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April 2007
Hawks’ co-owner stays optimistic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s impossible not to like Michael Gearon Jr. He’s conspicuously clever and relentlessly upbeat. Then again, he’s upbeat about an NBA franchise that has lost 177 games in the three seasons since he has been one of its several owners. When does remaining upbeat about the Hawks stop making sense?
“If we weren’t injured, I think we could have done what [upstart division-winner] Toronto did,” Gearon says. “We started off strong. We’d probably have won between 36 and 46 games. If we’d won 36 games, would you have called that progress?”
Sure. But the cold truth is that the Hawks didn’t win 36 games in the season just completed. They won 30 and finished with the NBA’s fourth-worst record a year after winning 26 games and finishing in a tie for third-worst. The difference between Gearon and those with a less-vested interest is that we apparently have different definitions of progress.
He arrives for lunch Monday at his favorite restaurant with a satchel full of data — a Hawks media guide, computer printouts, a pad full of handwritten notes and a typed sheet bearing the heading “Message Points.” Gearon has volunteered to give his “50,000-foot look at the franchise” because Billy Knight, the general manager who said a year ago he cares nothing for public opinion, declined an offer to make his opinions public.
Inevitably, the two-hour conversation becomes a debate about Knight, who continues to be held in curiously high regard by every part-owner save Steve Belkin. Says Gearon: “My defense of Billy is that there’s not a single GM who clicks on all levels.”
Also this: “”There’s not a good GM around the league who doesn’t think Billy is right on target.”
And this: “A lot of people would pick [Detroit’s Joe] Dumars as a great GM. In a draft with Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, he took Darko Milicic. That’s a pretty dumb move looking back.”
And this: “”I think you’re too harsh on [Knight]. Do you want to fire 29 other GMs? … You can micromanage anybody. Nobody has ever batted 1.000.”
At issue is whether Knight is even above .250. In each of the first four drafts he has overseen here, the Hawks have taken a demonstrably lesser player with their first pick when a better one was available. This wouldn’t seem to be micromanaging. This would seem a pattern of failure.
To other people, maybe. Says Gearon: “That’s where I disagree — we’ve had three players [Josh Childress, Josh Smith and Marvin Williams] who were second-team all-NBA [rookies] … There’s not an executive in the NBA who wouldn’t have taken Marvin … Is Josh Smith a good player? Is Josh Childress an NBA player? … [They’re] not Cal Bowdler or [Douglas] Edwards or Ed Gray [three first-round duds taken by Pete Babcock].”
On the Hawks as a whole: “We have 12 [bona fide] NBA players on our roster now; three years ago we had zero.”
So why hasn’t this accumulated talent won more games? Injuries, Gearon says. He refers to his notes. Six Hawks missed at least 18 games, the estimable Joe Johnson chief among them. He notes that Miami and the L.A. Lakers had multiple injuries and finished with lesser records than a year ago.
“When you get hurt, you usually go backwards. We went forward. Should [Pat] Riley be fired? Should Phil Jackson be fired? Because they went backwards.”
On Mike Woodson, who apparently will be retained as coach despite being 108 games under .500: “I’ve told him this: If we have 30 wins next season, Woodson’s not going to be around.”
Gearon insists these owners could, by majority vote, fire Woodson (or Knight) if they so desired, ongoing litigation notwithstanding. When will the court case — Belkin versus everybody else — be resolved? “I hope in my lifetime.”
And maybe, in all of our lifetimes, we’ll see these Hawks actually win. “I don’t believe in setting deadlines,” Gearon says. “It’s unfair to do that. Are we making progress? We had some good things happens this season.”
How much longer are these owners prepared to wait? “I don’t like to lose. I get frustrated as hell. But I don’t get frustrated with the development of young players … You’re beating me up over what the house looks like when we’re only on the first floor. And I think we’re beyond the first floor, by the way.”
Perhaps they are. Perhaps next season will be the one, Gearon says, when “it suddenly clicks.” Then again, there’s a chance the team bearing the NBA’s fourth-worst record could wind up without a first-round pick if the draft lottery goes against them.
“And we could end up with the No. 1 and the No. 11 picks,” says Gearon, accentuating the positive yet again. “And then people will think Billy Knight is a genius.”
Permalink | Comments (121) | Post your comment | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
Sensible approach to meeting needs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
There are a couple of glaring things you see when analyzing the Falcons’ portion of the NFL draft, and one of those things actually is good.
Consider this: If potential matches reality, the Falcons just got four starters for the upcoming season.
That’s the good.
That’s also the bad.
Four rookies projected as starters by the end of training camp? The word “desperate” comes to mind. Even so, we’ll start with the good. Except for a tailback twice the size of Warrick Dunn, the Falcons got everything they needed in the draft. They also got quality along with quantity.
They got the definitive No. 1 pick for them in Jamaal Anderson, the quick and big defensive end from Arkansas to replace Patrick Kerney. They got Justin “Big Bank” Blalock from Texas to help end their silly tribute to the Smurfs along the offensive line. They got Anderson’s old Arkansas teammate, Chris Houston, to use his considerable speed and noted cover skills at right cornerback. They also got South Florida’s Stephen Nicholas, rated among the top eight outside linebackers by NFLDraftScout.com. He is slated to replace Demorrio Williams, out for six months after a weightlifting injury.
In other words, the Falcons got top picks in the draft that made sense for the first time since 2001. Michael Vick (you know, before he lost his mind off the field). Alge Crumpler. Roberto Garza. Matt Stewart. Kynan Forney.
“What we do in the draft has to be logical, but it could be illogical, and then you would have people saying, ‘OK. Then why did they do that?’ ” said Falcons owner Arthur Blank on Sunday, who doesn’t need to worry about such questions for the first time in his five years with the franchise. That’s because Rich McKay got it mostly right after spending his third consecutive draft without noted personnel guru Tim Ruskell, who took the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl after leaving Atlanta.
Prior to the Falcons, McKay was in Tampa with Ruskell and Jerry Angelo, the builder of the Chicago Bears team that just went to the Super Bowl. All Blank knows is that McKay needed to produce now, and McKay did so with 11 solid picks. “The fact that students of the game can understand why we made certain picks is not unimportant,” Blank said. “You want people to say, ‘That makes sense. Well, that also makes sense.’ “
This time, for one of the few times in the Falcons’ 41-year history, it all made sense with their drafting. Which brings us to the bad. We discovered through the lofty expectations of Falcons officials regarding their picks what we already knew: The Falcons had a mighty talent deficit over the past two seasons, and their record of 15-17 during that stretch wasn’t a fluke. In fact, since they reached the NFC championship game after the 2004 season, they’ve ranked among the most heavily flawed yet overly hyped teams in the league.
No wonder the Falcons’ new coaching regime needed less than five months to determine that many of the players it inherited had to go.
So, just like that, along with those four draftees projected as starters, you had other additions for the Falcons. There was free agent Ovie Mughelli, signed to a contract worth more than any ever given to a fullback. Veteran Joe Horn was acquired to improve a ghastly group of wide receivers and a leadership void in the locker room on the other side of Lawyer Milloy. Elsewhere, cornerback holdover Jimmy Williams is projected as the new free safety. Plus, with Grady Jackson suing the franchise for defamation of character or something, you can expect the Falcons to have a new nose tackle sooner than later.
They already have a new coach in the meticulous Bobby Petrino, and he was heavily involved in helping the Falcons move from their previous mess of a roster to something better.
How much better? Said Anderson, sounding like this group really does understand the deal, “We’re here to win, and we’re ready to win the Super Bowl.”
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Anderson inspired by family’s success
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch — It was a celebration for an athlete, a celebration for family and friends, and yes, a celebration for the senses.
A cellphone rings in a hotel penthouse in Little Rock, Ark. Many in the room can’t hear it. Jamaal Anderson answers, smiles and listens.
He turns to his mother and, in sign language, relays: “It’s the Falcons.”
Karen Anderson turns to her husband, Glenn. She signs, “It’s the Falcons.”
Word spreads on the top floor of the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock, Ark. Some hear the NFL commissioner make the ensuing announcement on television. Others read the closed captioning. Soon, there is a convergence of all forms of celebration by 150 relatives and friends — one-third of whom are deaf.
Some yell. Some sign. Many laugh, or cry, or both.
“It was unreal — the whole top floor exploded,” Karen Anderson said later by phone. “It was phenomenal. Everybody was here. We had everybody. A mixture of black people, white people, purple, gray. We had people with disabilities. We had jocks. We had all cultures, all people. This means so much for everybody.”
This is the NFL draft. It would be foolish to declare early how this turns out. These are young people making big money for the first time in their life. These are young athletes with that most uncertain of qualities called “potential.” These are young people — period.
But know this: If Jamaal Anderson does not make the Falcons look very good, it won’t be for some of the pitfalls that derail so many players. It won’t be because of cockiness or a poor work ethic or a lack of perspective.
When a kid labors about whether to turn pro and make millions of dollars, or go back to school — that’s a good sign.
When an athlete shows the mental toughness and athletic ability to make such an atypical position change from flanker (his primary position in high school) to defensive end (at Arkansas), it bodes well for what’s to come.
When a young man grows up under the same roof as a man, his father, who proves to be the ultimate example of resolve and determination, he won’t allow himself to quit. Ever.
Glenn Anderson, Jamaal’s father, has a Ph.D. from NYU. He’s also deaf — the first deaf African-American to earn a doctorate. He teaches at Arkansas and works at the university’s Research and Training Center for the deaf and hard of hearing.
It follows that Glenn Anderson has been an inspiration not only to his own family but the deaf community. He lost his hearing at the age of 6 when he was given an experimental medication for pneumonia. But that didn’t stop him succeeding in school and becoming a high school basketball star in Chicago.
We need not wonder where Jamaal gets his work ethic. We need not wonder how a defensive end, who early in the season graded out as a second-rounder, saw his draft stock rocket late in the coming months.
Anderson was not the Falcons’ first choice for their first pick. But Clemson defensive end Gaines Adams, LSU free safety LaRon Landry, Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson — they were all gone by the time the Falcons’ turn came at No. 8.
The Calvin Johnson rumors? A pipe dream, created by those blind to the obvious holes on this roster. “We knew how important the draft was,” president and general manager Rich McKay said. “It wasn’t one where we were going to mortgage the future for [with a trade].”
But they should be happy with who they got. Anderson is a rarity, a defensive end (to replace Patrick Kerney) who can both bring pressure from the left side and defend the run.
“That’s what excited us so much about him,” coach Bobby Petrino said.
It was Petrino who phoned Anderson of his impending selection Saturday. Anderson’s response: “Are you really picking me?”
So much for ego.
Word spread. The room erupted. Karen Anderson had spoken for weeks about the possibility of her son playing in Atlanta. Among her close friends here: Diane Johnson, the mother of the Hawks’ Joe Johnson.
Glenn Anderson also celebrated, with friends in the room and in cyberspace.
“The deaf community knew what was going on,” Karen said. “His BlackBerry was vibrating all day.”
A celebration to hear, to see, to feel. We can’t know what happens next. But some signs can’t be ignored.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Aaron doesn’t owe Bonds a thing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This column probably could say all that need be said with one sentence: Henry Aaron is in no way obligated to join in the choir of authentication of Barry Bonds, should Bonds hit his 756th home run — you’ll note I didn’t use the term “break Aaron’s home run record” — send him a nice message and keep on selling those cars.
This subject is brought about by a column that came out of Detroit the other day. “Hank Aaron is a coward,” it was written. The theme was that Aaron owes it to Bonds to be there when Bonds passes Aaron in the home run book. That it is his duty. That he owes it to baseball. And that by not doing so, he gives a cowardly impression.
Aaron did what he did with what nature gave him. He was as natural a hitter as ever lived. “I don’t try to hit home runs,” he said, while we were putting together his book — cleverly titled “Aaron” — “I just try to hit the ball and if it leaves the park, fine.”
As he approached Babe Ruth’s record of 714, he did admit that he was swinging for the fences. “I wasn’t trying to hit singles,” he said.
Bonds is carrying more baggage — make that garbage — than a city dump. They say he has never failed a drug test, but when has he had one? What about the close ties he has to those shady characters working with steriods in the San Francisco area? At least one convicted and served time. Something has bothered me a great deal since the day that Gary Sheffield joined the Braves, just passing through. “I spent the off-season training with Barry Bonds,” he said at his press conference.
From Florida to California to spend training time with Barry Bonds? Is Bonds some kind of training guru? Never did make sense, but he was never called on it.
Aaron once admitted he had tinkered with an “outside substance.” He took one “greenie” one time and that was enough.
“I tried those things one time in my life. One pill,” he said. “We were playing in St. Louis, and you know how hot it gets there. I thought just one pill might pep me up one hot afternoon. I went out for batting practice. I started feeling so bad I thought I was having a heart attack.”
In the heat of the record pursuit, Aaron sufffered through some harsh personal times. He never spoke of it until he neared the end of the book, the “hate” mail he was getting, “threatening me, my family and warning me not to hit any more home runs.” Even his daughter, a student at Fisk University in Tennessee, was the target of threatening mail. On top of all that, he went through the agony of a divorce. Only time he was unburdened was when he stood at the plate with a bat in his hands.
The proposal that he should honor Bonds by appearing when Bonds celebrates his personal moment has received no wave of support. Even the man for whom Aaron hit his last home run, Bud Selig, then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, now the commissioner, apparently isn’t making plans to be there. Why celebrate a moment created under false pretenses? Besides, remember, Bowie Kuhn never showed up when Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record in Atlanta. Nor did Willie Mays show up when Aaron broke Mays’ personal home run record.
Through it all, Aaron weathered the storm gracefully. And some of the cross-examining he went through defied reason. Amid the hundreds of questions tossed his way, he had to field one from some bloke that hit the wall. “What have you done for baseball?” the guy asked.
Aaron looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“When Babe Ruth hit his home runs he saved baseball. He gave it a new face. What have you done?”
Aaron pondered briefly, then said, “Maybe what I’ve done is create some new fans for baseball. At first, there was a lot of mail from older people who didn’t want me to break Babe Ruth’s record. The younger generation then began to come to my support. I think they wanted to relate to me, to have the record set in their time. That’s about all I can say I’ve done for baseball, I guess.”
Wherever, whenever Bonds hits his tainted home run, I trust that Henry Aaron will be doing business as usual, in his office, not at the ballpark. What’s cowardly about that? Send him a telegram. Collect.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Petrino fills Falcons’ biggest need
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — The draft doesn’t matter if the draftees don’t get coached. Bobby Petrino will coach the heck out of whatever talent Rich McKay finds. Who says so? Rich McKay.
Granted, the general manager has a vested interest, having been party to Jim Mora’s departure and Petrino’s arrival. And yes, there was a time when McKay, who conducted the initial interview with Mora in January 2004, believed that coach and those assistants likewise knew their business. Time, alas, proved otherwise.
“I liked that staff very much as people and as coaches,” McKay said. “But it did not work out. Bobby and his staff are extremely focused on developing talent — I’m not saying that the other staff was not — and we believe this gives us the best chance to win.”
Conventional wisdom holds that the Falcons enter this draft in need of a massive makeover. McKay believes they’re rebooting, which isn’t nearly the same as rebuilding. He believes the resources on hand are greater than tepid results suggest.
“People see we finished 7-9, so accordingly we must not be very good,” McKay said. “The perception is going to be that we have a lot of holes. But we expect the quarterback to play really well. We like the Dunn-Norwood combination. We need John Abraham to be healthy because he’s as deluxe a right end as there is in the league.”
And Petrino isn’t just another college coach doomed to failure among the professionals. He’s a deluxe football man who can win anywhere. Said McKay: “I was really impressed in mini-camp with his attention to detail and his willingness to adjust to what he saw. That sounds easy to do, but it isn’t.”
Ask Mora. Ask Greg Knapp. The reason those two no longer work here is because they were at an utter loss when things went wrong. McKay: “The last two years we’ve gone in with very high expectations. We didn’t deliver in either season, and one reason was injuries, which we didn’t overcome. We’ve got to get over that. … Losing [defensive end] Brady Smith two years ago was a debilitating blow, and it should not have been.”
The Petrino portfolio: He lost his best player (tailback Michael Bush) in the third quarter of the season opener and his second-best player (quarterback Brian Brohm) for 2-1/2 games, and still Louisville was one lost second-half lead away from playing for the BCS title. He takes what he has — and Louisville’s recruiting base wasn’t nearly as vast as Florida’s or Southern Cal’s — and turns it into a spiffy-looking product. There’s no gimmickry to it. There’s simply coaching.
Said Petrino, speaking five days after taking this job: “Anybody can get on the blackboard and draw X’s and O’s, but it’s the details and technique [that matter]. We want to do that better than the other guys.”
These coaches will do it better than their predecessors. Defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer carries the reputation of being able to cultivate players, and Petrino is as good an offensive coach as there is. “We were pretty far along from an offensive perspective in mini-camp,” McKay said. “Michael [Vick] has put in the work — he hasn’t missed a day this offseason. He’s been phenomenal. I think you guys [the media] have put it in his head: ‘This is it.’ “
With seven choices in the draft’s first four rounds, the Falcons are positioned to give Petrino a quick and heavy helping of what we wants. Still, being seen to have won in the draft doesn’t necessarily translate to winning in December. The Falcons spent the last two seasons trying to override not a dearth of talent but a lack of direction. No matter what happens this weekend, they’ve already upgraded the most important position — head coach.
Permalink | Comments (64) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Hoping NFL commissioner can influence Vick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It’s one thing for Michael Vick to stiff a bunch of U.S. congressmen, which he did earlier this week.
It’s another if Vick is a no-show on Saturday in New York, where he is slated to be a part of ceremony before the NFL draft that will include somebody less forgiving than many on Capitol Hill.
We’re referring to Roger Goodell, the tough-guy commissioner. After just months on the job, Goodell already has shown his intolerance for the epidemic of knuckleheads in the league by sending Pacman Jones and Chris Henry to the NFL slammer. So, given the spiraling mess around the Falcons’ knucklehead at quarterback, Goodell needs to do a couple things before or after the first set of teams is on the clock.
You know, provided Vick doesn’t miss his flight or something.
No. 1: Goodell needs to look Vick in the eyes and tell him with a strong voice that the coddling is over.
No. 2: Goodell needs to tell Vick that he is one more “something” away from becoming a person of interest. That’s in regard to the commissioner’s edict last month that demands good conduct off the field by all NFL players — or else.
I mean, somebody has to begin screaming into Vick’s ears. Nobody is doing so around Flowery Branch. Either that or Vick just isn’t listening. At best, he is indifferent to whatever voice of authority he actually may hear from the Falcons, and who can blame him? He has spent much of his six seasons with the franchise as a $130 million pampered soul. You’ve had everything from owner Arthur Blank pushing a broken-legged Vick around in that wheelchair on the sideline to general manager Rich McKay’s getting amnesia after admitting publicly to scolding Vick.
Remember?
Well, McKay doesn’t.
When word surfaced in January of Vick’s water-bottle thing at the Miami International Airport, McKay called a news conference to speak of a “stressful” meeting of Vick and other team officials and to say Vick had “let a lot of people down” before adding Blank “was upset.” Days later, Miami police dropped the investigation. Two months later, McKay suggested reports of his previous hard-line stance with Vick were figments of the media’s imagination. McKay said he never spoke to No. 7 about the contents of the water bottle.
Such flip-flopping by Falcons management just contributes to Vick staying out of control. The missing watch (not his, by the way) incident at a security gate of the Atlanta airport. Ron Mexico. That trick water bottle. Numerous parking ticket issues. His one-fingered salute to fans at the Georgia Dome. Then came this week. It began with Vick missing his flight to Washington for a breakfast with those congressman and others involved with Vick regarding the funding of after-school problems. It continued on Thursday, when Virginia police searched a property owned by Vick but occupied by a relative. That relative was being investigated for drugs at the residence when the police discovered a possible dog-fighting ring.
Vick also was due to appear in a Virginia court on Thursday on trespassing charges for a fishing violation. We’re talking about minor stuff. But we’re still talking about stuff, and there is too much stuff involving Vick these days.
“This really is unfortunate, because Mike is such a great guy,” said Susan Bass, the director of Vick’s foundation. “He cares about his family, his friends. He cares about football, and he’s just trying to live a peaceful life. So when these things happen to him, it’s unfortunate, because it doesn’t reflect who he really is.”
Whatever the case, the commissioner needs to say something to the guy at Saturday’s draft. Vick is scheduled to join fellow Virginia Tech players DeAngelo Hall and Bruce Smith, along with Hokies coach Frank Beamer and Goodell, on stage for a tribute to the Virginia Tech community.
Then will the commissioner say something to Vick? “That’s not planned, no,” said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, before keeping hope alive by adding, “Then again, the commissioner will be visiting with a lot of people Saturday.”
Permalink | Comments (86) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Tech basketball’s in limbo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
People think college basketball coaches earn their money in March. Wrong. College coaches gain bigger jobs in March, but the real strain comes in April. As we speak, Paul Hewitt has no idea what sort of team he’s going to have when practice commences in the fall.
It might be a good one, a Top-10-in-preseason sort of team. It might be a picked-to-finish-ninth-in-the-ACC sort of team. It might fall in between. And whether Tech is good, bad, or indifferent in 2007-2008 is now out of Hewitt’s hands. Think how that must feel.
Nobody at Georgia Tech was surprised that one freshman decided to explore NBA draft options. Some Tech folks figured it would be Thaddeus Young doing the exploring; others were guessing it’d be Javaris Crittenton. That both have taken the step qualifies as a surprise. Neither seems a lock to go even in the lottery, which consists of 14 picks, and NBAdraft.net has Crittenton at No. 25. (Then again, Jarrett Jack left early two seasons ago and was taken with the 22nd pick, and he started 79 games for Portland this season.)
The guess here — just a guess — is that one of the two will return to Tech. If I’m Hewitt, I’d rather have Crittenton for a second season than Young, who’s the bigger talent but who plays a less essential position. Tech without Crittenton next season would be akin to the rudderless team without Jack in 2005-2006.
If both leave, the Jackets of next season will look pretty much like an older version of that team — Anthony Morrow, Jeremis Smith, Ra’Sean Dickey and maybe Lewis Clinch — plus incoming freshman Gani Lawal. And how did Tech do in 2005-2006? It finished 11-17.
As the Jackets were struggling to win a road game over the winter, some Tech fans looked on the team and said, “We’re just young. We’ll be better next year.” Alas, contemporary college basketball holds no assurances for any next year. Ohio State was young, and it played for the national championship. Syracuse was young in 2003, and it won the national championship. A coach had better win big with what he has when he has it because he might not have it for long.
