Jason Whitlock heaps praise on on Rick Carlisle for his coaching in Game 4:

He did crazy (stuff). He inserted J.J. Barea into the starting lineup. Barea has been a nightmare in the Finals. He can’t finish at the rim. He can’t knock down open perimeter shots. He left his game in the Western Conference playoffs.

Carlisle went with Barea to change his rotation and rest Shawn Marion. With Barea in the lineup, DeShawn Stevenson would come off the bench and defend Wade or LeBron James.

Carlisle also tied Peja Stojakovic to the bench. Peja left his shot in Los Angeles. The few minutes Carlisle would have wasted on Peja, he gave to Brian Cardinal. Well, at least “The Custodian” didn’t turn the ball over and escort a Heat offensive player to the rim.

The Barea and Cardinal moves didn’t really pan out. That’s fine. Down 2-1 and with Dirk sick, a coach has to try something.

And Carlisle did find minutes for Stevenson. In Dallas’ two victories, Stevenson has played a combined 48 minutes. In Dallas’ two losses, Stevenson has played 29 minutes. Stevenson played 26 minutes Tuesday. He knocked down three 3-pointers. He played solid defense on James and Wade.

Where Carlisle really made his mark Tuesday was in the fourth quarter, when he mixed in some zone defense. The Heat scored only 14 points in the final 12 minutes. The zone slowed Wade’s penetration, and it masked Nowitzki’s exhaustion.

Carlisle coached a masterpiece.

Carlisle definitely deserves some credit as Dallas came up big last night. But this is a crafty, veteran team that never gives up, and that, along with LeBron’s Houdini act, had just as much to do with the outcome.

In the ESPN documentary “The Fab Five,” Jalen Rose and his teammates made a few comments about the Duke basketball program. The most inflammatory was that the black Duke players were “Uncle Toms.” Grant Hill’s name was brought up, and Hill has since responded via the New York Times’ college sports blog.

My teammates at Duke — all of them, black and white — were a band of brothers who came together to play at the highest level for the best coach in basketball. I know most of the black players who preceded and followed me at Duke. They all contribute to our tradition of excellence on the court.

It is insulting and ignorant to suggest that men like Johnny Dawkins (coach at Stanford), Tommy Amaker (coach at Harvard), Billy King (general manager of the Nets), Tony Lang (coach of the Mitsubishi Diamond Dolphins in Japan), Thomas Hill (small-business owner in Texas), Jeff Capel (former coach at Oklahoma and Virginia Commonwealth), Kenny Blakeney (assistant coach at Harvard), Jay Williams (ESPN analyst), Shane Battier (Memphis Grizzlies) and Chris Duhon (Orlando Magic) ever sold out their race.

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous. All of us are extremely proud of the current Duke team, especially Nolan Smith. He was raised by his mother, plays in memory of his late father and carries himself with the pride and confidence that they instilled in him.

Well said, Grant.

In a recent column, FoxSports columnist Jason Whitlock took the Fab Five to task for saying such things:

The Fab Five clearly believe Coach K and Duke didn’t and don’t recruit inner-city black kids, and they believe race/racism/elitism are the driving forces behind the philosophy.

Let’s go back to the Fab Five era and Duke’s philosophy then. Coach K recruited kids who had every intention of staying in school for four years. He recruited kids who had a good chance of competing academically at Duke and could meet the standardized test score qualifications for entrance.

The Fab Five stated it was their intention to win a national championship and turn pro as a group after their sophomore season. Webber, who was recruited by Duke, left Michigan after two years. Rose and Howard left as juniors. Impoverished inner-city kids have good reason to turn pro early. I’m not knocking Webber, Howard and Rose for their decisions. They didn’t fit the Duke profile at the time.

During the three-year run of the Fab Five (one season without Webber), Duke beat Michigan all four times the schools met while winning two ACC titles and one NCAA title. During the same span, Michigan won zero conference or national titles. In addition, Webber’s interactions with booster Ed Martin put the program on probation and caused Michigan to forfeit all its games.

I think Coach K recruited and recruits the right kids for Duke.

It turns out that Jalen Rose was the executive producer of the documentary, so it would be tough to argue that his words were taken out of context.

FOX Sports columnist Jason Whitlock has weighed in on the death of Notre Dame student Declan Sullivan and writes that head coach Brian Kelly should be fired for his negligence in the situation.

Kelly should not coach the Irish on Saturday when they take on Tulsa.

We don’t need a thorough and exhaustive investigation to recognize Kelly’s negligence. A coach’s most important job, particularly at the amateur level, is to take every reasonable precaution to ensure the safety of the young people under his control.

Kelly failed in the worst way possible.

Mitigating circumstances do not matter. Notre Dame’s video coordinator should not be held responsible. Declan Sullivan, who tweeted before and during practice the weather conditions were terrifying and life threatening, certainly isn’t to blame.

