So, tonight is the pivotal game 5 in the series with Cleveland. If the Celtics don't win, I guess we'll finally see if this team is for real or not. Obviously, they put up a tremendous regular season, but the regular season will have meant nothing if this team doesn't make the NBA Finals. Each year it seems the NBA regular season means less and less because there are at least 12 terrible teams. And now with the epidemic of fire sale trades this season (KG to Boston, Gasol to LA and Shaq to Phoenix) it seems like the bad teams will get worse and the few good teams will get better more quickly. That might make for better playoffs, but it won't make for better basketball.

Should the Cs win tonight, they will be in a strong position in the series, but overall they still have the nagging issue of their inability to win on the road this postseason. I imagine it may have happened at one point in history, but I sincerely doubt a team has managed to win a title without winning at least one game on the road in the playoffs. Theoretically, it's possible as long as the Cs could win every game at home. But what exactly are the odds of that happening?

Say they get past the Cavs, that puts them up against the Pistons. And if they should beat Detroit without winning a game at the Palace, they would go on to face the team that emerges from the Lakers, the Jazz, the Hornets or the Spurs. By the time the playoffs are all said and done if the Cs advance to the Finals without winning on the road they'd have played 21 games on top of the regular season. Throw in the fact that Pierce, KG and Allen aren't really all that young any more (consider the fact that LeBron seems like he's been in the league forever, but he's only 23 then multiply that effect for the Boston Three Party).

And is it really likely that with the playoff savvy veterans in Detroit and San Antonio looming (I'll believe that the NBA won't allow the Spurs to hack and flop their way to yet another disappointing NBA Finals series when it happens) couldn't find a way to win in Boston at least once between the two of them? These teams know every dirty trick in the game today. And they have no silly superstitions about playing basketball the way it ought to be played, so they can either wear down or frustrate the Celtics with tactics that would make Pat Reily's Knicks teams blush.

And if the Cs should lose tonight, they'll be in a world of pain. Not having won on the road and facing elimination in Game Six, we would see a Celtics team that has been hit (for those of you who read this space regularly, you'll remember my fondness for quoting the maxim of the Michael Douglas character from The Ghost and the Darkness that in prize fighting, everybody has a plan until he gets hit). With a suspect coach in Rivers, and three superstars who have had a knack for coming up small when it really matters, would you really be confident that the Celtics would be dangerous with their backs against the wall?

I wouldn't, but then I don't want them to do well as long as Ainge and the boys from Banner 17 are minding the store. In other matters, the NBA is going to suspend play for the 2008-2009 season in the next few days. Since the Benefactor has signed Rick Carlisle to coach the Mavs, it is now officially a foregone conclusion that Mark Cuban will be celebrating the first of many NBA titles this time next year.

Or maybe we'll all remember that Jason Kidd will be a year older, and against everything that seems logical, will be even more of a douche. Dirk Nowitzki will still be some bizarre hybrid of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Josh Howard will still have peaked in 2006. Jason Terry will still be Jason Terry, and Rick Carlisle probably won't have acquired the magic to do what he failed to do in Indiana and Detroit.

In case you needed further proof that Mark Cuban is a douche, read his latest entry on BlogMaverick. He drinks Bud, he listens to Jethro Tull and he ponders how to overthrow Google. Bud is swill. Bud Light is fine, but High Life is so much better than Bud it isn't funny, in fact it makes up for those awful Commissioner of the More Taste League spots. Jethro Tull blows. And I rather imagine his machinations against Google are a bit like the Pinky and the Brain cartoons, except without a super-intelligent leader opposite the dim-witted Benefactor and only accidentally funny.

Finally, I received an interesting comment on my last post. An anonymous reader wanted to know why I haven't been posting on the Red Sox. And I guess, like anything else, I don't have a reason. But I will be picking back up with that in the next week or so, as soon as I have something to say. I was surprised to get that comment, though. I figured most people would be glad I haven't posted on the Red Sox lately. I'm sure it would make a far too successful start to this season even more pleasant, but what do I know?

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. With the football season over, and a moderate interest in basketball until the NCAA tournament starts, what was there for me to say? Yeah, the Patriots videotaping scandal has shown surprising staying power (or maybe not so surprising since it gets elected officials headlines while forcing them to take no risks to their future career prospects whatsoever), but I've already said all that I have to say about that, for the most part.

I know NBA teams are scoring more, and sinking ships in the league are offering big name players to potential contenders at bargain basement prices. But I still can't get fired up to watch too much basketball until the playoffs start. No matter how intriguing some teams are starting to look, that doesn't change the fact that there are 8-10 teams more than the market can support.

While there are enough basketball players to fill the league's rosters in the sense that they can all put enough warm bodies on the court, there are far too many guys who have no business in an NBA arena unless they paid the price of admission or sold beer at a concession stand for my taste. There was a time when a player with so little talent and so few discernible skills in the basketball industry like Brian Scalabrine wouldn't be cashing checks from an NBA team. I'm old enough to remember and miss that time and young enough to be depressed when I do remember it.

I do want to talk a little about the big NBA trades that have come down lately. It gives me a chance to do something that I almost never do, and that is compliment Bill Simmons. I guess I'd file it under the "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then" theorem, but Simmons was dead right on Jason Kidd going to the Mavericks being much more likely to blow up than pan out in the short run or the long run. Simmons nailed every one of Kidd's flaws as a basketball player, and how specifically his competitiveness won't overshadow his inability to fit in on an already flawed basketball team.

That said, I am thrilled that Mark Cuban did this. First, it brings together three people in the NBA that I hate more than anyone, even Ainge, in Cuban, Kidd and Dirk. And it puts the three of them on a ship that will almost certainly sink. As Simmons said, Kidd can't shoot and he's too old to consistently drive to the basket. The players who should benefit from an upgraded point guard position were already shooting very well before Kidd came to town. And best of all, Kidd makes $20 million a year at his age, granted the deal ends after next year, but that's a lot of money to pay for a product that just may be past its expiration date. Good night and good luck to any hopes of a Mavericks' title run in the immediate future.

Simmons made an interesting point that Portland would have been a better fit, but Kidd nixed that deal. Apparently he had his heart set on going to the Mavs. Personally, I can't help but wonder if there might be some small motivation for Kidd coming out of the Toni Braxton fiasco, which ruined the chemistry of the young Mavs teams of the mid 1990s after Kidd and Jim Jackson fell out over their interest in the R and B singer.

I also found it interesting that Simmons dared to ask hard questions about whether this Garnett move might not come back to haunt the Celtics from a competitive stand point down the road. I am actually looking forward to that unfolding, considering the fact that I still hate Ainge and wish this team no success. If they don't win this year, all the players will be a year older. More than that, the issues that can arise on a team with three superstars trying to share shots won't be as easy to work around. If people put the team first for a year and it doesn't get it done, particularly if they lose to a one man team like Detroit or Cleveland, it's not going to work like this again.

As Simmons said, and we all know, the simple, pure economic decision was to go for Garnett. Even without the win differential, it got people excited and interested in the Celtics for the first time in 6 years. It sold a lot of tickets and jerseys and other assorted memorabilia. And something tells me, that even if this team comes apart at the seams in the playoffs and never gets close to bringing the 17th banner to Banner 17, those tools won't lose much sleep over it. Not so long as they make money.

So much for the thought that Mark Cuban is a brilliant business man. I wonder how the people who were desperate for Cuban to acquire the Cubs have taken this. I notice Jay Mariotti hasn't had the time to devote an entire column on this story. I'm not surprised, what with the fact that he had to tell us Tiger Woods had overtaken Michael Jordan. Aside from the horrendously half-assed stab at some sort of poetry to start the piece, the worst aspect had to be comparing a golfer and a basketball player.

Consider the fact that Tiger Woods goes ballistic if a fan dares snap a photo of him while he's in his back swing. Then set against that image a picture of Jordan trying to drive to the hoop against the Bad Boys era Pistons or the Pat Riley Knicks whose hacking habits did what just might be irreparable damage to basketball as a sport. At the end of the day, it's got to take a bit more than a few ads for Amex and Buick for a guy who excelled at a hobby to pass by a guy who took a shameful amount of contact in a non-contact sport.

As for college basketball, I'm really not all that hard up for something to watch that I can force myself to sit down and watch a game featuring two teams that I really could care less about battle it out in conference play. The only thing I feel strongly about in the entire college basketball landscape is that I hate Duke. I just hope that the upcoming NCAA tournament provides some earth-shatteringly interesting story lines, otherwise college basketball might be dead to me forever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there has been no change in the status of Joe Torre as Yankee manager today, but before I finally say what I have to say about that, I have some belated good news to relay. In case you missed it, Jimmy Kimmel has been banned from the Monday Night Football booth because of his conduct this week. I say belated, because we all would have been better off had ESPN banned him from the booth before he came on the air and acted like a jackass, and not after the fact.

I hate to be the one to break this to America, but Jimmy Kimmel isn't funny. He had a few moments on the Man Show, but the strength of that show was that little fat kid who was such a d bag. Unfortunately for Kimmel, kids can get away with that sort of behavior and old people can get away with it, but not average, every day people, they just end up looking like douches.

I don't know who told him it was a good idea to go on MNF and crack jokes about Joe Theisman, but he probably shouldn't have listened. First off, Theisman had the good grace to retire quietly and not cause a scene to remind every fan that, as bad as Theisman was, he was 1,000,000 times better than Tony Kornheiser. Second, it gave ESPN a convenient pretext for banning him when the real reason the World Wide Leader is upset at Kimmel has nothing to do with Theisman. The network is in a dither because Kimmel kept making mocking references to the size of the crowd and the theoretical size of the viewing audience for a game that wasn't tremedously compelling.

