We all love to watch players and managers ranting and raving at post-game press conferences. Last night it was Seattle Mariners manager John McLaren’s turn.
That’s it.
Category: Television (Page 51 of 73)
Fantasy fans everywhere can breathe a sign of relief. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case from Major League Baseball that would require all fantasy sports leagues to pay a high data-licensing fee.
Fantasy sports companies like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), CBS (NYSE: CBS) Sportsline and others can now breathe a sigh of relief: the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Major League Baseball and its Players Association that, if successful, could have given these leagues the ability to control the lucrative fantasy-sports business via high data-licensing fee. This tussle has been going on for some years now…the situation began in 2005 when MLBAM acquired the rights to represent the MLBPA in licensing, decided to limit its licenses for fantasy baseball and refused to grant one to St. Louis-based CDM Sports, which then filed suit. CDM won the suit in federal court last year.
Wall Street Journal: Fantasy-sports companies and the leagues had a mostly peaceful relationship through the 1990s, and these companies paid licensing fees of 5% to 10% of revenues for the rights to the players’ names and statistics. Deals with the largest companies produced nearly $1.5 million a year, the story says. But three years ago, MLB tried to limit the number of companies that could use its statistics, even though they were readily available from variety of sources, and that’s when CDM filed the lawsuit.
LA Times: The justices’ decision was a setback not only for baseball players, but for other professional athletes who maintained that outside companies had no right to “exploit players’ identity for commercial gain.” The NFL, NBA and NHL had supported baseball’s players and owners in their appeal to the court.
We all know what this is about… money. The leagues see sites like ESPN, CBS and all the other mom-and-pop fantasy sites making a profit on what they perceive to be their product, and they want a (big) piece. But the fantasy sites have a strong argument that they are only using players’ names and stats, which are readily available for free on the internet. The sites are then providing consumers with a fantasy league and all the services and features that entails.
It always amazes me when professional sports leagues fail to see the big picture. Fantasy football has helped to explode the NFL’s fan base, yet the league wants to make it more difficult and more expensive for fans to own a fantasy team. Why doesn’t the league just appreciate the increased revenue produced from its higher ratings? Why must they squeeze every last cent out of us? I don’t mean to single out the NFL, but if there has been any league that has benefited from free, available fantasy sports, it’s the NFL.
Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. This is the same league that repeatedly gives exclusive rights to Sunday Ticket to the highest bidder, leaving millions of fans out in the cold.
Ah, here we are, a few days away from the matchup that most of us wanted to see: Celtics vs. Lakers. Not since the 2004 Finals when the Pistons upset the Lakers have we had a Finals matchup that even approached the history of the once-vaunted rivalry between the Lakers and the Celtics.
This will be the 11th time that the two teams have met in the Finals, with the Celtics holding an 8-2 lead (but the Lakers have won the last two). The rivalry started in 1959 when Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and the rest of the Celtics swept Elgin Baylor’s Minneapolis Lakers, starting an unmatched run of eight straight titles and 10 championships in 11 years. Seven of those 10 Boston titles were against the Lakers.
The teams wouldn’t meet again until 15 years later, in 1984 when Larry Bird’s Celtics beat Magic Johnson’s Lakers. The two teams would meet in two of the next three Finals, and the Lakers finally got over the Celtic hump, winning those two matchups in 1985 and 1987.
Not that the 2008 Finals needs this much history to be compelling. There are several big questions that need to be answered. Will Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen break through and win a title after 35 combined years in the league without a single Finals appearance? Will Kobe finally win a title without Shaq, and establish himself as a player that deserves to be compared to Michael Jordan? Will Phil Jackson win his 10th title, breaking the record of the Celtics’ legend Red Auerbach, who once said that Jackson was a “good coach,” but that he “picks his spots” and has “been very fortunate”?
The Phil Jackson and “Big Three” storylines are nice, but this Finals is all about Kobe Bryant. Thus far, it has been his year. Last summer, he demanded a trade, criticizing Mitch Kupchak for not pulling the trigger on a move that would have brought Jason Kidd to L.A., saying that it was a no-brainer since all they had to give up was Andrew Bynum. Then, he was seemingly detached for much of November, still quietly pushing for a trade. It was only after a 10-4 December that gave the Lakers a 19-11 record (and Bynum averaged a near double-double, emerging as one of the best young big men in the game), did Kobe fully invest himself in the 2007-08 Lakers.
Even Bynum’s season-ending injury couldn’t derail the Lakers, not after Memphis GM Chris Wallace’s decision to trade Pau Gasol – another of the league’s best young centers – to the Lakers for Javaris Crittenton and a bag of peanuts. Or the more overlooked acquisition of Derek Fisher who was so generously let out of his contract in Utah so that he could live in a city where his daughter could have better medical attention.
Now I’m hearing commentary about how Kobe deserves credit for the Laker turnaround because his critical words were what pushed Kupchak to make the team better.
Please. Kobe was wrong. He was wrong about Bynum, he was wrong about Kidd, he was wrong about Kupchak, but most importantly, he was wrong about airing his grievances through the media the way he did. And I actually defended him when he first demanded to be traded. (Keep in mind that I defended the trade demand, not the way he demanded it.)
