Wizards, Bullets, and Curses, Oh My!

  

A friend emailed me recently asking whether or not I thought the Wizards were cursed. The short answer to his question was no, I don't believe that cosmic forces have aligned to collectively screw over an NBA franchise. Excepting the possibility of the supernatural, though, I was forced to admit that he had a point about the eeriness of their futility. This is, after all, the team had a Mexican standoff in their locker room. That standoff involved a player (Arenas) who has played 47 games in the last three seasons combined while under contract for 111 million dollars over 6 years. Arenas then decided that the most mature way to handle these allegations was to make light of it by mock shooting his teammates before a game, which made about as much sense as Tiger mock humping a caddy at a golf tournament. Naturally, at that point the league decided to eschew allowing the legal system to run its course in favor of a year long suspension.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com

Meeting the Deadline

 

This is one of the slowest parts of the year for sports stories, unless you like to pretend that you can do a serious breakdown of curling or the biathlon. I suppose I could write the umpteenth article criticizing Tiger Woods for being a robot, but my opinion could be summarized in far too few words for an article: who cares.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com

When the Mighty Fall

  

The Boston Celtics were incredibly fortunate to win the NBA title in 2008. They had a pair of trades that gave them the top end talent they required. Their young players blossomed into excellent role players. They required 26 of a possible 28 games to get through the playoffs, allowing lesser teams to drag out playoff series instead of being able to end them quickly. Essentially, for one year, anything that could go their way did. Considering that they were thought to have a window of 2-4 years to win a title beginning with the 2007-2008 season, the future looked promising.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com

Heroes and Villains

  

Roberto Alomar is not a sexy name in baseball. He didn’t have the caché of a big market for the majority of his career. He didn’t hit a prodigious number of home runs, he wasn’t accused of taking steroids, and he never won an MVP. During his seventeen-season career, the words you would use to describe him would have been excellent, workmanlike, and consistent. He rarely found himself the subject of much attention, and he seemed to prefer it that way. Who needs attention when you are quietly the best player at your position since the legendary Joe Morgan?

Unfortunately, all of that nondescript excellence only made his moment of weakness seem all the more glaring.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com

Today We Spell Redemption, S-A-I-N-T-S

  

I’ve discussed at length why football brings about the emotions it so effortlessly coaxes from its followers. We don’t only find a reason to attach a ridiculous amount of our happiness to our team of choice, when they aren’t playing we muster up the energy to shift our hatred and exuberance elsewhere. For me, the result was a slightly irrational attachment to the Saints for a great number of reasons (bottom of the article). Their team is a series of cast-offs (Vilma, Brees, Colston), their coach gave up salary to get the defensive coordinator he wanted, and their city could obviously use a distraction, not to mention any financial windfall that winning might bring. As such, I was understandably nervous, given that if you had asked me before the game, I would have given an edge to the Colts, a.k.a. the team that doesn’t lose when it tries.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com

Our Newest National Holiday

  

 
The stage has been set for America’s only sports related national holiday. Amazingly, my predictions regarding the games proved to be more or less correct. I guess picking the favorites will lead to that result a good bit of the time. In any case, in preparation for the greatest spectacle of the year, lets look back at the conference championship games and see what useful information we can glean.

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com