Rip Hamilton To Donate Pubic Beard To Charlie Villanueva

To say the Detroit Pistons are in trouble would be an epic understatement. It seems to me that ever since the move to draft Darko Milicic (when we passed on Melo, Bosh, Wade, Kaman, Collison, and West) and the move to get rid of Larry Brown in 2005 (he had been talking behind the Pistons back with the Cavs), we have been in a downward spiral of piss poor coaching and mediocrity. In the years following the essential shitcanning of Brown, we were subject to the Flip Saunders experiment and the only reason he was "successful" was because of the carry over from the work that Brown did. The rebuilding of the team in 08-09 was highlighted by hiring Michael Curry and shipping out Billups and ultimately, trading the heart and soul leader of our perennial Eastern Conference Champs. In addition, Dumars love for the aging, gambling drunkard Allen Iverson and spending 1 billion dollars on Villanueva and Gordon were not his best moves. If we were going to spend money on an aging, gambling drunkard, I would have just paid Charles "TRBL" Barkley.

Now, it hasn't been all bad. The Pistons managed to let Sheed go in 09-10. This guy should have lived on the block and made a living with smooth post moves, but instead he always seemed to jack 3s and talk shit at inopportune times and cost us game after game. They also drafted Daye, Summers, and Jerebko who look to be solid for us if we actually decide to rebuild. 2010-2011 brought us Greg Monroe who has the raw talent to become a very serviceable big man with his averages of 13 and 9 over the past month.

So, what happened to watching the Bad Boys with your dad? What happened to the heart and hustle that was shown in the days of Jerome "Junk Yard Dog" Williams? What happened to the team defense that made us the team to beat in the East? What happened to the feeling of excitement when going to a Pistons game? Now, we just go to see my future job: dancing for The Spare Tires. It seems like the only person who plays with any energy anymore is Blaha, and he is approaching the age of The Big Bang. Count THAT baby and a foul.

Let's fast-forward to our current situation with Mr. Rip Hamilton and current coach, John Kuester. In case you haven't been following, here is Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C. The past couple weeks have been highlighted by Rip blowing up on Kuester in practice, players laughing on the bench during the ejection of Kuester, Villanueva tweeting his opinions on his head coach, and players skipping shootaround on Friday because of sprained vaginas.

1) This is apparently what went down on the practice court: "Hamilton bellowed at Kuester that he had been a failure in his two seasons in Detroit, blown the opportunity the franchise afforded him and was nothing more than a career assistant coach." Hamilton managed to do this in front of all the aforementioned young guys above and apparently was staging a mutiny against Kuester. I can't even begin to explain how atrocious this is. As we look to rebuild and develop young talent, this is wildly unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, the Pistons would be better off coached by Richard Simmons and "Hanoi" Jane Fonda at this point, but blowing up on Q in the middle of practice is not the way to handle this issue. If I had known that Rip was going to be a metastatic cancer like this, I would have drafted UConn teammate Khalid El-Amin and that oversized garbage bag of an undershirt he used to wear instead. Yes, I would have separately used a draft pick on his undershirt.

2) Let's discuss Charlie Villanueva's twitter account which has apparently over 137,000 viewers. If you are someone who follows Charlie Villanueva on twitter, you should be shot and forced to donate your genitals to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation. Athletes, for some reason, think Twitter is a great forum to express their opinions on authoritative figures. The solution? Every time an athlete says something negative about the team or people affiliated with their franchise on a social website gets a 3-game suspension and fined. And none of this shit $25K fines. I'm talking MASSIVE fines. I don't think our founding fathers had twitter and facebook in mind when discussing freedom of speech. And even if they did discuss twitter, I'm sure they didn't discuss following Charlie Villanueva for fear of losing their genitals. The bottom line: air your dirty laundry with the source of displeasure and not on public websites.

3) All of this culminated on Friday when the Pistons skipped shootaround as a type of mutiny against their head coach. I'll admit, not bringing in anyone at the trade deadline was pretty dumb. That being said, Hamilton was offered options to get out of Detroit but turned them down because he didn't want to play for the Cavs (or be bought out to go to the Bulls) given their current record. So now he is stuck to rot on the bench where he belongs. I would have liked to have seen the Pistons bring in someone like Gerald Wallace who the Bobcats were selling like 50/50 raffle tickets at your local high school game.