I suppose I shouldn't complain about the underlying hypocrisy, as it did punish Kimmel for a 15 minute appearance that felt like five years. He was dreadful. His timing was off, he had nothing worth saying and he acted like a little kid talking trash to someone who can't respond. Perhaps he is lashing out and feeling inadequate because Sarah Silverman is dazzling the world with the success of her dreadful show on Comedy Central, but his behavior was still uncalled for and will not be missed. I'm sure Comedy Central is lining up more bottom rung celebrities for roasts, so he won't have to waste his A material on small cable audiences for disappointing football games.

But back to Joe Torre. This extended seminar on his future in Tampa worries me. I want him fired. I must admit that I am not a Yankee fan, so I have no sentimental attachment to Torre from the championship years. I just want the Yankees to win as many games as possible because every good thing for the Bron Bombers is a bad thing for Red Sox Nation.

Torre has been in his current capacity for 12 years. That's a long time for any one to stay anywhere, especially in professional sports where constant change is the only constant. He has done some great things, never missing the playoffs and winning 6 pennants and 4 championships, but the Yankees haven't escaped from the first round of the playoffs since John Kerry liked what he saw in his polling numbers. That's ancient history in professional sports. By the way, I say escape the first round, because teams like the Yankees don't aspire to advance, they leave that to lesser mortals with 8 digit payrolls.

Since the Yankees last won the World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Florida Marlins, Whatever We Feel Like Calling Ourselves Today Angels and some other disgraceful blight on the landscape team have all walked away with the trophy and beaten the Yanks while doing it. That's not exactly a who's who of baseball tradition there. Things have gotten stale in the Bronx.

It's gone from the Bronx Zoo to the damn Museum of Natural History before our eyes. Jeter, Rivera, Posada and even guys like Matsui have a lot more mileage on them than one would think based simply on their ages because of the number of playoff games they've played. It's more than an additional regular season because of the stress involved. Every at bat, every pitch, every ground ball is magnified because it could mean victory or elimination. It has to take a toll.

So the question then becomes: who replaces Torre? It's not an easy question because of all the factors involved. First, there's the fact that he's been there so long. Then there's the fact that it's the single most visible coaching job in pro sports. Then there's the fact that New York is full of savage and ignorant people. And on top of everything, there are 2 former managers with half decent resumes currently employed as coaches (Tony Pena and Larry Bowa). It's anybody's guess who takes the reins now should Torre get the gate.

I'm just guessing, but Bowa and Pena are probably out of the running. Bowa didn't do enough in Philly to make any one forget that his team turned on him as though he were Cpatain Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty. Pena brought Kansas City as much success as it's had since George Brett and Saberhagen were there, but that's not good enough to appease New Yorkers or the media.

Don Mattingly is an intriguing candidate, but he has no credentials which would indicate that he can manage a professional baseball team. If I need a guy to play his heart out on an underachieving team, hit .340 with 20 HR and 100 RBI and it's 1987, Don Mattingly is definitely at the top of my list, but I'm not sure Donny Baseball is ready for this job.

Ron Guidry hasn't shown me enough as Yankee pitching coach to tell me he warrants a shot at managing in New York. Perhaps he may have been hamstrung by Torre's desire to see how many consecutive homers a rookie pitcher can allow in a national TV game before his confidence is irrevocably shattered, but I'm not sure Louisiana Lightning doesn't need to manage a second-tier team before he's ready for prime time.

There are a lot of candidates outside the organization who might be considered. There's always Lou Pinella, who might have to flee Chicago before Jay Mariotti runs him out of town as though he were Marshall Dillon from Gunsmoke. Or more likely before Mariotti challenges him to a fistfight, then threatens to sue when Pinella shows that even at age 68 he's more than up to kicking Mariotti's ass. Then again, if Mark Cuban buys the Cubs, perhaps Sweet Lou will want out of dodge before the Cubs become more of a national joke.

There are ex-managers hanging around all manner of broadcast booths who might be considered. Thankfully, the Reds snatched up Dusty Baker. I'm sure Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain must be thanking all sorts of divine beings that Baker and his determination to pitch every prospect he can get his hands on as though they could handle a workload to tire Cy Young and Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown to death won't be on the Yankees radar this offseason.

There's always Bob Brenley, and Brenley does have a ring. But is it just me, or does it seem like his Diamondbacks won the series a million years ago? Perhaps it's because the team was blown up and rebuilt to the point where none of his players was on this team that just lost the NLCS. And if the Yankees bring him in how will Cubs fans know what the wind is doing at each and every stadium during each and every inning?

I think that if Torre goes, and they can get him away from the booth, the logical choice as successor is Joe Girardi. He nearly won the NL wildcard in Florida last season before he was released from his contract due to a conflict with team owner Jeffery Laurie. He has a Yankee pedigree as a backup on the team that won it all in 1996 and bench coach for the team that lost it all in 2003. And God knows, he isn't a very good broadcaster. It could be win-win, if he does well managing and I don't have to see him calling games next summer.

And before I go, I just want to ask who at FOX sat down and said "I know what let's do. Let's get Jeanne Zelasko, Kevin Kennedy, Eric Karros and Joe Girardi and have them host a pregame show." It looks more and more like a very fortunate turn of events that the FOX NFL Sunday crew work well, know the game and entertain an audience. Karros has no business on TV, he's dreadful. And the four of them sit there and look like they don't want to spend a nanosecond longer than necessary together and have no desire to talk to one another. Now, if the job didn't seem to call for friendly banter, then they might have something there. Too bad for us a little chemistry goes a long way in a gig like that. Thanks FOX.

So, everybody and his brother feels compelled to talk about the Michael Vick plea today. For something that any reasonably intelligent person could foresee, it has garnered a surprising amount of coverage. Of course he was going to plead guilty. Once the other co defendants agreed to testify against him in return for a reduced sentence, what the hell kind of case did he have? Vick had to plead guilty, otherwise he was going to end up in jail for a very long time.

But there was at least one entertaining and interesting development to come out in this sordid mess today. A shady, corrupt organization has placed an ad in the New York Times questioning whether PETA kills more animals than Michael Vick. Once you get over the shock of any group, however misguided and corrupt, daring to question the practices of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it's pretty damn funny.

This is funny because this type of in your face, guerrilla marketing is what brought PETA to the attention of the general public in the first place. And anything that's bad for PETA is good for society as a whole. I do not like PETA. I am not a big fan of people who wear fur, but I don't really see it as murder. I do think that if you want to rock a leopard coat, you ought to have the good manners to take the big cat down yourself. But if you want to wear a mink or something like that, I just don't have the time or the energy to care about it.

My real problem with PETA comes from the fact that I believe it is one's moral obligation to eat meat. Think about. Over the last ten thousand or so years, we have domesticated a group of species and eliminated a number of predators in the interest of spreading what passes for civilization. If we suddenly stop eating meat, what becomes of the cattle and the pigs and the chickens and the turkeys? Are we going to allow the bears and wolves and wild cats to come back into our neighborhoods? Something tells me that that won't end well.

Of course, there are other, perhaps more practical alternatives to allowing the natural world to reestablish something approximating population equilibrium the old fashioned way. For instance, food animals could be sterilized and euthanized. What you do with the bodies at that point is beyond me, I realize there are alternatives but I'm not interested enough to research them.

I might be old fashioned, but I don't see how chemically castrating livestock and euthanizing them is particularly more humane than allowing people like me to eat them. I do think that food animals should be treated better than they are at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy or empathy for them. I just believe that if you raise healthier animals, I eat better meat.

I wonder, now, since I have Al Gore's assurance that catastrophic climate change could precipitate another ice age, how am I going to survive if I go vegetarian. I'm not a biologist, but I have noticed some things from casual observation of the world around me. One of the things I've come to realize is that plants have a tough time growing in winter conditions. The winter wheat might have been the greenest stuff Pop Fischer ever saw, but I don't think you're going to see much of it when the glaciers come rolling through the Boston Common.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe prehistoric man weathered past ice ages on a hearty diet of lentil soup and tofu. I have heard that a three bean salad prepared properly has as much protein as a nice, thick porterhouse. But I've come a long way to say that the worst thing to come from this Michael Vick mess has been to elevate the profile of PETA, and the best thing to come from it to this point is this ad ripping PETA.

In other news, rumor has it that Mark Cuban will be this season's token stretch on ABC's inexplicably successful Dancing' With the Stars. I say stretch because Mark Cuban isn't a star. He's a waste of space who creates controversy. One silver lining in this dark cloud (more media attention is not what Cuban needs), is that this little farce might distract him long enough to derail his bid to acquire the Chicago Cubs.

As I watched PTI and Around the Horn this afternoon, I learned two things that some think might make this appearance something less than an abject humiliation (like being denied entry to a Manhattan night club after trying to bribe the bouncer). First, Cuban is a pretty good natural athlete. But more importantly, Cuban helped pay his college tuition by teaching dancing. So he's going to strut his stuff, right?

I have the Benefactor's athletic prowess on good authority. No less a luminary than Michael Wilbon has tested Cuban's skills in pickup basketball games. Hell, if you take one good look at Wilbon, you know he is a tremendous basketball player. Look at his svelte, muscular build. You know Wilbon has game. So if he says Cuban can ball, then the Benefactor us almost certainly a tremendous natural talent.

And then there's his past as a dance instructor. Before we get all kinds of crazy, let's not forget that Cuban taught disco dancing, and he did it while at Indiana University. I don't really want to insult the great Midwest, and Bloomington, Indiana in particular, but it's not like he was tripping a light fandango at Studio 54. I don't know what the last days of disco were like for the Benefactor, but I doubt he was brought in as a consultant on the set of Saturday Night Fever.