The head football coach has final say over everything that transpires on the practice field. Everything. That’s why Ohio State’s Jim Tressel moved the Buckeyes’ practice inside on Tuesday when wind gusts made conditions unsafe.

Whitlock goes on to write that he understands why Kelly had his team practicing outside and also takes time to rip AD Jack Swarbrick for essentially making sure that the media knew he wasn’t at the practice long enough to tell Sullivan to come down.

I don’t know. My emotions say yes, fire Kelly and Swarbrick for their irresponsibility and extreme negligence. Sullivan should have never been on the lift in the first place and if Kelly thought it was dangerous enough to keep his team inside the day before because of a tornado warning, then he should have known not to have students filming practice from that high up during swirling winds. It was absolutely moronic for anyone to ok Sullivan being up on that lift.

That said, do we have the full details here? Do we know who was actually responsible for sending the young man up there? Was it Kelly, someone on his coaching staff, Sullivan’s boss, who? Did someone force him to go up there? If someone forced him to go up there, then done deal – someone has to lose their job. But if this was just a case of people not using their heads (as in, Sullivan went up there as he normally would and nobody thought to tell him to come down), then it’s up to the University to decide what the right course of action should be. Don’t follow up one irresponsible decision with another by firing people without compiling all the details.

Either way, a young man lost his life and for the time being, everyone should be morning his passing and not trying to assess blame. I imagine there will be plenty of time for that later.

Jason Whitlock is not happy that Mitch Albom won The Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE), and via The Big Lead, he shares his thoughts.

When I took a job in 1992 at the Ann Arbor News, I had a front-row seat during King Myth Albom’s glory years. My main job was covering the Fab Five. Albom’s main job seemed to be creating a Fab Five narrative that would fit neatly into a best-selling book.

Not surprisingly, most of my Michigan sports-writing peers watched the Fab Five pull up to practices and games in expensive SUVs and assumed C-Web, Jalen, Juwan and Co. weren’t exactly starving while pursuing higher education. I spent an entire day playing video games inside Webber’s beautifully furnished apartment. Years later, nothing about the Ed Martin investigation and the hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled to Webber surprised me.

Only Myth Albom, the “journalist” given the most access to the Fab Five by head coach Steve Fisher, was shocked by the good life Webber lived on UM’s campus. In his Fab Five book, Albom lamented the “fact” that Webber couldn’t afford McDonald’s while the university made millions off the sale of his jersey.

Feel-good narrative fiction bullshit was Albom’s money-maker long before he published Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Whitlock’s story about the Fab Five made me wonder — back in the day, why didn’t he write about how Chris, Jalen and Juwan were driving expensive SUVs? Maybe he filed a story, I don’t know…but I doubt it. Instead he’s spending an entire day playing video games at Webber’s ‘beautifully furnished apartment.’

I’m not a fan of Mitch Albom either, but it seems Whitlock is not criticizing him for turning a blind eye to the money surrounding the Fab Five, since he did the same thing. Instead, he’s criticizing Albom for acting surprised about the revelation that they were paid to play for Michigan.

Isn’t this a little hypocritical?

After Dan Gilbert’s ill-advised open letter to Cavs fans, which called LeBron’s decision to sign with the Heat a “betrayal,” Jesse Jackson had some choice words for the Cavs owner.

“He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers,” the reverend said in a release from his Chicago-based civil rights group, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. “His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship — between business partners — and LeBron honored his contract.”

While I agree that Gilbert’s letter was out of line — LeBron had every right to sign with whatever team he chose — there’s no need to invoke slavery with regard to the relationship between owner and player.

Jason Whitlock had this to say about Jackson’s comments.

Yep, it’s the card. LeBron James and his kiddie handlers screwed up, staging an image-damaging public-relations disaster, and now some African-Americans want to change the subject by changing the argument.

NBA owners and their $100-million contracts are slave owners and King James is Kunta Kinte escaping on the Underground Railroad to Miami’s Tootsie’s Cabaret, where he’ll make it rain.

It’s stupid. Dan Gilbert’s rant was certainly immature, but it wasn’t remotely racist. He sounded like a scorned lover, a guy who gave his heart to a relationship and found out on national TV that the alleged love of his life didn’t care about him at all.

Gilbert vented. I give James credit for not responding.

It’s increasingly clear that people fault LeBron not for leaving Cleveland but for the way he left Cleveland. Gilbert’s letter, while none too smart, wasn’t racist at all.

Confusing headline? Maybe, but it will make sense in a minute…

Augusta’s chairman, Billy Payne, who took over in 2006, made a few comments about Tiger Woods and the scandal that has surrounded him for the last several months.

“Finally,” Payne said Wednesday as he wrapped up his opening comment, “we are not unaware of the significance of this week to a very special player, Tiger Woods. A man who in a brief 13 years clearly and emphatically proclaimed and proved his game to be worthy of the likes of Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. As (Tiger) ascended in our rankings of the world’s great golfers, he became an example to our kids that success is directly attributable to hard work and effort.