Alas, were stuck with a coalition of veterans who continue to stage a coup d'état against their boss while the young players are forced to watch what happens when grown men become babies and ultimately, get their way. With the impending sale of the team, one word comes to mind for Joe Dumars. Hamstrung. The higher powers won't let any transactions occur and we're forced to watch a 22-39 team attempt to shave a 5.5 game deficit and hobble into the playoffs where they would be dismantled by any athletic team in history. Rip, Prince, CV all have to go. I don't care if we're forced to field a team consisting of Powder, Alf, Napoleon Dynamite, Doug Funny, and Optimus Prime. I am sick of these previously proud, presently pretentious primadonna's promoting pouting. Bring in some young guys that want to play for a mediocre coach (Re: Cleveland Cavaliers) and then can Kuester after the season. We should bring in Les Miles to coach! For real though, with whatever money we can spend, bring in Jerry Sloan to finish out his coaching career. He would do a wonderful job with talent development and would act as an enforcer. I'd be willing to spearhead a fundraiser at Bazooki's and The Old Shillelagh to get him here.

Richard Hamilton should be ashamed of what he is doing to an entire franchise. Just because he "fist-bumped" with Kuester and took passes from him today does not rectify our current situation. He is setting a terrible example for our young core and his incessant crybaby attitude has become taxing. He will never be Reggie Miller. He will never be Ray Allen. Take off the mask and expose who he really is: an aging veteran at the tail end of his career who needed Chauncey Billups to get anywhere in the NBA.

The NBA: Where Players Revolt

Leverage. It's not a show you see three thousand commercials for when you are watching the NBA on TNT. It's something that NBA players have been utilizing all season in order to get their way. It started with the Decision by Lebron James. While the event itself was short-sighted and orchestrated, it was made possible by one fact. Lebron James was free to go on ESPN to announce his decision because he was an unrestricted free agent free to go to any team with the right sales pitch and marketing plan. Players, especially, star players, hold tremendous leverage over team ownership and management because they are the ones that fans want to pay to see.

Unrestricted free agency means that players can use the threat of leaving via the open market to get teams to cave into their demands, whether it be Carmelo and LaLa deciding that they would rather be second round Sallies/failed reality stars in New York than Denver or Kobe threatening to take his talents to the other locker room in Staples Center unless the Lakers traded an aging Shaq. Too often teams are forced to trade star players in the NBA for less than fair value. The Nuggets-Knicks trade was reasonably fair given the man crush James Dolan has for Melo. Denver acquired three legitimate NBA starters and draft picks for an All Star and an aging yet very productive veteran in Chauncey Billups. They were able to make the best of a bad situation. Still, Dwight Howard and Chris Paul, both of whom can hit free agency after the 2012 season, can hold their teams by the balls and be able to dictate where they go next, and whether it is by trade or free agency. Teams, ultimately, have two options when star players try to play the free agency card. They can call his bluff and let him to play out his contract and thus risk losing the player to free agency or they can trade him at a discount and get a 3/4ths return. Carmelo tanked his trade value by letting out the open secret that he wanted to go only to the Knicks. This meant that the only real contenders became the Nets and the Knicks, and ultimately the Nets did nothing but drive up the price for the Knicks in a shrewd manner while I think secretly working on the Deron Williams deal. Utah pulled the trigger on the Williams trade in an effort to beat him to the punch. I don't think that they felt that he would be returning to Utah once he hit free agency, and I think the incident(s) with Jerry Sloan made it a toxic atmosphere in an organization that is very buttoned up. But by trading Williams before he really held leverage, Utah was able to get back a very strong package of players and picks. Devin Harris is a very good and still fairly young point guard to replace Williams, and the addition of Derek Favors gives the Jazz a very strong and young front line.

With the Collective Bargaining Agreement( man, has that word been in the news a lot recently) set to expire at the end of this season, it is interesting to see how the owners will attempt to reduce the amount of leverage unrestricted free agency carries. It is probably impossible to retract unrestricted free agency but the league may be able to get the players to acquiesce to a franchise player-type tag. The franchise player tag could be touted as a way to keep small market teams from losing their star caliber players, but in reality it would just be a way to get another year from players in a contract. The owners are trying to get the salary cap lowered a few million dollars a year and they will. The owners will hold players accountable for the bad contracts they gave out instead of holding the bad GM's they hired accountable. Ultimately, teams are losing millions upon millions in the NBA because they were poorly managed and no one will play to see them play in a shitty economy. The top ten teams in the NBA in terms of attendance percentage per game( how much of your arena is filled every night) are the Mavericks, Bulls, Trail Blazers, Magic, Heat, Celtics, Lakers, Knicks, and Thunder. The common denominator amongst all of these teams is that they are all pretty good, given the Knicks acquisition of Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups. People in Minneapolis aren't exactly clamoring to go watch Kevin Love put up ho-hum double-double while the Timberwolves lose by 25. The onus is on owners and management to put together a competitive product if they want to stop losing money. The elite teams in the league have to play by the same salary rules, so the owners losing money really cannot cry wolf, but they will, and we won't have basketball for at least a portion of next year.

