Every Rose has its Thorns

Derrick Rose is the best player on the Chicago Bulls when he’s healthy. Still reacclimatizing Rose to the team would be the worst thing for Chicago in this series.

Much has been made in regards to the star of Chicago’s injury and whether or not he can pull off a 360 dunk from his left foot as of now.

Rose was cleared by his doctors for the better part of two months yet he continues to mull over weather or not he should return for the playoffs.

Chicago should make the answer simple for him: tell him to wait until next year.

Adding Rose to these bucking bulls would cause imbalance to a team entirely dependent on team chemistry. For better or worse these Bulls have figured out how to play without Derrick Rose, and there is no way Rose can covalently bond with his teammates in this series.

For example while Nate Robinson and Marco Belinelli have tendencies to be defensive liabilities at times, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson know how to anticipate their mistakes better. With Rose back in the lineup, it would not be as clear to the Bulls paint monsters what mistakes the star guard would make on the defensive end.

And against the Miami Heat no team can afford constant defensive lapses.

Although the Miami Heat is undoubtedly capable of running with the Chicago Bulls, the ‘baby bulls’ have grown into defensive monsters capable of playing with the NBA’s best.

Chemical reactions take time to stabilize. Adding a player who plays as explosively as Rose would disrupt the potency of the Bulls chemistry.

One sign of this imbalance between Rose and the new look Bulls is his interaction with new impact rookie Jimmy Butler. According to an article written by SI.com, Rose and Butler have only shared the floor for a total of 75 minutes.

Also factoring Rose back in means less minutes for Robinson to be the impact player he has been throughout the series. Robinson ripped off 27 points and had nine assists in game one of the series.

Although Robinson does have a track record of being an inconsistent shooter, he well aware of his role and is on the NBA’s short list of players who are heated up after making one shot.

Every Rose has its thorns and Derrick coming back in this series would lead directly to the Bulls being pricked.

No Might in Dwight

This superman is his own kryptonite.

When Dwight Howard was ejected from the last game of this Lakers season, a 103-82 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, he submerged into the darkness of the team’s tunnel alone.

As the league’s new goliath trudged to his team’s locker room the Lakers mainstay arrived in a blazer and crutches to save the day.

Kobe Bryant showed us again that it takes a strong will in the face of adversity to earn the fans respect and become a champion.

In contrast Howard melted under the bright lights of Los Angeles. A champion does not pick up a dumb foul against a guy who doesn’t even have a picture on his CBSsports.com player profile when his team needed him the most.

After the game Howard spoke to the media and said “I think I handled some situations good and somesituations bad, but it’s a growing process.”

While the star stocked Lakers never got the chance to grow as a cohesive unit this season the way the 2008 Boston Celtics did, Howard proved once again that any team that was primarily focused around him will not win an NBA title.

Contrary to popular belief the stats back up the claim.

While Howard’s teams have made the playoffs six times during his nine year career, Howard’s teams have only made it out of the first round three times.

Howard’s best statistical performance in the postseason came in the 2010-2011 season when he averaged 27 points and 15.5 rebounds against an Atlanta Hawks team still plagued by Joe Johnson’s disgustingly large contract.

And the Magic lost the series in six games.

Even when Dwight’s Magic made it to the NBA Finals they were felled by Kobe Bryant and the Lakers team whose colors are now on Howard’s back.

In that Finals series Howard only broke the 20 point barrier once and had 20 turnovers in six games.

One of the league’s most physically dominant players has neither the pedigree of a champion, nor apparently, the mental acuity to win a title.

No team whether it is the Lakers, the Mavericks, or the Hawks should not pay Dwight Howard the max contract he will for these reasons.

While any move the Lakers make financially will most likely put them over the luxury tax, Howard’s discourteous actions in defeat do not warrant a team making him the centerpiece of a title contender.

Two years down the line, Howard will not have a teammate like Kobe Bryant to show him what it takes to win.

Howard will be alone bitterly tasting the agony of defeat once again. 

One and Done.

Welcome to the internet’s newest game show: one and done.

