Precious Roy

Postseason success these days is a crapshoot. The playoffs are an eight team, single elimination tournament. The odds are stacked against every team. The measure of a great team is uncommon success. Consider these points. -The Braves from 1995-99 were one of only two teams in MLB history to lead their league in wins for five consecutive seasons. -The Braves from 1997-99 are one of only five teams in MLB history to win 100 games or more for three consecutive seasons. If we didn't have divisions, it's possible the Braves would be every bit as impressive as the 1949-53 Yankees. After all, would they have won five World Series if they had to play two more rounds? Oh, believe me, I see your point, and I won't even try and argue it. It really comes down to a semantics argument. I'm not disputing the sustained, unparalleled greatness of the Braves. But IMO you win or go home. The Braves won a whole lot of division titles just to go home losers every year.

His OBP is only so high because he's too lazy to swing at pitches Re: The Braves I concur with labeling their run 'great' but not 'excellent' Excellence implies success of the highest degree. In my eyes post-season success is what seperates the excellent from the merely good and great. Post-season success defines true excellence. The Braves were a great regular season team, an excellent regular season team, but the true measure is championships, and when you make the post-season 14 times in a row and only win ONE championship, that's coming up short. When you make the WS 5 times and only win once, that's coming up short. The Bills won 5 AFC East titles in 6 years and went to 4 straight Super Bowls. But they didn't win anything. Were they a great team? Yeah, I guess, but they weren't excellent.

WCW in 1998 had so many random names from the 80's Rick Martel Marty Janetty Greg Valentine Lanny Poffo Barry Darsow Barry Horowitz I wouldn't call it the best roster ever, but it was certainly one of the deepest and most random, and it did make for a lot of weird B show matches. I'm usually pretty partial to the WCW of 1992/1993 At various times in 92 you had: Vader Sting Barry Windham Arn Anderson Rick Rude Cactus Jack Steve Austin Brian Pillman Ricky Steamboat Ron Simmons The Steiners Steve Williams & Terry Gordy Dustin Rhodes 2 Cold Scorpio Scotty "Raven" Flamingo Jushin Liger was around part-time Masa Chono Kensuke Sasaki William Regal Paul Orndorff Greg Valentine The Barbarian Danny Spivey Dick Slater Larry Zbyszko Bobby Eaton Brad Armstrong Terry Taylor Ricky Morton The Freebirds The Southern Boys Scott Hall Kevin Nash DDP Marc Mero And at one point in 1993 they had Ric Flair Sting Vader Arn Anderson Barry Windham Steve Austin Brian Pillman Cactus Jack Great Muta Ricky Steamboat Rick Rude Ron Simmons Bobby Eaton British Bulldog Chris Benoit 2 Cold Scorpio William Regal Shane Douglas Scotty Flamingo Kevin Nash Marc Mero DDP Brad Armstrong Harlem Heat

Maybe he is just up with the team to get a sense of winning. Yankees do it every year with their top rookies. Yeah, he's not active, but he's with the team, along with Clippard and Brent Cox. I think between that and Matsui coming back the D-Rays are lucky they're only down 12-0

Matsui goes 4-4, Abreu gets 7 RBIs and Moose takes a shutout into the 7th. Not a bad way to introduce Phillip Hughes and Tyler Clippard to the Bronx, but this game won't be complete without a Scott Proctor appearance.

http://redsox.bostonherald.com/redSox/view...rticleid=157114 BURN I think Jim Thome has something to say about that

Is anyone else psyched to finally see Philip Rivers play?

Good. Fuck Deion Branch. I'd rather have a first round pick than give in to his ridiculous contract demands.

Reggie Bush > TSM

Marbury's been getting a lot of good press this summer, hopefully he can just keep his mouth shut and play ball next season, and maybe some of the haters can get off his back

Not.even.a.chance. I figure the #1 will be Reche Caldwell with the #2 being Troy Brown. I've heard things that Chad Jackson has been struggling with getting the playbook thus his slow progression so I think it's between CJ and Gabriel as the 4th WR at the moment. Given how well Bam Childress has played, I wouldn't be surprised if he saw some time at the #3 WR slot. I could see Bam/Gabriel alternating turns at the #3 spot with Bam getting the role first. I think eventually CJ will wind up as the #3 with Gabriel netted as the #4 in the deep threat role. Bam Childress was released. He's being kept on the practice squad. We picked up a guy named Jonathan Smith who was released out of Bills camp. Only thing I know about him is he had a TD return against the Patriots in 2004. I don't think it really matters who the #1 is this week. We've got Brown, Caldwell and Gabriel and they'll all get looks. Watson and Graham are going to be our true first pass options, and we're going to see a lot of dumps to Faulk and Maroney out of the backfield. Garrett Mills should get some plays ran his way as well, though they'll probably save the trickery stuff they're drawing up for him for down the line.

Zenk also thinks that Can-Am was "the best team ever" and that "Strike Force never got over"

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/9893/zshoot1.htm That's Zenk's side of the story. Long story short, he was making a lot less money than Martel and Martel had been lying to him about it. He found out, demanded equal pay from McMahon (thinking he had leverage because the team was over and was being groomed for the titles), and quit when he didn't get it. I hate his tone also but you have to remember that the 80s WWF product was so different than the wrestling Dave grew up on. He couldn't adjust. The business was changing and becoming less and less about in ring work (well at least in the WWF). If you watch wrestling for in ring work than 80s WWF was probably a nightmare for you. But as several mentioned above the atmosphere, the booking, and the charisma of the workers drew in an enormous new fansbase. I still believe that Dave takes some cheap shots but he did report the hard numbers. It had to be killing him that Hogan was drawing all this money, especially with people like Kamala. He just hated where the business was going where talent wasn't really necessary to be successful. What's ironic about this is that Meltzer credits Superstar Billy Graham for making him a wrestling fan. Hogan, while different in many ways, was cut from the same mold, and was arguably a better worker. Meltzer always says Graham is underrated because even though he wasn't a good catch-as-catch-can wrestler he was very good at selling. You can say the same exact thing about Hogan. This is great stuff Landy, thanks for posting!

