The low-level fascination over whether the Golden State AlwaysWinnings will win 73 games, go 41-0 at home, or 34-7 on the road has to take a logical back seat to the question of how much of this they will achieve these things with head coach Steve Kerr .
He’s been back for the last nine victories, which is the same as saying he’s been back for the last nine games, but he cut his presser short Monday night (pulling a medical Quennenewt, named after Cam Newton and Joel Quenneville, the latest people to walk out on a postgame presser) and told Comrade Poole he still has bad days and the headaches that define him.
[POOLE: Despite return, Warriors' Kerr 'still not 100 percent']
Now this didn’t seem to harm the team in the first 43 games of year, and to the extent that one can improve of Luke Walton’s officially mythical .907 winning percentage, but it is something to note while you’re giving away long-held records to the Warriors just because, well, just because they’re the Warriors.
Besides, Walton’s record when attached to Kerr’s (.844 between them) still isn’t as good as that of radio analyst and substantial beer trollop Tom Tolbert, who is 77-7 over the last two seasons for a cool .917 record (Tim Roye, the play-by-play man, is by comparison a horrific 734-931, or .441).
Either way, the soonest the Warriors can clinch a playoff berth with help is February 22, and February 29 without it. That record is February 28, 1986, by Boston. In other words, it's one more ridiculous context-free number in a season full of them.
Here’s hoping Kerr is there for it, because Tolbert, completing his doctorate in foam-based physics, won’t be.
[RELATED: Kerr: Warriors 'in great hands' if he needs to step away again]
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Now over to former Giants third base coach and now itinerant mandolinist Tim Flannery, who put a massive spiked foot up a lot of hinders with one well-aimed tweet:
@TimFlannery2 “Ok, enough San Diego, here's the deal” ...
In sum, this is what “STFU” means, with a winter hat for emphasis.
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Jim Harbaugh, whose kilts are always at the ready in case he needs to bait opponents into a kicking contest, announced that Michigan is going to have spring break practice at the IMG Academy in Florida, to the massive consternation of the 14 schools of the Southeastern Conference. Naturally the SEC is objecting to practices during the sanctity of spring break, and certainly not the fact he’s doing it in Bradenton rather than, say, Benton Harbor ... which is in Michigan ... which is nowhere near any of the SEC schools ... and equally far away from any SEC recruiting hotbeds.
But not satisfied to win Bradenton for a week, Harbaugh tweeted too (of course he did):
“@CoachJim4UM Question of the day: Does anyone find whining to be attractive? Just curious.”
That’s beauty of Harbaugh. If there’s a finger you need rammed into someone else’s eye up to the second knuckle just for snicks and giggles, he’s your first phone call.
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Jim Fassel, the former coach who took the New York Giants to the Super Bowl after the 2000 season, has rethought Cam Newton, if that helps.
“All of the numbers pointed to Carolina. And when I saw Cam Newton walk out in gold shoes -- ‘MVP’ -- I switched my mind, essentially, right then,” Fassel said on a radio show in Denver. “I said, ‘That’s not what a starting quarterback, MVP, leading his team -- and I had a lot of respect for him during the season -- that’s not what happens.’ You don’t do that. And I said, ‘This guy’s already become soft,’ and that’s what he was.”
It’s a fresh concept, although I think the shoes the Denver defenders were playing in while they were standing on his chest played a slightly more significant role. After all, when Von Miller hits you enough times, you soften up good.
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Fans rising up to protest ticket-price increases is the new market inefficiency. Thus, while you know about 10,000 or so Liverpool fans leaving Anfield Sunday in the 77th minute in protest of a planned price hike per ticket to £77 ($112), you don’t know how fans of Borussia Dortmund, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the Bundesliga, made the same point by showering the field with tennis balls during the team’s game against Stuttgart.
In other words, you can say it with shoes, or you can say it with sporting goods. Either way, it beats a quiet boycott every time.
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If the Los Angeles Lakers really did try to trade Kobe Bryant for LeBron James in 2007 as reported today, we have the journalism of the future.
Namely, having decided that the sports we have aren’t sufficiently inspiring, we have decided to cover sports in alternate universes. Hurry making up your crap!
Of course, that means there is a universe where Minnesota general misjudgment factory David Kahn doesn’t pick the wrong point guards in 2008 and takes Stephen Curry instead, in which case the Warriors are still the Warriors, and the Kings feel infinitely better about themselves. In other words, you get in the wrong Millennium Falcon, you take your chances.
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And finally, whatever attention was paid to referee Mark Lindsay telling Draymond Green he was wrong the other night was ridiculously overblown. The best officials do that fairly often, because that’s how they get to be good officials –- by working with, rather than against, players -– and it’s been the practice for decades. So no, Green is not some mink-tongued sorcerer overcoming years of officiating intransigence. He’s just a guy who was wronged who went to a decent ref who knows that admitting when he’s screwed up is the best way to gain the respect of the players.
[POOLE: Instant Replay: Warriors take flight, out-slug Rockets]
But that’s what happens with young’uns who haven’t seen enough basketball try to explain something they think is new. They assume because they haven’t seen it often that it almost never happens.
And with that, get off my lawn, by cracky.