Today we tackle the most innovative sports issues in two paragraphs or less. Contrary to popular belief not every sports topic requires the debate reserved for the United Nations forum.

Anyway here comes the fun.

Topic One: David Ortiz’schoice of language during his pre-game speech at Fenway Park.

One and Done: The FCC said it was okay, youtube comments actually all agree that it was fine, and the Fenway faithful cheered like they just heard the opening riffs of Aerosmith’s dream on.

Good move Ortiz.

Topic Two: Who is going to win the NBA Finals?

One and Done: (Hysterically laughing) Oh wait this is an actual question. The Miami Heat will be your 2012-2013 NBA champions.

They are far and away the best team in the league. Their offense is impetuous, their defense is impregnable, and LeBron James will eat Kevin Durant’s children.

Topic Three: Should Derrick Rose come back in the playoffs.

One and Done: No. The Bulls don’t want a guy who hasn’t played all season long to be thrust into the playoffs only to unbalance a team overly dependent on defensive chemistry.

Topic Four: Should an NBA team take a chance on Brittney Griner.

One and Done: If any woman is going to try this jump Griner has the best chance become a successful role player.

However, everyone and their grandmother would say it was a publicity stunt rather than a tribute to Griner’s skill. Sadly they would all be right.

Topic Five: The Darrelle Revis Trade.

One and Done: It’s going to happen and the Jets are going to lose this trade.

Contract disputes or not Revis is leaving anyway after next season. New York will try to get something for him and it will not be for the value they want.

Topic Six: Mike Rice, the Rutgers coach that got fired for beating up his players, is now coaching an AAU team of 12 year old girls: in New Jersey.

One and Done: The stupidity of the human species never ceases to amaze.

Topic Seven: Transgender boxer Fallon Fox will take on Allana Jones on May 24.

One and Done: And anyone who has a problem with it can step into the ring with Fox themselves instead of taking pot shots at her behind a computer screen.

42

For the first time in a long time I’m scared to go see a movie.

Considering that the film 42 is supposed to be the uplifting tale of Jackie Robinson breaking down the color barrier in sports my fear appears to be irrational. Since Robinson was one of sports iconic pioneers there is no way I should be nervous about how Hollywood retells his tale.

However, the gravity of Robinson’s life off the field and his accomplishments on it cannot be fully measured in a two hour time frame. My fear is that 42 will not adequately capture everything that was Jackie Robinson, thereby belittling his accomplishments.

I’ve never hoped to be wrong this much before.

If someone really wants to make a feature film about Robinson, they would be better served doing one on his whole life rather than just his major league debut.

There was so much more to the life of Jackie Robinson than just that day on April 15, 1947. Robinson was a four sport athlete in college, and his best sport was track not baseball.Robinson was also the first black baseball analyst for ABC after his hall of fame career drew to a close. Yet 42 could pass these factoids up altogether even though they were part of his life.

This film’s potential shortcoming will likely not be due to a lack of preparation by the cast.

Harrison Ford has spent a lot of time researching the role of Branch Rickey, the Dodgers general manager who signed Robinson, and supposedly he’s worried about exposing the horrid racism Robinson dealt with during the early phases of his career.

Ford told wickedlocal.com “This movie is about Racial Equality in the United States…people that will go forward in their lives and their experiences and recognize that this is something to be worked against, this is something they don’t want their children exposed to. They recognize both the truth in it and the undeniable evil of it.”

If Ford and the film’s makers really wanted to show racism in Robinson’s life they would also be forced to include a few episodes during his military service.

Robinson was drafted in 1942 and became a second lieutenant in 1943 after completing officer candidate school. Robinson was assigned to the 761^st “Black Panthers” Tank Battalion. The Black Panthers unit went on to become the first black tank unit to see action in World War II; yet Robinson was not among them.

On July 6, 1944 Robinson boarded an Army bus with an injured ankle and the bus driver ordered him to go to the back of the bus; even though the bus line was not segregated.

When the bus reached the end of the line, the driver summoned the military police and they took Robinson into custody. When Robinson confronted the investigating officer about a racist line of questioning, the investigating officer ordered Robinson to be court marshaled.

