Leading Off: Lin's Wild Ride Hits South Beach - New York Times (blog)

Let's step back for a moment to understand what the last three weeks have accomplished for the N.B.A. and then perhaps we'll all be treated for whiplash. Because three weeks ago the N.B.A. was an injury-riddled mess, full of bad teams going nowhere, with nearly everyone cringing at the prospect of what might next leap from LeBron James's mouth.

The Knicks, until they stumbled on their scrap-heap gem Jeremy Lin, were one of those bad teams going nowhere. And a late-February game in Miami portended only another round of oh-if-LeBron-had-only-signed-in-New-York daydreaming. But the leaguewide typhoon of good feeling that Lin created has swamped everything else. Sure, the league is still an injury-riddled mess, James is still allowing mind-boggling things to bounce off his vocal cords and the Lakers are running their own soap opera. But we've got Linsanity now, headed for a date with the Heat in Miami Thursday night, and nobody cares about anything else. If we didn't know better, we would suspect the N.B.A. rigged this like the 1985 draft lottery. But the N.B.A. is not that smart — indelibly confirmed during the lockout — and Lin could hardly have been crafted on anybody's mental sketch pad.

So, we have Linsanity descending on Miami with all its accompanying sideshows, which includes James treating it all with an annoyed sigh before even he caught on to its medicinal benefits, writes Mitch Lawrence in The Daily News. The quirky part about this is, as Mike Vaccaro writes in The New York Post and Dave Hyde writes in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, when the Knicks were there 27 days ago, Heat forward Udonis Haslem tells the story of Lin in pregame chapel praying aloud not to get cut.

With Lin firmly established as a no-cut risk, the Knicks are now trying to figure out whether they are playoff contenders, Bill Reiter writes on Foxsports.com, and a game against league-dominating Miami will prove a bit of a referendum on that. Games like Wednesday night's drubbing of an injury-riddled mess of an Atlanta team, after all, don't tell much of anything. Perhaps the most notable part of it was, Lin showed no signs of bowing under the weight of all the publicity he spawned, Filip Bondy writes in The Daily News, which by itself is a superhuman feat.

The league did have more intriguing games Wednesday night, including the latest "As The Lakers Turn" episode, in which a fired-up group conquers the Mavericks in Dallas. This follows Kobe Bryant's sniping at his own front office, which even Magic Johnson thinks was a good idea,  and the Mavericks owner Mark Cuban holding court before the game to proclaim the lockout was about every team being able to make a profit. This, countering all those higher-purpose-sounding sound bites during the lockout, confounded Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, among others.

Just in case anyone in Los Angeles was bored with the Lakers' melodrama, the Angels threw in a little zinger. It seems they started an advertising campaign around their new star, Albert Pujols, a series of billboards proclaiming him El Hombre, without checking with el hombre, who decidedly hates them. Pujols had squashed that line of promotion in St. Louis, where he was sensitive to the legacy of Stan (The Man) Musial, and still would like to steer clear of it. This may not be as uncomfortable a preseason situation as the Rangers have: the major topic of conversation is their alcoholic slugger — with the owner Nolan Ryan declaring his support for Josh Hamilton — and the hordes of Japanese news media following every exhale of pitcher Yu Darvish. Ryan tried to throw a little water on the sky-high expectations there, too, writes Gil LeBreton in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Maybe even more awkward still is the scene with the Brewers, who wait in limbo for the ruling on Ryan Braun's positive drug test, writes Foxsports.com's Jon Paul Morosi.

There was a judicial decision in an even more important case: a guilty verdict in the murder trial of the Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely for the murder of the lacrosse player Yeardley Love. He now awaits sentencing after his second-degree murder conviction, which does nothing for the broken hearts of Love's loved ones, writes Anna Catherine Clemmons on ESPNw.com, but at least levies some justice.

College sports does offer some more redeeming story lines, with Pat Forde writing on Yahoo.com about how Southern Mississippi Coach Larry Eustachy has resurrected his career and his life after his alcohol-fueled flame-out at Iowa State. And Dan Wetzel adds on Yahoo.com how Cincinnati and its coach, Mick Cronin, grew from the ugly on-court brawl with Xavier. None of that explains how San Francisco 49ers Coach Jim Harbaugh ended up playing team manager at Indiana for a day, but this Indianapolis Star article does.

Most of the N.H.L. is waiting for Monday's trade deadline to spice things up — Rick Nash, please pick up the white courtesy phone — but Columbus threw in a twist by trading Antoine Vermette first (to Phoenix) while Nash waits. In Washington, however, they are fixated on the imploding Capitals, who lost again with the added twist of Alex Ovechkin sitting out with a mysterious lower body injury.

And just when you thought the craziest stuff was going on the N.B.A., the Wisconsin legislature throws in this gem: Dec. 12, 2012, will officially be Aaron Rodgers day in honor of the Packers' quarterback, who, yes, wears No. 12. Gosh, one Super Bowl victory gets you a day in Wisconsin. Too bad Jeremy Lin doesn't play there. They might give him a whole month.

Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt

 

 

23 Feb, 2012


-
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNE1dRoaQjN7b9OYAfA0T6ZjLALs2Q&url=http://offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/leading-off-lins-wild-ride-hits-south-beach/
--
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com

What's on Your Mind...

Powered by Blogger.