Au Revoire, Wonder of the World

Keisel shaves off his beard that he has been growing for 8 months...I couldn't grow this thing in 8 lifetimes...

Cheers to this cat.

Awesomeness

Soccer = Best Sport in the World

A while back, HamSlam wrote a blog post in which he described the pure and almost childish elation that he and so many other red-blooded Americans experiences when the man at bat smashes a home run clear out of the park, and this got me thinking.. Are there any other sports in which, at any given point during the game, one man's individual class and effort can cause the entire stadium to simply go nuts like baseball and it's home run do? Sure, football has its last-play-of-the-game hail marys and basketball has its buzzer beaters and whatnot, but the satisfaction these sports give their fans lies mainly in the result of the game, not in the actual play of the game.
Baseball's home run is only topped in awesomeness by soccer and it's wonder-goal. While home runs are always cool, even when you're like me and don't follow baseball, it's not THAT uncommon for even the most mediocre of batters to hit one or two every now and then. In soccer though, where games are often decided after 90 minutes by a solitary goal, the satisfaction of witnessing a career-making 40 yard screamer rocket into the upper 90 is indescribable. While good batters can hit hundreds of home runs in their careers, even the best soccer players might only score one or two of these dream goals in their careers. Seeing a grown man fall to his knees with tears of joy pouring down his face because of his own awesomeness makes the game seem so much more personal; it makes me want to jump into my tv and join the celebrations on the field.
I know this is an over-simplification, but as a baseball player, if you swing the bat hard and at the right time, you can hit a home run. But, in soccer, there's no pitcher, no bat, and no 3-strike rule: just a man and a ball. Wonder-goals only occur, however, when a player's set-up and execution are perfect, and even then, a decent amount of luck is involved. That's why these goals are one of, if not the single most awesome things to witness in the wide world of sports. And that's why I leave you with these videos. Are you happy, PeePee? I finally wrote and published a soccer blog...


24 year old Fredy Guarin scoring what will surely be the goal of his career

Arjen Robben is a machine and has a whole compilation of dream goals

Robben's international teammate Wesley Sneijder with an exemplary wonder-goal

Many of you probably saw Wayne Rooney's upper-90 overhead game-winner against Manchester City the other week, but, just a few days later, French striker Jimmy Briand decided to how Rooney how he prefers to take his bicycle kicks; blasting a shot through the keeper > upper 90

EDIT:

One of the most awesome wonder-goals ever: 17 year old Julian Draxler marks his professional debut with this absolute dream goal (1min 37sec) after coming as a sub late into extra time in this German Cup game with the game tied, securing a place in the quarterfinals just minutes from the game going to a penalty shootout. Unreal.

Food for Thought: Why the Lions Should TradeTheir 1st Round Pick

What is the Lions biggest need in the 2011 Draft? The biggest holes are in the secondary, depth at LB and DE. A highly skilled OT would be nice as well, since Backus' consecutive game streak could end at any time. The Lions need playmakers and they need them immediately. Will a rookie DB, LB or DE really be able to step in and have a Ndamukong Suh like impact? It's possible, but not likely. Who are the top free agents in 2011?? CB Namdi Asomugha, LB/DE LaMaar Woodley, LB Tamba Hali, LB Chad Greenway, and CB Antonio Cromartie. The NFL is a business right? If you are going to pay a guy first round money, why not not get a known commodity?

Now I'm not saying it is easy to trade first round picks because they are expensive, but if we can trade down in the first round multiple times from 13 to 16, 16 to 21, 21 to 25 etc. we will rack up later round picks and save ourselves some money. I say have this plan in place and attack the free agent market. Go get a guy who can help your team NOW. Go pay that first round money to Asomugha or Woodley and instantly improve your defense. Bringing a guy like Woodley back to his home state would be fantastic and fans would rejoice.