Hewitt is still trying to live down the inability to reach the NCAA tournament in Chris Bosh’s one collegiate season. Will he now have to face similar scrutiny for not being able to win an NCAA game with two one-and-done’ers on his roster? He doesn’t yet know. He doesn’t know who’s coming back. More to the point, he doesn’t know who isn’t.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Trading up for Johnson a bad idea
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch — Like any other NFL general manager, there are two things you can count on from Rich McKay before a draft: 1) He is not going to tell you his plans; 2) If he does tell you his plans, he’s probably lying.
But when McKay twice used the word “critical” Wednesday when addressing the Falcons’ draft this weekend, it wasn’t smoke, at least not smoke emanating from a charred cornerback.
The last two Falcons teams started a collective 11-4 but finished 4-13. Consistent fizzles are never about one player, or one coordinator, or one head coach. It’s indicative of bigger issues. Questionable talent. A lack of depth. Bad drafts. Bad choices in free agency. Salary cap fumbles. Character. Especially character.
Yes, this is a critical draft for the Falcons. Because of that, the last thing that really makes sense is to package a bunch of assets to move up and take a wide receiver, even if that receiver is Calvin Johnson. It’s nothing against Johnson. He’s an amazing talent and an even better kid. But the only teams that should consider pooling picks and players to draft a receiver are teams that are fairly well set.
We don’t know what the Falcons are. We only know what they aren’t. Set.
Notwithstanding advances in offensive and defensive schemes by several creative football minds over the past 50 years, even the most egomaniacal of coaches will tell you the sport still comes down to blocking and tackling. The Falcons don’t do either particularly well.
Drafting Calvin Johnson wouldn’t change that. It would be like carpeting a barn.
They need someone to block.
They need someone to tackle.
They need someone to act as Michael Vick’s personal skycap, because, like, the dude has serious airport issues.
The Falcons may not be rebuilding as much as they are razing. The new coach, Bobby Petrino, wants to tear down any remnants of an offense that can’t convert a third-and-one. He needs bigger offensive linemen. Alex Gibbs, the departed line coach, seemingly was given more autonomy than his head coach (Jim Mora), and he convinced McKay to bring in smaller, quicker blockers.
Smaller they got. Quickness and blocking, not so much. Now, with Wayne Gandy, P.J. Alexander, Todd McClure, Tyson Clabo and Todd Weiner, the team has a line that can neither pass block nor run block with much efficiency.
The defensive line isn’t merely bad. It has become a punch line. Patrick Kerney fled in free agency. John Abraham was an icebag with ears last season. Grady Jackson says he wants to come back but he also wants a new contract and, oh yes, he’s suing the team. Right. Farewell, fatboy.
Jonathan Babineaux has a dead dog hanging over his head. If Babineaux wanted a tamer dog, he should’ve looked around the locker room.
Defensive tackle Rod Coleman has become the closest thing to a sign of stability, which is a problem because Coleman and stability generally do not intersect (see: legal).
Petrino says Jimmy Williams, who hasn’t proven his coverage ability is even good enough to play safety, will start at the more demanding position of cornerback. A safety is needed to replace the maligned Chris Crocker and support Lawyer Milloy. And somewhere along the way, somebody needs to remind DeAngelo Hall that his next stop actually may not be Canton.
Calvin Johnson? Great player. But this team needs more. Shouldn’t we frame a house before we decorate it?
Barring trades, the Falcons will have seven picks in the first four rounds, including four of the first 75 selections. They shouldn’t trade up for one body. If anything, they should trade down to accumulate more heartbeats.
This will be a telling draft for McKay. His reputation has taken some dings, especially since the departure of his personnel chief, Tim Ruskell, to Seattle. A team that’s further along can afford to leap for one star. But that’s not this bunch. McKay seems to acknowledge as much.
“We like the fact we have 10 picks,” he said. “We need to fill the depth on our roster, and this is a good year for us to do it.”
Because even before a draft, there are some things you just can’t hide.
Permalink | Comments (259) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Shame on Vick, again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
According to Tracy McGrady, who is now two victories shy against Utah of leaving the first round of the NBA playoffs after five straight flops, he won’t answer his cellphone until his Houston Rockets are eliminated from the postseason.
It’s called focus.
Are you listening, Michael Vick?
Sounds like the Falcons quarterback shouldn’t answer his cellphone, home phone, e-mail, regular mail, beeper, faxes, doorbell or anything else until the end of his NFL career. Otherwise, he likely is to continue to make news for reasons other than his quick feet and strong arm.
This time, Vick missed a flight to Washington D.C. Monday night for a function he was scheduled to attend early the next morning. The function was to feature U.S Congressmen, along with more than 100 folks associated with an advocacy group to raise the awareness for funding of after-school programs.
Not good.
You add all of that to the water bottle thing and the Ron Mexico thing, and you have another disastrous PR thing for the Falcons involving Vick.
We’re back to focus - or the lack thereof, when it comes to Vick functioning as the face of the franchise.
Then again, two of these incidents involved airports (the water bottle thing and the missed-flight thing). So maybe Vick should consider driving or just go Greyhound.
Permalink | Comments (211) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Decision not easy for Jackets’ Young
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s easy for you to say what Thaddeus Young should do. You aren’t paying his bills. You aren’t living in a dorm and going to classes that will have little bearing on your future vocation. You aren’t auditioning for a job in an industry where the 15th overall draft pick is guaranteed $2.7 million over two years. Did you have $2.7 million in assets by the time you turned 21? Do you have $2.7 million now?
It’s easy for you to say that, if Thaddeus Young indeed leaves Georgia Tech after one season, he’ll have accomplished next to nothing as a collegian. And you’d be correct. Young had an OK freshman season — not great, not terrible. He had splendid nights against Georgia and North Carolina and Wake Forest. He had others where he went missing. He played on a disappointing team that won one road game and was gone from the NCAA tournament almost before it began.
It’s easy to say that, for the sake of Tech and college basketball, you hope Young will exercise the (still-available) option of staying in school. Because you’d like to see what he could do as a sophomore. Because you’d like to determine once and for all if Paul Hewitt knows what to do with big-time talent. Because you, to put it bluntly, have no stake in the matter. It’s not your livelihood on the line if he shreds a knee ligament.
It’s easy to say Young isn’t ready for the NBA, but that’s not quite true. He’s not ready to be an NBA starter, but he’s skilled enough to sit on someone’s bench. The issue with a young bench-sitter is whether he’ll develop: How do you improve while seated? The first contract, the two-year hitch with the club options at the end, is the easy part. The trick is to hit big with the next one. The trick is to have a career, not just a contract.
It’s easy to say there are a lot of guys like Young in this draft. There are in every draft. (Ask the Hawks. They lead the world in such guys.) He’s 6 feet 8 and skinny. He can slash and he can shoot some, and he hasn’t guarded anybody yet. RealGM.com has him going 10th in its mock draft, which sounds high. NBAdraft.net puts him at No. 17, which seems closer. And there’s the issue: If he’s a top-10 pick, it’s an easy call. If not, wouldn’t he be better served by staying another year?
It’s easy to say Young would (barring injury) be a top-10 lock in 2008, but locks can be picked. Joakim Noah hurt his draft position by sticking around. And Young, should he stay, would again be playing for tuition and room and board, as opposed to $2.7 million over two years. He’d be running and sweating — and going to class all the while — in the attempt to lift his team to a postseason where the NCAA banks $6 billion for its TV rights and its precious “student-athletes” bank nothing.
It’s easy to wax rhapsodic over the Florida Gators and the history they made by putting the NBA on hold, but not every player is the son of a pro athlete. (Actually, Young’s dad played basketball at Jacksonville and was drafted by the Buffalo Braves, who became the Clippers.) What made Florida special was the kinship and sense of selflessness forged by the four classmates, but no such dynamic exists at Tech or anywhere else. No, not even at Ohio State.
It’s easy to say what you’d do were you in Young’s shoes, but you aren’t. He has a business decision to make, the biggest of his life. He won’t be a money-grubber if he goes or a hypocrite if he stays. The guess is that he’ll leave, but it’s just a guess. It isn’t advice. See, I’m not Thaddeus Young.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Raiders will just bungle it, baby
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Only four days until the Raiders do something really stupid.
9: Only four days until the Lions do something really stupid.
8: Seriously, has there have been a better year to be drafting third in the NFL? These two franchises probably have had more spectacular face-plants in the draft than any other (Falcons notwithstanding). If I’m Cleveland (third) and Tampa Bay (fourth), forget worrying about who might be gone. Just sit back and wait for the 27 clowns stuffed into the VW to drive in.
7: For the record, I deny a Pro Football Weekly report that I may admitting smoking wacky tobaccy in college. And if I did smoke, I certainly didn’t inhale. And if I did make brownies, I certainly didn’t eat them. And I certainly didn’t accidentally mix it up with the oregano when I made spaghetti sauce. If you would like a list of any other things I didn’t do in college, please let me know.
6: Calvin Johnson and two others say they got high. Duh. What a non-story. Hey, how about if somebody breaks a story on the three college players who HAVEN’T gotten high?
5: No, this is not on the same level of a high-professional athlete getting caught with drugs or trick water bottles. There’s a big difference between a college player doing what kids do between (or during) classes and a millionaire athlete damaging not merely his own credibility but that of an entire pro franchise. One is about being a kid. The other is about embarrassing a franchise and turning your back on your teammates.
4: The Braves announced season tickets may now be purchased through a 90-day no-interest financing plan, a la furniture and appliance stories. It’s a worthy option. But I’d rather see creative financial ways to keep Andruw Jones in centerfield. Or is he going to be replaced by a new couch?
3: Scott Mellanby, who retired Tuesday, deserved better than to go out with a four-game sweep in the first-round of the playoffs. But while his legs are shot, his mind could still be an asset for the Thrashers. They could do worse than to bring the guy in as an assistant coach.
2: So much for the South ruling “Yankee Flatball.” After consecutive Stanley Cups by Tampa Bay and Carolina, look at these results: 1) Carolina didn’t make the playoffs; 2) The Thrashers and Tampa are out in one run; 3) Nashville, after posting the league’s third-best record and acquiring Peter Forsberg before the trade deadline, was bounced in five games by San Jose.
1: 92,000 people at an Alabama spring game. Was it held in a stadium or on Mount Sinai? Nick Saban turned Mountain Dew into wine. Then, of course, Alabama fans asked him to turn it back.
Permalink | Comments (25) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Georgia State football can’t succeed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Guess Lefty Driesell really does enjoy this retirement thing. Just because he could, he lay in bed on Monday morning while doing an interview from his beach home in Bethany, Del.
As the Atlantic Ocean ebbed and flowed against his cottage, Driesell used his 75-year-old tongue to say with that famous drawl, “Always something to do around here. Gotta go get the car washed. See the doctor. Head down to the drugstore to get more pills. Brush all of that sand off the sidewalks. Put the chairs out on the deck, stuff like that.”
He laughed. He did so nearly as hard as when we discussed the lunacy under consideration at his old school.
Well, one of his old schools.
They’re talking about bringing football to Georgia State. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess it would be nice, probably, for the students, but I wouldn’t jump up and down about it, myself,” said Driesell, laughing some more. After he spent the early and middle part of his 41 years coaching college basketball at Davidson, Maryland and James Madison, he finished his final six seasons at Georgia State through 2002.
This is the same Georgia State that remained obscure despite Driesell’s charisma and effectiveness. This is the same Georgia State that is a commuter school, which means the college football loyalties for its students and faculty members reside around Athens, Bobby Dodd Stadium and various SEC cities.
This also is the same Georgia State that is contemplating the addition of a I-AA football program.
The plan is for the Panthers to play home football games at the 71,250-seat Georgia Dome, where the Panthers likely would have an average of 70,000 or so.
That’s empty seats.
“See, I coached at [James Madison], where they have Division I-AA football, and most of the schools at that level lose money,” Driesell said. “If this was big-time football, like at Georgia, Georgia Tech and Alabama, then I’d say go forward. You know what I’m saying?”
Yes, I do. Crazy ideas happen when you’re a little engine, and you can’t stand seeing other little engines churning up that steep hill. Worse, for Georgia State, Old Dominion is a little engine from the Panthers’ Colonial Athletic Association, and Old Dominion already has announced plans to play I-AA football in 2009 season. Driesell knows as much, especially since Old Dominion is in Norfolk, the site of many properties that Driesell owns around his native Virginia.
Said Driesell, “See, it’s different in Norfolk. The newspaper there, I mean, they talk about Old Dominion football every single day. They’ve got a full-page ad in there. Buy your tickets for something that isn’t even here yet. You can’t do that in Atlanta. [Georgia State] would go broke on advertising. You’ve got a lot of competition there. Georgia. Georgia Tech. You’ve got the Falcons. You’ve got the Hawks, and then you’ve got everything else.”
Everything but Driesell, with 786 victories and an induction into the recently formed National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Georgia State was the losingest program in Division I basketball when Driesell arrived in 1997. Four years later, the Panthers went 29-5 along the way to slaying a potent Wisconsin team in the NCAA tournament.
Nobody cared. Even so, that’s not why Driesell retired on New Year’s Day 2003 to enjoy life with Joyce, his wife of 55 years. Red Auerbach once told Driesell it is time to retire when you get tired putting on your sneakers for practice. “I woke up, and I just said it’s time to quit putting my sneakers on,” said Driesell, who is thrilled Rod Barnes hasn’t reached that point.
Two months ago, Georgia State hired Barnes with hopes the former Ole Miss coach of eight decent seasons would resurrect Driesell’s success. But now the Panthers have this football thing. Said Driesell, who still attends Panthers games around Virginia, “Georgia State loses money in athletics right now, even in basketball, because we didn’t draw that well.
“We had a team that was 29-5, and we probably lost money that year. It’s a hard to draw right now in town, so I don’t know if financially they can handle it.”
They can’t.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Categories: Terence Moore
Impressed by the Braves so far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Those of us who sit in the judgmental seat, by choice or by duty, are often too swift to condemn, or on the other hand, too swift to commend, I among them. Thus, those men whose profession it is to produce winning teams are often hauled up before an unseen jury and charged with dereliction, or something to that effect.
Throughout the offseason we chewed on the Braves, at times snarling at the thought that the key to anything in baseball is the bullpen, and smouldering at the offensive loss of Adam LaRoche and Marcus Giles on the infield. Forty-three home runs and 150 runs-batted-in are not automatically come by, the combined production of the two. LaRoche, traded to the Pirates for another one of those heralded bullpen arms, relatively unknown (by us), Mike Gonzalez. Giles was surrendered without effort. Granted, Giles was a loud voice in the locker room and not always cheerily accepted by his mates, but the major factor in passing on him was his $6 million salary tag.
So John Schuerholz took the risk. All along there was no doubt in his mind that Kelly Johnson would develop into a major league second baseman. Here was a 25-year-old who had never played second base, who had been sidelined by arm surgery for a season, and had the tender look of a high school senior. He hasn’t lit up the marquee, but he has been just plain solid.
At first base, Schuerholz also gambled: That Scott Thorman, who’d had 128 at-bats in the major leagues, but could also play the outfield, would be a satisfactory replacement for LaRoche at first base. Just in case, he signed Craig Wilson, who bats right-handed and also plays the outfield, as a backup. And a free spirit of good nature but an obvious aversion to tonsorial parlors.
The other piece of the puzzle, now that he was well-stocked in the bullpen, was starting pitchers, Tim Hudson in particular. This was before Mike Hampton went down again, and into surgery for the second reconstruction job on his left arm. Hampton was being counted on like guaranteed stock dividends. Instead, he has become the Braves’ worst investment of the ages. He may or may not ever pitch again.
Schuerholz to the rescue once more. This obscure pitcher in Oklahoma had been in training in his basement, throwing to a brick wall. Mark Redman, not even invited back by the last-place Kansas City Royals, was signed. He hasn’t won yet, but he has pitched well enough, had the offense given him a few runs. Now, you had a starting crew of John Smoltz, Tim Hudson, Chuck James, Kyle Davies and Redman, and the most beautiful theme of this drama is that Hudson is pitching like the Hudson they signed two years ago. With brilliance. (And why couldn’t Bobby Cox have trusted him to finish his masterpiece Friday night, drat it?)
What has made the Braves a most appealing attraction to the natives is the hometown makeup. I doubt there is any team with a collection of glittering home-born stars, picked up off the sandlots or high schools, of the caliber of Brian McCann, Jeff Francoeur, Chuck James and Kyle Davies. There are not many purer hitters in the league than McCann, and Francoeur is beginning to establish himself in every outfield category, power with a cannon arm. Chuck James came out of nowhere, discovered on a travel team in Mableton, who hated pitching because he loved to hit, according to one of his coaches. And who has become the Braves’ latter-day Tom Glavine. He doesn’t throw hard, but he throws it where their bats ain’t.
They are a long way from home now. This is just April. But the time to savor the glory is when they’re flapping their wings. And the time to tell John Schuerholz, that for all those times we questioned him and his moves, his prosperous start brings a blush to our cheeks. With the hope that this isn’t merely a big tease.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Football a poor fit for Georgia State
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia State has commissioned Dan Reeves to help decide whether or not the school should start a football program. It’s a nice concept, and retaining Reeves, who knows football and Atlanta, makes complete sense. And by rights a university that serves 26,000 students should be able to sustain the most expensive sport.
This, however, is Georgia State.
This is the school that drew a non-crowd of 362 to a men’s basketball game on Valentine’s Day. This is the school that just posted an average home attendance of 1,173 in what stands as its flagship sport. This is the school that would play football games in the Georgia Dome, which seats 71,250.
This is one tough sell.
Mary McElroy is Georgia State’s athletics director, and she’s smart and ambitious. She’s also pragmatic. As Reeves goes forward, she’s neither pushing nor pulling. “Painstakingly neutral,” is how McElroy describes her stance. “I’m not ashamed to say that. I would be fine with football; I would be fine without it.”
She believes there’s a “decent” chance the school will move to sponsor the sport. Certain moneyed alums like the idea very much, and Reeves told reporters the prospects look “very likely.” The earliest McElroy could imagine Georgia State playing an actual game would be in 2010. And how long after that might it be before Panthers football could be branded a success?
Georgia State is a commuter school in a big city based in a state that already boasts massive football programs. An examination of similar programs offers a best-case scenario, and also a worst.
South Florida, located in Tampa, played its first game in 1997; last season it averaged 30,222 fans at Raymond James Stadium and finished 9-4, beating West Virginia and winning a bowl game en route. Central Florida, situated in Orlando, played its first game in 1979; last season it averaged 31,569 fans at the Citrus Bowl. The Knights will christen a 45,000-seat stadium this fall — they’re coached by George O’Leary, who’s 12-24 at UCF and who has never met a construction project he didn’t embrace — and Texas will serve as the first visitor.
South Florida is doing quite well. Central Florida, which has graced one bowl in its existence, is hanging in there. UAB, which played its first game in 1991, still lacks traction. (It just hired the former Georgia assistant Neil Callaway as head coach.) The Blazers, who play at Legion Field, averaged 23,139 fans for home games last season. UAB hasn’t done terribly on the field — its 3-9 record in 2006 was its nadir — but the program remains an afterthought in a state consumed by the ongoing saga of Alabama against Auburn.
The same dynamic would apply here. Doesn’t everybody in this state, GSU students and alums included, already have a favorite football team? Could a new program compete with existing loyalty? (Yes, Georgia Southern carved out a niche, but the Eagles don’t share a major marketplace.) Said McElroy, who admits she roots for Navy, where she earned her degree, and Tech, where she worked: “It may be that those people chose Georgia or Georgia Tech because we haven’t had a football team.”
Maybe. But the notion that the Georgia State constituency, which didn’t fully embrace basketball even when Lefty Driesell was winning significant games, would be energized by a start-up Division I-AA program seems fairly fanciful. What if GSU is confronted by the indignity of playing home games before 65,000 empty Dome seats?
“If it starts and it doesn’t work, nothing says this will be here in perpetuity,” McElroy said. “If it’s going south, we drop it. … But you won’t know how many people will come if you don’t do it. And I know people will say, ‘How can you have football if you can’t get 4,000 fans to come to a basketball game?’ Part of the reason was the product.”
It should be noted that Georgia State isn’t the only local school casting an eye. Kennesaw State is, too. “We’d be the only program in Marietta,” said Stan Dysart, who’s the chairman of Kennesaw State’s football feasibility committee and who’s also (full disclosure) my orthopedist. “The disadvantage Georgia State has is that there’s already a big-time program downtown.”
That said, Dysart believes Georgia State should give it a go. And McElroy has been “surprised there’s not more negativity — I’ve heard from maybe 20 people who are against it. It doesn’t seem there’s a whole lot of resistance. … The recruiting base is here. The interest seems to be here. But commitment is a lot different than asking about somebody’s interest.”
It is. And every lead balloon — the Edsel, New Coke, the 2007 Phillies — looked spiffy on the drawing board. “I want to set us up for success,” McElroy said, “not failure.”
Good luck with that.
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Fundamentals give Europeans an edge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Year after year, Johnny can’t shoot, dribble, pass or defend, but he is perfecting all of those gyrations he sees on your average ESPN highlight.
Thus the following: Johnny is being phased out of the NBA, and Andrea, Eduardo, Menad, Radoslav, Mehmet, Sarunas, Zarko, Raja, Vladimir, and Thabo are being phased in.
Good. What this record explosion of international players into the league will do is force Johnny to become as fundamentally sound as many of those international players. Just so you know, many of those international players are as fundamentally sound as Johnny once was before those gyrations became the rage between the Pacific and the Atlantic.
“No question. I mean, there isn’t a doubt that American players will go back to the fundamentals, because if they don’t, they won’t have a job,” said Dominique Wilkins, the king of gyrations as the Human Highlight Film throughout his NBA playing career. Even so, Wilkins combined style with substance.
That’s unlike today, when Johnny doesn’t get it, but Fabricio does. Added Wilkins, who also played in the European League, “Most international players have that in-between game. They can shoot the jumper. They can put it on the floor. They can do little things to help your team win. They get better and better. A lot of times, just being an athlete alone just doesn’t get it done.”
Wilkins was referring to the NBA, where he is a Hawks executive these days. He wasn’t referring to colleges, high schools and youth leagues around the United States, where you actually can “get it done” in hoops by just being an athlete. Such an emphasis on talent combined with flash has contributed to American players spending their youth listening to opportunistic AAU coaches. That’s opposed to the dwindling few stressing the Larry Brown philosophy of playing The Right Way.
We needn’t go further than this year’s version of the And 1 Mixtape Tour. On the And 1 Web site, it boldly states, “This summer, we are returning to the streets to put on the greatest display of creativity ever to hit the blacktop.”
Translated: This tour is nothing more than glorified street ball.
Speaking of which, you also have those highly popular And 1 Streetball video games. They are available everywhere to teach American youngsters how to play The Wrong Way.