Robinson’s commander, Paul B. Yates, refused to acknowledge the court marshal, bur Robinson was transferred. Upon relocation Robinson’s new battalion commander charged him with public drunkenness, even though Robinson did not drink.

 If 42 actually were the “Jackie Robinson Story” it would include that tidbit because it would give a more complete picture of both Robinson’s life and racism at that time.

Racism was there long before Robinson was a Dodger and it didn’t end when his career was over.

Yet because the film will be roughly two hours long, it could make an audience feel that Robinson single handedly killed racism with a baseball bat; which is historically inaccurate.

Also racism was still very much alive in the world of sports after Robinson’s debut. The last team to sign a black player in baseball was the Boston Red Sox in 1959; 12 years after Robinson shattered the color barrier in sports. (Ironically the Boston Celtics drafted Chuck Cooper in 1950, the NBA’s first black player. Go figure.)

Still Robinson breaking the color barrier in sports was a significant step in establishing social equality. Without Robinson we have no Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry Rice, or Michael Jordan; without Robinson we may not even have Barrack Obama.

Robinson’s life was intertwined with racism, the same was the United States was and the same way the world of sports was for a long time. While Robinson was a pioneer for racial equality in a different way, his setting foot on the diamond didn’t end racism.

I’m just petrified that 42 will make it seem that way. Although I really hope that I’m wrong.

Kevin Ware’s Injury and the Emotions of Sports

When the sophomore’s leg buckled and snapped in half the tough cringed, the weak hearted averted their eyes, and the Cardinals of Louisville cried for their fallen teammate.

Chane Behanan, Russ Smith, and Peyton Siva collapsed to the court in despair at the sight of Kevin Ware’s obliterated leg. They saw what happened, where Ware’s leg was, and the pain was evident on the sophomore’s face.

Ware’s injury itself happened on one of basketball’s most common defensive plays. With six minutes and 41 seconds to go in the first half Ware rotated to the wing too late and made the effort to block the wing three from Duke.

The subsequent awkward landing and leg separation turned the stomach of every fan in the stadium and millions more watching TV.

Even the normally stoic Rick Pitino shed a few tears for his fallen player. And the coach knew that his team would either rally around the injury or be ripped apart by sadness.

Yet before Ware was carted off the court, he made sure to channel the emotions in a certain direction. Behanan told the New York Times that Ware told his teammates “Win it for me, y’all. I’m good. I’m going to get surgery and be back at it like I never left.”

From that moment on the Blue Devils had no chance of going down to Georgia.

A debilitating injury to a player, regardless of the sport, becomes a test of team chemistry. The teams that care for each other, like Ware’s teammates care for him, find an inner strength reserved for the most turbulent times.

Teams that fail their chemistry test are ripped apart by the emotions of the moment. They try to rally together, but their love falls flat of expectations because it was not strong enough to begin with.

In the case of the Cardinals, they channeled their emotions into adrenaline and ran all over Duke. Smith and Siva, two players who were already quick, ran even faster. Gorgui Dieng swatted away shots with the fervor of Bill Russell.

And Pitino, the same coach who ended up on the wrong end of the Christian Laettner game, made every correct decision throughout the second half.

An early 22-6 in the entire second half felt as if it spanned the entire game. Louisville won 85-63 and secured their second trip to the Final Four in two years; but that was not the chief concern of those who banished the Blue Devils.

After a brief post game interview on CBS Siva came over and gave his coach a hug. The point guard was smiling at the camera and letting everyone watching know who his coach was.

That kind of honest affection between human beings is the reason Louisville is heading to Atlanta to take on Wichita State. While the Cardinals may be without Kevin Ware on the court he is undoubtedly in the hearts of everyone on the roster.

That love is how Louisville passed their team chemistry test with a perfect score.

Decoding the Jargon

Welcome to another installment of the sports terminology translation station.

Since Rosetta Stone hasn’t yet developed a ‘sports watchers to non sports watchers’ educational explanation software yet, the time has come to translate common sports terminology for those who don’t speak fluent ESPNeese.  

