Two Bottom Lines in Cousin's Trade & etc

Bottom Line #1: Will DeMarcus Cousins somehow changes his personality when he plays for the Pelicans, not just for this season, but for the foreseeable future? If he doesn't, he will poison the team. That's the bottom line. If he does wake up and grow up, the Pelicans will be a force in the NBA.

Bottom line #2: Will the Kings make the kind of smart basketball decisions that will indeed lead to a competitive NBA team. (That's all the Sacramento fans are yearning for.). I wish I felt a little more confidence in Divac and Ranadive. Still, I remain convinced that trading Boogie for an unnamed draft choice would have been better than trying to build a championship around a young man who is so out of control emotionally.

Lou Williams to the Rockets? How many 3 point shooters is enough? You'd think they'd tried to do something to shore up the paint.

Just a thought, Rose and Carmelo gone from the Knicks. Rose who dominates the ball, for primo point guard Ricky Rubio and a first round draft choice. Carmelo who dominates the ball for a first round draft choice. Carmelo gone clears cap space. Hey, I'm sounding like a GM.

Spring Training on. I wonder how many MLB players south of the boarder Trump would label terrorists and rapists. Just wondering.

Here's a baseball poem that I've kept since my days in the Iowa Writers Workshop. Michael Ryan, now one of America's premier poets, submitted it to one of the workshops for comments. I'll not include my marginal notes, which sound after all these years as not very helpful. If you don't know what a fungoe is, you've never lived in a big city.

Hitting Fungoes   by Michael Ryan

Hitting fungoes to a bunch
of kids who asked me
nicely, I'm afraid the hard
ball they gave me might
shatter the stained-glass
window of the church
across this abandoned lot.
I see it all now, in 
the moment the ball leaves
my hand before it smacks
the bat: we scatter
in every possible direction
but the pastor, sensing
a pervert, screams
to the cops to chase
the big one, and there 
I am trapped. I pull
my old Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship Letter out
of my worn suit pocket,
swing it wildly, but they
smell last night's sex
on my breath, condemn
me to jail for failure
itself. I swing without
thinking, the only way,
and the crack is the scream
of a hip-bone ripped
from its socket
on the rack. Not bad.
Not too deep, but nice
arching loft. One kid,
who runs faster than the others,
makes a spectacular 
diving catch & throws it back.

Boogie Trade Dissers Missing the Point

DeMarcus Cousins for Buddy Held plus a first round and second round draft pick? Doesn't look like value for value, does it? Rookie Buddy Held, a good shooting guard with the potential to be a great shooting guard vs the best low post center in the league, a two year All-Star, and an Olympic medal winner. So far this morning I've not read one sports blogger who isn't dissing this trade.

Not this blogger. I welcome the trade as the first step toward sanity and a chance (although a daunting one) to actually start building a cohesive and competitive team.

In New Orleans, Cousins may grow into an adult and that, of course, would be awesome for the Pelicans. However, I would not put money on it. In Sacramento, Cousins had zero chance of growing up. Ownership and management had already treated him with such kid gloves, his ego and emotional instability was out of control.

So, seeing this as a great trade for the Pelicans is missing the point vis-a-vis the Kings. Cousins, in his present state of being, was poisoning the court and the locker-room with his childish antics, his referee baiting, his dominating ego, and his gloomy disposition.

Granted, without The Boogie (a nickname he never lived up to with his lumbering up and down the court), there is not a whole hell of a lot of talent left on the Kings. I have high hopes for Willy Cauly Stein and reasonable expectation for Malachi Richardson's development into a solid NBA player.  Add Held at the two, and Collison at the one. After that, it's all up for grabs and will depend on the two first round draft picks, the talent of Bogdan Bogdonovic, if he is indeed a premier NBA caliber player. Rudy Gay might bring them another low first round or high second round draft choice. The big Greek rookie is a crap shoot, but he's more athletic than I thought in the past and he is 7'2" Labisierre, at this point looks awfully soft. As for the other vets on the Kings, they're up for grabs: to keep or not to keep for bench strength.

Let's not forget that without having to pay Cousins, the Kings have some bucks to go after free agents.

Let's not forget that as this team rebuilds, it does so with the best coach it has had since the team foolishly let Rick Adelman go.