Conversely, international players are groomed to become fundamental machines as preteens, and they often evolve into professionals in their countries soon after reaching puberty. So, if you’re a personnel guy for an NBA team, and if you’re more interested in winning than looking pretty, you do the following: You drive past all of those folks yakking and spinning in the air for circus dunks on the playgrounds, you hop on a plane, you fly across the oceans, and then you come back with a Yao Ming or a Manu Ginobili.
No wonder these numbers are ridiculously staggering: Twenty years ago, when Wilkins was with the Hawks in a league that featured a slew of fundamentally sound American players, ranging from Michael Jordan to Larry Bird to Magic Johnson, there were only 14 international players on opening day rosters.
There were 84 this season. In fact, when the playoffs begin today, there will be 59 international players on the collective rosters, an increase of 34 percent from just last year’s playoffs.
“You see those statistics, but at the same time, as long as this league has been around, you have to realize that it always goes through these adjustment periods,” Wilkins said. “You’ve got to be able to adapt as players coming up. [American] guys like Joe Johnson, like Kobe Bryant, like Dwyane Wade, like LeBron James. All of these guys have made adjustments to today’s game, and that’s why they’re so much better than everybody else.”
Well, not better than Dirk Nowitzki, the likely NBA most valuable player this season, and he is from Wurzburg.
That’s Germany, not Iowa.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Braves’ bats cold so far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Surely nobody is panicking over the Braves’ hitters spending much of their opening weeks of the season looking slightly less than the Big Red Machine.
Try the Little Blue Machine.
Mediocre average. High strikeouts. Few stolen bases. Lots of GIDPs, as in grounded into double plays.
It’s the weather, stupid. If you don’t believe me, listen to those who would swear on a stack of baseball cards that the Braves’ hitting woes are the result of a frigid April dominated by wind, rain and snow around the major leagues.
There was Braves manager Bobby Cox, for instance. Before his team finished with just four hits in a 3-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Thursday night at chilly Turner Field, Cox shook his head in the home dugout, before saying, “You really would be hard-pressed if you talked to Henry [Aaron], to Willie [Mays], to Mickey [Mantle], to [Ted] Williams and asked them if they preferred cold weather or hot weather. All of them would say hot.”
Thus the question: Has there ever been a cold-weather hitter of note? Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who was a wonderful slugger in his day, frowned and then said with a smile, “Unless you had an Eskimo in the lineup, I don’t think so.”
This is more of a baseball thing than a Braves thing. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, teams combined to score an average of 8.65 runs per game entering Thursday’s action compared to the 10.26 runs of last season when April actually resembled spring instead of winter. Plus, the overall batting average around the majors was .250 compared to .270 a year ago.
It’s just that the Braves had a team batting average nearly 30 points lower (.242 to .271) than what they had after 14 games in 2006. They replaced scrappy hitter Marcus Giles with unproven Kelly Johnson, a bust at the plate until managing eight hits in his past 12 at-bats. They sent Adam LaRoche (.285 average, 32 home runs and 90 RBIs last season) to the Pittsburgh Pirates for reliever Mike Gonzalez. To compensate for LaRoche’s loss, the Braves have a platoon at first base of rookie Scott Thorman and veteran Craig Wilson.
While Thorman is hitting .207, Wilson is at .160. Not exactly the stuff of Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, or even of Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche.
If you didn’t know better, you’d say Braves officials were so obsessed in the offseason with fixing a ghastly bullpen and tweaking the starting rotation that they forgot you can’t win if you can’t score.
The Braves can score. Prior to Thursday’s action, only three teams in the National League had more runs than the Braves. They also can rip. Nobody in the league began the evening with more home runs. They can win, too, because they’ve done so more often than not with that rejuvenated pitching, timely hitting and Cox’s splendid managing.
Still, the Braves have those deficiencies on offense, but they only are temporary. For one, the weather has improved from grotesque to tolerable. “Nobody wants to have a bat in their hands when it’s that cold out, because if you don’t hit the ball on the sweet spot, you’re going to feel it for the next three innings,” said Brian McCann, the closest thing to a cold-weather hitter for the Braves with a .327 average.
McCann also is among those slew of hot-weather hitters. So are the Joneses (Chipper and Andruw) and Edgar Renteria among the game’s best in the clutch. The promise of that core, along with free-swinger Jeff Francoeur, is why Braves batting coach Terry Pendleton isn’t panicking.
“When you see them in batting practice, and everything is mechanically fine, nine times out of 10, it’s a mental thing,” said Pendleton, winner of a batting title during his All-Star career. “Some guys, mentally, it’s tougher for them to go out there when it’s cold and do what they’re supposed to do. So it’s my job to kick them mentally to get them going.”
That’s opposed to just kicking them, period. Which Pendleton might do if this really isn’t just Mother Nature throwing misery at Braves hitters.
Permalink | Comments (58) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Thrashers should hold, Hawks fold
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The curtain closed for both of Atlanta Spirit’s teams in the span of 24 hours. The Hawks finished yet another lousy regular season Tuesday, and the Thrashers were swept from the playoffs Wednesday. Now decisions must be made about both franchises.
The Thrashers’ course seems so clear that even this addled ownership group can see it. This team wasn’t quite as good as it should have been — even in claiming the Southeast Division title, the Thrashers won only two more games than they had in 2005-2006, when they couldn’t keep a goaltender healthy and missed the playoffs by two points — and a goodly chunk of the future was mortgaged in the purchase of playoff insurance at the trading deadline.
And the playoffs themselves were a crashing dud. The Thrashers played like a team just happy to be there, and such teams never stick around long. Don Waddell said two weeks ago that his team had essentially “been playing playoff games for two years,” meaning that the Thrashers had gone all-out in the pursuit of postseasons both last spring and this, but there’s a fundamental difference between meaningful regular-season games and the chase for the Stanley Cup.
The Thrashers weren’t yet ready to win in the postseason. Their homegrown stars — Kovalchuk and Lehtonen — hadn’t been there before, and their famous imports — Hossa and Tkachuk — haven’t known real playoff success.The Thrashers came unstuck at the time a team needs to hang together, and that’s how you get swept by a lower-seeded opponent. But the failure to win a playoff game doesn’t mean the season was a failure.
Waddell made the right trades at the right time: Put simply, the Thrashers had to make the playoffs this season or people, Waddell chief among them, were going to get fired. It makes no sense now to dump the GM who, after nine years and seven seasons, has finally put together a division-winning team. Nor does it make sense to fire Bob Hartley, who has his quirks but who also has a Stanley Cup ring. Who else out there is any better?
The Thrashers are on the right track. The Hawks jumped the track long ago. The Thrashers at least have a banner to raise in Philips Arena next season. The Hawks were left to celebrate, if that’s the right word (and it isn’t), the first 30-win season of the Mike Woodson era. It’s an era that needs to end.
Maybe nobody could have done much better with the mismatched talent he has been handed, but the greater point is that Woodson has worked three seasons and has a career record of 69-177. Think of it like this: The Hawks could go 82-0 next season and Woodson would still be 26 games under .500.
The Hawks have to change coaches simply because these players have no reason to believe — and every reason to doubt — that Woodson is capable of winning. The world at large has every reason to wonder if Billy Knight knows what he’s doing, but the belief here is that Knight should be given one last year. That shouldn’t, however, be read as an endorsement.
To change GMs now would be to start over yet again. It’s better at this late date to bank on the extreme long shot of Knight being right in his method and his convictions — I put the odds at 25-1 — than to accept the absolute certainty of more losing that comes with upheaval and transition. Besides, what established basketball man would agree to work for an ownership that’s suing itself?
Maybe this is the year Knight gets lucky in the lottery and bags Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Maybe the additions of one big-time player and a better coach can turn Knight’s mismatched roster into something approximating a team. Maybe the Hawks will be in the playoffs this time next year. If they’re not, fire Knight. Fire everybody.
Permalink | Comments (75) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Tech-Dogs rivalry lacking in baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia played Georgia Tech on Wednesday, and neither side trotted out its No. 1 pitcher, or even its No. 2. That’s the way college baseball works. Or, more precisely, doesn’t work. What sort of sport renders the year’s first installment of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate only the fourth-biggest game either team will play this week?
Both Tech and Georgia regard conference games, which are reserved for weekends, as the ones that matter most. Of Wednesday’s matchup, Tech coach Danny Hall said: “We feel we need to win the game.” (His team did.) But the feeling wasn’t so strong that he deployed David Duncan, his best pitcher. Duncan, see, is a weekend guy.
Hall again: “The emphasis for us is on postseason play, and we feel winning conference games is the way to get there … It pains Georgia Tech alums to hear me say that, but that’s just the way it is.”
Imagine the outcry from Tech fans if Chan Gailey chose to start Taylor Bennett instead of Reggie Ball in Athens last November. (Wait a second. Bad example. Try again.) Imagine the protests from Georgia fans if Mark Richt, looking ahead to a bowl game, had held out Matthew Stafford against Tech.
Said David Perno, Georgia’s baseball coach: “The difference is that we play 56 games a year, as opposed to 11 or 12.”
There’s never an uproar about the way Tech-Georgia baseball is conducted because (a.) not nearly as many people care, and (b.) those who do see the merit in the respective coaches’ conventional wisdom. That said, maybe more people would care about Tech-Georgia baseball if the logistics were different.
As it is, the old enemies will meet twice more — once at Turner Field next Tuesday and again in Athens on May 9. Spreading things out dilutes the effect — Russ Chandler Stadium, which seats 4,157, wasn’t filled Wednesday — and renders what should be a spirited rivalry almost an afterthought. Mightn’t it be more interesting if the two faced off over the course of a weekend, when the best pitchers would presumably be available? Sure. Now to the bigger issue: Is such a series logistically feasible?
Alas, maybe not.
Dan Radakovich, Tech’s athletics director, wrote in an e-mail: “A weekend series would be difficult, and I think the same issue confronts other ACC/SEC rivals. To play a three-game set on a weekend would need to be done in early March.”
Said Hall: “I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but we’d have to do it in February.”
Perno: “If you do it earlier, basketball’s still going and the weather’s 50-50.”
Not so long ago, Tech and Georgia would play a pair of two-game series — sometimes in midweek, other times on the weekend. Then Turner Field became available, and the schools scaled back. Radakovich again: “Certainly [a weekend series] would impact the Turner Field game, which is a great thing for both schools.”
Clemson and South Carolina, it should be noted, played a two-game series — one at each place — the first weekend in March. They met again Wednesday in Columbia and will play next week in Clemson. Then again, they don’t have the Turner Field component to consider.
A suggestion: Let Georgia and Tech do something similar — play home-and-home on a weekend in late Februrary or early March, weather and basketball notwithstanding. As Perno conceded, “That way you could see us use all the best arms.” That’s in contrast to Wednesday night’s doings, which saw the Jackets pull Ryan Turner after two scoreless innings so as to save his strength for a scheduled Sunday start against N.C. State.
Play the weekend series early, and then come back with a third game at Turner Field in late April. That would satisfy all the venue requirements, and it might lend an edge to a rivalry that has, to be brutally honest, gone soft.
Permalink | Comments (33) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Defects exposed in quick retreat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — Imagine finally having enough money to buy a used car, and then halfway down the driveway the transmission falls out. So much for the trip to the beach. Or the market.
So much for redefining your existence.
The Thrashers made the playoffs. Five minutes later, they are out of the playoffs. Cue it, Groucho: Hello, I must be going.
The division title this season — unexpected. But this — even more so.
And, no, this should not be a time to celebrate the steps forward. The 43 wins, the playoff berth, the Southeast Division title — all worthy precedent-setting moments. But you lose four straight games to a team that you beat three out of four times during the season — where’s the room for celebration?
“It feels really empty,” Ilya Kovalchuk said.
It should. You can debate the bad goal in Game 1 and the bad bounce in Game 2 that immediately dropped the Thrashers into an 0-2 hole. But four straight losses don’t happen by accident. Four straight losses mean that as far as you have come, you have farther to go than you could have imagined.
After the final game, several Thrashers owners and executives walked around the locker room. Atlanta Spirit president and CEO Bernie Mullin shook Bobby Holik’s hand and said, “You’re division champions.”
Holik forced a smile. “It’s a start,” he said. But he shook his head as he walked away. The man is used to more. He played on two Stanley Cup teams in New Jersey.
Division championships — they don’t even get you down the driveway.
“Personally, I don’t think we were even close to being competitive in the playoffs,” he said. “There’s a long, long way to go here. I don’t think there should be any sense of accomplishment whatsoever.
“It’s not like we need any more parts. We didn’t have what it takes. We have what it takes physically, but that’s a very small part of hockey.”
Bang on the cranium. They made too many mistakes.
Bang on the chest. They started slowly in Game 1 at home and tanked it in Game 3.
The stars underachieved. The starting goalie struggled.
“I want a Stanley Cup — and now we’re done,” said Keith Tkachuk, who cost the Thrashers three draft picks in trade and almost certainly won’t be back. “Obviously I’ll always cherish playing with a great bunch of guys. But we felt really good about our chances to win a Stanley Cup, and we got beat by a better team.”
They made the playoffs. They hit the lottery. And they won — a scratch-off ticket, which lost. They won four of their last five games of the regular season to clinch the division. Then they flopped.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Didn’t they do this all season?
“We would lose five, win five, lose five, win five,” Greg de Vries said. “Now we lose four.”
Until Wednesday, they never had a lead in any game in the series. They led twice in this game, 1-0 and 2-1. So much for small victories. Two minutes into the third, Matt Cullen rifled a shot over Johan Hedberg and under the crossbar. Fans screamed goal. But it wasn’t until after a subsequent review that the Rangers were awarded the goal (the puck clearly dropping down over the goal line before bouncing out).
The Thrashers lost one game on a 60-foot dump-in off the glass. You expect them to win a review?
Criticism will follow. It should. General manager Don Waddell shouldn’t be hammered for making the pre-deadline deals for Tkachuk and Alexei Zhitnik because that got the team to the playoffs. But there are holes all over the place, particularly at center and on defense. The Rangers exposed just how slow this team is.
Coach Bob Hartley will be criticized and should. The Rangers’ Tom Renney was a step ahead the entire series. But those calling for Hartley’s firing are short-sighted. He got the team to the playoffs, and his record has improved every season. He’ll get a new contract.
Hartley understands why there is heat, and he’s not running from it.
“We all come in the league with a big target on our back,” he said earlier Wednesday. “I guess that’s the ransom for the glory.”
Glory is still being held hostage.
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Hawks should pursue Jerry West
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This is a no-brainer, even for Hawks officials, who collectively have moved through life as The (witless) Scarecrow.
Get Jerry West.
I mean, whenever greatness is available, you just get it.
West is available, and he is greatness. Such high praise continues for the former Hall of Fame player and accomplished executive despite his frustrating five-year run with the Memphis Grizzlies as director of basketball operations. This season, they had the NBA’s worst record, and they also are in the process of being sold.
Not a good situation when you’re greatness, and you’re 69 years old. As a result, West is retiring this summer, but he said he is open to becoming a consultant somewhere.
Why not Atlanta, especially since he should be here anyway?
Remember? After West built the Los Angeles Lakers into its mini dynasty with Shaq and Kobe, Hawks officials had a chance to hire West as general manager before the Grizzlies came calling on him.
Instead, Hawks officials became The Scarecrow again. Now they can correct their previous gaffe involving West without even clicking their heels.
All they have to do is pick up the phone and call the guy.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Doesn’t matter who’s in Thrashers’ goal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — If nothing else, this should about do it for intrigue about who starts in goal for the Thrashers. Because, like, does it matter?
Kari Lehtonen wasn’t very good Tuesday night. But at least this time, he blended into the scenery with his teammates. They looked slow. They looked disorganized. They looked panicked. They looked like 1999.
They gave up a goal 32 seconds into the game. They gave up two goals to a kid (Ryan Callahan) whose resume is only 14 NHL games long. They gave up a goal when their defenseman (Shane Hnidy) apparently couldn’t stand the sight of his goalie (Lehtonen) actually making a save, so he kicked it in.
New York 7, Atlanta 0.
Until Tuesday, the Thrashers had managed to hold the Rangers without a touchdown.
“We got outplayed and we got embarrassed,” Marian Hossa said. “There’s nothing else to say.”
They aren’t merely knocking on the door of an early exit. They are threatening to erase the memory of any forward steps they took this season and implode any goodwill they built along the way.
Before the playoffs started, we wondered if these Thrashers were good enough to go deep. Now we wonder how they got here. For the first time, they didn’t look like a playoff team. They looked like a team wishing this series was only a best-of-five, because that would mean they wouldn’t have to play again tonight.
They weren’t just bad. At 3-0, they were just bad. They fell apart and then they pulled apart. The night before, they all sat at the same dinner table at a Manhattan steak house. But in Game 3, they looked at each other like strangers, when they looked at each other at all.
“This isn’t about special teams or breakdowns or whatever,” Bobby Holik said. “We played against that team pretty evenly for a couple of games.”
“Eight minutes into the game, we’re down 3-0,” he continued. (It was 12 minutes, actually. But he was on a roll.)
“At that time, the team should come together. That happened at times during the season. But it’s magnified now because it’s in the playoffs. It’s a concern. We addressed it briefly [in a post-game meeting]. But now is not the time for analysis. Right now it’s one game too early.”
He meant loss. Freudian slip.
The Thrashers are down 3-0 in their first playoff series. They have yet to hold a lead. We’re not sure about their dignity.
We can only imagine how their coach is taking this. Bob Hartley saw the Rangers’ Michael Nylander get behind his defense, take a pass from Jaromir Jagr and beat Lehtonen on the game’s first shot 32 seconds after the opening faceoff.
“The entire bench froze,” he said.
Down one goal and the entire bench froze?
What does that say about a team’s character?
They lost another game and, for the second straight game, they lost their composure. They took 18 penalties, including five 10-minute misconducts.
Ilya Kovalchuk had a roughing, a fighting, a misconduct — and one shot.
Hossa had a boarding, a roughing and once again no points. He came into this series as one of the league’s premier players. For two games, he was invisible. But he has transitioned to numskull. He was pushed off the puck. He was lazy defensively (he was on the ice for the first three Rangers goals). He was dumb (the boarding was five seconds into a power play).
Hartley on the mess: “We didn’t want to take a check. We didn’t want to do the little things. The game was lost.”
Hartley brought the Thrashers to the playoffs. The team did not immediately announce a huge contract extension. Suddenly, after a performance like this, you have to wonder about his job security.
You have to wonder about Kovalchuk, who had shown signs of maturity during the season but now is merely coming undone. You have to wonder about Lehtonen, who has allowed 11 goals in two playoff games. You certainly have to wonder about Hossa. Wasn’t Marcel supposed to be the lesser Hossa?
We thought the goalie was ready. We thought a lot of things about this team. We never thought they would go back in time.
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Woodson can’t be blamed for Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This ongoing disaster called the Hawks is the fault of everybody involved with the ownership and management of Atlanta Spirit, LLC.
Well, everybody not named Mike Woodson.
In other words, Bob Knight was correct three years ago when he wrote me that letter on Texas Tech stationery to say of his favorite player during the Indiana portion of his career: “I think you will really enjoy Mike Woodson being there.”
Knight’s reference to “you” was meant for the enlightened — those back then, and those right now when it comes to understanding the mess that Woodson inherited. Imagine the reincarnation of the two Reds (Holtzman and Auerbach). Now clone them with Pat Riley and Phil Jackson. That combination still wouldn’t have spent this season keeping another disjointed group of Hawks from ending with 50-something losses and more questions than answers.
The Hawks mercifully finished their season Tuesday night at virtually empty Philips Arena against the Indiana Pacers. As usual, the Hawks played hard, because Woodson won’t settle for less. It often hasn’t mattered. This time, the Hawks’ diligence turned into a 118-102 victory after spending Monday night in Milwaukee as 102-96 losers to the ghastly Bucks.
Woodson got sick before the Bucks game, presumably from food poisoning and not from coaching one of the NBA’s worst teams. Take it from Michael Gearon Sr., nearly 30 years into serving the Hawks as everything from general manager to chairman of the board. “The question you have to ask yourself is, are the players improving under his coaching?” said Gearon, now among the Hawks’ nine owners. “The answer is that there isn’t a guy on this team who has played better anyplace else, and that includes a veteran like Tyronn Lue. You look and you see that Mike has all of these projects, and every one of them has consistently gotten better.”
The two Joshes (Smith and Childress), along with the two Williamses (Marvin and Shelden). Zaza Pachulia, considered as worthless in Milwaukee as stale beer. Even Joe Johnson, now an All-Star, who was just another good player in Phoenix.
This is the same Woodson who would have succeeded his NBA mentor, Larry Brown, as head coach of the Detroit Pistons. The timing just wasn’t right. With an opening in Atlanta during the summer of 2004, and with Brown spending another year coaching a championship-caliber team, Woodson left as Brown’s assistant to take his first head coaching job. He has grown with that job, and he’ll continue to do so, either here or elsewhere.
So this is encouraging news for those around the dwindling Hawks Nation who want their team to have its best chance to join the living again: Despite serving as coach during the last three of the Hawks’ eight-consecutive seasons as a lottery bunch, Woodson will return for at least a fourth season as head coach.
Won’t he?
“I appreciate what he’s done, and I really think we do as an organization,” Gearon said. “It’s a very difficult challenge. I mean, he had a kid out of high school in Josh Smith, and a couple of rookies. You can’t expect him to knock people dead, because you don’t have a team that is as mature as an expansion team. You’re starting as close to ground zero as you can.”
Makes sense to me. So do the other eight owners (minus Steve Belkin, who is suing his colleagues for control of the team) agree with Gearon and myself? “I haven’t seen anything to the contrary so far,” said Gearon, who nevertheless admitted next season is the key for Woodson.
There were a slew of injuries this season that kept damaging the Hawks’ projected rotation. Still, here was their biggest problem: a ridiculously flawed roster, which was the fault of Billy Knight, their general manager. Among other horrors, Knight acquired three backup point guards after failing to draft either Chris Paul or Deron Williams, both available at the time, both prospering elsewhere.
Knight picks them.
Woodson just coaches them.
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Robinson’s allies deserve credit for roles
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Throughout the celebration of the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s arrival in Major League Baseball, the two individuals responsible for it were rarely brought to mind. One was the commissioner, later fired before he served out his full term, the other a skilled and crafty club operator bold enough to take the plunge. One, Happy Chandler. The other, Branch Rickey.
Even though Chandler was bounced from office at an owners’ uprising in 1951, students of baseball history find it strange that he is installed in the Hall of Fame. There were two determining factors — one, that he was commissioner when the color line was broken; and two, that Bowie Kuhn took it upon himself to do it when he became commissioner. It wasn’t an act that popularized Kuhn, for his term came to an abrupt end shortly afterward. He accepted it as a duty that baseball owed the one-time senator-governor who was wont to burst out into the lyrics of “My Old Kentucky Home” at any given moment.