Sadly there aren’t enough inches in this column to break down every single sports term and its immediate meaning. Instead the focus here will be to breakdown the backhanded complements of sports that share the airwaves with Michael and Kelly.

The first term that deserves decoding is the term ‘glue guy.’ Usually this term comes up primarily in basketball, although baseball and hockey see this term in their word banks occasionally. The player’s relevance to the team is usually brought up when Skip Bayless or Stephen A. Smith are in the middle of debating who the better team is.

What a ‘glue guy will’ most commonly be defined as is a mediocre player whose primary function is to be a catalyst to improve team chemistry. In the NBA guys like Derrick Fisher of the Oklahoma City Thunder would be a good example.

Back in Fisher’s heyday with the Los Angles Lakers from 2000-2004 he averaged roughly eleven points per game and his signature moment was a falling away ‘there-is-no-possible-way-this-shot-should-go-in-but-why-the-hell-not’ three pointer in the 2004 playoffs.

Nowadays Fisher is a backup guard who will occasionally hit a three point shot; that is if he has enough space to read “War and Peace” before a defender gets to him.

Talking heads and journalists will reward the ‘glue guy’ term to a good teammate who can’t produce on the court anymore in order to get good quotes from him after the game. Everyone who follows Fisher knows that he hasn’t averaged more than ten points per game since 2008 and hasn’t been a reliable defender since 2005.

Yet because Fisher is a nice guy who serves as an important catalyst for team chemistry, nobody is going to outright say Fisher sucks. Instead they give him the backhanded complement of being a ‘glue guy.’

Synonyms for glue guy include ‘hustle player’, ‘hard worker’, or any player description that includes the word grit. 

Now the sports terminology translation station will break down what it means to ‘turn back the hands of time.’ This phrase will make appearances from football to hockey and every sport in between.

When a player ‘turns back the hands of time’ he or she is an older player who is statistically producing similarly to when they were in their prime. Anyone who has watched ESPN in the last two weeks has heard this term applied to Kobe Bryant after two historically great (40 plus points and 12 plus assists) games in a row.

Although the black mamba deserves the praise, there is a bit of bile in pundits saying Kobe turning back the hands of time.

For one thing that phrase is a not so subtle reminder that Bryant has played in the NBA for 17 seasons and is 34 years of age. Kobe being an experienced NBA player is not necessarily a bad thing because certain players do get better with age; like a fine vino.

Still nobody likes to be reminded that they are not as young as they once were and Bryant probably doesn’t want to be reminded that the last championship he won was in 2009-2010. He is still a good player who happens to be up there in years.

While there are no synonyms for the phrase ‘turning back the hands of time’ although there is probably one daylight savings time joke in there somewhere.

Another term to break down depicts the constant breaking down of athletes’ bodies.

When a player frequently gets hurt over the course of their career they are plagued with the dreadful ‘injury prone label.’ This term is also not sport specific and has more people fit the bill than in a casting call for Les Miserable.

Perhaps one of the most drastic cases of an ‘injury prone’ player would be former Boston Red Sox outfielder and vanilla ice cream substitute J.D. Drew.

Over the course of his career, the infamous Drew missed roughly 96 games per year during a five year span in Boston. The injuries ranged from a strained lower back to sore knees to ouchies that saw Drew out of the Red Sox lineup a total of 606 regular season games with the Red Sox.

Drew missed so much time due to injury that the fan base of Red Sox nation not only questioned the severity of Drew’s injuries, but also assigned him the dubious (but hilarious) nickname of “Nancy Drew.”

Synonyms for injury prone include ‘just can’t seem to stay healthy,’ ‘injury plagued,’ ‘soft,’ ‘frail’ or in the most extreme circumstances ‘quitter.’

While ‘injury prone’ is by far the most condescending term that the translation station has defined perhaps the most loaded term would be ‘trade bait.’

Players who are ‘trade bait’ are athletes that a franchise is looking to get rid of in return for other players, draft picks, cash, or some combination of the three.