The NFL is a business and it is time the Lions start treating it like one.

Emo Cabrera Joins Dashboard Confessional: "You Don't Know Anything About My Problems!"

One of these mugshots is not like the other! But before I give you the answer, let's have a nice little flashback. October 2009. the Tigers lose to the Twins after leading the division since May and ultimately lose the Central and do not go to the playoffs. Worst 4 hours of my life. I think we all know where I'm going from here. The night before, Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera stays out too late, drinks too much, and hits his wife which leads to him half-assing the game, and us losing maybe the most heartbreaking baseball game I have ever seen. I do not think I have ever been so irate at a Detroit player in my life. Well, upon thinking about childhood, I do remember Piston great Bill Laimbeer telling me, "Kid, I don't do autographs" and my dad about punching him in the ear, but thats a blog for another day. Miggy fans said, "It wont happen again." "He's a changed man." "He's our best player." Flash forward to the 2010 season where he finished with a .328 average and 38 home runs which led to him finishing 2nd in the MVP voting. "He turned a corner." "He doesn't drink anymore." Now, while he was creaming the ball last year and memories of him ruining our 2009 season were being slept under the rug, some of us didn't forget the past.

Let's flash forward now to our present conundrum. About a month before our most promising season in many, Miggy is arrested on DUI charges. I wish this is where the story ended, but alas, it is not. The only worse time to fuck up than RIGHT before the season is if you're in a playoff to get into the playoffs. Catching my drift?

My first issue with this story is the fact that he was driving a car with a bum engine which was smoking when the cops came to the scene. He is set to make $20 million this season. 20,000,000. If I made that kind of money, I would definitely own the Delorean. I would then drive said Delorean roughly 88 mph to activate the flux capacitor and go back in time to make better fucking decisions. Either that, or I would hire Elian Gonzalez to follow me around and any time 1 ounce of alcohol touched my face, he would be my DD. If imagining Elian Gonzalez and Miguel Cabrera in an inner tube in a major Florida city doesn't make you smile, then you do not have a sense of humor. Shit, if Miggy would have called me, I would have crawled to Florida and let him ride on my back to his house for just a small fraction of that 20 mil.

My second issue is Cabrera's behavior whilst inside his vehicle. I'm nearly positive that the dumbest thing you can do while behind the wheel is take a swig directly from the bottle you have been drinking. Couldn't he have hid it in a Bubba Keg or something? He might as well have been pointing a weapon at the cop while admitting that he has a kilo of Colombian Bam Bam under his seat.

My third issue here is a chicken and the egg debate. Let me explain:
"According to the police report, Cabrera was wandering into the road with his hands up before he was handcuffed. The report quoted him saying, 'Do you know who I am? You don't know anything about my problems,' and cursing at deputies who tried to get him into a patrol car."

What I mean is did his alcoholic tendencies stem from deep-seeded issues with his wife or did the bottle lead to issues with his significant other? Either way, making 20 million and being one of the best players in the MLB doesn't sound like huge problems. Maybe, there are other issues from childhood we don't know about and never will. And let me address his quote, "You don't know anything about my problems." Perhaps he doesn't realize that the WHO estimates that there are around 140 million alcoholics worldwide and 50% of marriages end in divorce. Miggy, why don't you stop being so goddamn narcissistic and find ways to cope with these issues other than driving a jalopy around in Florida with a bottle of scotch. Stop blowing your career batting average into the breathalyzer and grow up.

The fourth issue to address is how the police handled the issue. "One deputy struck Cabrera in the left thigh several times with his knee after Cabrera pushed into him, causing the ballplayer to fall into the patrol car." Picture this, please. A cop kneeing an oversized professional baseball player to try and get him to submit. I have a lot of trouble trying to play this scenario out in my head and why didn't the cop just use his hands? Pistol? Tazer? The next fight you get into, I beg you to just try and use your knees to defend yourself. See what happens.

And leave it to Ozzie Guillen to stand up for Miggy, too. Guillen has a known history of making fun of homosexuals, puppies, midgets, other minorities, kitties, and babies. It's only natural for him to come to the rescue of a rich drunk who can't make decisions on his own.