Rickey ran the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson wasn’t the first black player he had auditioned. Two players from the Negro Leagues were given tryouts when the Dodgers trained at West Point during World War II but didn’t make it. When Robinson came along, Rickey moved into high gear. The story I’ve read is that he flew to Kentucky and took his case directly to Chandler at his home in Versailles. It was a serious confrontation in which Rickey convinced the commissioner that Robinson was the right man with the right talent and the right stuff to carry the torch. It was a handshake deal.
After a season on the Montreal farm club, where he was the leading hitter in the International League — and where his shortstop comrade was Al Campanis, who would later be sandbagged by Ted Koppel and Roger Kahn — the Dodgers were next, and with him playing first base they won the pennant in 1947. Then came the Yankees in the “Subway World Series,” and it caught America’s attention. It went the full seven games before the Yankees closed it out in Yankee Stadium. Robinson hit .259, drove in three runs and stole two bases. The most vivid memory of it, though, was Bill Bevens’ near no-hitter, down to the last out before Cookie Lavagetto broke it up with a hit off the right-field wall, and Ebbets Field went into a frenzy.
It was written that “it is to the credit of Chandler’s administration that permitted the brilliant matching of Rickey and Robinson that signaled baseball’s greatest moment.” This, no doubt, served Kuhn well when he made his decision to champion Chandler for Cooperstown.
It was somewhat saddening that Robinson’s tenure as a Dodger did not come to a warm and cozy parting. For some heartless reason, Jackie was traded across the river to the Giants — the hated Giants — for Dick Littlefield, a left-handed pitcher, and some pieces of silver. But Robinson never wore a Giants uniform. Soon after the trade, he sold the story of his retirement to Look Magazine for $10,000, which, as you might have imagined, ignited the New York sportswriting corps. And upset his warmest fan, his son, who was a Dodger at heart, so I read.
Kuhn, once he became commissioner, struck up a close relationship with Chandler and often had him as his guest at World Series time. So did he have Robinson in 1972, when Cincinnati opened at home against Oakland. Jackie threw out the first pitch. Nine days later he was dead, but the memory lives on and strong.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Just got back from the Thrashers’ skate. Asked Keith Tkachuk if a team approaches a game three any differently when it’s down 0-2 in a playoff series. Keith looked around the room, then whispered: “We’re really gonna try to win tonight. But don’t tell anybody.” See, it’s not such a complicated game.
9: Had dinner at a nice steakhouse last night with my AJC brothers. Ran into the Thrashers. The entire team. What are the odds? Asked Bob Hartley today what the tab came to. “I don’t even know. It’s, what, maybe $100 a person? Must have been $25,000.” I think he meant $2,500. Otherwise, it’s the first dinner to qualify as a salary cap hit.
8: And if it really was $25,000, there’s one more lawsuit coming among Atlanta Spirit owners.
7: I will say this about the Thrashers: They’re remarkably loose for a team that’s two losses away from the off-season. But the NHL playoffs have seen its share of strange turnarounds - witness Carolina losing its first two playoff games to Montreal before winning the Cup last season - and the Garden has hosted its share of collapses (tease to 6).
6: For some reason, the Thrashers have always played well in New York, even in the painful early years. The most memorable: a 5-2 win in March of 2002 when where-are-they-now goalie Frederic Cassivi was making his first NHL start and the undermanned Thrashers’ lineup total 419 career goals compared to the Rangers’ 2,349. I can still remember the late Dan Snyder throwing a punch at Eric Lindros, who towered over him.
5: Welcome to Burger King. My name is Mike Nifong. May I take your order?
4: I don’t doubt that Nifong has some regrets about the way he acted during the Duke investigation. But his statement - “To the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved incorrect, I apologize to the three students that were wrongly accused” - might be the worst apology I’ve ever heard.
3: Saw a headline this week, “Team’s core likely will stay together.” It was a Hawks story. Question: If a franchise that goes 13-69, 26-56 and 29-52 (so far) even has a core, do you want it to stay together?
2: Mike Woodson missed a game the other night with “food poisoning.” Look, Mike, you can say you have a bad headache. Trust us, we’ll understand.
1: And by the way, enough about NBA teams “tanking it” to try to position themselves for the draft lottery. The Hawks don’t need to try to lose.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Lehtonen’s Thrashers’ best hope
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Even if the Thrashers lose tonight, Bob Hartley made the right choice. When an organization works forever just to breathe the playoffs’ heady air, it can be hard to grasp that there’s life beyond this one postseason. But there is, and Kari Lehtonen will be a large part, maybe the largest part, of that life. Kari Lehtonen will be the goalie for this franchise long after this coach is gone.
During the first intermission of the Thrashers’ last regular-season game, their general manager called Lehtonen “a great young goaltender” and dismissed the notion that, for the playoffs, Hartley might choose Johan Hedberg instead. “It’s 100 percent [Lehtonen],” Don Waddell said. “No doubt about it.”
Come Game 2 of Round 1, Hedberg was the starter. Lehtonen hadn’t distinguished himself in Game 1 beyond dyeing his hair blue and then bleaching it blond. He let in four goals, the fourth being particularly soft. Still, his misplay wasn’t nearly as bad as Patrick Roy’s clanger in Game 4 of the 2001 Stanley Cup finals, and Colorado’s coach, one Bob Hartley, didn’t see fit to sit the great Roy for Game 5. And Roy, it must be noted, was 35; Lehtonen is 23.
Just as the Thrashers have waited forever to play a postseason series, they’ve waited just as long for a goaltender of Lehtonen’s class. (Indeed, the chief reason they hadn’t made the playoffs until Season No. 7 was because they kept looking for a Lehtonen and finding Damian Rhodes, Norm Maracle and Byron Dafoe.) As Hartley said Monday, “The sky’s the limit for this guy. With his talent, he can steal games.”
Tonight Lehtonen will seek to win, if not outright steal, the biggest game in Thrashers history. It’s the role he was drafted and nurtured to play. “I always want to be the guy to make a difference,” he said, and he’s capable.
Hartley is trying to win games in the here and now, which is what coaches do. (If they don’t, coaches get fired.) His explanation for benching Lehtonen: “We’re not going to sit there and watch the parade go by us.” But there will no Cup-winning parades this year or in the next 10 years if Lehtonen isn’t allowed to develop into a bona fide Playoff Goalie. Hedberg, who’s 33 and who played well enough in a Game 2 loss, is the backup for a reason: He’s simply not as gifted as Lehtonen. Few guys are.
To lose, perhaps even to get swept, in Round 1 would be disappointing. To damage a 23-year-old’s psyche because he had a shaky playoff debut would be the height of organizational folly. Wouldn’t Lehtonen have felt rotten if he’d gotten to play only Game 1? “Not if we win the Stanley Cup,” he said. “I always put the team first. But of course you’re not satisfied if you’re not playing.”
He admitted Monday he’d been “very down because of the decision” to start Hedberg in Game 2. After a rough couple of days, Lehtonen did “some thinking by myself at my place.” He steeled himself and practiced hard. And now? “The old Kari’s back.”
The one thing Lehtonen isn’t is old. There have been sudden goaltending successes in Stanley Cup annals — Ken Dryden in 1971, Roy in 1986, Cam Ward last year — and it’s not inconceivable that a sharp Lehtonen could yet turn this series. And if he doesn’t and the Rangers close this out in routine fashion, there will be other seasons and other series.
He’s playing tonight because he gives this team its best chance to win. The same will be true next year, and the year after, and the year after that. Even as Kari Lehtonen seeks to prop up the Thrashers’ present, he remains a pillar of their future.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
Baseball’s still telling the ‘big lie’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They kept coming. Hundreds of them. All of those African-American baseball players from just two youth leagues in Fulton County kept streaming out of the tunnel in the right-field corner of Turner Field on Sunday before the Braves’ game against the Florida Marlins.
Somebody’s lying.
Either that, or this was a mirage on what was called “Jackie Robinson Day” throughout the major leagues.
Then again, maybe those 350-something kids with baseball caps, team jerseys and wide eyes didn’t get the word: African-Americans don’t play baseball.
You also had that other scene representing many around the ball park. Within a hook slide of Hank Aaron’s statue on the plaza, Tony Mulrain, 38, squatted to give a hotdog to Morgan, his six-year-old son. They are African-Americans. “This is his first baseball game,” said Tony, glowing nearly as much as the younger Mulrain, who cheerfully wrapped his fingers around the largest bun he’d ever seen.
Guess the Mulrains from Marietta got lost along their way down I-75 to watch folks dribble or tackle.
Which brings us back to the biggest lie in the history of sports: Not only have African-Americans stopped playing baseball as youth, but they all prefer All Mighty Football and Basketball to the sport that Robinson used to become a baseball and civil rights icon. Worse, to hear proponents of sports’ Big Lie tell it, the primary reason why the number of African-American players in baseball has dropped from 27 percent in 1975 to 18 percent in 1982 to barely eight percent this season is because African-Americans don’t care about the game anymore.
With apologies to the late Jack Buck, I guess we aren’t supposed to believe what we just saw on Sunday.
“Wow. I’ll tell you what. I never even heard any of this stuff about African-Americans not liking baseball and preferring to play other sports instead of baseball until I got into the professional ranks,” said Dontrelle Willis, shaking his head in the Marlins’ clubhouse. He is their 25-year-old ace who already ranks among the game’s elite.
Willis also is an African-American from Oakland, Calif. Added Willis, “Where I’m from, everybody plays baseball. Latins. Whites. African-Americans. You think about C.C. Sabathia, and he is from the [San Francisco] Bay area. So is Jimmy Rollins, and Jermaine Dye. It’s really sad, because contrary to what is being said, African-Americans are playing baseball everywhere. Just not in the majors.”
For verification, there were the cold, blustery and gray conditions on Sunday afternoon at Turner Field. How appropriate for an occasion that deserved clouds instead of sunshine. There were as many African-American players in both dugouts combined as there were 60 years before when a Brooklyn Dodgers rookie slid by baseball’s color barrier.
One.
That one was Willis, the only one for the Marlins. In contrast, the Braves join the Houston Astros as the only teams in the majors with zero African-Americans on their 40-man rosters. Just 11 years ago, after the Braves won their only world championship in Atlanta, they started that season with 11 African-Americans on their 40-man roster. This contributes to the strangeness of it all: The Braves have made their fairly quick evolution over the years toward operating without African-Americans players in what supposedly is “the black mecca.”
John Smoltz, the Braves veteran pitcher, who usually has deep thoughts on everything, paused, and then he paused some more. “Uh,” said Smoltz, before another long pause. “You know, obviously, you have trends in baseball. … I actually have no idea. I don’t have any reasons. I don’t have a theory. I’m just going to remember this day for what it stands for, and not for maybe what it doesn’t stand for, if that makes sense.”
Well, it does. You have theory, and then you have reality. In theory, Robinson’s legacy still lives in the majors, with the game retiring his No. 42 and developing a few token initiatives supposedly to attract African-American players. In reality, baseball officials care more about promoting the Big Lie than finding African-American players.
Permalink | Comments (92) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Thrashers’ best players failing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Before this series began, Bob Hartley boiled playoff success down to two elements.
One was obvious: goaltending.
The other should’ve seemed obvious: goal scorers.
After that everything sort of falls in place. Or falls apart.
“The best players come to play,” Hartley said. “It’s about clutch performers — goalies and scorers, those are the guys who come up with big performances. It’s the time of the year when some individuals come up performances that overshadow their talent. But if your best players show up, you’ll be fine.”
Marian Hossa: 0 points.
Slava Kozlov: 0 points.
Ilya Kovalchuk: He scored one goal Saturday, tying him for the team lead with Pascal Dupuis, Eric Belanger — and Shane Hnidy.
The Thrashers: not fine.
There are a lot of things you might want to see through two playoff games. Shane Hnidy being tied for the goal-scoring lead isn’t one of them.
The Thrashers went 0-for-6 on the power play Saturday, when most of the aforementioned best players are on the ice. They lost 2-1 to the New York Rangers and are now down 2-0 in their virgin playoff series, going to Manhattan.
“We can’t get frustrated,” Hossa said. “We just have to find a way to score, and I have to find a way to be productive.”
Give him points for honesty. Hossa might be one of the five best players in the league. But the one criticism that followed him from Ottawa was a tendency to go quiet in the postseason. That might merely have been a case of the scatter-shooting Canadian media looking for a sacrificial lamb whenever the Senators took an unexpected playoff dive.
But if Hossa and Kozlov are actually in this series, they must be skating with some sort of cloaking device.
The Rangers’ first goal of the series was scored by Jaromir Jagr. Their winning goals have come from Michael Nylander and Brendan Shanahan.
For one team, the best players came to play.
Hossa: “It’s frustrating, but I have to fight through it.”
Kovalchuk: “We need to get more screens because their goalie is big. We need to get in there, get dirty, score some dirty goals.”
Clean, dirty, off the roof, Sean Avery’s head — Hartley won’t be picky. He’s already benched a starting goalie. But he can’t bench a forward line. Calling up three guys from the Chicago Wolves wouldn’t quite have the same impact as playing Johan Hedberg did on Saturday.
Hartley’s first significant coaching decision of the series — to sit Kari Lehtonen after Thursday’s 4-3 loss — didn’t backfire. Until the last four minutes of Game 2, Hedberg was shutting out the Rangers. New York’s only goal was scored by the arena. It was a fluke to the 10th power in the first period, when Avery flipped the puck into the Thrashers’ zone from outside the blue line and it caromed off a partition between the glass and into an open net (Hedberg had left the crease to meet the expected puck’s arrival along the boards).
That was New York’s only goal until Shanahan converted a pass from Avery in the slot for the game winner with 4:01 left, after Kovalchuk had tied it. Hedberg made 37 saves, several on rebounds and a breakaway. He probably did enough to earn another start. But it won’t matter if the offense continues to look anemic.
The Thrashers have been the more physical team of the two. Maybe that gets them a few points in the WBC rankings, but not here.
They have not played smart. The Rangers have 77 shots in two games. Avery, who is paid to be a pest, has gotten under the team’s skin, as much as some players don’t want to admit it. (Kovalchuk: “He means nothing. I don’t even want to talk about him.”)
No. They don’t want to talk about him. They just want to retaliate. Kovalchuk and Tkachuk both chased after the Rangers’ forward during a power play and drew minor penalties.
When asked if his team showed its frustration, Hartley said: “I don’t think it’s frustration. I think it’s the love we have for Sean Avery.”
They might want to start creating some of their own love.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Trainer reigns at steeplechase
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kingston — Eventually they’re going to have to change the name of Kingston Downs, tomorrow, if not sooner. You’ve heard the term “Horses for courses.” Well, here’s a “trainer for a course.” Change the name of Kingston to Sheppard Downs, and you’ve got it.
Jonathan Sheppard arrived in this country from England in 1961 with a career as a jockey in mind. And he did ride for a while, but then the light came on. Instead of riding horses, why not get in the business of training and grooming them and leave the saddle duty to somebody else? Besides, he was getting a little heavy for it, though riders of jumping horses don’t have to starve themselves down to pygmy size as do those who pilot flat racers.
Well, that was $11 million or so ago in earnings, and by this time he is the prime trainer of steeplechase horses in the country. And he increased his lifetime take Saturday afternoon at the aforementioned Kingston Downs, which has become like home field to Sheppard since the grass course opened 13 years ago. His stable turned in two wins and two seconds at the annual horsefest Saturday, the hillsides banked with thousands of party-going Georgians who have a taste for the great outdoors and the sight of hurdling horses.
Star of the show was the 8-year-old Seafaring Man, brown-coated son of Sea Hero, winner of the Kentucky Derby in 1993 bearing the colors of the distinguished Paul Mellon. In the irons, as she was on all four of Sheppard’s jumpers, was the young Danielle Hodsdon, steeplechasing’s leading rider last year. Seafaring Man got away to a laggard start, but that is of little matter over a course of two miles. Hodsdon lay back in the field, content to let the others, mainly Mark the Shark and Bow Strada, scrap it out up front, then turned it on coming into the stretch and won pulling away. Bow Strada finished second and The Looper third in the $75,000 featured Georgia Cup.
It was a return to the wars for Seafaring Man, who didn’t race the entire 2006 season. “It’s good to see him show such form after a year away,” Sheppard said. “I first saw him at Keeneland one day and I liked his size. I approached the owner on the backside and I bought him just a couple of years ago.”
It was a card of six races that offered combined purses of $210,000, much of which landed in the bankroll of two men the Atlanta Steeplechase Committee honored for their years of racing. Dr. John Griggs of Kentucky, an Auburn alumnus, won the Irongate Cup with Hip Hop, Chip Miller in the saddle. Angel del Viento, an Argentine import, won the Sport of Kings maiden race, Richard Boucher up. Then Sheppard shifted into gear, won the Grey Goose Hurdle with Hodsdon up on Slew’s Peak, and so it went, the feature clearing just before the predicted rainstorm blew in from the west.
Boucher was a stand-in for Jody Petty, who rode McDynamo to the Eclipse Award last year. Petty never made it past the first jump, and this was a forecast of spills to come. Five jockeys went down at the hedges, worst day for such calamities in the history of Kingston. None suffered serious injuries, but Petty had to be transported to a hospital in Rome with cuts about the face.
That was the distressful side of the day. The bright side, under a gloomy, scowling overhead, was Jonathan Sheppard’s return to form at the acreage he loves. “See here,” he said, pointing to the standings of a season yet short, “I hadn’t won a race before.”
Now, he has and the form is back. So, call it Sheppard Downs.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Falcons years ahead of NFL on bad behavior
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
With a little push (OK, from me), the Falcons were among the NFL pioneers on something. Let’s start with the present before returning to the future.
Under commissioner Roger Goodell’s new policy of nearly zero tolerance for those involved with off-the-field silliness, each team must have a player-development director. These folks help with financial advice. They help with housing needs. They even help with explaining why the dessert fork is closest to the plate.
The primary role of these folks is to help keep guys out of jail.
Chances are, Falcons officials nodded between yawns during Goodell’s announcement this week. They’ve had such a person for a while. These days, his name is Kevin Winston, entering his second season in Atlanta after five years with the New York Jets. The Falcons’ original such person was Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, highly acclaimed in that role by the NFL for 13 years before he joined the Falcons’ strength-and-conditioning staff.
The thing is, the Falcons have employed player-development directors longer than most of their peers. Partly because of omniscience, and mostly because they hadn’t a choice.
Long before Pacman Jones began spending more time in courtrooms than locker rooms and Chris Henry’s four arrests in three different states within months and 50-something other NFL players unofficially auditioning for “Cops” during the past two years, there were all of those knuckleheads on the Falcons.
We’re talking about 1993, when linebacker Darion Conner was charged with DUI. Twice. Cornerback Bruce Pickens was charged with rape, but he was cleared on his way to being traded. Quarterback Bob Gagliano was charged with DUI. Wide receiver Andre Rison was arrested for an altercation with his girlfriend that involved Rison firing a gun into the air outside of a supermarket. Why? Well, he said somebody questioned his manhood.
This was before Rison’s girlfriend torched his $2 million house and had Rison claiming afterward that he was contemplating suicide.
During the five years before all of that, two Falcons died in automobile wrecks (Brad Beckman and Ralph Norwood) and another succumbed to a drug overdose (David Croudip).
I suggested back then that the Falcons hire somebody to bridge the gap between players and management. Somebody who could be the organization’s Harry Edwards, the noted sociologist from the San Francisco Bay Area whom Bill Walsh hired to counsel players, coaches and others during his 49ers dynasty. Somebody of high moral standards who nevertheless could relate to the Falcons’ knuckleheads.
Somebody named Billy Johnson, the former standout Falcons player who was an educator and coach in Atlanta on the high school and collegiate level.
The late Rankin Smith Sr., the Falcons’ original owner, called me after reading my column and said, “I’ve talked to Billy off and on about this, and we’re going to talk some more.”
Then Smith hired him.
Splendid move. Compared to the ugliness of the early 1990s, the Falcons quickly became NFL choir boys, and the streak has continued. In recent years, there were those Rod Coleman moments (jail time for disorderly conduct after a traffic incident and the crashing of his Escalade after swerving away from a deer). There also were those Michael Vick controversies, ranging from “Ron Mexico” to that trick water-bottle thing. Still, the Falcons aren’t the Bengals (nine players arrested in nine months), and Winston hopes to keep it that way, without help from the commissioner’s crackdown.
“The new policy really doesn’t affect what we do, because we kind of do programs year round,” Winston said. “Through Falcons University, we’ve done orientations for all of our incoming free agents and rookies. We’ll continue to look at resources to be able to support our players.
“We understand it’s a small percentage of guys that get in trouble, but nonetheless, we want to make sure we have things in place as players need them.”
Those players will need them. Unless they prefer mug shots to publicity shots.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Lehtonen must focus in goal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It took the franchise 574 regular-season games to get here. Maybe you can’t expect everybody to get it right the first night.
Not the defense, which fumbled too many pucks early. Not the offensive stars, who went pointless.
Certainly not the goalie.
Kari Lehtonen made 34 saves Thursday night. Statistically, that would seem like a good first playoff game. But he gave up one goal that was at least as ugly as his recently dyed-and-bleached-then-buzzed hair.
One bad goal in 38 shots hardly makes for a bad night. But it was one bad goal more than the New Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist allowed, and that was the difference in a 4-3 Thrashers loss.
Maybe Lehtonen can start over today. Clear his mind. Shave his head.
“Kari was just like all of those [playoff] first-timers who I feel like probably was not as comfortable as he would have liked,” Thrashers coach Bob Hartley said, “That’s experience. But you need to go through this at some point in your career.”
Yeah, except this is a seven-game series. The learning curve needs to be really short.
The Thrashers were not sharp early. They trailed 2-0 and spent the rest of the night trying to dog-paddle out of the deep-end. But when a goal by Shane Hnidy cut the Rangers’ lead to 3-2 at 12:19 in the second period, they seemed to be taking the game over. They started controlling the puck better. They had the Rangers backing up. In some cases, they had the Rangers on the ice — as when Garnet Exelby flattened Jaromir Jagr against the boards.
But less than five minutes after Hnidy’s goal, Lehtonen made a critical mistake. He attempted to glove a shot by the Rangers’ Petr Prucha and dropped it right on the door step, creating a gift-wrapped rebound for Michael Nylander, who banged it home for a 4-2 lead. Lehtonen said he was caught off guard by Prucha’s shot, saying it fluttered.
“I’m not happy with that fourth goal. That knuckle-puck, those are hard to handle,” he said. “I need to put my chest behind the puck, and not just try to stop it with my glove. That’s the only one that bugs me.”
If Lehtonen avoids the same mistake in Game 2 on Saturday, it will be his second correction of the week. On Tuesday, he and defenseman Andy Sutton decided to dye their hair blue. (Lehtonen’s actually was bleached on the side with a blue stripe, like a Finnish skunk.)