On the surface that doesn’t sound so bad because ‘trade bait’ implies that the player openly being shopped has value. However, the notion that a player is expendable decreases his overall value to the team and therefore some could have a lower opinion of his or her production.

Before the NBA trade deadline this year Los Angeles Clipper guard Eric Bledsoe was mentioned in more rumors than Kris Humphries and his wife.

Bledsoe put up good numbers for his team off the bench for the Clips (21 minutes, nine points, three rebounds, and three assists per game) was a player with the potential to get better (age 23) and was a part of the deepest team in the NBA.

So the Clippers tried to dangle Bledsoe as trade bait in order to lure that final piece to make a championship run this season. Bledsoe ultimately didn’t get traded and now his value has depreciated because of the Clips openly willing to bargain for Bledsoe.

The biggest reason that being acknowledged as trade bait is partially condescending is because it can hurt the psyche of a player. If a player has to hear that his or her name is being discussed in trade rumors then it automatically becomes a distraction to the team.

Instead of worrying about winning, trade bait players like Bledsoe have to answer questions about how they are dealing with the rumors of their impending departure. 

The free trial in ESPNeese is now over. Hopefully now the language of sports is a bit easier to translate. 

Out of Bounds

Dennis Rodman has more or less the same credibility when it comes to foreign diplomacy as an inmate in Sing Sing.

This is a man who put on a wedding dress just to promote his book back in 1996. Rodman had an MTV show in which he interviewed guests from the comfort of his bed. Rodman has been to rehab, driving whilst intoxicated, and multiple domestic violence incidents.

Yet all of that outward lunacy pales in comparison to Rodman’s recent visit to North Korea for the purposes of ‘basketball diplomacy.’ Over the weekend the madman of the midway met with the madman of east Asia, Kim Jong Un, and said “As a person to person, he (Un) is my friend.”

To be fair one has to put Rodman’s words in proper context. Many will misinterpret Rodman’s one on one meeting with Un as Rodman accepting Un’s rule of his people. In reality, Rodman’s one on one interaction was just a fan admiring a great basketball player.

Even though that fan is a ruler of a country and Un treated the hall of famer better than any of the citizens he is in charge of.

It does not take John Kerry to tell you that as a ruler of a country Un has been far from exemplary. An article by BBCnews.com said that 3.5 million people have starved to death in North Korea since 1995. And the U.S. is still technically fighting the Korean war because a peace treaty was never signed after the 1953 truce ‘ended’ the Korean War.

It is hard to figure out which is scarier, the fact that Rodman wants Obama and Un to talk about basketball or that Rodman probably got closer to Un than anyone in U.S. intelligence in the last half century or so.

Seriously in a CNN.com article reported that former Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Ganyard told ABC News, "There is nobody at the CIA who could tell you more personally about Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman, and that in itself is scary.”

It’s terrifying actually. Nobody can take this meeting seriously because of the man who supposedly bonded with Un. Rodman gets his sanity questioned on a daily basis, and he is supposed to be the man who leads the U.S. to peace negotiations with an enemy government?

That is simply not going to happen. Not every international sports story will be Invictus. If Un wanted to bring the citizens of North Korea together and better his nation through some form of basketball diplomacy he’d have to actually feed his people first.

While the principal of being the bigger nation and talking to your enemy may be noble there are people in this world in which reason fails to reach them; and Un is one of those people incapable of reasoning.

And Rodman very well may be a person incapable of fully grasping reason himself.

Although sports reporters from Chicago to San Antonio swear that Rodman has a good heart most of them will not refute Rodman’s questionable sanity. If there is an athlete in the world who is to unify people for a cause it is most certainly not a man who is regarded as one of the dirtiest players in NBA history.

Though Rodman has been making a fool out of himself for his entire professional life it was inconceivable to think belittling diplomacy was in his arsenal. Dennis Rodman having an affair with Madonna, sure that’s possible. A professional athlete making an a-hole out of himself happens every day.

But to pretend that there was any kind of good that came out of two insane man vying for the President of the United States to talk with them about basketball is just plain dangerous.

Now that Rodman has had his moment back in the spotlight the men in the white coats can put him back in his straight jacket.