I expect Cuban will find a way to come out of this appearance on Dancing With The Stars looking ridiculous. Even if he dances brilliantly, there is no doubt in my mind the Benefactor will find a way to turn a bravura dance performance into a public humiliation. But if he comes out for one show sporting the lily white suit of armor that Commodus rocked in the final battle in Gladiator, I will gain respect for him. I'd go so far as to recant almost 83% of the unpleasant things I've said about him in this space.

Finally, since the game is still going on, and I'm on record as saying I wouldn't post at length on preseason football, I just have a few things to say about the NFL. First, I have to congratulate my old friend DeAngelo Hall. He shaved a message to Chad Johnson into the back of his own head, and then proceeded to be beaten in ugly fashion by that same player.

Then there is the trainwreck that is the ESPN Monday Night Football crew. Tony Kornheiser called Chad Johnson "the irrepressible Chad Johnson" and his mike wasn't cut off instantly. I hate to say this, because I like him as an analyst breaking down film, but Jaws isn't doing anything for me. He does great work on NFL Live and the Matchup show. But he doesn't seem to bring the same insight to the table in real time. Maybe it's just Kornehiser taking the air out of the booth, and that could happen to anyone.

Finally, Asante Samuel is back, baby. And with any luck, he has stayed out long enough so that he'll be out of sync with his teammates. What a shame it would be if the Patriots were to stumble out of the gate this season. I just don't think I could bear up under that type of emotional strain.

Even though every moron and his brother has seen fit to weigh in on the NBA officiating scandal, I still want to put in my two cents. There are aspects of this story that surprised the hell out of just about every American fan. It sort of reminded me of the famous scene from Casablanca where Claude Rains as Captain Renault (the prefect of police) shuts down Rick's under orders from the Germans. The pretext he used is that there was illicit gambling going on in the bar. And as he is claiming to be shocked at that fact, the croupier walks up to him and hands him his winnings.

As a nation of sports fans, we have exhibited the same basic reaction as Captain Renault. We have the nerve to be shocked by this story when we ought to come out and admit that we're really surprised that it has taken this long for an official in one of our major sports to be implicated in a mess like this, or we would be if we weren't so monumentally naive. Officials don't make a lot of money and they have a pretty thankless job. I'm surprised only one of them has allegedly been fixing games.

Another thing that surprised me was Mark Cuban's response to this situation. I would have bet money that he'd have come out in his blog whining about the number of Mavs games Ted Donaghy reffed which featured questionable or controversial calls. Perhaps I was blinded by my hatred. To his credit, the Benefactor came out with a shockingly moderate response and provided a vote of confidence for the league office. I don't agree with him, but I found it to be a not entirely unpleasant surprise.

I don't want us to lose sight of the real victim here. Poor Bill Simmons is now dangerously close to experiencing an identity crisis of epic proportions. For 6 years now, he has managed to walk the fine line between being a wholly owned subsidiary of David Stern and daring to come out of the Commissioner's pocket once in a great while to criticize the league. Now he might have to pick a side, and it might hurt him a little bit.

When I discuss basketball in this space, I think I have made it explicit that I am not impressed with David Stern. He got to where he is today by stabbing his boss in the back. The NBA is falling down around his ears, and the most proactive solution he could come up with is a player dress code. But people claim he's the best commissioner in professional sports today?

The NFL gets better and stronger with each passing year. Their players get involved in ugly off-field incidents and the league comes down with a new player conduct policy. I'm still not a fan of it, but it's a genuine response. Pro basketball players fire into the air outside the strippie, enter the stands to accost and/or assault paying customers and the ratings decline year in and year out, but they have a fancy dress code.

Am I missing something here? Do I need to start smoking dope? How does any sane person look at that and think David Stern is the best commissioner in sports today? So what if the NBA runs a tighter ship than hockey or baseball? Is the constant struggle to attain mediocrity now what a person ought to aspire to?

Here's a thought: maybe David Stern should have been wondering whether one of his officials might have had a gambling problem. Maybe the Commish should have considered the possibility that an official with an alleged gambling problem might possibly come under the thumb of organized crime figures. And maybe one of his officials with an alleged gambling problem and alleged ties to alleged organized crime figures might allegedly take a hand in altering the outcome of games in which he was officiating.

Unless one can solve that problem with a new dress code, Stern could be in a little bit of trouble on this one. I think he might want to put the World's #1 Sports Commissioner mug on the back shelf for a little while. Before I leave this topic, I want to ask a rhetorical question. Every year the NBA playoffs seem to get worse from a fan standpoint. Is it a coincidence that the NBA championship trophy is the Larry O'Brien trophy and said O'Brien is the boss who was stabbed in the back by David Stern?

In other news, Jon Lester was impressive in his debut. And I don't really care. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that his cancer is in remission. It's just that I wish him good health but professional failure. Also, it doesn't help that I hate the Indians. I had a hard time summoning up the energy to root for them tonight.

Finally, while my people seem to have hit a roadblock in advancing my candidacy for President of Red Sox Nation, it won't stop me from ripping Bill Simmons again tonight. I forgot to mention last week when I linked to his podcast addressing his flap with the Remdawg, Bill Simmons managed to make himself the dean of the Max Mercy Hall of Fame.

Simmons said that he wasn't going to feud with Jerry Remy because he didn't feud with second basemen with a lifetime OPS of less than .660. Which is a pretty damning insult coming from Bill Simmons. Out of curiosity, I went to Baseball Reference to set up one of their statistical comparisons to see what the Sports Guy's lifetime OPS was. And the damnedest thing happened. The comparison engine didn't work. It took me a while to figure out why. Then I realized Simmons never played the game.

If you've been reading this space regularly, I think you probably know that I hate Barry Bonds by now. And if you haven't, then I guess I ruined the surprise. But every once in a great while, a writer of such talent, perspicacity and eloquence comes along and makes me think for a fleeting moment that I ought to reconsider my opinion of the man who will hold the MLB record for most home runs hit over the course of a career any day now.

Tonight, that writer is Jay Mariotti. I know I spend a great deal of time in a blog that is supposed to be about my hatred for the Boston Red Sox ripping a "man" who writes for a newspaper 1,000 miles from Boston. Sometimes I almost feel badly about it, but then I read his columns and I grieve for Chicago. Mariotti's recent piece that comes dangerously close to being about something but degenerates into an incoherent rant about Bonds is more a cry for help than anything else.

I know I'm no stranger to an incoherent rant in this blog. But I'm generally drunk when I post jibberish, and I usually apologize for it. Also, this site is free. I don't get paid for it. I don't have any ads to click. So I think I have the right to criticize people who are paid handsomely to do a job and who are covered by an editing staff yet somehow manage to submit disgusting mishmashes of sentence fragments and run-ons for profit.

I wonder why an organization like NOW hasn't noticed that Mariotti is as capable of sexism as any figure they've protested recently. If I started a post with a line like: "Swollen ankles? What is he, pregnant?," I imagine I would get some nasty comments back, but Mariotti's piece was published in a big city daily. Where was the righteous indignation?

What worries me is that Cubs fans are signing petitions and hoping that Mark Cuban wins the bidding process for ownership of the team. You know how I know that Mark Cuban isn't the answer to the Cubs' problems? Jay Mariotti thinks it would be great if Mark Cuban bought the Cubs.

Considering the fact that the Mavericks have not only won every NBA title since Mark Cuban purchased the team but have managed to scrape together 3 Super Bowls, 4 Stanley Cups (they might have had the 5th if not for the lockout) and a runner-up finish in the English Premier League, Cuban will bring 5 or 6 World Series championships to Chicago from jump street. Or maybe I'm the one that thinks an epic collapse in an NBA Finals and a quick exit at the hand of the eight seed the following year isn't much of a resume. Cuban is a shameless self-promoter, not a winner.

Yes, Mariotti loves Cuban now. Just wait until that day when the Benefactor brings his act to Chicago. Mariotti will be the first guy to rip him for acting like a spoiled 3 year old when the Cubs end up on the business end of a close call. Or wait until Cuban can't get into a nightclub and acts like one of the princesses from My Super Sweet 16 when she finds out that Cindy down the block is having a more expensive party.

That's probably why Mariotti wants Cuban to buy the Cubs. That means at least 15 columns a year without any thought on the part of the writer. That's like catnip to a writer of Mariotti's eminence. I don't think a writer owes it to a city to root for its teams, but I do think I writer owes it to himself to be honest about his motives.

I really wish I didn't have to keep saying the same things over and over again, but Cuban can't be allowed to purchase the Cubs. Plus I'm sure John Henry is in favor of Cuban buying a franchise. That way there will be at least one owner who is a bigger tool than Henry with his quaint little Howard Hughes mania for cleanliness. I couldn't begin to think of an executive who would be a bigger waste of oxygen than Larry Lucchino, so I don't know who Cuban's right-hand man will be.

This story arc is taking the jam out of my doughnut, and that's not cool. The Red Sox lost again to the Royals, dropping two out of three to KC. And the Yanks beat Toronto, picking up yet one more game. I should be much happier than I am.

On the plus side, Dave Chapelle said his recent trip to the ER was due to exhaustion. Perhaps it's not as easy to bear the burden of being one-fifteenth as funny as you think you are as I thought. I'm not going to lie, I did like the first two seasons of his show on Comedy Central. And I didn't care one way or the other when he left the way he did. It was his business.

But when I saw him on Inside the Actor's Studio, that was it for me. For a guy whose credits are very meager, Dave Chapelle is an arrogant, obxious dude. My first problem is that there was no mention of the very prominent role Dave Chapelle played in Robin Hood Men in Tights. And the complaints that the studio turned Half Baked into a weed movie for kids didn't sway me. Even if it were the Citizen Kane of weed movies before the studio bastardized it for mass consumption, that doesn't mean the movie deserved to exist in its own right. If you don't want your movie to be altered, don't sell it.