The intent might have been team spirit and all that. But it wasn’t quite stolen from the Patrick Roy school of playoff preparation. Some Thrashers veterans were less than thrilled.
When the media quizzed Lehtonen about the hair Wednesday, he apparently started to have second thoughts. “It didn’t look the way I thought, and people were talking about it too much,” he said.
So he had his hair buzzed later in the day, leaving mostly bleached stubs with just hints of blue down the middle.
Hartley can only hope his goal is past the hair issues so he can move on to goaltending.The Thrashers missed the playoffs last season primarily because of Lehtonen’s groin issues. They made the playoffs this season primarily because he improved his conditioning, stayed healthy and became tougher physically and mentally, making up for an occasionally porous defense.
Logical conclusion: If the Thrashers win in these playoffs, it will be because of Lehtonen.
But this is not Hartley’s first Zamboni ride. The man doesn’t care about stepping on egos in the regular season and he cares even less in the playoffs. He doesn’t have the luxury of patience and knows there’s an experienced playoff goalie in Johan Hedberg on the bench.
Hedberg was strong this season and, more importantly, led Pittsburgh to the Eastern Conference finals in 2001. He started 18 playoff games after playing only nine in the regular season following his call-up from the minors.
It’s only one game. It’s only one goal. But it’s already the difference in the series.
“Guys like me who never experienced this before, it’s going to be a lot easier in Game 2,” Lehtonen said. “The most important thing is we have to get wins now.”
And stay out of the salon.
Permalink | Comments (49) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Steeplechase spiced by keen competition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Georgia’s romance with thoroughbred racing has been more a one-day tryst than a romance. Once a year, in a pasture near Rome, bearing the regal name of Kingston Downs, it takes place Saturday. This is the third home of Atlanta Steeplechase, first on a bend in the Chattahoochee River; then on John Wayt’s farm on Bethel Church Road, and now, finally settled in this rolling spread in a bend of the Etowah River. Home at last.
This has been going on since 1966, cheerily advertising itself as a “lawn party.” And, in truth, it is. Such fun. Terrier races, pig races, outlandish hat contest, rock climbing, petting zoo, all the stuff you’d expect at the county fair. And the racing of some of America’s finest hurdling thoroughbreds.
Now to the nuts and bolts of it all. What doesn’t come clear to most Georgians is that this is not just a one-day gambol in the grass. This is one in a series of national steeplechase races that began in Little Everglades, in Florida, a month ago, then continued through Camden and Aiken in South Carolina, cozy havens for thoroughbred runners since the time Yankees first came south for the waters and the pine fragrance. The races are capital events in the economic status of these resorts, and to give you just one glimpse of that, race day in Camden seven years ago drew 71,000 spectators.
Steeplechase has been the foundation of horse racing as we know it today. It began in Ireland, when one horse owner challenged another to race his steed from one church steeple to another over all the hedgerows and such obstacles in between. Horses aren’t bred for steeplechase. Usually, they happen. Most of them are too slow and too bulky for flat racing, and there are horses that like to jump over things, like kids. On the other hand, some of them have been successful on the flat track, then switched to the jumps as they aged.
One coming out this year named Alumni Hall earned over $750,000 in flat racing, and some have been stakes winners. One of them will be running in the Georgia Cup, the $75,000 feature Saturday at Kingston. His name is Riddle, a 6-year-old gelding — nearly all are geldings — and Jody Petty, who jockeyed McDynamo to the Eclipse Award last year will be in the saddle.
The winner of the Georgia Cup last year will not be back to defend. Quem se Atreve, a Brazilian import, running in the colors of Sarah Lyn Stable, has developed into a major contender, and was leading into the stretch at Aiken last month when he fell and is on the mend. The 7-year-old was a late developer, and surprisingly so. Hence a field of five will go to the post Saturday, Seafaring Man, Bow Strada, Mark the Shark, The Looper and the aforementioned Riddle. There’s little to go on this early in the season, but the two favorites are likely to be Riddle and Mark the Shark, who won two allowances and finished third in a graded stake last year.
Now, that I know passes over the all-time champion trainer of jumpers, and at the Atlanta meet, Jonathan Sheppard, and it is never safe to go against Sheppard here. He’ll have a horse in all six of the races, and in the Georgia Cup he sends out Seafaring Man, 8-year-old gelding with Danielle Hodsdon, leading rider of the spring, in the irons. He’ll be kindly weighted, carrying only 142 pounds, including Ms. Hodsdon, but so will all the others except Bow Strada, a British import carrying 150 pounds.
Sheppard has trained the winners of more than $11 million on the steeplechase circuit, winner of five features in Atlanta. (He has saddled 172 jumpers here.) And has been successful in flat racing as well. But it is the steeplechase that has been his breadwinner. “If it weren’t for the Atlanta Steeplechase,” he once said, “I’d have to get a job.”
He did once have a “job.” He was an accountant back in England, tied to a desk and hating it. “So one day I just got up and walked out and got into horse racing,” he said. A delightfully affable gentleman who will be receiving a special honor before the races, as will Dr. John Griggs, a longtime successful breeder and racer from Kentucky. Let the party begin and the races be run.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Playoffs a breath of fresh air for Philips
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Thursday night we begin the purification. Thursday night we leave behind winless streaks and losing streaks and second-rate goalies with third-rate groins and plus-minus statistics that defy logic (Yannick Tremblay: minus-42?).
A playoff game.
By the hockey team.
In Philips Arena.
“I’m getting nervous,” said the general manager, Don Waddell, who is experiencing this for his first time in nine years (seven seasons) of employment. “It feels like opening night in first season.”
Remember that night? Patrik Stefan, the franchise’s first draft pick, sets up Kelly Buchberger, the team’s first captain, for the team’s first goal. New Jersey scored four (the game-winner: by Bobby Holik).
First game. First loss. Sixty would follow.
Breathe in.
Light a candle.
Open the chakras
They are here. The Thrashers played 82 games this season and, finally, their next appearance isn’t the front row of the draft. Thursday night, they play an 83rd game. They have won a division title. They don’t necessarily need a playoff series win over the New York Rangers to validate that. But why stop now?
This city hasn’t had any pro team in the postseason since the Braves lost the divisional playoffs to Houston in October of 2005. It has been 18 months. Last year, the Braves lost the division. The Falcons lost their heads. The Hawks just continued to lose.
The Thrashers suddenly are our crowning jewel. Who knew?
Thursday night, we cleanse, in the most unlikely of venues. Philips Arena has never hosted a playoff game, unless you count Arena League football, which we don’t. Can we assume the ghosts are gone? Does negative energy just dissipate like that?
“It can linger,” Diane Garner said.
She is an ordained minister, an “energy facilitator” and store manager of “Synchronicity” in Roswell, a sort of metaphysical boutique of books and incense.
“I’ve actually been to a few hockey games,” Garner said. “I went to a couple of Thrashers games, and once I was at a minor-league game in Omaha, Nebraska. I almost got hit by a puck. But it hit the guy behind me.”
Good karma.
So there must be something to this. Diane does cleansings. For $125 (plus mileage), she offered to drive down to Philips Arena to, as she said, “help get rid of that negative energy and allow the positive energy to enter the room.”
It should be noted that $125 was actually quite a deal, considering that’s usually the cost for a house, not a sports arena. Unfortunately, I could not get my editors or Waddell to pick up the cost.
“We’ll skip that,” Waddell said. “I believe we’ve already started our cleansing this year and it will continue with the first playoff game. There’ll will be many more to come for both franchises.” (He was alluding to also the Hawks. Either he was being a good Atlanta Spirit team player or he needs more than just a cleansing - he needs oxygen.)
Nonetheless, Carner was ready to go to work. The healing process would involve a “saging.” She would burn white sage to “cleanse the area.” Doorways are particularly important. Goal creases couldn’t hurt, either.
“You invite the positive energy to come in and remain,” she said. “You send the negative energy up to the light.”
The light?
“It’s what we call the universal source. We send the negative energy to the light and then call in all of the archangels.”
Archangels?
“Yeah. It’s sort of like that movie. You know, the baseball movie.”
Angels in the Outfield?
“That’s the one. That’s one my favorites.”
I spent $3 on some sage. For the record, I waved it in front of TurboTax Tuesday night and it didn’t help.
The Thrashers are on their own. But they are here, finally. They are here, after so many draft picks and expansion picks and free agents that nobody else really wanted.
Breathe out: eight goalies in the first three seasons. Breathe in: Kari Lehtonen and Johan Hedberg.
Breathe out: Martin Prochazka, Kamil Piros, Ed Ward. Breathe in: Marian Hossa, Ilya Kovalchuk, Slava Kozlov.
At last, a trade deadline wasn’t used to help stock another playoff team. Prospects left but Alexei Zhitinik and Keith Tkachuk arrived.
Nobody has waited longer or endured more than Waddell.
“I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason,” he said. “Some things you just can’t explain. But this is what we had in mind, to be here from day one and have this dream and be able to live it out.”
A playoff game, by this team, in this arena. Let the cleansing begin.
Permalink | Comments (118) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Don’t fire Imus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
He should stay. Otherwise, how will members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team and everybody else know if Don Imus truly has repented?
Yeah, let him stay. Let him continue to do whatever it is he does on his nationally syndicated radio show that is simulcast by a cable network.
Let him demonstrate that he isn’t the same guy who once called noted African-American journalist Gwen Ifill “a cleaning lady” and former African-American Secretary of State Colin Powell “a weasel” before referring to the African-American players on the Rutgers women’s team as “nappy-headed hos.”
Let him stay, because unless you fire all of the rappers who use those same vulgar terms, you can’t fire Imus.
Just let nature take its course, which it already has with this Imus thing. Noted personalities such as Cal Ripken Jr., have canceled scheduled appearances on Imus’ show. Plus, advertisers are leaving quicker than a Rutgers’ fastbreak.
Staples, Inc.
Procter and Gamble.
Now the folks at Bigelow Tea say they’re on the verge of bolting.
Let him stay, all right, because he already has his tongue out the door.
Permalink | Comments (233) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Braves will be fine without Hampton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Nothing against Mike Hampton or anything, but the Braves pitching will be just fine, thank you.
No, better than that.
Try slightly beyond good, especially if the Braves’ first seven games of the season are indicative of the rest of the way. Says here, they are a 6-1 team that continues to sizzle atop the National League East. After just a year’s absence, the Braves boldly have returned to their formula of yore: timely hitting, efficient fielding and splendid pitching.
Now about that splendid pitching, exemplified on Tuesday night at Turner Field by Tim Hudson making the Washington Nationals look even more wretched than they are. During his seven innings of the Braves’ 8-0 victory, he allowed three hits while striking out seven and walking one. This is after he spent his first start of the season last week throwing seven nice innings (two hits, one run) against the Philadelphia Phillies.
This is just more of the same from the NL’s best pitching staff not based in San Diego. Solid starting pitching, competent relievers. Such has been the case for the Braves, even without Hampton’s left arm that once produced six seasons with 13 or more victories. Such will remain the case for the Braves when spring becomes summer along the way to autumn that should give this bunch a 15th division title in 16 seasons.
With Hampton slated to miss a second consecutive season with a surgically repaired elbow, this strikingly balanced group of veterans and youngsters still is a couple of fungoes away from reaching the Cy Glavine, Cy Maddux and Cy Smoltz territory. Even so, the remaining starters are plentiful and talented. Along with Hudson, suddenly rejuvenated after his worst year ever, there is the accomplished John Smoltz, the promising Chuck James and the experienced Mark Redman. The nice arms of Kyle Davies and Lance Cormier give the Braves youthful depth.
Not only that, the Braves finally have guys who battle fires out of the bullpen with water instead of gasoline. This time, it was Mike Gonzalez’s turn to give the Braves wonderful relief for an inning, before Chad Paronto did the same in the ninth. So the Braves didn’t have to bother the likes of setup guy Rafael Soriano and closer Bob Wickman, both brilliant so far. Both the antithesis of the mess that dominated the Brave’s bullpen last year.
Then there is that other thing. It’s the splendid thing that had Braves manager Bobby Cox changing his frown over losing Hampton earlier in the afternoon to a smile regarding everything else.
Said Cox, glowing when discussing all of his pitchers, “Ah, we’ve got gamers. They love to play the game, you know. They’re pretty focused on winning. They get used to it, and they like it.”
They haven’t a choice. Not given the Braves’ legacy since their worst-to-first trip in 1991. All-Star catcher Brian McCann was a 7-year-old growing up in Duluth back then, but he still remembers enough about those early Braves and the subsequent ones to know that mediocrity isn’t an option when it comes to pitching.
Here’s what else McCann knows: He knows his batterymates know the same, both old and young.
“What’s going to have to happen is that, just like the other day when Kyle Davies comes out and dominates the game, that’s what we’re going to need from him,” said McCann, referring to Sunday, when Davies held the mighty New York Mets to four hits and a couple of runs in 6-2/3 innings in a Braves’ 3-2 victory. “And Lance Cormier and Mark Redman, they all can do the job. Obviously, losing somebody like Mike Hampton is a huge hit to the team, but you’ve got to move on. Injuries happen to every team, but you just have to make the best of the situation.”
The Braves will.
That’s because they already are.
Permalink | Comments (69) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: It’s a good thing Liberty Media is only buying the Braves for tax purposes, because they’re getting a heck of a writeoff with Mike Hampton.
9: Things you want to see: Don Imus standing over a sink, washing and setting the hair of players for the Rutgers women basketball team. And then maybe forcing him to walk the streets as an old, white ho.
8: There seem to be a lot of people dumping on Tiger Woods for letting his emotions get to him on the final day of the Masters (“What the hell just happened?” he yelled after his approach shot on 16 went into the bunker.). I’ve gotten e-mails, blogs and was asked about it on a radio show. But, people, Woods is a competitive guy. What did you expect? If we’ve never seen this side of him before, maybe it’s because we’ve never seen him lose on a Sunday before. Does it really mean the guy’s a dirtbag? If he blows a few more majors and starts throwing his clubs into lakes, then get back to me.
7: You know, if we just canceled the rest of the Hawks’ season and let the ice at Philips Arena freeze properly for the playoffs, it would help the Thrashers and nobody would miss a thing.
6: This is not at all an endorsement of Josh Smith’s moronic protest during a timeout the other day. But when a player is so bold that he feels he can call out a coach during a timeout, it doesn’t speak well to the control said coach has over the team. To translate: Mike Woodson has lost them.
5: No, Billy Knight shouldn’t fire Woodson. Why? Because that would constitute Billy Knight putting together another plan. And we don’t want to go there.
4: This is where Knight’s plan has gotten the Hawks: 26th overall, and potentially no lottery pick. Waiter: hemlock.
3: American Express has signed snowboarder and skateboarder Shaun White to an endorsement contract. White also was given a Gold Card. Unfortunately, he doesn’t own a wallet and he lost the card through a hole in his shorts.
2: I promised myself I would never write about the Arena Football League unless there was an item so good that it would interest, like, you know, normal sports fans. So here it is: Jon Bon Jovi, who owns the Philadelphia team (I learned), gave the double-barreled middle-finger salute to referees during a game against the Georgia Force Monday night. This wonderful moment was caught on camera by ESPN (which for all we know hatched the plan in AFL marketing meetings).
1: Arthur Blank’s always up for a new marketing idea. Maybe he can bring in Michael Vick as a consultant on this one.
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Aaron owes Bonds nothing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Why won’t he call?
Even when we’re in Atlanta, he never comes to visit.
You mean, he can’t reach out to the younger dude pursuing his record by giving him a hug and some tips on how to handle the pressure of it all?
Those whispers from Barry Bonds over the past few days, weeks and months have left the shadows to reach the ears of Hank Aaron like a fastball. The all-time home run king (at least for the moment) responded from his residence in southwest Atlanta by slamming Bonds’ comments back toward the ozone in which they came.
Good. Oh, and Aaron did so as graciously as he once flipped his wrists to make 755 a magic number.
“I’m sorry Barry feels that way, and I don’t have any resentment toward him whatsoever, but I have no intention of trying to get in contact with him or doing anything with him in regard to his [chasing the record]. Nothing. Why should I?” said Aaron, who discovered only recently that the privately sensitive slugger for the San Francisco Giants wants to become pen pals or something. “It’s really not a big concern of mine. I don’t know why I should have to do anything. I might send him a telegram, and that would be the extent of it.”
In case you’re wondering, Aaron first heard about Bonds’ grumbling from a fairly reliable source. His name is Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball and among Aaron’s closest friends. They’ve been tight since their Milwaukee days. Aaron played for the old Braves, Selig’s boyhood heroes, and after a stint in Atlanta from 1966 through 1974, Aaron played his final two seasons with the Brewers, the team Selig owned at the time.
But back to the present, where Aaron shrugged over whatever it is that Bonds wants him to do. “The commissioner told me that [Bonds] has asked him several times about why I haven’t contacted him,” Aaron said. “I don’t talk to anybody, really, and I’ve never talked to Barry, outside of that commercial we did together a few years ago, and a few other short times.”
Then Aaron gave one of his famous chuckles, adding, “I’m 72 years old, and I’m not hopping on a plane and flying all the way to San Francisco for anybody.”
Nor should he. Which brings us to the primary point here: If Bonds wishes to talk to Aaron, why doesn’t Bonds just pick up the phone?
Sounds like an ego problem.
A big one.
The kind that has Bonds believing he already is on the home-run throne that Aaron has owned nearly forever.
It’s a throne that Aaron consistently has said that he doesn’t mind giving up to Bonds or anybody else. Even so, when the new coronation takes place, Aaron hasn’t changed his mind about being anywhere but within a few solar systems of the place that Bonds is likely to rip No. 756.
“Uh-uh. No, no. I’m not going to be around,” said Aaron, adding that he would stay away even if Bonds were slated to break the record in Atlanta.
Aaron laughed, saying, “I’d probably fly to West Palm Beach to play golf. Again, it has nothing to do with anybody, other than I had enough of it. I don’t want to be around that sort of thing anymore. I just want to be at peace with myself. I don’t want to answer questions. It’s going to be a no-win situation for me anyway. If I go, people are going to say, ‘Well, he went because of this.’ If I don’t go, they’ll say whatever. I’ll just let them make their own mind up.”
The point is, Aaron isn’t afraid of controversy. Since the end of his career, he has evolved into Jackie Robinson, the ultimate role model for truth, justice and what should be the American Way. Not only was Robinson a baseball icon, but a civil rights icon. His No. 42 is retired by all teams in the major leagues. In fact, every game on Sunday - including the Braves’ game at Turner Field against the Florida Marlins - will honor the 60th anniversary of Robinson breaking the game’s color barrier.
Aaron remembered April 15, 1947, as the moment he became a permanent Robinson fan while growing up in segregated Mobile. Aaron also remembered the moment when Robinson passed through town to visit a local drug store. “It was the first time I ever saw him,” said Aaron, still glowing with the memory.
They never spoke back then, but they chatted often in subsequent years. “Listening to him, and just watching his movement and what he stood for and how he went about everything, I wanted to be just like him,” said Aaron, who matched his thoughts with action. After a blind Robinson, crippled with diabetes, died at 53 in October 1972, Aaron approached Ernie Banks and Willie Mays about joining him as Robinson’s replacement.
Said Aaron, “The three of us had a platform to stand on. We needed to voice our opinions. Willie being in New York [Mets], Ernie being in Chicago [Cubs], and me being where I was, we needed to make sure we didn’t give our stamp of approval on certain things that were happening.”
For instance: the token progress of African-American executives in the game, and the declining number of African-American players on the field.
Then Aaron gave that famous chuckle again, before saying, “Quite naturally, those guys [Mays and Banks] decided they weren’t going to do it. I decided that, not only do I owe it to myself, but I owe it to Jackie Robinson.”
That’s opposed to Bonds, to whom Aaron owes nothing.
Permalink | Comments (257) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Ward’s G-Day homecoming long awaited
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Athens — Ten years later, the eternally vibrant smile was back, and it warmed the chilly breezes on Saturday zipping throughout Sanford Stadium. That his Red team whipped the overmatched the Black one in Georgia’s spring game was irrelevant to Hines Ward, an assistant coach for the afternoon. He was the giddiest person among the assembled 21,407 for the simplest of reasons.
He was back. Prior to this, Ward hadn’t returned to Bulldog Country since his three seasons of doing all sorts of wonderful things to keep folks barking whenever they saw No. 19 for Georgia functioning as a blur against defenses.
No question, Ward has wanted to stand between the hedges again — for a game, for a practice, for something. Plus, his good friend and former Georgia teammate Mike Bobo has spent the past six years evolving from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator. It’s just that Ward’s job has kept him away. “When I have my off week, either Georgia is off or they are playing away or the timing has just been totally off, and it’s really been that way my entire career,” said Ward, referring to his nine years as a prolific receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The schedule was friendly this time around for Ward, who was an honorary assistant coach of the Red team with former Georgia linebacker Will Witherspoon. As a result, Ward was able to stand in the old locker room, filled with a new generation of Bulldogs, and flash that smile. “This all has brought back memories,” he said, referring to 1994-97, when he became the Bulldogs’ most productive offensive player not named Herschel Walker. “There was me, trying to make a name for myself, trying to do what was best for the team. My spring game was kind of weird. I think I played a new position every year.”
That’s because Ward did, ranging from quarterback to split end to slot back to tailback to anything else that would get a former Forest Park High School standout noticed by his hometown team during the 1998 NFL draft. Instead, the Falcons did what they often have done through the years when they’ve been on the clock: They lost their minds. They selected the great Jammi German instead of Ward, and Ward has spent the subsequent years obsessed with a couple of things. Staying nearly great with the Steelers, and trying to keep his teeth from clenching whenever he thinks of how he could have spent the last decade or so driving from his Smyrna home to Falcons games and practices.
“All the time. I mean, I think about it all the time, especially whenever we face Atlanta,” said Ward, a four-time Pro Bowl player and Super Bowl MVP for the Steelers two seasons ago. “That’s why I just want to do something extra special and play extra hard whenever we face them.”
Take last season, for instance, when Ward caught three touchdown passes against the Falcons at the Georgia Dome. He even punctuated a 70-yard scoring play by outrunning DeAngelo Hall, supposedly the NFL’s fastest player, to the end zone while losing a shoe. “Luckily, everything has worked out for the best, because I’ve had a great career at Pittsburgh, and I don’t want to change that, but …” said Ward, pausing, losing that smile for a moment.
Then that smile returned, with Ward adding, “I grew up a Falcons fan. I loved Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where you could get tickets for $10 and walk your way down to the good seats. I saw Deion [Sanders] when he was playing, before they went to the all-black uniforms. I grew up there. I’ve been a Georgia boy, and I thought it was just a natural fit. You just drafted Keith Brooking, who had some productive years at Georgia Tech. You’re going to take a receiver anyway. Why not stay with your own?”
