve to mention “Dream Team.”
Until now. Colangelo said the 2012 squad is a fair comparison.
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Posted on January 17th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The Wizards are going as expected, starting to play more as a team, with more intensity and confidence. They’re starting to get contributions from many players and should settle in now and start to become more productive.
Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. That’s what owner Ted Leonsis wrote on his blog when the Washington Wizards were merely 0-5. He said he knew the rebuilding process would be difficult, messy and painful, but he’s patient.
He could use some tips from Job at this juncture.
“Obviously — no one is happy with the progress we are making as a team,” Leonsis wrote after Washington fell to only 0-8. “It is important that we be measured and smart in how we move forward.”
But the Wizards are stuck in reverse with the pedal floored, collectively unable to comprehend the words “measured” or “smart.” That much is clear after Monday’s loss dropped them to 1-12 and provided Exhibits X, Y and Z in the case against them.
Washington is guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. The offense?
Flashes and lapses. Primarily the latter.
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Posted on January 16th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks capped an 11-game schedule on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which has become a sacred day on the NBA calendar.
Home teams prepare special MLK tributes to be played in their arenas. The Indiana Pacers did a collaborative reading of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The Washington Wizards went with a couple of players sharing their thoughts — as Steve Wonder played in the background — interspersed with clips from the March on Washington.
ESPN got into the spirit with a weeklong series of orginal programming entitled Content of Character. It included a roundtable of journalists, scholars and former athletes discussing the King’s legacy and how it affects sports. Among the stories examined were the familiar — former home run king Hank Aaron’s rise from Mobile, Ala., to the Hall of Fame — and the unfamilia: Kareem Rosser’s rise from inner-city Philadelphia to a national polo championship and scholarship to Cornell.
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Posted on January 13th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Church mothers who never watch football because they’re always in service have heard of him. Preachers who want to make points about incredible faith and overcoming odds have preached about him. And Christians who didn’t have a favorite NFL team or a favorite player have chosen the Denver Broncos and him — Tim Tebow.
Tebowmania reached new heights on Jan. 8 when he led the Broncos to a playoff victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The game produced several numbers connected to John 3:16, the popular Bible verse that Tebow sometimes inscribes on his eye black. He’ll attempt another miracle Saturday night against the New England Patriots, though there’s already enough proof for true believers: They contend that Tebow transcends football.
But observers who use football, not faith, to inform their opinions remain skeptical. And fans who prefer that athletes keep their religion to themselves are upset. Opposing sides in the cultural divide struggle to keep their views unencumbered. Thoughts on Tebow the Christian get mixed with Tebow the Quarterback. Tebow the Hyped is entangled with Tebow the Great Guy.
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Posted on January 13th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
First-year Maryland men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon is a breath of fresh air, and not just because first-year football coach Randy Edsall is emitting so much funk. No matter who occupied the head office at the Gossett Team House, there’s little doubt that athletic director Kevin Anderson at least got the hoops hire right.
Turgeon still is figuring out his team, actually version 3.0. He started the season with just seven scholarship players, didn’t have a true point guard for the first nine games and didn’t get his big man until the 11th game. Yet the Terrapins managed to survive scares from virtually every non-conference opponent and compile enough ugly wins to enter league play at 10-3.
Prevailing on the road Sunday at North Carolina State was too much to ask. But Maryland rebounded to win its ACC home opener Wednesday, surviving the obligatory second-half swoon for a 70-64 victory against Wake Forest.
And Turgeon’s Terps inched another step forward.
“We’re starting to become a better basketball team and figure out ways to win games,” he said afterward. “Tonight, it was second-chance points and at the foul line, which is a good formula. It’s no fun going through games like that. We’d like to win by 16, 18 or 20 points. But that’s not who we are as a team right now.”
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Posted on January 12th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
There’s nothing like some good old-fashioned trash-talking to whet our appetite for a big fight. And Floyd Mayweather is doing his part to promote the one bout that every boxing fan wants to see.