“But as he now says himself, he forgot in the process to remember that with fame and fortune comes responsibility, not invisibility. It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here; it is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children.”

Nothing to outlandish there, right? Wrong. Jason Whitlock is up in arms because he doesn’t think that anyone associated with Augusta should be lecturing others about their behavior.

He’s chairman of a club with a history of exclusionary membership policies that would embarrass even the angriest Tea Party protesters.

You can’t preach ethics and morality from Payne’s bully pulpit. The stench of hypocrisy makes it sound like bull(spit).

Black and brown folks have kids and grandkids, too. And so do women.

It wasn’t until the Shoal Creek Golf Club/PGA Championship controversy in the early 1990s that Augusta National decided to invite a token black member. Augusta National still doesn’t have a female member, which does not bother me but does trouble some female golf fans.

A couple of things bother me about Whitlock’s argument: 1) Payne took over as chairman in 2006, well after the club started to welcome black members, and 2) Whitlock brings up the “no-women” rule to support his point and then says it “does not bother” him that Augusta doesn’t have any female members.

Payne is not responsible for the exclusionary policies that Augusta held before he took over. He is the chairman, and people are expecting him to make some remarks about Tiger and his recent history. Maybe his words were condescending and/or over the top, but it’s not like Tiger has handled himself with great humility and tact throughout this whole ordeal.

As for the club’s lack of a single female member, Whitlock is essentially saying that it’s not okay to be racist, but it is okay to be sexist, or at the very least, it doesn’t bother him. I wonder how he would feel if a female columnist said that it would be all right with her if a club had a “no blacks” policy as long as women were allowed to join.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Here’s a look at what local NFL beat writers and columnists have to say following their teams’ performance on Sunday.

- Steve Serby of the New York Post writes that Jets’ rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez “outswaggered” the Pats’ Tom Brady.

- Gil LeBreton of the Star-Telegram writes that the Cowboys’ offense spoiled Jerry Jones’ new stadium party.

- Mike Mulligan of the Chicago Sun-Times says that Jay Cutler’s signature game saved the Bears from defeat on Sunday.

- Damon Hack of SI.com says that the Patriots showed a rare loss of composure in their defeat to the Jets.

- David Climer of the Tennessean compiles a list of troubling signs for the 0-2 Titans.

- Tim Sullivan of the San Diego Union-Tribune wonders if the Chargers can be fixed after their loss to the Ravens and their near-loss to the Raiders in Week 1.

- Tom Oates of Madison.com writes that the Packers’ offensive line (which struggled mightily on Sunday against the Bengals) could ruin the season for Green Bay.

- Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post can’t help but think that head coach Jim Zorn has low expectations for the Redskins.

- Never afraid to hand out criticism, Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star writes that the Chiefs coaching performance against the Raiders was embarrassing.

In Jason Whitlock’s latest column for FOXSports.com, he writes that author Serena Roberts has credibility issues stemming from a column she wrote about the Duke lacrosse rape case and calls her new book about Alex Rodriguez a “celebrity-gossip book.”

During her interview with Jim Rome, she claimed she went into her investigation of Rodriguez believing he had never used steroids. She said that A-Rod’s interview on 60 Minutes convinced her of his innocence. “I didn’t think he was dirty,” Roberts said. “I thought he was clean.”
This is nearly impossible for me to believe. Roberts is a cynic, at least she is in her column writing. When she worked for The New York Times, she wrote numerous columns about A-Rod with the same theme: Rodriguez is a phony. Read this, this and this and then read this blog for examples of her A-Rod cynicism.

In those columns, does she come off like someone who would take Rodriguez at his word? She comes off like someone who doesn’t believe a word that comes out of A-Rod’s mouth.
What I’m about to write is pure speculation.

Selena Roberts believes America is a safe haven for sexism (I happen to agree, but that’s beside the point). She wanted the Duke lacrosse players to be shining examples of how deep-rooted and protected our sexism is, and she was more than willing to ignore their innocence to make her point (this repulses me).

Selena Roberts believes professional sports — the money, fame and power they primarily give young men — are corrosive of good values and a haven for sexism (I happen to agree, but that’s beside the point). She wants Alex Rodriguez to stand as a shining example of what’s wrong with American sports, and she just might be willing to ignore flattering truths about A-Rod and publish hearsay and gossip to make her point (and this is unfair).

She’s written a celebrity-gossip book, “A-Rod: Game of Innuendo.” Maybe you despise Rodriguez so much that you don’t care about her methods and whether the rest of the alleged mainstream media characterize her work properly.

Whitlock brings up a good point that we must question what an author’s motives are for writing a non-fiction book, especially when the content matter essentially attacks a person’s character as in this case. Is Roberts trying to uncover the truth behind A-Rod’s use of steroids or does she have a personal agenda as Whitlock suggests?