Because for those Falcons, it just made too much sense.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Reality remains: Nobody’s perfect
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
So long as they kept winning, each division title was an extension of that dominance. But what happens if the Braves finish first this year after running third last time? Would it mark the beginning of something new or the semi-continuation of something old?
Said Chipper Jones: “It’d probably be part of the same era.”
Said Bobby Cox: “We’re trying to make a new start.”
So the Braves don’t know, either. And it could, over the fullness of 162 games, be a moot point. But when a team sweeps its opening series in a geared-up opponent’s ballpark … well, that spawns all sorts of fanciful thinking.
“One hundred sixty-two and oh,” said Cox, eyes dancing. “It’s been a dream forever. It’s like a football play; you practice it over and over. So why doesn’t it work every time?”
What worked in Philadelphia was that the Braves got good starting pitching, even better relief and a series of well-timed home runs. None of the above worked Friday night, which is why the 2007 Braves won’t go 162-0. (The 2007 Mets still have that chance.) A sellout crowd gathered Friday night for the chilly home opener and was reminded that, unlike scripted football plays, baseball games can fly off on tangents.
The Braves trotted out a starting pitcher who hadn’t begun training camp on their roster or anybody else’s. Mark Redman was home in Oklahoma when Mike Hampton tweaked his oblique, and now he’s their No. 4 starter. If he’s their No. 4 starter three months from now, something will have gone badly wrong. He’s keeping a spot warm, trying to eat up enough innings with his 85-mph fastball - sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? - so as to deliver a winnable game to the new-and-improved bullpen.
He couldn’t do it Friday. The Mets led 2-0 after 1 1/2 innings and 3-1 with two outs in the sixth, whereupon Redman yielded a single to pitcher Oliver Perez. That impelled Bobby Cox to summon Oscar Villarreal, who surrendered a two-run triple to Jose Reyes. Matters soon deteriorated to the extent that Jones was booed for not catching a wind-blown foul pop with his team 10 runs behind. And then the postgame fireworks were canceled due to wind.
After three games of good starting pitching and better relief, the Braves whiffed on both fronts Friday. Only time will tell if this was a glimpse of grim reality or simply a rotten night in April. Baseball seasons last six months, and the bedrock of those 14 division titles was the rotation’s capacity to stack inning upon quality inning. At issue, at least until Hampton and Lance Cormier get healthy, is whether these Nos. 4 and 5 starters can do such stacking.
Because those three de facto closers will matter only if the Braves are, ahem, close after six innings. How often in the late ’90s did we see the Yankees do what the Braves are trying to emulate? But how often has Mariano Rivera been rendered a non-factor in recent postseasons because his starting pitchers spit the bit? The three-closer ‘pen is fine in theory, but the Braves’ decision to bank on an aging and/or infirm rotation could undercut the grand design.
Then again, they’ve played four games. “I’ll take three of four the rest of the year,” Cox said, and if the Braves manage that over six months they’ll win more games than any team in the history of baseball.
They can’t go 162-0, but these Braves have a chance to extend the era of good feeling. Or, depending on your slant, to start a new one.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
The misadventures of Tiger and Phil
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — One guy hits it into Rae’s Creek. The other fires it into the woods, bounces his second shot into some other trees, then morphs into DeSoto, looking under leaves and cable for his ball (and his game).
One guy hits it into a tributary, thereby leaving him a lake or an ocean short of the aqua hat trick. The other guy figured he would be fine with a 68 Friday. He was fortunate to close at 73, given he was 3-over through six holes.
Welcome to Masters Lite.
Through two rounds, the leaderboard is devoid of a Tiger or a Phil. It barely has a Vijay, who is struggling just to be the best Singh. (Vijay’s at par; Jeev is 3-over.)
Billy Payne said at a dinner the other night that the players make the Masters. Right now, the players are making the Masters the Greater Milwaukee Open.
Only three players are under par. Everybody else is merely sub par.
We thought this would be the Tiger and Phil show. We just never figured there would be slapstick involved. They have combined for 19 bogeys, one double bogey and several created heart palpitations at CBS.
Both scrambled to avoid second-day disasters. Woods hit water on 12 and 13, nearly threw out his back on 13 when he stopped a tee shot because of low-flying birds, then managed to grind his way back a couple of shots.
“I turned a 90 into a 74,” he said. “[Thursday] I threw away a good round and [Friday] I salvaged a bad one.”
Mickelson, the defending Masters champion, has not built much confidence among his fans since the tent-trees-bunker collapse on 18 in last year’s U.S. Open. He appeared in danger of missing the cut Friday, when he was 3-over through six holes and 7-over for the tournament. As it was, he settled at 5-over 149, his second-worst two-round score ever here.
The course isn’t just winning.
The course is humiliating.
Tiger and Phil? Generally acknowledged as the world’s two best golfers, they have combined to hit only 40 of 72 greens (56 percent) and 24 of 56 fairways (43 percent).
Woods has won four of these. It was at Augusta National 10 years ago that he shot 40 on the front nine, then changed the face of golf by shooting 22-under for the rest of the tournament. He won again in ‘01, ‘02 and ‘05. Now, conditions have led Woods to almost cower.
He dropped a 30-foot putt to “save” bogey on 12, after his tee shot was short of the green and rolled back down the embankment into Rae’s Creek.
“I’m just thinking, ‘Let’s just not do any more damage than what we’ve already done,’ ” he said.
Somehow, Woods saved par on the par-5 13 when his second shot bounced into tributary short of the green, leading to another drop.
“The whole idea is you never make a double at this place,” he said. “If you don’t make doubles and you don’t make three-putts here, usually you’re in contention to win the tournament.”
If the concrete greens and wind gusts weren’t enough, even other life forms seemed to be against Woods. On 13, he abruptly stopped his tee shot on the backswing when a flock of birds flew over his head. They weren’t dive bombers, and, fortunately, did not feel the need to leave a souvenir on Woods’ shoulder. But Woods wasn’t thrilled with the sudden stop.
“I broke my back, my wrist, my neck, legs, hip,” he joked. “I don’t how those baseball players do it with a check swing. But I tried to check it and did somehow, and I felt like the shaft was going to snap.”
Somebody took the amen out of Amen Corner. On 11, Mickelson’s tee shot went into the woods. His second rattled around trees and fell under leaves and near a TV cable, allowing him a free drop. He was happy to get bogey.
After the tee shot, he said, “I thought I might have to pack my bags and go home.”
No, Mickelson and Woods are still here. It’s just not their show.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
High scores bloom like azaleas
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Few birdie (and fewer eagle) roars were rising from the galleries around Augusta National. The weather was enormously beautiful. Not a leaf moved on the trees. If you were a golfer, this was a perfect day, or if you weren’t a golfer.
Reminded me of the story of the man who had dreamed forever of playing Augusta National, and at last, here he was, walking down the fairway, his caddie trudging along under the burden of his bag. “Here I am, playing the Masters course. What could be more perfect. I wonder what the poor folks of the world are doing today?”
“I don’t know about the rest of ‘em,” the caddie said, “but one of ‘em’s toting yore bag.”
There was a lot of bag-toting going on at Augusta National Friday, but not a lot of scoring. Caddies were the only people the press staff didn’t bring in for interview — and a spectator who slipped into a pond. The scoreboard was littered with 80s. It sort of grieves an old warhorse like me to look up and see all those 80s by the names of past champions. Seve Ballesteros, Gary Player, Larry Mize, Raymond Floyd, not to mention two British Open champions, Todd Hamilton and Ben Curtis. Maybe the luckiest one was Ian Woosnam. He withdrew, sprained something or another.
Of course, that’s part of the charm of this old American classic. Champions are always invited back. Some come, some don’t. Some play, some have been wisely retired from competition. Twenty-six are here this year, seventeen of them are playing. Charlie Coody played his last round last year and checked in with a sport-model 74, then found himself being interviewed like a rock star.
“I quit just in time,” he said, “looking at those scores.”
This was becoming the “silent” Masters, as in “The Silent Spring.” The foliage is breath-taking. The galleries are as mannerly as an art show. Nobody is complaining vigorously, though Tom Watson did say, “We can’t compete anymore,” speaking of the seniors. Of course not, they’re not supposed to. They’re here as sort of walking museum pieces.
High scores have been part of the history of the Masters. Two champions have won with scores over par, Sam Snead in 1954 when he and Ben Hogan tied at 289. Snead won the playoff, 18 holes then. Jack Burke won straight out at 289 in 1956, but there were conditions on Sunday. Ken Venturi, then an amateur, went out with an eight-stroke lead the last day, but how the the wind did blow, and so did Venturi. He shot 80, Burke let his experience take hold, played just well enough to win by a stroke, and Venturi exited in tears.
All Jack Nicklaus had to do in 1966 was shoot even par, but so did Gay Brewer and Tommy Jacobs. Nicklaus won in the playoff Monday, by eight strokes over Brewer. But, Brewer would be rewarded the next year and won his own. The highest winning score since that time has been 285 in 1987, when Larry Mize and Greg Norman tied, and you know the rest of that story. (Check playoff, 11th hole, chip-in. Winner: Mize.)
These are changing times at Augusta National, beyond the invigorated presence of Billy Payne. The man who sets up the course is straight out of the USGA mold. Fred Ridley, former U.S. amateur champion, former USGA president, is in his first year as chairman of the Competition Committee, previously occupied by Will Nicholson, who retired. This is Ridley’s first show, and maybe it’s a spinoff of the old USGA policy: “Give ‘em hell.”
It’s OK with the rest of us. Not that we like to see grown men suffer, but it does endear these old acres to us to see them sweat and cuss, and come off the course looking as if they have just seen a UFO. Stand by, the show is just beginning.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Masters
Daughter’s birth trumps Masters debut for Quigley
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — On a day when wind gusts and drag-strip greens made grown-up men look like 6-year-olds trying to master the par-3 loop-de-loop, Brett Quigley played golf at the implausible intersection of bogey and Nirvana.
His opening tee shots went into the woods. People yelled, “Congratulations.” He was 3-over through six holes and was moved to tears — just not for reasons you might think.
There was a hospital bracelet on his wrist. A pink tee in his pocket. A picture of his daughter stuck between pages of his yardage book.
“I probably wasn’t as sharp as I would’ve been if I had been here the last couple of days,” he said. “But it was so peaceful out there.”
His score?
“Didn’t matter.”
Actually, 76 isn’t all that bad for his first Masters. Quigley is tied with Phil Mickelson.
But the circumstances that led to his inaugural Masters round Thursday — a day after the birth of his daughter in Florida — were unlike any other player in the field, even if it really wasn’t that unusual for the Quigley family.
In August 1969, Paul and Geneva Quigley prepared for the birth of their child. Paul, stationed in the army at Fort Devens, Mass., also was an avid golfer and had only one concern. There was a post tournament coming up.
“I told my wife, ‘If this kid is going to be a golfer, he or she will wait until after the tournament,’ ” Paul Quigley recalled. “She looked at me like I had six heads.”
All six heads turned out to be prophetic. Brett was born on Monday, the day after the tournament. Thirty-eight years later, the timing of Brett’s first child wasn’t quite as well-timed.
Clearly, Lillian Sage Augusta Quigley has no future in golf. Her impending arrival chased her father off the course during a practice round Tuesday, two days before his Masters debut. He had just left the 11th green and was walking to the 12th tee when he decided to check for messages on the cellphone that he sneaked onto the course.
He was at Amen Corner, of course, when it rang.
“Literally, as I turned the phone on, it started ringing,” he said.
A friend told him he needed to fly home to Jupiter, Fla., to be with his wife, Amy. Quigley, whose wife wasn’t actually due until April 16, didn’t quite grasp the urgency of the situation.
“I said, ‘I’m on 12, I’ll just play the last couple of holes,’ and he said, ‘No, Amy’s in labor. Her water broke.’ I said, ‘Oh gosh,’and I turned to my dad and said we gotta go. [Practice partners] Lucas [Glover] and [Jeff] Sluman were kind of in shock.”
That phone call came shortly after 1 p.m. Amy’s contractions were three minutes apart. Quigley left his clubs and his father (also his caddy) in Augusta and caught a flight for Jupiter. Four hours later, he was in the hospital. After a protracted labor, doctors performed a C-section. The newest Quigley was born at 2:55 a.m. Wednesday.
Brett spent the rest of the sleepless day with his wife. He changed two diapers. (“I feel like a real veteran.”) He thought about not returning to Augusta, but his wife convinced him. He made it back in the evening.
It was his first Masters, but he floated through the day. He got to the course and handed out cigars on the practice green. (Another 150 have been ordered.) Adrenalin carried him through fatigue. He smiled all day. Nothing fazed him. Paul Quigley said he couldn’t recall his son ever being so relaxed on the course.
Turns out, the biggest moment in somebody’s career isn’t so intimidating when it comes the day after the biggest moment of his life.
“Exhausting. Incredible,” said Quigley, who also has an uncle on the Champions (Senior) Tour. “There were probably five or six times out there when I was fighting back tears.”
When asked about the timing of his daughter’s birth, Quigley recalled telling his 93-year-old grandmother the due date. “The first thing she said was, ‘Couldn’t you have planned that any better?’ ” Quigley said.
Given the family history — well, no.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Masters
Aussies have best shot at victory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Up to this time, there has been less talk about who wins the Masters this year than about (1) the change in command, (2) Billy Payne’s early moves, such as the return to automatic invitations to PGA Tour winners, (3) Arnold Palmer’s return to the first tee box, and a whole lot of matters, other than why we’re here: Who might win the thing. Not even Tiger Woods has taken over in the usual storm of prognostication. The sports staff of the local paper was polled and not one member picked Tiger to win.
So, there seemed to be a tempting invitation to speculate, and it behooves me to step into such a delicious breech, this hour of indecision. Therefore, I have your winner here: Australia.
That’s right, Australia. I’d say that’s a pretty good spread at Augusta National this week. Seven guys going for me. And remember, no Aussie has ever won the Masters. Some close calls. Poor old Greg Norman finished second three times, once in the most heart-smashing manner. You know it, you’ve seen it in reruns. Larry Mize chips in off the 11th green in 1987, and how more sudden can sudden death be than that? He had come into the 18th hole the year before with a chance to catch Jack Nicklaus — and ruin a helluva story — and missed. Norman again finished second to Nick Faldo in 1996, and that’s one he’d just as soon forget.
Before he lost an arm in a horrendous accident Jack Newton tied for second in 1980, four strokes behind Seve Ballesteros. And that’s about how it has been for the Aussies down through the years. Until now. Look, are you forgetting? Our national champion is an Aussie.
Remember Geoff Ogilvy? He waited around patiently. Tiger Woods had missed the cut. Then Phil Mickelson’s game blew a gasket at Winged Foot. Winner of the U.S. Open, Ogilvy from Adelaide.
How about Nick O’Hern of Perth? Twice he has beaten Woods in the World Match Play Championship, a tall left-hander who putts with the kind of weapon a chimney sweep might use. Nick was in early Thursday with a 76, 4 over par, and wasn’t feeling too badly about it when he saw some of the other scores.
“With no wind and wide fairways and no rough,” he said, “it’s the toughest course I ever played. You’ve just got to take it on the chin. I never saw the scores this high this early. That’s Augusta.”
It’s Augusta, but it’s not match play, so there’ll be no shot at Woods again, head to head.
Look at Stuart Appleby. He finished tied for second at last week’s Shell Houston Open. His game does taper off a little after the turn into springtime, but he did make a flourish at Houston again last week. Robert Allenby has always been a potent challenger, but he is a bit quirky. Up and down, and if the shot isn’t a draw, he may go into the tank. But he’s player enough to have won four times on the American tour.
Rod Pampling has more to be remembered for than being the only player who ever led the British Open after the first round, then missed the cut. That in 1999, the year the world cursed the return to the new (old) Carnoustie course. Pampling planted his game over here and has won twice, Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Tournament last year on top of his dossier.
Aaron Baddeley actually was born in the United States, in Lebanon, which I thought was in Vermont — but the book says New Hampshire — while his father was an engineer for Mario Andretti’s racing team, but grew up in Australia, and there founded his golf game. He has won twice here, but established himself more famously as “Bads” in those girly television commercials.
That brings me around to my ace in the hole. Adam Scott knows how to win in this part of the world. He won the Players Championship at Sawgrass in 2004, then cleaned out in the field in the Tour Championship at East Lake last fall, the one Woods and Mickelson chose to pass up. Five times this bright and sparkling young man has won on this soil, with some emphasis on the Houston tournament, which he won last week. They always say that it’s encouraging to come into Augusta fresh from winning. Actually, it happened so long ago that Sandy Lyle was a blushing kid, which was 1988, a week after he’d won at Greensboro.
There you have it. Can you come up with a better seven-card hand?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Masters
Pitching must stand up against Mets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
When you consider everything, ranging from manager Tony LaRussa still fresh from a DUI arrest to maybe the worst starting pitching rotation ever for a defending world champion, the St. Louis Cardinals are a mess. That’s why the New York Mets spent the first week of this season exploding to the top of the National League East.
Well, that’s part of the reason. Despite the Mets ranking among baseball’s most overrated teams every year, they actually are more than hype this time.
What this means for the Braves is that the perennially aching Mike Hampton has to stay healthy. It means John Smoltz and Tim Hudson can’t stop resembling their vintage selves. It means Chuck James, Mark Redman, Lance Cormier and whoever else fills out the Braves’ pitching rotation must have more solid starts than sorry ones. It means the revamped bullpen has to continue looking potent.
“You can overpower teams with pitching, but the Mets have an American League lineup, to me,” said Braves manager Bobby Cox, referring to the visitors tonight at Turner Field for the home opener of his also streaking team (3-0). “Everybody in the Mets lineup is outstanding. They can get away with a little less pitching, possibly. But the entire world, you need pitching.”
Even the Mets. Thus some encouraging news for those already chasing this bunch that is 3-0 after outscoring the Cardinals 20-2 in St. Louis: These aren’t the days of Seaver, Koosman and McGraw. Although the Mets have accomplished closer Billy Wagner, they haven’t much else in the bullpen. Plus, Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez are just shy of ancient, but they are the Mets’ starting aces.
The problem for the Braves is that bats more than arms spur the Mets’ thoughts of repeating as NL East champions.
They have the blur that is leadoff hitter Jose Reyes. They have the clutch ways of Paul Lo Duca, along with the consistent bashing of Carlos Delgado, Carols Beltran, David Wright, Shawn Green and Moises Alou. So, given that the Braves’ goal is to capture a 15th division title in 16 years, and given that the Mets are the scariest team standing between the Braves and that goal, and given that they play each other 17 more times after tonight, the Braves have to become Mets killers right now.
We’re back to pitching, with Smoltz suggesting that we’re not talking about just any kind of pitching.
“To be blunt, our pitching the last five years has not been real good,” said Smoltz, the Braves’ elder statesman, referring to a unit that was anchored for nearly a decade by Cy Glavine, Cy Maddux and Cy Smoltz. There also were the All-Star likes of Steve Avery, Denny Neagle, Russ Ortiz and Kevin Millwood. Added Smoltz, “We’ve got to re-create that pitching-rich aura that was here all the way up until the last few years. That only can happen by going out and being dominant and not having any weaknesses. I think we’ve shored up a lot of those concerns, but the first month is just Step One in the process.”
So what does this have to do with the Braves and the Mets?
Think psychologically, if nothing else. “I liken all of this to a golf tournament where you can’t win it in the first day, but you actually can lose it,” said Smoltz, whose team will face the Mets nine times before Memorial Day. “You don’t want to get in a big hole with some of these teams, and that kind of goes along with, we’ve got to create a little bit of ‘Oh. You know. These guys are pitching. These guys are solid.’ It’s not a situation of saying to ourselves, ‘Let’s just hang in there.’ It’s a situation of, ‘Let’s go out and create what once was a strong point of our ballclub.’ “
To slay the suddenly mighty Mets, the Braves haven’t a choice.
Permalink | Comments (68) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Can Thrashers seize the moment?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Stanley Cup playoffs are a great event that almost nobody — almost nobody in this country, anyway — watches. I wonder how many Atlantans will be watching the Thrashers. I wonder because this is all new, at least new for those among us who weren’t around when the Flames were based here.
The Thrashers have never played a postseason game. That changes next week. The NHL playoffs are different from the NBA’s. Any team that gets in has a realistic (as opposed to a theoretical) chance to play for the Cup. The Thrashers could surprise everyone and be playing not just next week but next month.
If that happens, Atlanta will tune in. This is, as we know, a bandwagon city. But I’m guessing the first round will get little attention from the masses because the bandwagon hasn’t really budged. Yes, there’s a core audience for hockey in this town and there always has been, but the core hasn’t expanded greatly in the eight years since the Thrashers set up shop. Part of that is their fault for not winning big enough soon enough. More of it has to do with hockey itself.
It’s a bad TV sport in an era when being good on TV is all that matters. (It’s a great in-person sport, but because television money pays so little of hockey’s overhead the teams have to charge their paying customers two arms and two legs.) The Thrashers have been good all year, but they really haven’t caught the fancy of the man/woman in the street the way the Braves did in 1991 or the way the Hawks did in 1988.
These playoffs are the Thrashers’ chance to catch hold the marketplace in a way they haven’t quite yet. They need to stick around for a while. They’re capable.
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Payne cool and professional
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — He did not march in behind a parade of flags. There was no sounding of bugles or dropping of confetti or an Al Haig declaration of power.
Pimento-cheese — safe. Martha? Not so much.
“They forgot to send me my invitation,” Martha Burk said by phone. “I would have imagined my VIP pass would be FedEx’d.”
It wasn’t quite the start of Billy Payne’s reign over Augusta National Wednesday. But he held his first Masters press conference, which fairly equates to driving off the first tee. If Payne’s intent was to set the early tone for his tenure, think Hootie Johnson — only cleaned, pressed and run through a politician’s spin cycle.
The man ran the Olympics. Golf writers, he can handle. Issues like tournament qualifications, membership policies and course changes — they pale in comparison to an Olympic city being likened to a flea market and the French media screaming about broken down buses.
Payne smiled often during the news conference. Whether it was genuine didn’t matter. He was more convincing than Hootie. Perception is everything.
He hit on all the talking points. He referenced Bobby Jones, Cliff Roberts and perfect greens. He talked about having been to 110 countries, “and I would call this the most beautiful piece of real estate in the world.”
Release the doves.
Payne made the popular, if not unexpected, announcement that PGA Tour winners will receive a hall pass into the ensuing Masters. This comes after he helped convince Arnold Palmer to be the tournament’s honorary starter.
If Payne was considering the White House in 2008, this would be a good time to declare.
He has been visible all week. There have been handshakes and face time in the media workroom. (The assumption is Johnson didn’t realize such a place existed, or he might have converted it into a storage facility.)