So, let's see how things shake out before deciding if this trade was a loser for the Kings. Losing Cousins might be the start of the Kings wining.

I'm thinking that watching street lights going is more exciting than watching the NBA All Star Game. So, I've come up with a few suggestion for the future that will make the All-Star Game more exciting and more interesting: 1) Create a 4 point shooting line. 2) Create two 4x4, 5 point shooting blocks positioned where the half-court line meets the sideline. 3) Allow players to shoot free-throws from the top of the key for double points. 

Snow is falling on the Sierra. The ponds are frozen. Here's a fine winter poem.

The Skaters   by John Williams

Graceful and sure with youth, the skaters glide
Upon the frozen pond. Unending rings
Expand upon the ice, contract, divide,
Till motion seems the shape that movement brings,

And shape is constant in the moving blade.
Ignorant of the beauty they invent,
Confirmed in their hard strength, the youths evade
Their frail suspension in an element,

This frozen pond that glisters in the cold.
Through all the warming air they turn and spin,
And do not feel that they grow old
Above the fragile ice they scrape and thin.

This and That in Sports Monday 2/13/2017

After getting dinged with his 17th technical foul, DeMarcus Cousins stated, "It's obvious I can't be myself. Me playing how I play is what makes me the player that I am Obviously it's not acceptable, so I'm trying to find a way to, you know, do what these guys are asking me to do. . . "

So, how would the officials like for you to play, DeMarcus? How about not questioning them on every call. How about not waving your arms in disgust and embarrassing them. How about not smacking an opponent in the face (okay, last night's face slap was inadvertent, but the refs called it anyway).

Bottom line: how about not leading the league in technical fouls very year.
 
This is NOT about the officials. It is about you and your inability to control your emotions. You have an anger management problem. You will always have one, if you don't do something mature about it now when you're young. Otherwise, that anger will surface in other areas of your life. Ask any psychologist.

Finally, Grow Up.

Talk about anger management, I read that the N.Y. Knicks pulled off a PR coup. After the bad press of the Oakley/Dolan feud, the team allowed Latrelle Sprewell back into MSG from which he'd been banned for bad-mouthing the owner back in 2003. Sat right next to Dolan, smiling and waving to fans. This is the same one-time Warrior Sprewell who choked his Warrior coach. Got the "red-carpet" treatment. Kudos to the PR guys who thought that baby up.

At least Cousins hasn't choked a referee, But I'd worry if I were them.

One of the greatest moments in basketball history will be played out tonight when the Connecticut Lady Huskies go for their one hundredth straight victory. Did you get that sportswriters, ONE HUNDRED WINS WITHOUT A LOSS. Such scant attention is being paid to this seemingly impossible feat that one would believe 100 straight wins happens every day. This is HUGE. This is like Wilt's 100 point game. Can it possibly be that the Lady Huskies are getting the public relations snub because they are women? Could that be true in 2017? Yeah, I guess, since we elected a President who felt it was okay to grope women.

I can hear all the conservatives moaning, come on, Meschery, you can't blame Trump for everything. Oh, yes I can. When the President of our country treats women the way he has, ("I grope women because I can get away with it because I'm a star," B.S) you bet I can. A pronouncement of this kind has fall-out. And one of the fall-outs is it validates and perpetuates misogyny. 

As a country and as sports fans, we better get our butts in gear. Women's sports need to be covered better. Why not begin with this historic moment in sport's history. How about the front page of the sport's section tomorrow, win or lose, a full column?

Talk about Spring Training. Baseball season's approaching. Here's a baseball poem for all you diminishing baseball fans.

Baseball    by Linda Pastan

When you tried to tell me
baseball was a metaphor

for life: the long, dusty travail
around the bases, for instance,

to try to go home again;
the Sacrifice for which you win

approval but not applause;
the way the light closed down

in the last days of the season - 
I didn't believe you.

It's just a way of passing
the time, I said.

And you said; that's it.
Yes.

Loyalty in Sports? Really?

Where do sports fans get the idea about loyalty? There has never been, let me repeat, never been loyalty in sports. Not between owners and players, owners and their host cities, players and their owners, players and their teammates, and players and the cities they play for.