Between blowing through screen doors as though I were the Kool-Aid man and waging one-man wars against Cambridge, Brookline and Connecticut, I have found myself too busy over the last two weeks to criticize some of the old familiar enemies of this space. For too long, Bill Simmons, Dan Shaughnessy and Mark Cuban have been able to vomit up ignorance into the punch bowl we all share whilst the general populace is all too willing to call it alphabet soup and move on. Believe it or not, despite what that last sentence and my track record would have you believe, I'm not drunk. It's just a complicated paraphrase of a great line from an episode of NewsRadio.

Tonight, it's time to criticize the Benefactor one more time. I never got around to saying this at the time he elected to tell the world about his colonoscopy (as I was disappointed in the complete lack of discretion on his part), but I found it surprising. Not just the over-sharing, but for what the doctors apparently didn't find. I would have bet good money (Hell, I would have bet internal organs and wound up in a bathtub full of ice down a kidney) that the doctors would have found Mark Cuban's head right there in his colon. Alas, the search continues.

The reason I feel compelled to criticize the Benefactor tonight is simple. Mark Cuban has submitted an application to Major League Baseball for the right to bid on the Chicago Cubs. No matter what anyone tells you about Persian restaurants and excessive heat, that rumor is what made all those people sick at the Taste of Chicago festival the other day.

The city of Chicago is the second-best city in the world, right behind Boston. I like the Bears. Antoine Walker is from Chicago. Hell, I even like the Cubs. To me, the Cubs represent everything that the Red Sox never were. The Cubs and their fans dealt with losing longer than Red Sox Nation, and they deal with it still. But they bear it with class and dignity. The Boston Red Sox and their fans have yet to bear anything with class or dignity.

One never hears Cubs fans raise a cheer of "Cardinals Suck" the way Red Sox fans chant "Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat. Cubs fans don't resent the fact that the Cardinals have been more successful than their team. Instead, they pity Cardinals fans for being from Missouri. Chicagoans know that St. Louis has a brewery and an arch and little else on which to hang its hat. I admire Cubs fans for that.

The last thing the fans in Chicago need is for Mark Cuban to purchase the Cubs. Can you imagine how he would comport himself on a stage as big as that? He very likely would morph into Commodus from Gladiator and show up at Wrigley in that white suit of armor that Commodus wore to the arena in the film's final scene. 81 times a year, Wrigley would become a zoo, a place to see and be seen rather than a place to watch a game. Basically, it would become Fenway West.

Furthermore, I don't view the Mavericks as an NBA success story. It is undeniable that Dallas was a doormat before Cuban purchased the team. Now the road to the NBA title goes through, or more precisely over, the Mavericks. However, in professional sports, second place is king of the losers. And the Mavs haven't won it all. Nor do they show any sign that they will any time soon. The Benefactor has yet to address his team's fatal flaws, and it looks like another great regular season and abrupt exit from the playoffs is in the cards.

Even after every dollar spent and improvement made, the Mavericks really aren't a marquee franchise. Admittedly, they should take consolation from the fact that the four time champion Spurs aren't one either. The NBA lives and dies in New York, Boston, Chicago and LA. The Mavericks and Spurs could win the next 74 NBA titles between them and never produce a moment like Hondo's steal (or Bird's) or Reed gimping out to play against Wilt. It just won't happen.

But somehow through all of that Mark Cuban has earned the right to purchase a Major League baseball icon? Dallas is a third-rate city. It has Nieman Marcus and the Cowboys and some oil companies growing fat off gouging the rest of us. Chicago is a whole different animal. If he buys the Cubs he has to win or face a media storm not seen since Jay Mariotti was a child.

Let's say the Benefactor buys the Cubs and turns them into a perennial playoff team, but never wins it all. Obviously it won't taint his legacy, since Mark Cuban, for all his wealth and prominence, doesn't have a legacy. It will, however, be a big disaster for a fan base that has suffered enough.

The one comforting factor in all of this is that there is no way the Cubs will sell for less than $700 million. That means the Benefactor would either have to put nearly half of his net worth on the line or build a consortium to purchase the team. I can't see a consortium putting up with his grandstanding nonsense, so this may all have been a false alarm. Let's hope.

It's been a very long time since I attacked Jay Mariotti in this space. With the Red Sox roaring out to that 14 and 1/2 game lead in the first two months of the season, I was just too depressed to read Mariotti's appallingly dishonest carping. I just couldn't handle it. But with Humpty Dumpty falling flat on his face for the second time in as many starts, I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.

What bothers me most about Mariotti as a man and as a writer is the fact that he acts as though he were tough as nails right up until the moment confrontation could become conflict and then he backs off, whining with his tail between his legs. Just look at that infamous dust-up with Ken "Hawk" Harrelson when Mariotti said "I ought to slug you" only to back off and threaten litigation when Hawk showed signs that he intended to do harm to Mariotti.

A close second in the treasure trove of inadmirable character traits that make up the man, the myth, the fraud is his complete lack of scruple and honesty as a writer. The man has no sense of irony, either. Consider this piece he wrote for Monday's paper on the US Open. Mariotti calls Tiger Woods into question for his inability to catch Cabrera, while barely conceding the fact that Mariotti believed that Eldrick would win the tournament.

It's almost as though this column, which appeared in Suday's paper had never been written. I realize a two or three paragraph apology for the tortured logic, mangled metaphors, left-handed compliments, phony tough and crazy brave rhetoric and general poor taste exhibited in that piece would be out of the question, but a brief, humble little digression along these lines: "Look, I made a mistake. I thought the guy was going to win. I had a deadline and might have gotten carried away thinking I was a much better writer than I am. But I was wrong and I'm sorry" would have been nice.

That is far from the only instance. Earlier, before the US Open, Mariotti wrote this piece ostensibly feeling a bit of empathy for Phil Mickelson in his hour of difficulty. Then, after Mickelson missed the cut, Mariotti wrote a column to demonize Mickelson for complaining about the rough. I can't believe that editors, TV producers and the vast public tolerate him. Outside of a blogs, like fireJay.com, Jay the Joke and Boise Wants Jay, hardly anyone calls him on this nonsense.

Mariotti is currently lining up Mark Cuban for this treatment. At the moment, he is in favor of the rumored interest in acquiring the Cubs shown by the Benefactor. Part of it is due to the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf hates Cuban and Mariotti hates Reisndorf. I'm sure there must be, somewhere in the dark recesses of the back corners of Mariotti's oh so prodigious mind, the faint hope that Mark Cuban will buy the Cubs and bring his little freak parade to Chicago. I'm sure that will mean weeks and weeks of columns and hours of TV time for Mariotti to rip Cuban and the Cubs with very little intellectual effort. But I'm sure a nice guy like Jay hasn't thought of that.

Now it's time for me to go back to hating the Red Sox, at least until the fall. Once the Bears start playing again, I'm sure Mariotti will be writing articles like this more often. After all, when can a middle-aged never-was bully a massive, three hundred plus pound world class athlete? Perhaps that is the root of his appeal to whatever demographic Mariotti appeals. All the other frustrated Monday morning QBs must look to him to take the big and the strong down a peg since they can't do it themselves.

I'm not a big fan of the midday post. Even when I don't have better, or at least more important, things to do, I try to give the impression that I do. But I was just too damn tired, and quite frankly a bit angry, so I couldn't do this last night. In part I was mad that the Spurs won, and a lot of my anger had to do with the guy who was tailgating me in his minivan for a good 10 miles last night. And I'm not an easy guy to tailgate, as I tend to be somewhere around ten miles over the speed limit at all times.

I find myself wondering as I watch certain commercials (like this recent one from Nike) whether I am the only one out in the wide world with a sense of irony. I thought it when I first saw the old Campbell's Chunky Soup Ads that featured Michael Strahan's grinning maw peering in the window on a NYC subway car, with his face framed above a decal that said "Watch the Gap." And I think it now, watching the We Are All Witnesses spots from Nike which will surely go away now that the NBA Playoffs are finished.

We were witnesses, that much is true, but not necessarily in the sense that Nike commanded us to be. We were supposed to witness LeBron James become the basketball player he had better be for the sake of the NBA's future. And he very nearly did. He submitted what would have been the mother of all transcendent sports moments for this very young century in that ">amazing Game 5 performance against the Pistons. I say would have been because he really needed to submit a couple of 30 point efforts, maybe force the Spurs to a game 6 (or at the very least game 5) to cement that status. Alas, it was not to be.

What we, the basketball watching public, instead witnessed was a shameful display of dreadful basketball with a few brief shining moments where the games aspired, didn't quite reach but aspired nonetheless, to something verging on mediocrity. Now for a regular season game in early January where one or both teams comes into the game on the second leg of back-to-back games, that wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately for us, this wasn't a throwaway game. This was the end-all, be-all. The NBA Finals. These were the last two teams standing slugging it out for the O'Brien Trophy.

Back when I thought it was a good idea to study European History, I remember reading about the Battle of Jutland. The British and the Germans invested ludicrous sums of money in big fleets of massive battleships. The two navies sailed out and met off the coast of Denmark. They fired their big guns at each other for hours, and at the end of the day it was just a big waste of time. The Germans ended up inflicting more damage on the British ships, but they went back to port and never tried their luck again.

That's what this series between the Spurs and Cavs boiled down to in the end. A big, giant multi-million dollar waste of time. I wonder whether some marketing czar at Nike is answering to the CEO as we speak. I wonder whether David Stern is thinking that maybe some rule changes are in order. Maybe Mark Cuban is thinking he really shouldn't have hired Dan Rather, what with the fact that he said CBS is tarting up its evening news with Katie Couric. God forbid we get a younger woman who doesn't look like Methusala's older brother and doesn't have an alleged penchant for broadcasting doctored documents about the President of the US as though they were true. But enough about that.