It has been a lovefest. At the traditional “Champions Dinner” Tuesday night, Payne endeared himself to players in the best way possible.
“He was very complimentary, [saying] players make the tournament what it is,” Tom Watson said. “He said, ‘It’s not Augusta National that makes this tournament. It’s you players who make this tournament.’ He said that very graciously.”
Watson said the transition from Johnson to Payne has been “seamless.”
In some ways. But Johnson was a blast furnace. Payne is a thermostat, set to 72.
Johnson reacted to Martha Burk’s protests of Augusta’s exclusionary policy against women by saying he would not be shaken or swayed “at the point of a bayonet.” But Payne, well-practiced, responded to the topic without emotion, and hardly a soundbite: “All members are subject to the private deliberations of the members. Other than that, I’m simply not going to talk about it.”
For the second time in three years, New York congresswoman Carolyn Maloney began Masters week by introducing the “Ending Tax Breaks for Discrimination Act.” The bill, which would eliminate tax breaks for businesses related to private clubs that discriminate against race, religion or sex, was defeated in 2005. She also introduced the “Fair Play-Equal Access in Membership Resolution,” an attempt to dissuade federal officials from belonging to exclusionary clubs.
But Payne wouldn’t bite Wednesday. “I’m aware it’s been done many times in the past and there’s no significant developments of which I’m aware.”
He ignored Burk’s request for a meeting, so Burk resumed going after corporations that associate with the club. When asked about Payne, she threw a hook: “He’s got this image [of being open-minded]. I don’t know where he got it. … There’s no point in me tilting at that windmill in Augusta [to protest].”
It is peaceful outside the gates here, and serene inside. Perfect weather. Perfect conditions. Stepford.
Payne waxed on about Masters history. He laughed. He bantered. Asked about whether he has been approached with potential changes, he said: “We don’t have a suggestion box.” Firmness, with a smile.
He was a sophomore at Georgia when he attended his first Masters. The tickets came from a fraternity brother, and Payne made his way from Athens with his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife. “We drove down here in my pink Chevrolet 1947 coupe that I shared with my sister,” he said. “Honestly, we were just blown away by the majesty and the beauty.”
Another Augusta talking point. He’s done this before.
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Payne blessed with grace under fire
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Say this for Billy Payne, he is not a stranger to challenges. In fact, if he hasn’t faced one lately, he’ll go looking one up. I offer the 1996 Olympic Games in evidence. He was an offensive end at Georgia; you know, catch passes, score touchdowns, be a hero. Vince Dooley switched him to defense. No problem. Georgia had itself an All-SEC defensive end. He had one girlfriend in college. Martha Beard of Moultrie became his wife.
He tried to bring golf into the 1996 Games, to be played at Augusta National. That’s one he didn’t bring off, and far as I’m concerned, I’m glad. There was something about cluttering up that magnificent acreage with a muddle of the great unwashed who had no appreciation for its special meaning that disturbed me. When he became a member, there were those who suspected there was more to come. Excluding me.
Then last April, when Hootie Johnson and I were winding up what had become a kind of annual chewing of the fat, the chairman said, “Can you keep a secret?” I assured him that I could, especially if he wanted me to.
He hardly changed expressions, except for a cheery little smile, and said, “I’m going to retire as chairman.”
About all I could say was, “That’s a pretty short term, isn’t it?”
“Jack Stephens served seven years, I’ve had it eight and I think it’s time for someone else. Now, can you keep another secret? I mean don’t even tell your wife.”
Then he spoke of his successor. “Billy Payne is going to succeed me.” You could have knocked me over with a puff of air. Billy had moved into the membership gracefully, coming up through the ranks as press officer, following the pioneer member Charlie Yates, another Atlantan. This was a tip of the hat to youth, as the membership of Augusta National goes. Billy was 58 at the time. Seniority usually went with the chairmanship.
It so happened that the Bishers had dinner with the Paynes that evening and that was good. Three weeks later, the date that Hootie had projected for the announcement, I made my call to the new chairman. He was aghast. “You mean you sat there all through dinner and you knew it and never said a word to me about it?”
“I gave the man my word,” I said. “I did cheat a little. I told my wife the night before.”
If Billy Payne had thought he weathered a firestorm with the Olympic Games, surely he had now become the bull’s eye in one of sport’s favorite target games. Newspeople have taken joy in jabbing at Masters traditions, real or imagined vexations. That’s the way it is with some people who resent the successful elite, persons of a kind who find refuge in taking cover in a club of their own. Some of the media take joy in making jokes about the pimento cheese sandwiches, a tradition here since a group of church women first prepared them. Writing media types do not walk the fairways here as in other major championships. Then there was the matter of color, resolved when Lee Elder finally qualified by winning a tour tournament. Then, Martha Burk.
That says enough. The chairman might have taken the soft course by replying to Burk’s challenge thusly: “Yours of [such a date] received and duly noted.” Hootie isn’t the kind. Such things bother him. He ponders. He is too civil to brush them off, and there he sat, target for the year.
Billy Payne, just the other way. He rolls with the punches. He’ll give you a wink and a smile. Maybe the difference is clarified in their football careers, Hootie the hot running back, Billy the defensive end. Hootie offended the old guard when he wrote letters even to the immortal Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer suggesting they had played out their string. Billy, on the other hand, invited Palmer to pick up his driver and renew the ceremonial ritual of hitting the opening shot. He accepted, happily, beating Gary Player to the punch in their informal match of comeuppance.
Then Wednesday, Billy made another forward stroke in public relations, calling up the crusty old typewriter jockeys who have covered 40 or more Masters Championships and presenting them elaborate carved replicas of the clubhouse for their lengthy devotion to this American original. He knows public relations. And for one who survived the vortex of such a whirlwind as the Olympics of ‘96, this should be like a walk down a country lane.
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Palmer stepping into different realm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
In case you missed it, Arnold Palmer just announced to the world (and to himself) that he really is mortal.
Fifty years.
That’s how long Palmer played in the Masters. That’s 19 more years than Tiger Woods has been on earth. In other words, Palmer did the right thing by refusing to become the honorary starter at the Masters until now.
He wasn’t ready until now.
Prior to this year, Palmer was showing, even at 70-something, why he ranked among the greatest competitors of all-time in any sport during any era. The greatest competitors are into playing for something instead of for nothing. The thought of evolving into only a symbol of past glory is foreign to their systems.
So this is huge: Just before 8 a.m. on Thursday, when the 77-year-old Palmer walks to the first tee at Augusta National to strike the ball for his one and only time at this year’s Masters, he will hide his cape in the attic and become Clark Kent for the rest of his life. Gary Player, 71, said he’ll do the same in a couple of years by joining Palmer as an honorary starter.
Jack Nicklaus, 67, said he’ll never do such a thing. Despite retiring from Masters competition in 2005, immortality lives for Nicklaus — at least in his memory.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Golf, Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Gators took away suspense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It wasn’t a great tournament. It wasn’t a great Final Four. The best that can be said for the Big Dance of 2007 is that it produced a great champion, and there’s merit in that.
Still, Florida was so good these last two years that it seemed to be dancing alone. That’s not a criticism of the Gators — on the contrary, it’s the highest possible compliment — but the best NCAA tournaments are those that have multiple plausible endings. That’s why this Final Four was, in the grand scheme, a massive letdown. All the mystery died when Florida started to play.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageIn winning 12 NCAA games last spring and this, the Gators’ average margin of victory was 15.1 points. They didn’t face a second-half deficit in their four Final Four games. They were good for the sport in the sense that their selflessness and camaraderie could, at least in theory, motivate other gifted teams to stick together, but they were lousy for the concept of drama. Duke needed its climactic Christian Laettner moment to repeat. Florida sailed through on a dozen Lee Humphrey moments.
Ohio State played better in the title game than any runner-up since Duke in 1999. The Buckeyes made six more baskets than Florida and had eight fewer turnovers, and still they never got close enough to make the Gators sweat. The pressure that seemed to be bearing down on the reigning champs in Round 2 against Purdue and Round 3 against Butler didn’t show in the Final Four because Florida wouldn’t allow it to register. And that’s still another hallmark of greatness.
Said Billy Donovan: “The UNLV teams, the UCLA teams, the Kentucky teams, the Duke teams: I’m not saying our team could beat them. I’m just saying that when you look at the word ‘team’ by itself — I’m not talking about competing against other teams but what a team is — I think [his Gators] have to be talked about.”
It was possible to see in Florida what was missing in Kansas and North Carolina, gifted assemblages that didn’t reach the Final Four, and in UCLA and Georgetown, more harmonious aggregations that did. The Gators had the talent to make the requisite plays and an otherworldly mesh that enabled them to maximize their talent. Ohio State came the closest to approximating Florida’s blueprint, and with another year of playing together the Buckeyes might actually achieve Gator-like eminence. But surely there will be no second try for Greg Oden as a collegian, and that’s a shame.
When he doesn’t foul, Oden is as splendid as advertised. He’s a better offensive player than Patrick Ewing was as a freshman and a better defensive player than Shaquille O’Neal has ever been. He’s as fundamentally sound as Tim Duncan and 10 times more forceful. It would be fun to watch Oden rip through March Madness a year from now, but anyone who spent half a season nursing a bad wrist will surely reach the conclusion that returning to school is a bad career choice.
Unless Oden simply wants to come back, which would be a welcome surprise. He did, after all, just get a close-up look at the joys that can come from deferral. “If Greg Oden really in his heart wants to go back to Ohio State, he should do what he wants to do,” Donovan said. “If any one of those guys feels like, ‘Listen, I’ve got the opportunity to leave but I really want to stay’ … look at what happened with [his Gators]. It all worked out for them.”
Reality, alas, is rather colder than that warm and fuzzy notion. Not every player is the son of a famous pro athlete. Not every player can afford to spend another year going to class when he could be banking millions. It would be nice to think these Gators and their willingness to wait will become the new paradigm of college basketball. It would also be hopelessly naïve.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Returning Gators set great example
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Their greatness will be debated. Their consecutive titles will be revered. Their coach will be canonized.
But what happened on this night and in this tournament and during this season should be remembered for something else. The Florida Gators didn’t merely win another championship Monday night. They may have helped fix college basketball.
How many kids watched this tournament? How many high school players or college freshmen watched what Al Horford and Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer accomplished Monday night, and thought: “Maybe school’s not so bad. Maybe the NBA can wait.”
Yes, the Gators won it again. But it was a bigger victory for the NCAA.
It was a bigger victory for those who cling to deteriorating concepts like unselfish athletes and the purity of sport.
Suddenly, there’s the thought: Contracts can wait. Houses, cars and shoe deals will be there in a year.
Which way to the pep rally?
When the final seconds ticked away in Florida’s 84-75 win over Ohio State, Brewer ran in circles, delirious, like a child who had just wandered into Wonkaland.
Horford took the basketball and joyously threw it into the crowd.
Noah ran up steps in the Georgia Dome to find family members to hug.
Could there have been a better advertisement for college athletics?
“This,” Brewer said, “is what we came back to school for.”
Florida coach Billy Donovan said the Gators should be ranked among the greatest teams — emphasis on team — of all time, adding: “For some of them to have a choice [to turn pro], and make the choice to come back, you have to be pretty competitive.”
Noah’s father, Yannick, sat in the stands before the game. He was dressed in Gator blue and orange, with a necklace of orange beads and gator heads around his neck. A year ago at this time, he figured to be wearing normal clothes in another city.
“It’s a beautiful story — this just doesn’t happen anymore,” the former tennis star said. “You don’t see these kids turn down the big money, and some of them very much need the money. It just doesn’t exist.
“I can only speak for Joakim. But he grew up with posters of NBA players on the wall. That was his dream, and then he had a chance to fulfill that dream. But when he decided he could still have his dream and go back to be with his friends, I was, like, amazed. These kids, they did it for the right reason. I truly believe now that other kids — not a lot, but some — will do it.”
This isn’t to paint leaving college early as some evil. Since when does a 19-year-old saying yes to millions of dollars qualify him as stupid?
But what Florida did was expose the positive side of saying, “No, not yet.”
Tito Horford, Al’s father and a former NBA player, said: “Not too many kids were thinking of going back to school. Now they’ll think, ‘Wait, if Joakim and Al and Corey Brewer did it, we can do it, too.’
“Other kids should look at them as great role models. They just came back to school to accomplish a dream and make history. They made a great decision. So I’m pretty sure many kids in America are going to look at them.”
It seems unlikely any of the three juniors will return. But even if all turn pro, the point has been made. It would have been made even if Florida had lost Monday.
“I don’t know how many kids this will impact,” former Georgetown coach John Thompson said. “But I thought it was a hell of a great example for kids. Everybody’s not in their certain situation. You have to judge your own situation individually. But I think it’s about time that somebody acknowledges their decision, obviously — not just taking the money and running.
“I don’t blame the kids who do take the money because there’s a lot of circumstances where they should. But we needed somebody to show the other side of the issue. They’re the example.”
The best example. Follow the leaders.
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Stand and applaud the mighty Gators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s the best team of the last 31 years, and it’ll be the best of the next 31. Even if some among us cringe at the thought of continuing Florida domination on every front, we all should stand and applaud as these mighty Gators pass into history. We might never see their likes again. It’s a wonder we saw them at all.
“There’s no lying in championships!” Joakim Noah fairly screamed. “You all can say what you want, but these are in the books!”
If these Ohio State Buckeyes stayed together two seasons more, they might become what Florida is. But they won’t because they can’t: The marketplace won’t allow it. What passes for excellence in neo-collegiate basketball is to do it once, Carmelo Anthony-style.
Florida did it twice while having only one real scare — against Georgetown in the regional semis a year ago — in a dozen NCAA tournament games. Think about that.
Think also about this: With 3:41 remaining in Monday’s first half, the exasperated Buckeyes called timeout. They’d played well enough, having made 10 of 22 shots — exactly the same as Florida. They trailed by 11 points.
For these last two years, that’s what the Gators did. They took an opponent’s best and flung it back harder. They were Jimmy Connors hammering Roscoe Tanner’s serve. They were George Brett turning on Goose Gossage’s 100-mph heater and smashing it against the façade of the upper deck.
To the second half: With Ohio State’s resistance stiffening, Al Horford wheeled on Greg Oden and had his shot snuffed. And yet … the Gators tracked down the loose ball and Taurean Green whipped a pass from the left corner to Lee Humphrey at the head of the key, and Lee Humphrey did what he does at this time of the year. A big-time block wound up with the Buckeyes staring at that same 11-point deficit.
It was supposed to be harder the second time around, but it really wasn’t. The Gators’ closest calls, such as they were, came against Purdue in Round 2 and Butler in Round 3, and once they overrode an early nine-point deficit against the Bulldogs the rest was rudimentary. Oregon thought it had the speed. UCLA thought it had the grit. Ohio State thought it had the players. Turned out nobody had a chance.
“We had a big target on our back,” Taurean Green said, “but we handled it.”
“It’s the reason we came back,” said Corey Brewer, the most outstanding player on merit. “To win another national championship.”
A word about the Buckeyes: They were good enough to have taken the title other years, and they acquitted themselves nobly Monday. (Oden was majestic.) They were simply in against the strongest championship assemblage — better than North Carolina of 1982, better than Georgetown of 1984, better than Duke of 1992, better than Kentucky of 1996 — since Indiana finished unbeaten in 1976.
Florida was a team of size and shooting, of offense and defense, of many stars yet no superstar. Noah, MVP of last year’s title run, made one basket in this championship game, and it mattered not one whit. That’s what separated these Gators from those worthies cited above: They were dependent on nobody, but also on everybody. They were what every team aspires to be but, at least over the last three decades, only this one truly was.
Green again: “We’re a team. That’s what it’s all about.”
And when it was all done, the winning and the net-cutting and “One Shining Moment,” the four juniors — Brewer, Green, Horford and Noah — posed for a picture. But someone was missing from the mix, and on cue Humphrey appeared. And there the five were, equals without peer.
Together they’d generated not one shining moment but two. Twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, their legacy will shimmer still.
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15 to watch in 2008
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Any ranking of next season’s best teams is based on assumptions, only some of which will be borne out.
Example: If Florida’s frontcourt of Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer returns to school yet again, the Gators would be No. 1 yet again. But the guess is that all three will leave, which is why Florida doesn’t appear on this list.
1. Kansas
Assumption: That Brandon Rush and Julian Wright will return.
Prognosis: The Jayhawks were the nation’s most talented team this season and will be again.
2. North Carolina
Assumption: That only Brandan Wright will leave early.
Prognosis: The Heels were the nation’s second-most talented team this season and will be again.
3. Ohio State
Assumption: That only Greg Oden will leave early.
Prognosis: Mike Conley Jr. will vie with North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough for player of the year.
4. Memphis
Assumption: That no one will leave early.
Prognosis: The hugely gifted Tigers will get a major boost from incoming point guard Derrick Rose.
5. UCLA
Assumption: That Arron Afflalo will again return.
Prognosis: The offensively-challenged Bruins should find a scoring option in 6-foot-9 signee Kevin Love.
6. Southern Cal
Assumption: That Nick Young will return.
Prognosis: Even if Young leaves, the Trojans’ ascent will continue with the arrival of O.J. Mayo.
7. Louisville
Assumption: That Rick Pitino won’t take the Kentucky job.
Prognosis: Whoever coaches Kentucky will have the second-best team in the Commonwealth.
8. Georgia Tech
Assumption: That Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton will stay.
Prognosis: If the Yellow Jackets lose 12 games next season, someone will have gone wrong.
9. Tennessee
Prognosis: That Bruce Pearl won’t take the Kentucky job.
Assumption: The young and swift and dauntless Vols are growing up around Chris Lofton.
10. Kansas State
Assumption: That Bob Huggins won’t scare anybody off.
Prognosis: Rising program gets a double boost from arrival of Michael Beasley and return of Bill Walker.
11. Georgetown
Assumption: That Roy Hibbert will leave but Jeff Green will return.
Prognosis: The huge Hibbert would be missed, but Green started as a low-post player and could return.
12. Villanova
Assumption: That Jay Wright won’t take the Kentucky job.
Prognosis: Smallish Scottie Reynolds could be the Big East’s leading scorer next season.
13. Texas
Assumption: That Kevin Durant will leave early.
Prognosis: D.J. Augustin figures to be Mike Conley Jr.’s only rival as the nation’s leading point guard.
14. Duke
Assumption: That Josh McRoberts is gone.
Prognosis: Kyle Singler, another blue-chip Duke recruit, actually might not be overrated.
15. Arkansas
Assumption: That Frank Broyles won’t coach the team.
Prognosis: Dana Altman, named Monday as Stan Heath’s successor, will inherit a roster laden with size and seasoning.
The next wave 16. Indiana, 17. Maryland, 18. Michigan State, 19. Washington State, 20. Alabama 21. Marquette, 22. Oklahoma State, 23. Stanford, 24. Nevada, 25. Georgia.
Next year’s George Mason (Even though there really wasn’t one this year): Davidson. Sophomore-to-be Stephen Curry stands to lead the nation in scoring before he’s through.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Simply put, the Braves are back
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Philadelphia - The bullpen was as wonderfully scary as advertised. That’s enough right there for the rest of the National League East to shiver for a 15th season out of the past 16, especially whenever they see somebody with a tomahawk across his chest.
Simply put, the Braves are back as the bogeymen of the division. They haven’t a glaring weakness, and they have more than a few strong points. They also have a chance to go 162-0 after resembling some of their forefathers by finding ways on Monday at Citizens Bank Park for a 5-3, 10th-inning victory over the supposedly improved Philadelphia Phillies.
“Dang. First loss of the year. Guess our season is over,” said Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, joking. His team is expected to join the Braves and the New York Mets throughout the summer in a cozy NL East battle. It’s just that the Braves are suggesting they’ll spend more time having chasers than doing the chasing.
And, yes, this was only one game to start the year, but this was a telling game for so many reasons beyond the Braves having a bunch of relievers who finally get it.
There were those timely hits, punctuated by the second of Edgar Renteria’s home runs. With teammate Kelly Johnson at first base, this one settled among Philadelphia’s lovely boo birds behind the wall in right-center field. Just like that, the Braves were a perfect bottom-of-the-10th away by reliever Chad Paronto from victory.
That was after Paronto’s predecessors - holdover Bob Wickman, along with newcomers Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano - kept the Phillies scoreless for the previous three innings.
Then there was John Smoltz starting and dominating with his Hall of Fame arm for much of his outing. It also didn’t hurt the Braves’ cause that Brian McCann is hinting at making his third season in the major leagues look as potent as his previous two. Among his three hits was a two-run homer that gave the Braves a start toward where they finished.
“I don’t know if my home run had anything to do with what we did today, but I just know that coming from spring training, everybody had that attitude back,” said McCann, the All-Star catcher, in a relatively businesslike clubhouse filled with quiet confidence.
Just like old times for the Braves. He was among the 18 rookies who helped the Braves win their 14th consecutive division title in 2005 before their bullpen-related crash to third last year.
Added McCann, “This division is up for grabs, and we know that. We know we have to play good every night, and I think our ballclub is going to do that.”
Generally, these Braves will do that after last year’s taste of mediocrity gave them a collective tummy ache. They began their healing process with their version of baseball ecstasy for a day.
It began with the weather. Give or take the ones likely invented by Ben Franklin, this was the prettiest April afternoon ever between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. The bluest of skies. Temperatures in the low 70s. No clouds within a few fungoes.
It also was opening day, sports’ first unofficial holiday, and it was all enough to make those eternally in love with baseball even more so. Thus the extra giddiness for the 65-year-young Bobby Cox, starting his 26th season as a manager in the major leagues.
“You still get the butterflies and the goosebumps. All the ceremonies. The flyovers,” said Cox, the Braves’ accomplished leader. He also could have mentioned the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Men’s Chorale singing the national anthem, the U.S. Navy Parachute team delivering the first pitch and the Phillie Phanatic turning back to green after becoming red during what was called “Paint the Town (Phillie) Red” week.
Suddenly, Philadelphia was blue. As in the Braves’ dominant colors. As in those lovely boo birds watching the Phillies already losing to the team to beat in the NL East this season.
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Tough to judge this book by its cover
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If you want to know about the past, you’ll find it on banners in the outfield. Otherwise, the Braves are pretty much devoid of reminders. We are now like old men sitting on the porch, complaining about the cost of a bowl of soup and the fact that nobody has ever really replaced Mark Lemke.
The media guide cover? It depicts two kids. Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur are less than two years removed from being a major league novelty and their first legal beer.
The roster has only two leftovers from the 1995 World Series team, one (John Smoltz) possibly gone after this season and the other (Chipper Jones) possibly soon to follow, assuming his body parts hold together. The only other reminder in the dugout from even a pennant team is Andruw Jones, and this season amounts to a farewell tour.
These are the Braves today. They have talent. They have youth. They have a bullpen (we think).