Owners have always moved their teams for the sake of the bottom line. (the facts are there on the Internet) Players, once they got their legal rights, jumped from one team to another at the siren call of more bucks. Back in 1972 when I was coaching the Carolina Cougars in the ABA, the Seattle Sonics signed away my star center, Jim McDaniels in mid season. The Sonics felt no disloyalty stealing from me, one of their ex-players who'd broken his butt for them, and McDaniels felt no remorse leaving behind his teammates, trying to make a playoff run. Personal example. There are hundreds more.

So here we are, 2016, watching OKC fans go ballistic over  Kenin Durant leaving a team he played his heart out for, for eight seasons, and I mean his heart out for. I've witnessed very few players that played with such passion, intelligence, and grit as KD. during his tenure with the Thunder. One might ask Thunder fans, quoting Shakespeare, "Have you no eyes to see?" KD. is a big-time-pro! And those soft ice cream signs, where did they come from? Those were made by OKC management and approved by management and ownership. Can there be any doubt of that? KD made the owner, a lot of money. How did he express his loyalty? Like a bush-leaguer.

Speaking of loyalty (and ethical behavior) I wonder if the owner of the Thunder felt any remorse, moving the Sonics from Seattle (which he said he'd never do when he bought the team) to Oklahoma City, his home town? No way.

All that should matter to fans and ownership is what an athlete does for his city, his team, and his ownership on the court in whatever time span it happens. Based on what he did for the Thunder, the fans, administration, and ownership should have given KD a standing ovation.

So, KD, welcome to the Bay Area where fans have class. You play your heart out for the Warriors, and I guarantee the fans will give you a standing ovation no matter how long you play for us, one year or ten years.

On another subject:

Let's hear it for Steph Curry who sees Donald Trump for what he is an, Ass, not an asset. It is time for liberals to stop being so nice. We need to be on the Conservatives like Draymond Green is on his opponents.

Another poem honoring a black athlete in Black History Month.

On Hurricane Jackson   by Alan Dugan

Now his nose's bridge is broken, one eye
will not focus and the other is astray;
trainers whisper in his mouth while one ear
listens to itself, clenched like a fist;
generally shadow-boxing in a smoky room,
his mind hides like the aching boys
who lost a contest in the Pan-Hellenic games
and had to take the back roads home
but someone else, his perfect youth,
laureled in newsprint and dollar bill,
triumphs forever on the great white way
to the statistical Sparta of the Champs. 

Good News for the Kings

Last night's Kings' victory over the Celtics got me thinking. There's way to build a team out of the roster they have now. The key is to look at the solution in reverse, i.e.: start with your reserve players and work up to your starters. At the moment and for most of the season, as I've expressed before, except for Cousins, and Rudy Gay, all the other players on the team would be reserves on any other team in the NBA. That makes the King's reserve team arguably as good as or better than any reserves in the NBA if they were asked to play only against reserves.

But last night I saw one of these reserves: Willy Cauley Stein demonstrate his potential to be an effective starting center in the NBA: a shot blocker, and rim protector, a runner, dunker (a la DeAndre Jordan), and a scorer (if he develops that 16 foot jump shot). If I'm right, then the Kings can trade their only sure-fire tradeable assets: DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay. They probably won't get a lot for Gay now that he has to come back from a torn Achilles tendon injury. (Perhaps a low first round draft pick or a high second) But they should be able to get at least two strong players at any of the starting positions, (one should be a bone-fide point guard) for Cousins. Free agency and a willing pocketbook should account for the other starters. Get your pen out Ranadive.

There'd have to be some trimming of reserves, of course, but I don't see that as a problem. Ben Maclemore, for example, needs to be on another team if he has any chance of living up to his potential.  And a couple of last year's draft choice need the D League or Euro-League for a couple of years.

Let's be clear, a strong bench is essential to a winning team. The Warriors have proved that. Their guys off the bench are held  in high esteem by coaches and starters, who are demonstrably delighted with their successes on the court. Seeing most of the Kings'present team as reserves is not a put- down, but a put-up.

As of now, the Kings have got that half (the reserves half ) of the team right. It's time to get to work bringing starters to Sacramento.

In other news  How about some love for Steph Curry in this morning's paper, calling The Trump an ass, a synonym for rump.

As it's Black History Month:

To Satch (or American Gothic)  by Samuel Allen

Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go on forever
Till one fine mornin
I'm gonna reach up and grab me a handfulla stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin down the heavens
And look over at God and say
How about that!