I think that the easiest way to fix the NBA is to have the officials actually call fouls that are in fact fouls. A foul doesn't cease to be a foul because the player scored, nor does it become a foul when the shot misses. This late whistle nonsense must come to an end. This can never happen, as it would require a miracle and the present NBA regime has apparently outlawed miracles.

If, however, the league office desires to be more proactive about fixing its product than interfering in off-court behavior and imposing a dress code as though this were reform school and not a professional sports endeavor, I have a suggestion I think is constructive (for a change). Get rid of the 24 second clock and replace it with a 14 second clock. Get some positive ball movement back into the game, speed up the tempo and end the trend of the superstar who dribbles at the top of the key until fans decide to surf channels to see if Masterpiece Theater is showing an interesting Miss Marple mystery.

But what do I know? I'm only a rabid sports fan who found himself watching Too Late the Hero last night during the first three quarters of the last game of the NBA Finals. And wouldn't you know, the damn hero was, in fact, too late. And that ending was still more of a surprise than the Cavs losing the game and the series to the Spurs.

But every cloud has a silver lining. This time, to paraphrase the immortal words of MeatLoaf, two out of three is not, in fact, bad, not bad at all. The Red Sox lost the rubber game against the mighty Colorado Rockies. It could not have been better. Josh Beckett was shelled. Francona dug deep into his bag of tricks and ordered JD Drew to bat in the leadoff spot, where he submitted probably the single most impressive 0 for 5 game in the history of Major Leage Baseball.

In case you're keeping score at home, this was the seventh time in the last nine games the mighty BoSox have managed to put two or fewer runs on the board. JD Drew, Coco Crisp and Julio Lugo are all hitting .230 or below and making millions. Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia have a long way to go to hit the seven figure plateau in terms of salary, but are both hitting over .300. Sooner or later the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men are bound to catch up to this team. But at least John Henry has his little foray into professional beach volleyball to console him.

For long time readers familiar with my habit of quoting the Grateful Dead in order to remind everyone that every silver lining has a touch of grey, here it is. The Yankees are seven and 1/2 games back, but they host the Mets (whom I absolutely hate, except for that nice little two week stretch back in October of '86) who enter the game at 36-28 and in first place in the NL East while the Red Sox host the Giants who enter the game at 30-35 and in the cellar in the NL West. It was a nice run while it lasted, now we need the Yanks to stay close through the weekend and then mount another run before the All Star break.

PS - I hate to do this, but it was a nice, empty gesture on the part of the Red Sox to ask that MLB replace David Ortiz with Kevin Youkilis on the All Star ballot.

So many of our old friends have been up to so much, it's hard to know where to begin. Daisuke Matsuzaka was trounced by the Indians and chased from the game in the 6th. Kobe Bryant has found himself sinking into a morass of his own creation in Los Angeles, but he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. And to top it all, there is a rumor of a new football league in the developmental stage and the Benefactor is involved.

After so many wins, I am cautiously optimistic that the Red Sox are due to fall back to earth. With any luck, they'll go straight from dizzying height to terrifying low, bypassing the creamy middle. But for a change, I'm going to do my level best not to jinx this one. After all, Carl Pavano's to do list probably reads like this now: 1). have Tommy John Surgery. 2). track down and apply savage ass whooping to pseudonymous anti-Red Sox blogger who predicted 18 win season in 2007. 3). rehab from Tommy John Surgery. So no more on the Sox for the moment.

I really hate jumping on bandwagons at late stages, but I really do not like Kobe Bryant. For those of you who have been reading this space from jump street, you know that. You also know that I am a big Elvis fan. So when I heard the series of interviews with Stephen A Smith and Dan Patrick today, it reminded me of a relatively obscure country song Elvis released in the early 70s. The song's title is "It's Your Baby, You Rock It" and it includes the following line: "You made that bed you're sleepin' in and I'm tired of hearing about it friend."

Kobe really, really, really wanted Shaq out of LA. Since Bryant was the younger of the two superstars, management obliged him and sent the Big Aristotle to Miami. Shaq has gone on to win a championship with the Heat. Kobe has yet to carry the Lakers to the second round of the playoffs. And now Kobe says team management promised to build a title contender around him in the immediate future. Bryant's hurt, he's betrayed and they lied to him. And yet I am not in tears.

It seems incredibly unlikely, but I guess there is a remote possibility that Kobe Bryant doesn't know basketball. You'd think that he might, since he's played it since childhood, his father was a pro ball player and he chose it for his career. But that might not necessarily mean he knows the game. After all, if management told him they were looking to compete at the highest level in the wake of the Shaq deal, and he believed them, Kobe is either ignorant or full of something unpleasant, particularly in the heat of summer.

The Lakers traded Shaq for Carom Butler and Lamar Odom. Shaq, at that point in his career, was a veteran of 5 NBA Finals and a three time champion. Carom Butler and Lamar Odom may have won any number of titles playing NBA Live on X Box, but neither has played so much as a minute of basketball in the NBA Finals. Moreover, they're both power forwards. They play the same damn position. How could any one not see that as a bad deal for LA?

It is true that the Lakers parlayed Carom Butler into Kwame Brown, who was supposed to be the center of the future. At the time, in literary parlance, that was rather like the Ancient Mariner from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner trading in the albatross around his neck that weighed him down for a large metal anchor. Since then, the trade has gone on to look much worse, as Butler made the Eastern Conference All Star team this season (yeah, the East kind of blows, but it is still an All Star team) and Kwame Brown is stuck in neutral. He might not be getting worse, but he surely isn't getting better either.

None of the Lakers other moves have panned out since they let Shaq go. Lately, the "brains" of their operation have been taking a lot of heat for failing to deal for Jason Kidd at the deadline. I don't see why. Can you honestly tell me that Kidd would have made the Lakers markedly better than any of the other seven teams that qualified for the playoffs in the West? I just don't think that would have been the case.

So I'm sick of Kobe whining. This was never about winning, this was about getting away from Shaq's shadow. Now Kobe has been jarred back into reality because everything that was his now belongs to LeBron and D Wade. Wade has a ring, and LeBron is fighting the Pistons to a standstill. They're younger and more dynamic than Kobe. Kobe needs to do something or he'll lose his league.

The trouble is, fans everywhere believe he forced management to sell Shaq for pennies on the dollar. Fans have been convinced after the scoring binges of the past two years that Kobe cares more about his numbers than his team. Kobe is in danger of becoming the answer to the trivia question: "Who scored the second most points in a single NBA game?" Would that he had chosen a more dignified route around his present course to oblivion.

Then there's the Benefactor. He's already on board with the proposed venture known as the UFL. Because the American landscape needed another professional football league. Because the USFL and the WFL and the XFL were all unqualified success stories. Because the NFL is much bigger, wealthier, more powerful and infinitely better prepared to adapt its product to the environment in which it exists than it was when the AFL challenged it in the 1960s. That's why the UFL is such a good idea.

What no one on the outside of the football business looking in on it's riches seems to understand is that the AFL succeeded for a reason. It wasn't because the upstart league was able to sign huge college stars like Namath or Mike Garrett, or develop guys like Len Dawson, Lance Alworth and so many others into household names. Those factors helped, but look at the USFL who went for broke luring Herschell Walker, Jim Kelley, Steve Young, Doug Flutie and others into their league and got pretty damn broke pretty damn quick.

The real reason no football league will ever compete against the NFL the way the AFL did is simple. Because there were no collective bargaining agreements, minimum salaries and pensions back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was room for a second league to come in and start a bidding war for the solid, dependable veterans that make up the guts of a professional football team. Now the NFL has all that infrastructure in place for all 32 of its teams.

Can you imagine how much capital would be necessary to start 8 new teams at once? Not to mention creating a league office to codify the rules, set up a draft, schedule all the games and make sure that each new team has a home city and a home stadium? And on top of those headaches deal with the fact that the 2,000 best football players in the world are currently under contract to NFL teams? Any one who thinks they can do that with 8 different billionaires who have no experience in football beyond watching a game or two here and there, no current common bonds and Mark Cuban involved is dreaming.

If this new league tries to get off the ground playing in the fall on Friday nights, they'll be destroyed. Maybe they'll get a few high profile college draft picks, some older stars looking for one last big score like an aging thief in a crime drama and some other assorted has-beens and never-will-bes. That might be enough to challenge for a Grey Cup or two, but not to take money out of Jerry Jones' pocket.

People don't often realize, since it takes a little more thought than the average tool is willing to put in to the sports he or she watches on the TV, but Namath made the guarantee and his teammates won the game. Randy Beverly and Johnny Sample were two former NFL defensive backs and they made huge plays in the Red Zone to stop big drives for the Colts. In the old days, guys like that were on the open market. It's just not the case any more.

And what is the Benefactor going to do? Spend like Dan Snyder? We've all seen where that has gotten the Redskins lately. I suppose I ought to shut my mouth. If he wants to waste his money on a colossal failure in the making, that's his business. And the sooner he gets back to his new favorite pastime of hiding and trembling lest David Stern smack him down again, the better for us all.

Today was a bad day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Nick Cafardo beat me to a punch. And I take very little consolation from the fact that that puts me in a very, very, very small fraternity of people who have been beaten to a punch by a writer notorious for being slow to the punch. I imagine the Red Sox ownership did their very best to conceal the fact that JD Drew is in a persistent offensive funk from keen, penetrating minds like Cafardo's, but the scribe got wise.

Unfortunately for Nick Cafardo, living in the era of Google means that I can simply type his name and JD Drew's name in a search window. Within seconds, almost by magic, I can read articles like this one where Cafardo wrote in December that JD Drew has gotten a bad rap over the years. It would be ironic if it weren't so pathetic.