Revisiting my first sentence of this post, I ask you, which one of these mug shots is not like the other? If you guessed that one is of an Asian person, I award you half credit. If you guessed the ghastly one of the person smiling, you receive full credit. Who smiles in their mugshot? I could not look happier in a photo if it was taken at the birth of my first child. This really looks like a guy who's having problems that we, the "common folk," are unable to comprehend. And what the fuck is he wearing?!? Is that a denim scrub top? This looks like a picture taken directly from Beaumont hospital's website. If I could have photoshopped a stethoscope around his neck, I would have.

My bottom line is that kids look up to this guy and he continues to shit on their dreams. I will never understand how these guys bank so much money, yet can't hire an immigrant to drive them around when they are drinking. As Tigers fans, we can just sit and hope that this doesn't interfere with his season. If nothing happens and he gets let off, I wonder if Miggy will go out in a golf cart in the middle of Miami with a handle of Canada House screaming, "you guys will never understand me! I'm so misunderstood! I hate my life!" Win the trial or not, he has managed to lose my support. I can only hope that Carlos Guillen somehow had a bionic hip installed this offseason or the Tigers installed Foxtrax behind the baseball so Ryan Rayburn can adequately track down a flyball...

I Hate Evan Smotrycz With Every Fiber of My Soul

This article is the product of my simmering rage for one Evan Smotrycz of the Michigan basketball team. Last nights game against Illinois was the final straw. I have reached my boiling point. Those of you who correspond with me during Michigan games know this hatred is well-documented and long-standing. Evan Smotrycz is the worst basketball player I have ever seen. I hate him.

When we first recruited him I was excited. He came out of high school looking like the prototypical player for Beilien's system. He was tall (6-9) and he had range. However, over the course of the last 27 games he has proven to be completely inept. First of all, whoever accused him of being a good shooter is an idiot. He is shooting a robust 38% from the floor and 66% from the line. Horrible. Second of all, despite his height, he plays smaller than anyone on the floor. He hangs out on the perimeter on offense doing nothing but occasionally spotting up for a 3 pointer when Belein needs a strategical missed field goal that leads to a fast break the other way. On defense he is about as intimidating as an adolescent Asian child. He gets pushed around in the post by forwards and guards dribble right around him like he's not even there. Seriously, he is a 6-9 "power forward" who averages 2.4 rebounds and .3 blocks per game. Do you know who averages more rebounds per game than Smotrycz? 5 other players on the team, 4 of whom are guards. Our point guard out-rebounds him by 1.6 a game. And what is the reaction to all this horrid play? HE STARTS! Every time I see him my blood boils.

Last night against the Illini Smotrycz had another stellar showing. He went 2-9 from the floor. The 3 pointer that he made DESPERATELY tried to come out. It spun around in the rim for at least 2 seconds before going down. He nearly blew the other shot he made, a wide open lay-up set up by a brilliant pass from Morris. Then, in the least shocking turn of events in the history of time, Smotrycz got wide open with 3 seconds left, down 2. He slid to his left to shake the only would-be defender, got an uncontested shot off and.......missed horribly. The shot went careening off the backboard, never anywhere near threatening to win the game. In fact, Stu Douglass got the rebound and without looking turned and fired it with one hand as time expired and at least drew rim. Literally, a player blindly threw up a one handed prayer that had a better chance of scoring that Smotrycz getting a set shot wide open in rhythm. I drowned my sorrows in beer and liquor, but really all I want to do is drown him.

I have never hated a member of any of my school's athletic teams this ardently before. There have been guys I didn't like, but I find myself outwardly rooting against him. I would get up and cheer if he blew his knee out. Before Smotrycz, the only Michigan athlete I ever loathed was Morgan Trent, but mostly that was because he couldn't cover one of those mannequins that doesn't even have arms (how is that guy in the NFL?). My hatred levels for Smotrycz are exponentially greater. I wish there was some way to transfer him to Guantanamo Bay A&M. The worst thing of it all is that we have no height coming in next year so he is going to continue getting a lot of playing time despite the fact his height is irrelevant because he thinks he's a shooting guard (who can't shoot).

Despite this untalented asswipe parading his incompetence on the floor night in and night out, I will applaud the team as a whole (minus him, because he should die). I never dreamed that the Illinois game would even be relevant coming into this season. Losing Harris and Sims I thought would mean a complete lack of competition from our team. The guys are buying into the system though, and since this team has 0 seniors and 2 juniors the future is very bright.

But seriously, I will give you $10 to whoever runs Smotrycz down with their car or gives him bone marrow cancer. Our team will thrive without him.