The Yahoo! Sports rumors about Draymond Green maybe considering the likelihood of returning to Michigan to get a possible max deal from the Detroit Pistons because he could possibly be homesick is . . . well, okay, sure.
Adrian Wojnarowski, the league’s premier leak recipient, tossed this out as the second item in a column that began on Phoenix’ chance of retaining Goran Dragic, so it’s at least not the hottest item on the rumor griddle. In addition, it assumes that Green is so homesick and/or feeling somehow underloved in Oakland that he wants to leave a 60-plus win team to examine life with a 30-win team.
But there is one other problem. If Green left for Detroit, he would have to convince Stephen Curry not to shoot him on the way to the airport. It’s called team chemistry.
[RELATED: Report: Draymond has 'significant interest' in joining Pistons]
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George Karl said at his Sacramento presser that among other things, "I like purple."
He also has liked, in order, red (Penn Hills High School), Carolina Blue (North Carolina), maroon (Cleveland), blue (Oakland), green (Seattle), green and red again (Milwaukee), Carolina blue again (Denver) and gold all over. So yes, he knows his favorite colors because he's had loads of them.
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Jason Giambi retires, Andy Pettitte gets his number retired, Alex Rodriguez writes “I’m sorry for giving you what you paid for” 1000 times on a blackboard, and the national result is another tedious debate about the evils of performance enhancing drugs that omits, as they all do, the other people who benefited from the era and never get called out.
The owners who profited from the era and knowingly rewarded the needled.
It is the real reason why the posturing and sniveling about the end of our fan-ish innocence that has arisen today is so freshly yet repetitively obnoxious. The game and all its subsidiaries made a collective if unspoken decision to let the chemistry do the talking, sucked up great wads of money doing so, and kept all of it. From the commissioner to the lower orders, everyone in a position to know did -- drugs helped put jumper cables to the game in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and everyone was in on the scam.
Why people don’t want to see this in larger and more encompassing terms escapes me, but there it is.
Jason Giambi retires, Andy Pettitte gets his number retired and Alex Rodriguez writes “I’m sorry for giving you what you paid for” 1000 times on a blackboard. And the puritans who don’t want to get it turn purple again.
[RELATED: Former A's 1B Jason Giambi announces retirement]
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And yes, that includes that fellow PED user and otherwise moral exemplar (read: twice charged with domestic violence) Chuck Knoblauch, who tweeted, “Congrats to 46. Yankees retiring his number. Hopefully they don’t retire it like his HGH testimony.”
Ick.
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The Michigan theory: Jim Harbaugh’s diabolically clever Jon Gruden homage, tutoring Jameis Winston and Bryce Petty on ins and outs of the NFL Combine, is the act of a true philanthropist, and only a subtle reminder of Harbaugh’s understanding of the position and how those who play it can do it for money at a later time in their lives.
The rest of The Big 10 Theory:
Jim Harbaugh’s cheap but doubtless effective Jon Gruden ripoff, tutoring Jameis Winston and Bryce Petty on the ins and outs of the NFL Combine, is some sort of recruiting violation, we’re sure of it, and if Mark Emmert were alive, he would out a stop to it.
The 49er Fan Theory:
Jim Harbaugh’s unique, hypercompetitive and skilled Jon Gruden knockoff, tutoring Jameis Winston and Bryce Petty on the ins and outs of the NFL Combine, will set him up for a broadcasting job if this Michigan thing goes south, but it is also exactly the kind of thing Jed York would have approved cheerfully in Year Two but by Year Three would have declared the antithesis of “Winning With Class” and would have used it against Harbaugh when it came time for the inevitable firing.
It’s all in whose ox is being cut into strips for steaks, roasts and chops.
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Russell Wilson, whom we have decided is one of those smart athletes, did something really foolish. He Tweeted.
Worse, he tweeted that he saw an early screening of 50 Shades of Grey and considered it an excellent bit of entertainment. Many of his followers responded unasked, as is always the case, and objected that he wasn't setting the proper Christian example he claims to represent. Others were disappointed that he was watching a crap movie.
The lesson: Russell Wilson has discovered that the best kind of caring is very often not sharing.
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And finally, former Italian soccer manager par excellence Arrigo Sacchi offered up a heaping plate of razzismo al dente for us all to enjoy.
The 68-year-old mastermind behind AC Milan’s European dominance in the late 80s and early 90s and managed the national team to the World Cup final in the U.S. in 1994, decided to tip his hand with the always helpful, “I’m certainly not racist and my history as a coach demonstrates that.”
But?
“But look at the Viareggio tournament I would say that there are too many black players. Italy has no dignity, no pride. It should not be possible that our teams should have 15 foreign players in the squad.”
Then he tried to tidy it up with this disclaimer:
“I just said I saw a game featuring a team who fielded four colored boys. My history speaks for itself, I always coached teams with different colors and I bought many, both at Milan and at Madrid. I just wanted to point out that we are losing our national pride and identity.”
All this coming from a guy who has lived his entire life in a country that the noted Carthaginian (as in African) general Hannibal invaded and occupied Italy for a good 15 years, and I’d bet a small chunk of money that his soldiers did not remain chaste during his stay.
In other words, we are family, whether that fits in with your mangled world view or not.
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