You’d think that a guy that was wrong on so many points might show some sign of regret or remorse. Not Kobe. He repeatedly implies that it was his temper tantrum that motivated Bynum to be a great player and that he pushed Kupchak to make the team better.
Right, like Bynum wasn’t already halfway through his demanding summer workout program (and already on track for a breakout season) or that any GM in the country (with an owner willing to spend) wouldn’t have agreed to trade for a seven-foot, borderline All-Star if all they had to give up was an unproven rookie, a backup center and a late first round draft pick. To be fair, Kupchak blew the Caron Butler for Kwame Brown trade, but he has drafted very well in his tenure, garnering most of the players that make up the Lakers’ dangerous bench.
For a while there, I was hoping Chris Paul would win the MVP so that Kobe wouldn’t be rewarded for his actions last summer. I’m not sure what kind of message that sends to the rest of the league. Hey, it’s okay to throw your teammates under the bus – we’ll still give you the MVP.
Now I’m rooting against Kobe and the Lakers, hoping that his legacy-defining, Shaq-less title will have to wait at least a year. But I don’t know if the Celtics – even with home court advantage – have the juice to pull it off. They aren’t well-coached, the vaunted ubuntu chemistry is shaky, and they don’t have the best player in the series. I’d love to see Garnett win a title, especially considering all of the trials and tribulations he went through in Minnesota, but I wonder if his immense intensity will work against him. It’s tough to play at a very high level when you are wound that tight, and he is standing at a monumental precipice that represents his entire career. Do you think he’s going to be playing loose in crunch time?
The best defense in the league (Boston) will try to slow down the best offense in the league (L.A.), but the difference might be on the other end of the court. The Lakers are an underrated defensive team and the Celtics have a tendency to go through offensive droughts because they shoot so many jumpers. And both teams have several young players in their rotations; who will play above their head and who will lie quietly in the corner in the fetal position?
One thing’s for sure – the Lakers have the coaching advantage. I don’t think anyone not related to Doc Rivers is going to say that he’s a better coach than Jackson. In a seven-game series, adjustments are so important, and Jackson has a much better track record.
Ultimately, this is going to come down to Kobe. If he plays well, the Lakers will triumph. If he doesn’t, Boston has a chance to win a few games and make the series competitive. As much as I’d love the sweet justice of Bynum becoming the guy responsible for putting the Lakers over the top, it looks like that role will be played by Pau Gasol.
Unfortunately, it’s Kobe’s year.
I know next to nothing about mixed martial arts (MMA). Before his fight tonight against James Thompson, all I knew is what I read about Kimbo Slice in the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine. Apparently, he gained notoriety by fighting in bare-knuckle fights in the backyard that were recorded and found their way to the internet. He was homeless for about a month and now he’s a rising star in MMA. Anyway, I thought his story was interesting so I tuned in to the Elite XC’s debut on CBS. Here are some random thoughts from the night’s events:
1. MMA is more entertaining than boxing. The action is pretty steady and the addition of kicks and other wrestling moves makes it more unpredictable. There isn’t so much grabbing and holding as there is in boxing when the fighters get tired. Of course, it helps that CBS hired Gus Johnson to call the fights. He’s one of the best play-by-play guys out there. I can’t believe that TNT and/or ESPN don’t use him for the NBA playoffs.
2. The “cheerleaders” (and I use that term loosely) are hot. I’d say the outfits are smaller and tighter than the average NBA dance team, and that’s saying a lot. When the girls start dancing freestyle, some of the moves are pretty stripper-esque.
3. The undercard fights were pretty interesting. There was the women’s fight that featured Gina Carano, who still won despite not going through the proper training. She’s built nicely and is pretty easy on the eyes. The middleweight championship fight between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith was great until Smith was poked in the eye. The doctor came in and called the fight which brought a chorus of boos from the crowd. Apparently, you have to have three complete rounds in a championship fight and it was called in the middle of the third.
4. Kimbo Slice got his ass beat and then he beat some ass. Thompson had him pinned on the ground and hit him with about 20 consecutive elbows to the side of the head. It got so bad that the ref had to keep telling Slice to defend himself or he’d call the match. He made it through the round and then smacked Thompson’s (disgusting) cauliflower ear, which started to bleed profusely. Then he landed about four straight punches to Thompson’s kisser and the ref called the fight.
I don’t know how the Elite XC relates to the UFC, but the two should merge so that there is one “league” that has all the best athletes. No one likes it when there are two middleweight champions and two heavyweight champions. Get everyone together in the same deal, and have it. That’s a superficial view of the sport from someone who just watched his first event, but if MMA really wants to take off and ultimately replace boxing, they need to pull everyone together.
I was surfing ESPN this morning, and when I hit the NBA page, I saw the following headline:
Yao still shaken by China’s earthquake tragedy
Journalists love to write clever headlines that use puns or wordplay to grab the reader. But when there are more than 62,000 confirmed dead in one of the world’s biggest disasters in recent memory, there’s no need to use the term “shaken” when describing Yao Ming’s feelings about the earthquake. To put things in perspective, about 2,541 people died (or are missing) as a result of Hurricane Katrina. You do the math.
This is no time to be clever.
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