For my part, I have been reluctant to point out the fact that JD Drew is underperforming in a big way. In part, I have been hoping his offensive woes would get worse before I posted on the subject. I have also been waiting patiently for the team to reverse field and come back to the pack in the American League. To this point, I have been disappointed in that simple ambition. But cliches tell me that sooner or later all good things come to an end and what goes up must come down, so I have yet to panic.

This team simply isn't good enough to keep winning at this pace over the course of a 162 game season. Drew is hitting .250, and may have hurt his back in an effort to look sublimely ridiculous whilst breaking his back on the right field wall last night. Coco Crisp is hitting a stately .231, and begging the question why aren't Red Sox fans demanding his immediate departure with his performance (or total lack thereof) on a daily basis. Manny has come alive, but we all expected that.

JD Drew needs to be a productive player for the Red Sox to maintain any kind of momentum through the dog days of summer. At some point, the teams in the AL East are going to get better. Everything that could have gone right to this point has gone right for the Red Sox. They haven't had any injuries to speak of, the Yankees are ravaged by injuries and their offense is apparently wrapped up in the graduation season (they've hit four homers in the last ten games, and two of them came today).

The Red Sox can afford to harbor a .250 hitter with 2 home runs and 13 RBI right now, but what will things look like for the Nation if their #5 hitter is putting up numbers like that in August and September. I imagine that Red Sox fans will stick out their chests and boast that they will have clinched by then, so a slight statistical correction won't make a difference. Of course, there isn't a group of people in the world that can front-run with Red Sox Nation.

The real question is can Red Sox Nation afford to pay a guy to bat in the five hole where they desperately need protection for Ramirez and Ortiz $12 million to hit .250 without producing solid power numbers? It will make it all the harder to sustain the pleasant fiction that the Red Sox are the victim of the Evil Empire's spending sprees.

I think the problem here is that the Red Sox expect JD Drew to play like a guy worth $12 million a year. If they really wanted him to play as though he were worth $12 million, then John Henry should have signed him for $18 million a year. When this situation becomes a problem, and it will because another hitter is due to go into a slump any minute now or a pitcher will lose his mojo (maybe Beckett has with his litte finger issue), I won't enjoy it as much as I ought.

Red Sox fans have a way of passing their misery on to the rest of humanity. As soon as I get my first "I told you so" post up, I'm sure I'll have comments from Red Sox fans saying they knew this was going to happen because they went to one of the dozen websites that enable baseball superfans to find the statistics they use to bore normal humans into submission and were able to calculate the minute disparities in WHIP and OPS to the 35th decimal place which explains why the team flopped down the stretch.

Speaking of flops, so much attention has been paid to the incredibly harsh suspensions of the two Phoenix Suns following the incident in Game 5 of their series against the Spurs that the underlying hypocrisy of the situation has been overlooked. I think that the one game suspension should have been extended once the Suns tried to sell the fact that their players had left the bench area because of offense-defense substitution patterns to people who should have been too intelligent to buy it.

That was one of the more ridiculous statements I have heard in a long time. First, unless there are some special rules for Phoenix, no one could have come into the game until a stoppage. Considering that there were fewer than 24 seconds to play and the Spurs were over the foul limit, how was the clock going to stop? Unless magical elves intervened, the only way the clock was stopping was a foul by San Antonio.

Once that foul was committed, Phoenix would have two free throws, which is ample time to insert players. In the time it took for all of the players to line up at the other end of the court, two healthy men who are ostensibly world-class athletes should be able to walk the thirty feet to the scorer's table in time to be admitted to the game between the first and second free throws. It happens all the time, in every game and it could have happened there.

A more interesting question is that Phoenix knew, because Mike D'Antoni is the brilliantest mind in basketball (so brilliant that any effort to describe it in one word requires the writer to resort to expressions that are grammatically and syntactically impossible as I just did), that San Antonio would foul trailing by 3 with fewer than 24 seconds on the clock if they wanted any chance at winning the game. So if San Antonio is going to foul and said foul will end any offensive possession and transition immediately to defense, were the Suns really going to substitute two players in an offense-defense pattern?

I don't like it when teams lie to me. Phoenix players left the bench for one reason, and one reason only - to get after some member of the Spurs. I don't want to have to examine their case as if I were Lt. Caffey trying to find out from Colonel Jessup why Private Santiago didn't pack his gear or make any telephone calls prior to his 0600 flight out of Gitmo. If Phoenix didn't try to weasel their way out of the suspensions with such a blatant fabrication that ought to insult the intelligence of any person who has ever watched a basketball game, maybe I'd be a little more sympathetic to their plight.

However, the real travesty of the unpleasantness at the end of Game 5 is that we are expected to treat a small, gutless overachiever from Canada as though he were the victim in all of this. Steve Nash took a step before he went down, he flopped. If I were the type of person that believed that sort of gamesmanship had any place in civilized competition, I would offer kudos to him for that kind of initiative. Unfortunately, I find it reprehensible and I am not amused.

As a point of comparison, I don't know if you remember when Chad Clifton was crushed by Warren Sapp. I tried to find the video on youtube, but it wasn't available. The site was doing routine maintenance, which might have been part of the problem. Chad Clifton, who was slightly bigger than Sapp, went down immediately. But Steve Nash, who was a good deal smaller than Robert Horry, managed to take a step in the process of his collision? It doesn't make sense to me.

As I've mentioned in this space before, there is a serious problem in the NBA right now. Some one needs to step in and put an end to the culture of flopping. Surely I am not the only basketball fan who is horrified that flop artists and hacks like Raja Bell, Bruce Bowen and Shane Battier are considered top-flight defenders? Michael Cooper, whom I hated as a kid, would be rolling over in his grave to see that, provided, of course, that he were in fact dead.

No one seems to have the guts to say this, but the problem in the NBA begins at the top. David Stern is the problem. I have been reluctant to say this because I thoroughly enjoy it when he oppresses Mark Cuban. But he has let the product be debased. He was given a mulligan when the experiment of expansion into Canada proved so disastrous that Vancouver relocated to Memphis (a city that has a claim to fame other than Elvis???) in just a few years of existence. The closest thing to a proactive policy he has instituted is a dress code for players, which hasn't exactly been a smashing success.

Chicago fans, especially, ought to be griping about this situation more than I am. That nice layover between the series with Miami and the second round killed the momentum for the Bulls. Absolutely murdered it. Plowed it under and sowed salt in the furrows. It's been amazing to see the Bulls claw their way back to force a Game 6. But it makes you wonder what this series would have been like had the Bulls with limited playoff experience not had to deal with a week of downtime between playoff games. If it's any consolation, at least TNT had the convenience of running forty games in forty nights promos.

Even though the Red Sox managed to come back against the Mariners tonight and win the single most impressive game a team has ever played in their 27th contest of a 162 game season, today was still a good day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation world. Tom Brady was seen walking through NYC sporting a jaunty Yankee cap. Bob Halloran wrote an uninspired post for his blog, and there was a mind-numbingly dull piece in Red Sox Times on how to socialize with other Sox fans down in New York. And best of all, Steven Jackson and the Golden State Warriors routed the mighty Dallas Mavericks out of the playoffs.

First, Red Sox Nation is in moral crisis because their football hero Tom Brady is wearing a Yankee cap to conceal his receding hairline while he's out gallivanting his Brazilian supermodel companion. And he's spending his time in New York City when he could be in Boston cheering on the Sox. Maybe he could have been seen in green Sox regalia, after all, isn't it his duty to make sure that he spend every waking moment figuring out new ways to do everything New England fans want him to do?

That's just one more reason to love Red Sox fans. This is a huge non-story. After all, Brady came from California and went to school in Michigan. His ties to anything remotely connected to Red Sox Nation didn't even begin until the Pats drafted him. So why is it incumbent upon him not to wear a Yankees hat?

If Brady does in fact, as I fear, harbor political aspirations for his future after football, doesn't it make sense for him to curry favor in New York? It's a bigger, richer market than New England. And he already has Patriot fans in his corner. Hell, he'd have to start breaking in to season ticket holders' houses at night to smash their possessions and kick their children to alienate them.

Then there is our old friend Bob Halloran, who is not convinced that the NFL pays enough attention to on-field performance in the rush to draft workout warriors who put up impressive numbers at the combine. The vertical leap in particular concerns Halloran. I'm sure it never occurred to him, but the vertical leap is one of the better ways to measure a player's explosiveness from a standing start.

And as for the question of whether the teams don't watch enough game film, that is ridiculous. In the process of media build-up, individual workouts and interview sessions, teams seem like they do more and study more than they should as opposed to less. It's hard sometimes to tell everything you need to know about a player from the game tape. There is a very fine line between the player with a great head for the game and a guy who was in the right place at the right time against inferior competition.

If you are a Red Sox fan and you want to network with other colossal tools, there are a number of places in New York City in the heart of Yankee Country where you can meet fellow travellers. Read this Fist Magnet's Guide To Rooting For The Sox In New York to find out where to go. Use extreme caution, however, and do not operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery after reading it. The boredom it inflicts could be lethal in large doses.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the author's meeting with Jonathan Papelbon's mother. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that encounter which I'm sure must have been painfully awkward. Not having a child who pitches for a professional team, I can't say for certain how uncomfortable it would be to meet a random stranger who just happens to root for said team and wants to have a nice chat about my son. But I'm willing to be that it would call to mind visions of Ted Bundy, or at the very least the Robert DeNiro character from the terrible movie The Fan.