Maybe he was feeling flush after claiming he won $400,000 on the Alabama-LSU game Monday night, because he began challenging Manny Pacquiao on Twitter shortly thereafter. Two tweets came within a minute of each other Tuesday afternoon.
The first one was pretty tame: “Manny Pacquiao I’m calling you out let’s fight May 5th and give the world what they want to see.” But Mayweather spiced up the second one with name-calling: “My Jail Sentence was pushed back because the date was locked in. Step up Punk.”
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Posted on January 10th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Somewhere along the way in major college football, we stopped. We quit being accurate in our description. We dropped the extra syllables and characters. We got lazy and gave in to convention.
But it wasn’t long ago when writers, broadcasters and fans were upfront about reality. Everyone acknowledged that power conferences cut backroom deals with the bowls and the team voted No. 1 in the final media and/or coaches poll would be crowned as the mythical national champion.
Mythical wasn’t surrounded by quotation marks or parentheses. Teams chased mythical titles and became mythical champions, plain and simple, no explanation necessary.
However, as society morphed into the fast-paced, instant-gratification, 800-channel blur that exists today, “mythical” slipped from the discussion and our conscious. We allowed major college football to equate its champions with the legitimate champions crowned at every other level and in every other sport.
But the fact of the matter is Alabama won the mythical title Monday night, like Auburn won the mythical championship the year before, and so on.
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Posted on January 9th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Todd Bozeman actually should have landed a better job by now.
His talents should have been requested at a more prestigious school, for a job with a national profile that’s worthy of his résumé. He did his penance for a major NCAA violation 16 years ago and excelled once Morgan State gave him another chance in 2006.
Bozeman proved that he still had it at Morgan State, leading the Golden Bears to 20-plus victories in three of his first four seasons, winning a Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award and three Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Awards.
He’s ready to return to the big time, like when he coached California in 1994 and became the youngest coach to reach the Sweet 16 (a record he still holds). The eight-year ban he served for giving a recruit’s parents $30,000? Ancient history.
The last thing he needs is another negative incident attached to his name (like the assault charges — dropped after he apologized to a restaurant worker — in 2007). But that’s where he finds himself today, suspended with pay by Morgan State for either punching a player or making accidental contact, depending on whose account you believe.
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Posted on January 8th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
As word leaked that Bill O’Brien would be the next head football coach at Penn State, some prominent alumni illustrated the same narrow-minded, shortsighted thinking that contributed to the mess at their alma mater.
Apparently, critics such as former all-America linebackers LaVar Arrington and Brandon Short believed that the only acceptable coaching candidates either played or coached at Penn State in the past. Outsiders need not apply.
Arrington, who backed interim coach Tom Bradley for the job, told Rivals.com that he was “done with Penn State. If they’re done with us, I’m done with them. … If they get rid of Tom Bradley, that means they in essence have accepted the fact that we are all guilty. You might as well call it the same thing.”
Short went even further, expressing sympathy for O’Brien. “He has not been made aware of the implications of him being in this position,” Short told ESPN.com. “I don’t envy him at all. He doesn’t have support of the vast majority of former Penn State players and the vast majority of the student body and faculty won’t support him. I feel sorry for him.”
I feel sorry for Short and others who share those views, which very well might include proponents of inbreeding.
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Posted on January 7th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Just as we can’t help noticing that more than 80 percent of NBA players are black, it’s impossible to be oblivious when a team can put five white players on the court. Especially white American-born players, who are outnumbered in the league by Europeans.
ESPN’s J.A. Adande pointed out the obvious about the Los Angeles Lakers Lakers in a column that drew 900 comments and counting.
It figures that the topics of skin color and the NBA would attract such attention. As the late tennis great Arthur Ashe said in the 1989 NBC News special Black Athletes — Fact and Fiction, the issue of race in sports is “a sociological red button.”
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