Patriots picked up WR Doug Gabriel from the Raiders for an undisclosed draft pick

The thing I wonder about is what it says in the ESPN article about Branch reporting to the team for the last six weeks just to get his unrestricted FA rights. Wouldn't that be contingent on the Patriots actually letting him back on the team? And at this point I can see them just telling him to stay home. Branch might file another grievance over that, but he IS under contract to the Patriots for this year and is refusing to honor his contract, so I'm not sure he's entitled to anything there. I thought all along that Branch would be back, and I figured a trade wouldn't happen because of the Patriots' asking price, but I didn't anticipate Branch going this route. I can see this whole thing getting really ugly, and now I'm doubtful that Branch will ever play for us again, which is a shame. The part that's pissing me off the most is that the Patriots offer was fair. They offerered him between 6 and 7 million a year, up to 12 million more in performance bonuses, and like 20 million of the contract guaranteed. That's not that different from the Jets/Seahawks offers he got. Him and his agent are just being stubborn because he's the Patriots #1 and Brady's favorite reciever and they think the Pats will break down and overpay. They won't. Oh, and he's being fined $14,000 a day, if he really holds out til week 10 he's basically forfeiting his entire salary for this season.

I just worry about his knee holding up over 82 games. And I also think that losing some of his explosiveness will take away the effectiveness of his face up game. The reason he was able to get face up 10-15 footers was because he was so explosive, if you played the shot he could get to the hoop in one quick burst. It's not like he was a "good" ballhandler, he had a good power move to get by guys when he got played close. He probably won't have that advantage any more. A guy named Antonio McDyess used to have the very same face up/explode to the rim game, and microfracture took that away from him. It's not that I don't think Amare will be a good player anymore, but lets see him out there in actual games and staying healthy during the grind before we declare him the savior of the Phoenix Suns. That said, Amare being back isn't going to hurt anyone else's game. The Suns are going to be good with or without him.

Branch has filed a grievance with the Player's Association, based on the Patriots promise that they'd trade him if they got fair market value. He says that a 2nd rd. pick was fair. Kind of shoots his contract demands in the foot.

John Lester has Lymphoma. Holy shit.

Let's not proclaim Amare back just yet.

No, you're absolutely right. Arenas is a one on one player, who scores by dominating the ball and dribbling til he finds an opening. For him to be truely effective he needs the ball in his hands, and his style of play doesn't exactly translate to the international game. He's a decent shooter, but he gets all his shots off his own dribble. He's not a catch and shoot guy. I'm sure he's capable of subjugating his game and doing other things, but that's not his strength, and we had other guys (Paul, Hinrich, Johnson) better suited to do those things. Hell, I thought Carmelo would be cut too, just because you don't need all these one on one offensive players on the same team.

They can ask for it because they don't want to trade Branch. They feel like they've been forced into this position and they want to get as much for him as possible. And they don't have to trade him, so if other teams balk at the price, so be it. The difference with Moss is that he's a headcase and everyone in the league knew the Vikings wanted to get rid of him. Hell, there was talk that the Vikings would have just released him if it came to it, because they weren't getting a lot of trade offers.

Yeah, we beefed up our stats running and gunning against a bunch of shitty teams. When we played teams like Germany and Greece that actually know how to slow the game down and defend we had trouble scoring. But really, the problem isn't our shooters, we have guys who can shoot, the problem is the shots we take. Too much one on one, too many contested jump shots. It's the same problem we had in the last Olympics. We don't know how to fucking move the ball or move without the ball.

Yeah. There was a stretch in the 3rd/4th where Greece pretty much scored every single time they had the ball, and it was all on picks, pick and rolls or a third man rolling off it for 3's. It was really pathetic, the USA would defend the pick by switching, and then they'd like try to switch back to their original man and you'd end up with two defenders standing there like idiots while one of the Greek guards blew by them for a layup. And it's not like pick n' rolls are a foreign concept, they're just played differently in the NBA because the lane is so clogged up, these guys are tought to feign a switch until their man can recover, and the Greek players completely exploited and confused the US with it. Another thing, Dwight Howard and Elton Brand not playing almost the entire game made NO SENSE. First, there was this big black guy on the Greek team (future Clipper) who was KILLING US, and we were trying to guard him with LeBron or Joe Johnson. Second, we had no stoppers near the basket to contest the endless stream of layups. Also, Shane Battier should have played more than he did. When he came in in the second half he immediately gave the USA a shot in the arm with some hustle plays and defense, but it was pretty much too late at that point. And probably the most frustrating thing, Carmelo Anthony played very well, he played very well throughout the tournament, but he put up an airball on a crucial possession where we'd FINALLY forced a turnover and had a chance to get the lead down to 2 or 1. That was the nail in the coffin.

Time to face facts: We suck at basketball

USA down 12 and looking absolutely shell shocked. This is depressing.