And in case you're wondering in Red Sox Nation, there is a touch of grey to the silver lining of tonight's impressive come-from-behind win over the Mariners. First, the Mariners starter should have been pitching to Artie Lange in Beer League. And Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded in the opening frame before he recorded an out. Yeah, JC Romero recorded his first save in a long, long, long time, but lost in all of that is that Jonathan Papelbon might have overstressed his arm throwing those thirty five pitches while blowing the save the other night. That won't be good for the Nation.

Finally, the real story of the night is that the NBA, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Rand Corporation can rest easy for another year. Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks have just been eliminated from the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors. For the first time under the current playoff format and just the third time ever, an eight seed has eliminated the one seed. It's only the second time a team which had won 65 games in the regular season failed to win the championship, and the first time a team with many wins didn't reach the conference finals.

Google and YouTube are in the process of retreating to the hills. Since the NBA has eviscerated the lone voice of reason on basketball issues by fining Cuban hundreds of thousands of dollars for his crying out in the basketball wilderness in blogMaverick, the Benefactor can but vent his spleen on media conglomerates. With any luck, Cuban will be too depressed to buy the Chicago Cubs in the wake of this catastrophe.

Dirk Nowitzki's performance, especially in the second half, was abysmal at best. I remember a quote attributed to Napoleon that said "scratch a Russian and you will wound a Tartar." Nowitzki has inspired me to offer this version: "hit a German in the mouth and you will make a gutless bully cry." I'm sure Angela Merkel will give Dirk a national holiday to console him, as rolling over in a playoff game is still the most tangible achievement of any German since a ghost in the machine ruthlessly shanghaied a four week old child into the German army.

Even better, Don Nelson led his team past the owner who fired him. Steven Jackson who did his best to take the mantle of worst citizen in the NBA (based on the way the media covers him) or guy who really needs some help with his decision making off the court from Ron Artest as long as Jackson stayed in Indiana is now somewhat vindicated. At the end of the day, Dallas was outplayed and outcoached, they were beaten as an organization. And it put a smile on my face, if it's any consolation to the Benefactor.

All I have to say on the Western Conference playoffs as they progress is this...

Be looking good Warriors. Be looking real good.

And good luck with that, as Baron Davis reminds us that a guy really shouldn't have a beard that's longer than the hair on his head.

I have a riddle for you. When is a win not a win? When an official goes mad with power, runs amok and ejects the best player on either team with little or no justification. Such was the case last night in Dallas, where the Spurs went into a funk after Joey Crawford kicked Tim Duncan out of the game on a insane power trip and lost to the Mavericks.

After a long silence on the subject of basketball, the Benefactor weighed in on this subject today. Mark Cuban doesn't want you to send him emails complaining about the officiating in the NBA anymore. He wants you to email the owners or managers of the other NBA franchises to stir up grass roots action to change the face of NBA officiating.

Of course, as a blogger who has long been critical of his hypocrisy, I have to wonder whether the Benefactor would have been so quick to bow out because of the severity of any fine the league would levy prevents it from being worth his while had it been one of his players instead of Tim Duncan. I have to think that had Joey Crawford had so much as troubled the serenity of Dirk Nowitzki by mentioning the fact that the German government recently tried to draft a four week old child into its war machine or pointing out that David Hasselhoff's music sucks, the Benefactor would have manned the barricades and screamed bloody murder. But that's just me.

That gets to the root of my problem with the Benefactor. More even than his atrocious personal deportment in the crowd at games, which constantly evokes the image of a spoiled four year old throwing a temper tantrum because another child is playing with his favorite toy, the fact that his concern with the quality of NBA officiating begins and ends with how it impacts the Mavericks.

If Joey Crawford broke a chair over a player from any other team's head, kidnapped his family to force them to participate in some ill-conceived cross-country race or sold poisoned milk to school children, Mark Cuban would keep his mouth shut. But if he misses one call that the Benefactor thinks should have benefited the Mavs, and it's go time. Even if David Stern decided to forgo the standard fine and handed Mark Cuban over to black market organ harvesters to exact punishment, the Benefactor would move heaven and earth to get his two cents heard.

And Mark Cuban doesn't want to be bothered by fans looking for a mouthpiece to articulate their discontent with NBA officiating. It seems like he should have made that call a few years ago, before he set himself up as NBA gadfly to get people to notice him. And if you don't think it's about ego with the Benefactor, then maybe you shouldn't read this little piece about what a tool Mark Cuban is.

I have a solution to his little problem. Email Mark Cuban to complain about NBA officiating. Email him to talk about the umpires in Major League Baseball. Email him to talk about the weather in your town. Email him to ask pointless, unanswerable questions. Email him to talk about sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings as though you were the damn Walrus from Alice in Wonderland. Email Mark Cuban several times a day to tell him no one cares about his opinion on Google and YouTube. Just email him to tell him he's a tool and a hypocrite and wish the Mavericks an early exit from the playoffs when you email him.

I think I have reasonable precedent for this. According to legend, the eminent comedian WC Fields would send Elanor Roosevelt and the IRS letters every day to complain about them. I think you should take the time to complain about Mark Cuban, provided of course that you want to. God knows, if I ever become famous, I'm going to send a letter to remind people (like John Henry, Theo Epstein, Larry Lucchino, Danny Ainge, Wyc, Steve, Irv, the rest of Banner 17, Bill Simmons, the CHB, Bob Ryan, Jay Mariotti, Mark Cuban and others) that I don't like them.

Just do me one favor if you decide to email Cuban, keep it clean and don't do anything illegal. And do not under any circumstances send any complaints to the IRS. That sounds like one hell of a good way to get an audit, and I just don't need that hassle.

Tonight, we have a combined tool of note segment and random thing I hate thing segment for the first time ever. They both come out of that colossal waste of time that is the Boston Marathon. While I hate the marathon, it is not the random object of my derision tonight. Instead, that honor goes to the space program.

Space exploration was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be a giant waste of time and money. So what if we got Tang, Velcro and pens that write upside down. I just don't see how that and all the and a little flag on the moon justifies the billions and billions upon yet more billions of dollars of the next dozen generations' money that the government spent on the space program.

Even if there is intelligent life in the universe (based on what passes for it on this planet, I sincerely doubt that intelligent life exists anywhere), I just don't see how sending people up in rockets to do experiments of little tangible value is going to help us here on Earth. So what if aliens invade the planet to probe rednecks or kidnap people or kill us all.

And among all of the colossal wastes of both time and money in the space program, there is this gem. A woman at the space station was tethered to a treadmill to run the Boston Marathon in spirit. And on both Tax Day and Patriots' Day. The Founding Fathers must have been rolling over in their graves. They revolted against a relatively benign tyranny over a 3 cent tax on tea, and now we have a woman in space running on a treadmill at the expense of billions of dollars of public money.

Even better, the woman was running the Boston Marathon in spirit as a gesture of solidarity with her sister. Aside from the gargantuan waste of money, this struck me as a total fraud. First, if there were gravity on the space station, why did they have to tether her to the treadmill? And if there was less than normal gravity shouldn't she have had to run further? And how does it count, even if she'd changed the incline settings at the appropriate times? It's not like she ran real, honest to goodness, no fooling hills in the rain.

And on top of everything else, the woman was a Red Sox fan. There they were on TV, the banners, trappings and paraphernalia of the team I hate as the woman was wasting an entire nation's money in an exercise that was so obviously fraudulent. A perfect storm, in the metaphorical sense, and with no pun on the miserable weather.

As a special bonus, here is a second tool, with a bizarre infatuation for the terribly pointless UPS whiteboard ads.

I don't know if I can finish tonight's post. I might just be so scandalized by so many things that I might explode. The least of them is CMT (Country Music Television) is currently rebroadcasting it's countdown of the 100 Greatest Duets. I am watching it because Miami is being slaughtered in Dallas. Much as I complained about the Blender Magazine countdown of the 50 Worst Things to Happen to Music (if you might want to see it, please use the tags), I must complain about this. If Reggie Miller gets to sing a bar or two of Kumbaya without being beaten savagely, I can rant about whatever I want.

George Jones and Tammy Wynette came in at 16 with Golden Ring. Seven Spanish Angels came in at 15. I love both songs. They should have been 3-4, behind Roy Orbison and KD Lang singing Cryin' and Roy Orbison and Emmylou Harris with That Lovin' You Feelin' Again. That's the way it should have been. I know Mitt Romney just came out and said Roy was his favorite music, but I can't hold that against Roy. I'm not coming out against Mitt, just don't attach much weight to his opinion as arbiter of music.

As it was, Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss came in ahead of the four songs mentioned above with Whiskey Lullaby. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill was 13 with a terrible song. I won't go through them all, but Marty Stewart and Travis Tritt came in at number 12 with The Whiskey Ain't Workin' Any More. Roy Orbison singing Oooby Dooby alone is a better duet, despite the fact that it's not a duet and, as much as I love Roy Orbison's music, Ooby Dooby blows.

Before I get to the real heart of this post, I do have to say this. You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma came in at 6. Personally, I rank it at number 5. Not so much because it's a great song (it's average), but because it is one of the great mysteries of all time. Is it tongue-in-cheek, or are they serious? It baffles me. I will admit that I don't know much about Oklahoma, beyond the fact that True Grit was set there (I'm not sure where it was shot, but I love the movie). But three is no way that's a compliment. After all, it's not one of those iconic places that come to mind when one thinks about great natural beauty like Hawaii. To me, it sounds like the song's subtext is basically: "You're very average and I'm OK with it."

In case you care, the top duet in Country Music history, as judged by the CMT brain trust was Islands in the Stream, the Kenny Rodgers-Dolly Parton crime against humanity. The Roy Orbison duet with KD Lang came in at 26, and That Lovin' You Feelin' Again somehow placed 41st. Perhaps it was due to a series of clerical errors, a bizarre offshoot of the anti-Mark Cuban conspiracy or the fact that every one but me and, of course, my readers (unless you're reading this to monitor me for one of my many enemies) is a moron. But, for the record, sucks. But I should move on, while I still have a reader left.

