This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > October > 20
Monday, October 20, 2008
Ryan, Horford make past blunders forgettable
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We Atlantans had come to regard two words - “the draft”- with the fear and loathing Bostonians held for Bucky Dent. We watched as Aundray Bruce and Bruce Pickens and Adam Keefe and Ed Gray became, albeit briefly, part of the local landscape. We saw the Falcons trade up to get Reggie Kelly. We saw Billy Knight snag Williams after Williams but not, alas, Deron Williams.
But now, for one shining moment, we have arrived at a point in Atlanta sporting history when all, draft-wise, is bliss. When last the Falcons picked, they took Matt Ryan. When last the Hawks picked, they landed Al Horford. Both were the No. 3 selections overall. Neither was a sure thing: Some wanted Mike Conley Jr. instead of Horford, and many preferred Glenn Dorsey to Ryan. Happily, both No. 3s are better than we dared dream.
Horford should have been the NBA’s rookie of the year. (He finished second to Kevin Durant.) Ryan will be the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year. Horford’s addition turned a loose collection of talent into something stronger, something finally capable of playing beyond the 82nd game. Ryan’s advent has rendered Michael Vick and Bobby Petrino yesterday’s news.
As Mike Smith, the Falcons’ coach, said after Ryan’s stunning performance against Chicago: “Matt’s got It. We’re not sure exactly what ‘It’ is, but Matt’s got It.”
So does Horford, who has the bearing of someone 10 years older. That was evident at Florida, where he was first among equals on two national championship teams. As essential as Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer and Taurean Green and even Lee Humphrey were, Horford was the Gator to whom others deferred. (Noah — and only Noah — called him “Horfy.”)
Horford spent last season making us forget he’s a rookie, and Ryan gives increasing lie to that designation with every week. Horford and Ryan are already linchpins of their organizations, and those organizations look better than they have in years because of these two men.
Ryan took command of the Falcons’ huddle on his first day of minicamp and took ownership of the locker room by spending $10,000 of his $72.5 million for a new sound system. Horford’s audience was less skeptical: The Hawks hadn’t done anything in a decade, and here was a hard-edged rookie who had two NCAA titles to his name. Even famous athletes gravitate toward winners.
And on one spring Saturday, the new stars aligned over Atlanta. On the day the Falcons drafted the quarterback from Boston College, the rookie from Florida helped power the Hawks to a playoff victory over the Boston Celtics at Philips Arena. First the rookie from Florida screened an inspirational DVD of the Ali-Foreman fight for his older mates, and then he ripped the imperial C’s with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Thus was the day of Matty Ice’s arrival the night Horfy fully arrived.
Because of these two draftees, hope grows in a city where the draft had become a continuing source of dread and the Falcons and Hawks had become unfunny jokes. The Hawks made the playoffs, and these Falcons just might. And if enthusiasm is indeed contagious, is drafting excellence about to become a civic epidemic?
Let’s recall that the Thrashers also had the No. 3 pick in the June draft, and the 18-year-old defenseman Zach Bogosian is already in the NHL. If he turns into Bobby Orr, or even Al MacInnis, we’ll know our long-beleaguered franchises are really and truly onto something.
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Bradley’s Buzz: T(otal) B(lackout) S(aturday)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“You haven’t missed much.”
The folks at TBS are taking a pelting. The network pulled one of the all-time whiffs by losing the broadcast of the first 20 minutes of Saturday night’s ALCS Game 6. Deadspin called it an epic failure, and AwfulAnnouncing.com wondered why baseball hadn’t sold the rights to “a real station.”
Writing in the New York Daily News, Bob Raissman quoted an unnamed network source as calling the failure “mind-boggling” and “somewhat embarrassing.” Someone posting on a Los Angeles Times blog opined that TBS “should stick to reruns of ‘Family Matters.’ “
Never mind that TBS pretty much pioneered baseball on cable three decades ago. A big-time network simply can’t lose a signal and put up a rerun of “The Steve Harvey Show” and expect no one to notice. And nowhere did they notice more than in — you guessed it — cranky New England.
An enterprising Sox fan posted the office number for TBS sports president David Levy on a Boston Globe blog. Tony Massarotti of the Globe raised the possibility that the dreaded glitch might give MLB a way to opt out of its postseason contract with TBS. And the Boston Herald dared to ask spokesman Jeff Pomeroy if the network planned to compensate Red Sox fans financially for their pain and suffering at having missed 20 minutes of baseball. Pomeroy’s response: “We’re talking seriously?”
You can understand Pomeroy’s failure to find any humor therein. You’ve doubtless read Kristi E. Swartz’s reports of Turner Sports and its ongoing court case against Texas car salesman David McDavid in the ol’ AJC.
It didn’t help that TBS’ Chip Caray welcomed viewers by saying, “You haven’t missed much.” (Actually, they’d missed the game’s first run — a homer by Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton.) National pundits have lined up since last season to rip Chip. Phil Mushnick of the the New York Post wrote that the announcer “worked hard to confuse simple realities with crazy talk,” which was almost gentle compared to last year’s evisceration by Richard Sandomir of The New York Times.
A personal note: I tend not to watch postseason baseball on TV; I listen instead on XM Radio. When I do watch, I usually turn down the sound because I can’t stand the bloviation. But I had the volume up during Boston’s Game 5 comeback, and what I wanted to hear — a discussion of whether Coco Crisp was wrong to try (unsuccessfully) for second base after driving in the trying run — went undiscussed by Caray, Buck Martinez and Ron Darling.
Perhaps Steve Harvey has some thoughts on the matter.
Smitty, sitting pretty
The Falcons’ stunning start has prompted two nice features on Mike Smith, the coach of whom few had heard. Pete Prisco of CBSsports.com recounted Smith’s salty address to his troops before their win at Lambeau Field. And Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports goes to great length contrasting Smith and Bobby Petrino, which isn’t exactly news but still makes for interesting fare.
A Georgia team in a BCS game?
In ESPN.com’s weekly bowl projections, Bruce Feldman has Georgia Tech going to the Orange Bowl. Which means Feldman thinks Tech will win the ACC. Which it just might.
Grim tidings for Fulmer?
Last week Dave Hooker of the Knoxville News-Sentinel spoke with Tennessee athletics director Mike Hamilton, and the printed report of their conversation couldn’t have been happy reading for Phillip Fulmer. Given a chance to say the school would stand behind the coach no matter what, Hamilton said nothing of the sort.
As Mark Wiedmer wrote in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Fulmer’s response to Tennessee’s dismissal of Mississippi State was a cheery, “Not dead yet.” In another column, Wiedmer noted that Haywood Harris, Tennessee’s beloved publicist, missed his first home game in 48 years. Harris has been ill. Cracked Wiedmer: “There is no truth to the rumor that the Vols’ struggling play made him sick.”
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