Fifth in an occasional series.
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Posted on April 7, 2010
SportsMonday: Cinderella Stories
By Jim Coffman
What an amazing night of basketball on Saturday . . . after Butler edged Michigan State to continue its Cinderella story. Then again, at least sitting through the second half of the first national semifinal and the long stretches of offensive ineptitude therein (lowlighted by the Bulldogs going almost 11 befuddled minutes without a field goal) enabled me to avoid watching the Bulls’ early fourth quarter follies. Those were especially special considering they included numerous big plays from former locals turned Bobcats such as Larry Hughes and Tyrus Thomas. By the time I really focused on the local professional franchise during the break between national semifinals, the team, which had led by double-digits for much of the second and third quarters, had reached its nadir. It was down six with about five minutes remaining.
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Then, just like that, the Bulls flipped the switch back on. The rest of the game looked like a long highlight reel. When Derrick Rose wasn’t making like a machete on his way through the Charlotte defense time and again in the final minutes, he was passing to a red-hot Kirk Hinrich, who hit the three that gave the Bulls the lead for good and was 9-for-12 from the field on the night, or Joakim Noah. It was Noah’s dunk through Thomas’ outstretched hand that seemed to convince the Bulls once and for all that they could turn this game around one final time and record the victory, one that improved their record to 37-39.
It is still a long shot that the Bulls will pull ahead of Toronto, which beat the bad 76ers in overtime earlier Saturday to improve to 38-37, for the eighth and final playoff seed in the Eastern Conference. The home team has six games remaining, the Torontonians have seven. But the Bulls’ first victory over a playoff team in more than a month was simply a thriller.
Then it was Duke and Northbrook’s Jon Scheyer (a game-high 23 points) playing their best game of the season against West Virginia. My wife Julie noted during the Butler game that she wondered if the Bulldog and Spartan shooting was suffering from the lack of depth perception that comes with holding basketball games in football stadiums containing acres of relatively flat spectator space behind the glass backboards. That clearly was not a problem for the Blue Devils and it would seem to bode well for them in tonight’s final.
Posted on April 5, 2010
The White Sox Report
And so, armed with only a staff for the ages and no bats to immortalize it, the White Sox enter 2010 a little wiser and a whole lot older.
Mark Kotsay batting fifth. Alex Rios coming off an absolutely Swisherian season. All the optimism in the world suggesting Andruw Jones will, at best, get on base 30 percent of the time. The oldest player in the American League backing up the most reckless. Mark Teahen replacing Gordon Beckham replacing Chris Getz. Their best players in decline, their eventual best not yet there, and the whole thing just reeking of another season spent envying the competition. But it’s only April, so let’s not yet dwell on things which might not happen.
Posted on April 5, 2010
Ofman: Dis and Dat, Dem and Dose
By George Ofman
Here’s a prediction you won’t see anywhere else: The Sox will go 135-27 while the Cubs will finish 144-18. This is what happens when you have a rum and OJ followed by a Nyquil chaser.
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Here’s the real prediction: The Cubs will finish 87-75, five games behind the Cardinals. The Sox will wind up 87-75, two games behind the Twins. Hope I’m wrong.
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Bear down! Alex Brown is gone. What a class act and a solid player. I’m just wondering whether Jerry Angelo could have gone under the radar the way Kenny Williams does and tried to trade Brown rather than release him.
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Is it me or is Julius Peppers getting more ink than Barack Obama?
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I’ve warned you before about these Blackhawks . . . they won’t make it to the conference finals. The goaltending issue is one thing and so is the loss of Brian Campbell, whom fans should miss. His loss is one of the reasons why the Hawks pace has slowed. This is a quick-moving, slick-passing puck control team. Campbell is a quick-moving, slick-passing puck control guy.
Posted on April 2, 2010
TrackNotes: Roeper Goes To The Dogs
By Thomas Chambers
Seems a lot like CB radio or swing dancing or expensive cigars, this faddish gambling fetish Richard Roeper’s latched on to as fuel for his latest non-fat, pop-culture lite tree killer of a book. Ever the now hipster, Roeper cites Super Size Me as an inspiration for his Bet the House, excerpted in Sunday’s Sun-Times.
Isn’t gambling in a slump and isn’t the Texas Hold ‘Em craze kind of fading? And Super Size Me was six years ago already. RR seems typically late to this one.
And you can kind of smell a rat in Roeper’s theme if you check out the premise of Horseplayers: Life at the Track by Ted McClelland, where McClelland uses a book advance to spend a year as a horseplayer. Horseplayers is a great book and I’ll wager it’s of much more substance than Roeper’s.
Yes, I did read the Roeper excerpt, and you wish Jason Robards was in the newsroom to tell the guy “Come back when you’ve got something.” I understand the automatic hype of the S-T’s featured columnist brands, but as Albert Brooks protested in Real Life, he’s shallow.
And Roeper completely blows his gambling cred in the first installment. Who picked this excerpt?
Posted on April 2, 2010