What they don’t have is much of a résumé. They’re a blank page. Maybe they go back to the playoffs. Maybe, as Chipper Jones said, “Just because we lost last season doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten how to finish first.”
But this is what we don’t say: “The Braves? They’ll figure out a way. They always do.” Because last season, for the first time since we finally got over the Nick Esasky hangover, they didn’t.
Bobby Cox, the Braves manager, generally gives his players the same speech every spring training. In so many words, it’s, “We’re here to win a championship.” This year, he tweaked it slightly.
“I just told them a lot of good things happened last year,” he said. “Losing sucks and all that. But it happened, and I told them why it happened. We had a good team. We had one soft area, and that was it. I thought last year’s team worked harder than any team we ever had. We had a lot of great things that happened. But when you blow 30 games in the bullpen — it doesn’t mean we had a bad team.”
No, the Braves aren’t a bad team.
We just can’t be sure how good they are.
General manager John Schuerholz certainly strengthened the bullpen with the additions of Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano. Losing the division, Schuerholz said, created “an intensity and a focus in our meetings even sharper than most offseasons. And once we made the deals for the bullpen, the countenance and the spirit of our team changed.”
That said, it would be overly simplistic to conclude all is well. There are too many issues.
The entire right side of the infield, Kelly Johnson and Scott Thorman, is untested. Johnson also is hitting leadoff, which has been a black hole since Rafael Furcal left. Three months from now, we may still be asking, “Who starts in left?”
The starting rotation may be very good. Or not. There was an attempt to bring back Tom Glavine that failed. Smoltz shows no signs of breaking down. But wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if he were the No. 2 starter at almost 40? Tim Hudson, the intended staff ace, has been going the wrong way in his two seasons. Mike Hampton is coming off major surgery and injured himself taking batting practice. Chuck James — suddenly he’s No. 3 as a sophomore.
How many games does Chipper miss? How will the distraction of impending free agency affect Andruw?
The Braves are a team devoid of assumptions.
“We had less question marks last year at the beginning of the year, but there’s more upside this year,” Smoltz said.
He will tell you that, despite failing to win the division, the start of this season didn’t feel different. Failure is failure, whether it’s losing in the playoffs or not getting there at all.
“When I sit and watch other teams play,” Smoltz said, “that’s about the worst feeling for me, whether it’s Oct. 1, Oct. 18 or Oct. 20. It all feels the same. It infuriates me, and that’s a feeling that I hope carries over to 25 players.” Better? Maybe.
Different? Certainly.
If you want comfort, you’re in the wrong era.
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The year in review - in preview
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This is the year we learn if last season was the raging exception or the new rule.
This is the year we discover if the Braves can seize on the benefit of the doubt they’d accrued in finishing first 14 times running.
This is the year we find out if it’s better to have a bullpen than a rotation.
This is the year we see if Marcus Giles was as indispensable as the fans thought or as overrated as the Braves believed.
This is the year Bobby Cox says will be his next-to-last, and if you don’t think that’s cause for concern, you know nothing about baseball and shouldn’t even be reading this.
This is the year Chipper Jones will be lucky to play 110 games.
This is the year Mike Hampton needs to earn at least one-quarter of his massive salary.
This is the year the Braves get a new PA voice, and to that we can only say, “Now that’s HOT!”
This is the year the Braves get a whole new broadcast operation, and to that we can only say, “So what was bad about just having Skip and Pete and Don and Joe?”
This is the year Kelly Johnson proves he can play second base. Or doesn’t.
This is the year — actually, it’s another in a series — when the Braves really need a quality backup for their third baseman. And Wilson Betemit’s gone.
This is the year Ryan Langerhans proves he’s more than just a fourth outfielder. Or doesn’t.
This is the last year we’ll see Andruw Jones in a Braves uniform. Enjoy it while you can.
This is the year Liberty Media gets a big, fat tax writeoff. Bully for LM.
This is the year the Mets are defending NL East champs, and how strange that sounds.
This is the year Tom Glavine wins his 300th game for somebody else. Rats.
This is the year Chuck James becomes either the next Tom Glavine or the next Damian Moss.
This is an awfully big year for Roger McDowell.
This is an even bigger year for Terry Pendleton, who’s suddenly auditioning for Cox’s job.
This could be the biggest year of all for John Schuerholz, who has to be asking himself: “Do I really want to go on doing this without the best manager in baseball to handle my personnel?”
This is the year the jostling for Schuerholz’s job, which has been ongoing for the past decade, gets really serious.
This is the year Scott Thorman hustles more conspicuously than Adam LaRoche but accomplishes significantly less.
This is the year Jeff Francoeur learns the strike zone. Or doesn’t.
This is the year Brian McCann proves he’s worth the Braves’ long-term investment.
This is the year Jarrod Saltalamacchia learns a new position in the minor leagues.
This is the year John Smoltz hits the big 4-0.
This is the year Tim Hudson either turns it around or pitches himself off the roster.
This is the year the Braves have three closers but no proven big-leaguer on the right side of the infield. This is the year — actually, it’s another in a series — when Edgar Renteria gets his hits and plays a highly professional shortstop.
This is the year Kyle Davies finds a place in the rotation or an apartment back in Richmond.
This is the year Cox achieves immortality by breaking John McGraw’s record for career ejections. No word on whether Bud Selig plans to be on hand to witness the gala event.
This is the year — the second in a row, to be precise — the Braves finish third in the East.
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Storylines and a prediction
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
There’s one dance to go, two if you count the one Joakim Noah figures to perform after Florida has taken its second consecutive national championship.
(For a look at the last dance Noah unveiled in the Georgia Dome, check out YouTube.) There’s one dance to go, and here’s how it will look and sound.
Team of destiny vs. team for the ages
Ohio State is the former, having rallied from 11 points down to beat Xavier and from 20 behind to beat Tennessee. Florida, duh, is the latter. Florida is the team that never sticks together in neo-basketball, but somehow this one did, retaining all its starters despite ample reasons for at least three of them to bolt for the NBA.
Asked how long it will be before we see such a thing happen again, Thad Matta, the Ohio State coach who has freshmen Mike Conley Jr. and Greg Oden at his disposal for at least one more game, said: “I hope next year.”
Burning questions (and really hot answers)
• Can Ohio State play the zone defense that frazzled Georgetown and still defuse Lee Humphrey? (Probably not.)
• Can Greg Oden (right) get in foul trouble yet again and expect his team to win yet again? (Nope.)
• So: Can Oden stay out of foul trouble? (Nope.)
• With history waiting to be written, can Florida focus, as Billy Donovan keeps saying, on the process and not the outcome? (Probably. The Gators have gotten this far, haven’t they?)
• Is Billy Donovan going to Kentucky? (Nope, but folks in the Bluegrass State will tell you the introductory news conference is set for Wednesday.)
Overrated, yet also underrated
• Corey Brewer, Florida: His man-to-man defending has slipped a bit — the belief is that he’s looking more for steals than stops — but his offense has improved exponentially. He kept the Gators afloat early against UCLA with his 3-point shooting and lane-slashing, and he remains the single best Florida player.
A fun thing to do: Watch Brewer stand next to Joakim Noah, who’s listed as 6-foot-11, and realize that the Gators’ small forward is a legitimate 6-9.
• Greg Oden, Ohio State: He’s not the man-to-man defender he’s believed to be, which is somewhat understandable given that he’s 19 and hasn’t played against many guys half as talented as he is. Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert scored rather easily against Oden on Saturday.
But there’s a flip side: Oden scored on Hibbert, too. Oden has beautiful footwork and fundamentals, and his jump hook — not the sweeping sky hook of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s — is swift and efficient.
Third-most overblown storyline
Ohio State’s Ron Lewis described his team as “great” Sunday. It was then pointed out that he had characterized Florida as merely “good.” Was this a slap at the reigning champ? Said Lewis: “I go bad teams, middle teams and good teams. They’re a good team. If you want a great team, look at the Bulls.” (Presumably he meant the Bulls with Michael Jordan, not the Bulls as coached by Tim Floyd.)
Asked about being merely “good” to Ohio State’s “great,” Noah said: “Oh my God. He said that? He’s a bad person.”
Noah was, it should be noted, kidding.
Said Corey Brewer, the voice of reason: “At least he said we were good. He could have said we were bad.”
Second-most overblown storyline
The game in Gainesville on Dec. 23. Florida won by 26 points. Big deal. It was a set-up game for the Buckeyes, who knew it going in. The Gators, who had already lost to Kansas and Florida State, were out to prove they were still a great (as opposed to good) team, and they did. It was only the Buckeyes’ second road test — the first, also a loss, was in Chapel Hill — and it was only Greg Oden’s fifth collegiate game after wrist surgery.
“I don’t think December has anything to do with April,” Billy Donovan said. “Greg Oden wasn’t healthy. … He was still shooting free throws left-handed.”
Most overblown storyline
Unless Ted Ginn Jr. runs back the opening kickoff for a touchdown tonight and then sprains his ankle in the celebration, the basketball game will in no way mirror what happened in Glendale, Ariz., on Jan. 8. This is a different sport. These are different players.
Said Joakim Noah: “Revenge is so overrated. Does revenge at this point make you play harder? If it does, you’re playing for the wrong reason. UCLA said things about wanting revenge.” And the Gators just beat the Bruins by 10 points 12 months after beating them by 16.
Key numbers
9.6: The average number of shots taken by Brewer, who leads the Gators in field-goal attempts.
7.3: The average number of shots taken by Noah, fifth among Gators starters in field-goal attempts.
13: The number of turnovers in five NCAA games by Conley, Ohio State’s great freshman point guard.
16: The number of tunovers in five NCAA games by Taurean Green, Florida’s very good junior point guard.
2: The number of shots missed in the NCAA tournament by Chris Richard, Florida’s superb sixth man.
86,334: According to Al Horford, it’s the number of times the Gators have been asked about repeating as champions.
Worst question in Final Four history
On Sunday, someone asked how Ohio State’s backup center got the nickname of Twig. Said Greg Oden, whose deadpan sense of humor is also greatly undervalued: “Because his last name is Terwilliger.”
The bottom line
Ohio State will make the Gators work harder than any team has in this tournament, but Florida will win because Florida never gets rattled, not even on the biggest of stages. Gators 72, Buckeyes 67.
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Streak ended, but East still chasing Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Philadelphia — He’s not backing off, which is fine. I mean, he’s wrong, but that’s not the point. If Jimmy Rollins, the efficient shortstop and undisputed leader of the Philadelphia Phillies, believes his team will take the National League East this season, he has the constitutional right to put his cleats in his mouth.
In fact, Rollins mentioned what he first predicted last month again on Sunday during a players-only meeting at Citizens Bank Park after his team’s workout for its opener today against the Braves.
Said Rollins, nodding in the home clubhouse toward another room, “We got together back there, and the point was that spring training is over. It’s just a matter of us getting our minds right. The work is done. Now it’s putting all of that together and finding a way to win. No matter what it takes. Regardless of who you are. Just find different ways to be special today.”
The Braves are not amused. Said right fielder Jeff Francoeur, speaking for those in the visitors’ clubhouse who wish to stuff the Liberty Bell down Rollins’ throat, “I know his comments motivate the heck out of me. I’ll tell you that. When you start getting guys making predictions like that, it really does get you going, especially after the Mets won it last year, and we won it for 14 seasons before that.”
Consider, too, that the Mets have fossils Tom Glavine and El Duque leading a ghastly collection of starting pitchers. Many of those nice freshmen from last year’s Florida Marlins bunch are likely to become duds as sophomores. The Washington Nationals are the worst team in baseball. That leaves the Phillies, who haven’t won anything in 14 years, and the Braves, who are flashing signs with a rejuvenated bullpen of becoming the Braves again.
This isn’t 1991, when they were a young miracle and oblivious to the word “pressure.” This isn’t 1995, when they clearly had the players to do what they should have done two or three times earlier in the decade, and that is win it all. This isn’t 1996, when they went from defending their world championship to the greatest choke in World Series history. This isn’t 1999, when they won a pennant despite a slew of aches and pains throughout their roster. This isn’t 2005, when 18 rookies somehow gave them a 14th consecutive division title. This isn’t 2006, when their bullpen crashed and burned, along with their record streak for reaching the playoffs.
This is the Braves returning as winners. That’s because they have fewer “ifs” throughout their overall pitching staff than anybody else in the NL East, and because Bobby Cox is baseball’s best manager, and because everybody in the division is still chasing them.
Mentally, if nothing else.
Even Rollins said as much indirectly. This was after he praised his Phillies with an everyday lineup that features rising slugger Ryan Howard, impressive second baseman Chase Utley and Rollins. The Phillies also have decent pitching that nevertheless has significant bullpen issues beyond closer Tom Gordon. Not good. Just ask the Braves, whose NL-high 29 blown saves last season made them less than ordinary.
Anyway, back to Rollins and the mighty psych job that the Braves continue to do on division foes. “Before the Mets knocked them off, the Braves found a way to beat you every year, no matter what changes they made, or who they lost, or who went down during the course of a season,” Rollins said. “They know how to win. Whatever it is, they have that ‘thing.’”
Realizing what he just said (especially since he is suggesting the Phillies have that “thing”), Rollins added in a hurry, “Or I should say the Braves had that ‘thing’ for years.” Then Rollins paused before reflecting more on that ‘thing’ for the Braves. “Something like that just doesn’t go away,” he said. “They had a down year, but now that somebody has knocked them off, you have to expect them to be good.”
Makes sense to me.
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Team of veterans will earn repeat title
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The designation on my Final Four credential read “MUP,” which stood for “Media Upper.” That meant the football press box at the Georgia Dome. Hot dog, I’d get a view of the Final Four like I was in the Goodyear blimp. Those basketball behemoths would be shrunk to dwarf-size, scurrying about on the distant floor below like figures in a pinball machine.
So, where was I when the buzzer sounded for the start? Imprisoned by my television screen, victim of a back spasm, a situation that did not represent disinterest. We have seen three Final Fours in our town, beginning in 1977, when Marquette upset North Carolina, after which Al McGuire never coached again, took off to another continent, rented a motorcycle and did another one of his spontaneous solo tours.
The coming of the Georgia Dome, and its expanded seating, aroused renewed NCAA interest in Atlanta. If the Final Four of 2002 came off like another downtown convention of chicken-pluckers, this one was like Las Vegas East. Downtown was turned into a roiling outdoor circus. Just as many visitors milled about the streets as found seats inside the Dome. Some people just like to be part of the scene, even though this was a Classic FF, with two No. l and two No. 2 teams on the bill.
It bears repeating, I think, that two of them were lucky to be there. Xavier missed a free throw that would have taken Ohio State out. An official — or three — missed a traveling call that would have eliminated Georgetown. They don’t have a replay rule in college basketball, thank heaven. If they did, games wouldn’t be over until breakfast.
It was destiny at work. History laid its hand on the Hoyas, another John Thompson, another Patrick Ewing, all those parts that reassemble past dramatics. All along, it had appeared to this non-student of the game that Georgetown might be the surprise team of the lot at an early stage, but as it played out Saturday night, this is the Final Two that some mystical force with a sense of history designated. There is powerful evidence berthed in these teams that breeding will out.
Look at ‘em. Joakim Noah, son of Yannick. Mike Conley, son of Mike Sr. Al Horford, son of Tito. Taurean Green, son of Sidney. Jeremiah Rivers, son of Doc. Darren Collison, son of June, and the Ewings and the Thompsons. And in passing, have you noticed how much Thad Matta, the Ohio State coach, resembles Gene Hackman, who played the winning coach in “Hoosiers”?
There is something about Noah that lights up a court — beyond that hairstyle. (Did I hear it referred to as a “pony- tail”? A barber could only handle that bale of hair with a bush-hog.) He draws attention to himself when it isn’t necessary. He attracts enough just naturally. He wears his temper prominently, and at the required interviews after play, comes off with repugnant insolence.
This is a remarkable band of athletes, the five Florida players, four juniors and a senior, who took the pledge to return and defend their championship. They have two long-range gunners, Lee Humphrey and Corey Brewer, but this is not the offense they live by. North Carolina found out how self-destructing that can be when the Tar Heels turned their offense over to the bombers against Georgetown and did nothing but clank the rim.
Fate would designate this one to Ohio State. But there is something about “team” in this game that I have deep respect for. Not being one heavy on basketball history, meaning I have no prognostication license, nevertheless I take my stand. Florida again, with little doubt. And frankly, I have no idea where Billy Donovan will coach next, and care little.
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Anybody doubt Gators now?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Asked yet again about this repeating business, Billy Donovan said Friday: “You’ve got to get to Monday night first.” His Florida Gators are there now, there with the same stubborn players who have pointed toward this Monday night since that Monday night in Indianapolis 12 months ago.
“I think our guys know,” Donovan said Saturday, “if the result [Monday] is for us, what that means.”
The Gators are back in the NCAA final, their long slog toward basketball immortality almost done. They haven’t yet had the Christian Laettner moment that Duke needed to repeat in 1992, haven’t yet run upon an opponent with the skill and the will to make them consider the dark possibility of elimination. Maybe Ohio State will be that test. Then again, maybe these Gators are so good that nobody can graze them.
UCLA was thought to be a severe impediment, the UCLA that Florida had handled easily 12 months ago, the UCLA of razor-wire defense and Howlin’ Ben Howland. But the Bruins, who’d stared down a hugely gifted Kansas team in the West Regional final, were reduced to a series of blinks Saturday night.
Their best player, Arron Afflalo, was whistled for his second foul in the game’s second minute and his third in the ninth. Florida let the Bruins linger for a bit, but soon the Gator lead was 16 points and Howlin’ Ben was calling his last — yes, his last — timeout with 13:49 to go. Once again, Florida had reminded us that it’s nice to be tough, but it’s better still to be tough and talented.
Florida can take a blow and deliver one. Florida can win with its big men playing big or its little men punching above their weight. Should the Gators prevail Monday, they’ll be ushered into Hoops Valhalla, but truth to tell they belong there already.
They’re exactly the sort of team — big and swift and deep and seasoned — we weren’t supposed to see in latter-day basketball. They’re a retro bunch in a microwave world. They play the sort of game that wouldn’t have been out of place in John Wooden’s day or even Hank Iba’s. They share the ball and defend like demons, and obviously they love playing with one another. If they didn’t, three of them would be in the NBA.
And they fit together. Unlike Kansas or North Carolina, there’s no duplication of resources. Every Gator has a clearly defined (and willingly accepted) role. As Lee Humphrey, whose four baskets in the first eight minutes of the second half drained the life from UCLA, said Friday: “Each one of us brings something the other guys can’t.”
Consider Humphrey. Without Taurean Green to get him the ball and Joakim Noah and Al Horford to draw double-teams down low, he’d be just another standstill jump shooter. On Florida he’s the game-breaker, the man who hits no shot except those that cause the opposition to drop its head in submission.
Or consider Chris Richard. He’s the third-best big man on his team, but if you put him on UCLA he might well have been the Bruins’ leading scorer. For two seasons Richard has been content to spell Noah or Horford, and Saturday he outplayed both. He scored 16 points, and a succession of Richard putbacks had the neutrals in the crowd headed for the exits before the game’s final TV timeout.
The big rematch had long since been rendered a numbing rerun, and now the Gators must play one more team they’ve already dispatched. They beat Ohio State by 26 points on Dec. 23, and 16 days later their football team whipped the Buckeyes by 27. Don’t expect a similar rout this time, but at this late date does anybody really envision Florida losing?
Somebody? Anybody?
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Buckeyes can write saga in indelible ink
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The NCAA can level a program in a number of ways. Few are worse than with a bottle of Wite-Out.
Turn to the first page of Ohio State’s postseason media guide and you will find its history of successes and face-plants in the NCAA tournament. What you won’t find is any reference to 1999, when the Buckeyes went to their previous Final Four.
There is something about paying players and orchestrating academic fraud that leads NCAA investigators to lose their sense of humor, which is to assume they ever had one.
Nothing Ohio State can do will ever completely erase what, well, the NCAA already officially has erased. But win one more game and it’ll be as close to memory whiteout as the Buckeyes can get.
Their 67-60 win over Georgetown Saturday night has put them in a national title game for the first time in 45 years. It has been 47 years since Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek led the school to its only championship, a feat the school actually was allowed to keep.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not this soon. Not even with a freshman center who seemed NBA-ready (Greg Oden) and a freshman guard (Mike Conley Jr.). Not with a team that is forever dwarfed by the football program. When Thad Matta, the third-year replacement for the fired coach Jim O’Brien, handed players a Final Four pamphlet in the summer and spoke of the team’s goals this season, even some of them didn’t believe it.
“He talked about what we wanted to achieve and stuff — that was the first time we talked about it,” Conley said. “To tell you the truth, I probably didn’t believe him. I figured I would see how it went the first couple of games, and see if we’re as good as Coach says we are.” Let’s assume Matta was right.
This makes 22 straight wins.
Has there ever been a less talked-about team with a 22-game winning streak?
Ohio State did not do it the easy way Saturday. It had no choice. Hyperventilating referees gutted the game’s biggest sideshow when Oden was called for two curious offensive fouls in the first 2:41.
At that rate, Oden would’ve fouled out long before CBS could squeeze in another 17 commercials. So he was pulled. His first-half stats: 0 shots, 0 rebounds, two fouls.
“It was real tough, just sitting there,” Oden said.
His recap: “What happened was the referee blew the whistle.”
Fortunately for Ohio State, it was well practiced in these situations. It played the first seven games of the season without Oden while he recovered from wrist surgery. It has played several games with him in foul trouble. All the Georgetown game did was reaffirm what we should have already known — that this isn’t a one-man team, especially not with the quickest player on the floor (Conley).
Twenty-two straight. OK. They’re good.
Georgetown had become the feel-good story of this tournament. A famous coach’s son. A famous alum’s son. The Beast returns.
Fans wore T-shirts with “III” on the back, a reference to coach John Thompson III, and the caption: “Respect is back. Fear is next.”
Well, when “next” gets here, be sure to tell Ohio State.
Oden returned in the second half. The totals: 13 points, nine rebounds, in 17 minutes. “I told Greg at halftime, ‘You should be well-rested,’ ” Matta said.
His return actually was punctuated by a thunderous missed slam-dunk when he nearly knocked Georgetown’s Jeff Green into an altered state. “I was out for 17 minutes,” Oden said. “I wanted to get in there and just tear the rim down.” (As if risking life wasn’t enough, Green was called for a blocking foul.)
The Buckeyes have one more game to vent. Their football team was drilled by Florida in the BCS title game. Their basketball team was humiliated by the NCAA (and lost to the Gators by 26 points in December).
“It’s amazing,” said senior Ron Lewis, an O’Brien-era holdover. “Excellent coach, excellent team, and I’m looking forward to getting this ring.”
And to the moment not being erased.
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