Among the other things that scandalize me at the moment, and do not relate to the sports world: VH1's Celebreality. I know it's hard to get famous, and it's hard to stay famous. But the people they drag in for show's like the Surreal Life Fame Games probably never should have been famous in the first place. There's the guy from Poison who wasn't Brett Michaels. And who the F--- is this New York that I'm supposed to love? Has any person done less to be famous? God help us.

But into the sports world. Miami might be down by 26 with 2:40 to go in the third, and it seems like it would take a miracle for them to win. But I am shocked and appalled that the officials have not called all of the fouls that the Heat have committed. They must have taken pity on the people who paid to see the game, because there is no other explanation for why all 12 Heat players didn't foul out 20 minutes ago. I would have documented all their abuses, but I'm busy waiting for Mark Cuban to admit that Dallas has been the beneficiary of even one bad call.

You know it must have happened. The law of averages commands it. Furthermore, if David Stern is even 1/3 as intelligent as Bill Simmons makes him out to be, he'd at least try to cover his tracks. Maybe it's just so hard to conceal anything from Mark Cuban that he's given up trying to hide the machinations that deprive the Mavs of title after title. One would have to get up very early in the late afternoon to outfox the Benefactor.

I salute Antoine Walker for his foul on Dirk Nowitski. Toine hit him hard, harder than necessary. It was a flagrant foul, but he didn't try to put Dirk out of the game. What happened to the day when one could send a message with a hard foul without Stu Jackson banishing the offender to the island prison from the Ray Liotta film No Escape? And if poor Dirk is traumatized, he can just cry like a little girl and Mark Cuban will make it all better.

I can't decide what scandalizes me more, so here are the two top contenders in no particular order. I don't know if you saw on PTI or read in the Globe, but the Boston Red Sox announced that Wise Food Inc. is now the Official Potato Chip and Cheez Doodle Sponsor of the local professional baseball concern. There are so many things about this that upset me, I hardly know where to begin.

First, does the "cute" misspelling of cheese open the door for the Red Sox to create partnerships with any number of companies that produce said product and employ any conceivable permutations of cheese and doodle in their logos? Second, is it that much of a stretch to make ends meet at Fenway that they need to do this? Third, why Wise? When I told a friend about this story, he mentioned Vincent's or Boyd's because I had forgotten for a moment the name of the company involved. His rationale was that those are both local companies. John Henry is always willing to go the extra mile to forge connections with the local business community. After all, Wise is almost a local company. The company's headquarters is about 15 minutes away (by SR-71) in Berwick, PA.

This brings me to the other of my main sources of irritation on the evening. When I heard this story, I immediately thought of a line from the the movie Miller's Crossing. Gabriel Byrne's character tells one of the other characters "if there was a market for little old ladies, you'd have Grandma Bernbaum first in line." That sums up the John Henry business model. Any way to squeeze a red cent out of this team, its properties, its trademarks and its fans is acceptable.

It bothers me, not that they have an official snack food company, but that they narrow it down to that extent. I await the day when they sign a deal with Pringles, since I'm sure the tube based potato crisp falls outside the rubrics of their agreement with Wise. But I'm also irritated by the fact that I could swear I used that Miller's Crossing reference before, but I couldn't find it by googling the blog or checking the tags. I suppose I could look some more, but I'm tired. It's time to sign off.

P.S. If I end up in the trunk of a car in the weeds three weeks from now, you'll know that I might have one more reader than I think I have at this point. I'm not saying I told someone that she was the reason God made Oklahoma when I was intoxicated, but I might have. All I can say is, I'm sorry. Nothing I say when I'm drunk can be held against me. Just look through the back numbers of this blog to find the "this will make us all soldiers" that very nearly makes me sick to my stomach with confusion and shame when I think about it. But I'm not admitting anything.

And another thing - the simple fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that I'm wrong. After all, Richard Nixon was paranoid. But people were out to get him. They must have been, because they got him in the end.

You will have to bear with me tonight as I write this post. I am so torn by emotion that I am having trouble resisting the impulse to throw my monitor off of each and every wall in my apartment. The particular emotions which are tearing apart the fabric of my universe are rage and disappointment. And I am having trouble finding out who is responsible for these conflicting emotions.

The most obvious target is Dwayne Wade. But there are others who are very nearly as responsible for what just might be the final nail in the coffin of civilization as we know it. The NBA bears responsibility for allowing Wade to talk about things he cannot know. The management of the Miami Heat also bear responsibility for not silencing their star. And all right thinking Americans bear some of the burden for allowing this greatest of travesties to take place.

In case you haven't heard, Dwayne Wade dared question the leadership qualities of the single greatest basketball player in recorded history. In case you might not be as well educated about the NBA as you should be, the best thing that ever happened to basketball is Dirk Nowitzki. And he must never be questioned. Ever. Unless of course you want to make the most powerful of enemies.

Mark Cuban laid what would be the smackdown on Mr. Wade, provided of course that a jock sniff and a fraud could lay down the smackdown on anyone. Of course, one would expect this from the guy who owns the team for which Nowitzki plays. And one would expect it to be as eloquent as all get out considering its author once wrote an impressive evaluation of a recent cinematic classic (believe it or not, he called Happy Gilmore a classic).

Among the many problems with Cuban's defense of his player is the fact that he dismissed Wade's criticism first and foremost because Wade's commercials are boring. Outside of the incredibly, unfathomably, indescribably brilliant ads that feature the PC vs. Mac debate, how many TV commercials aren't boring? I must say that those PC vs. Mac ads are so awesome that I hereby volunteer my services as a free-range organ bank on the off chance that Steve Jobs should ever need a transplant. A man that wonderful and with that much to offer mankind must live forever, and the rest of my life is small price to pay as means to that end.

Of course there is no way that Wade could know Dirk's leadership skills. It's not as though Wade took over the series himself and brought the ring to Miami. To think that Wade did more to win the championship than Dirk did would mean you would have to believe that Wade scored nearly 60 points more than Dirk over the last four games of the series. Oh, wait...

I have tried to be one of the people who doesn't link to his own past posts during the history of this blog. Tonight, I have to link to this post from two days after the Mavs lost the finals. It has a few of my favorite elements in it. For instance, there is the Orwell quote. I am also partial to my little pun on the Nowitzness shirts that Dallas fans wore to answer the Witness ad campaigns featuring D-Wade. I still love that Nowitzless line, and it's funny because it's true.

In Life, The Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams describes the home world of the mattresses. The mattresses live in swamps and flollop around. According to the author, flollop is not a common word because it's a thing only live mattresses can do. Of course, Douglas Adams probably never saw Mark Cuban, as he passed away in May of 2001 (Adams, unfortunately, Cuban will be with us always). Even though I don't know what flollop means, I imagine it's the only word that can concisely describe Cuban's petulant 4 year old act as he sits in the stands.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Cuban. Maybe he has virtues that I have missed in the infrequent attacks on him in this space. He has done great things to benefit the families of those who have lost their lives in America's military operations overseas. But in my defense, he is also a douche and I hate him.

But more on Nowitzki. He is one of the best players in the NBA and a measure of my sarcasm is probably undeserved. He did score 29 points in the deciding game of the 2006 Finals. He is an excellent player, until the final quarter of the biggest games. He went 0 for the field in the fourth quarter as Miami closed out the series. He passed up an open look to pass to Erik Dampier in the last minute. And most damning, in my view, Jason Terry took the final shot for a Mavericks team down by 3 in the decisive game of an NBA finals.

Imagine this as a scenario. It's the mid-1980s. The Celtics are in a series deciding game. Replace Dirk in the preceding paragraph with Larry Bird. Could you imagine Bird allowing that sequence to occur? Wade had every right to call out the most overrated German athlete since those clowns that Jesse Owens dusted in the Berlin Olympics of 1936. There is no such thing as an almost champion, and second place is a fancy word for king of the losers. Nowitzki didn't play badly, but when a Gatorade container feels your wrath more than the opponent in the NBA Finals, maybe you do need to work a little on the leadership skills.

I did enjoy Mark Cuban's subtle dig at the NBA officials and commissioner, hinting that he would be fined again if he mentioned the secret of Wade's success in the finals and saying that he loved watching him shoot free throws. Mark Cuban would do well to remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf, or at least take an oral tradition class. Then maybe he'd stop whining about the officiating after every game, or at least point out one instance where Dallas benefited from a missed call (I pointed one out in last years' playoffs and I'd link to it if I hadn't already linked to myself tonight).

I don't feel like so much of a dork bringing up fables and oral tradition, since Cuban questioned whether D Wade had taken business classes at Marquette. Of course, I should have realized that the business schools are the new cradles of leadership. After all, look at how the courageous MBAs contributed to the great deeds of Enron and TYCO. And we all know that Patton attributed his ability to inspire troops to feats of greatness to the business seminars he took at the academy.

Running a crap corporation and tricking Yahoo into buying it doesn't qualify you to speak out on leadership. Carrying a basketball team to a title probably doesn't, either, but it's still better than the former. Mark Cuban should remember the one thing that separated broadcast.com from the rest of the dot com busts was good timing. And he should remember to shut his face once in a while, and if it's not too much trouble, any time he feels up to it, he can drop dead.

That final sentiment might be a little harsh, but Cuban reminds me of Ethel Merman's character from it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The film happened to be on this afternoon, during the 31 Days of Oscar on Turner Classic Movies (which almost makes me forget the NFL season is over when they show some of the greatest movies of all time). And I love the scene where Buddy Hackett suggests that Ethel Merman drop dead.