Just In Case You Didn't Know Already, Darren Rovell and ESPN Is Worthless

For Hire

Appearing this afternoon on the front page of ESPN, a "story" from the World Wide Lemur's senior writer, detailing Kobe Bryant's appearance in a new Apple commercial.

No, I'm not linking to it, because that would only encourage them.

In the 207 words that accompany a clip of the 30-second ad, Rovell tells you nothing that you would not learn from, well, playing the video. Other than this is a one-off ad, rather than a series, and how much the Apple tech profiled in the spot costs.

Friends, I get that sports has always been the toy department of news. I get that ESPN has the journalistic integrity of a YouTuber posting videos of animals driving cars. I understand that there will be no penalty or loss of, um, prestige from what can only be regarded as a PR insertion with a byline, from a secondary brand that's nearly as disgraced as the parent. Finally, I also understand that on the Web, clickbait is every bit as much on the reader as it is the publisher, because Web content is fundamentally broken on every level.

But with all of that said...

Honestly. Front page, 200 words, to describe a television commercial?

Sam Hinkie Pulls His Chute

Good Night, Sweet Prince

So Sam Hinkie gave his resignation letter to the Sixers tonight, as aged new de facto king Jerry Colangelo completed his palace coup with the nepotism slide of Bryan Colangelo to the front office.

In the long run, of course, this is not exactly a major tragedy, or even that much of a surprise. While Hinkie has shown an incredible ability to collect assets, those assets haven't turned into watchable hoop, let alone anything but an incredible amount of on the court losing. There hasn't been a 2-way point guard on the roster in his entire tenure, and there is no more important position in the NBA in the current era. For all we know, NBA commissioner Adam Silver more or less ordered this move, because the Sixers have been an active hole for every other team's marketing efforts when it comes to selling a home game. Just because the system only really rewards corruption does not mean that you can be honest about it.

But man alive, what a fallow field the Colangelos walk into here. They've got assets all over the place, especially if the medical work that's been done to Joel Embiid comes to fruition. They've got a ridiculous number of assets to move, and decades of elbow grease from working the league. They've also never scared anyone with winning championships or being anything more than entertaining frauds, so unlike Hinkie, there's no problem going back to New Orleans, Sacramento, Milwaukee or any of the other places that got fleeced by Hinkie.

Here's my problem with this... the injustice of it all, really. And not just to the old GM. Hinkie walked into an absolute train wreck of a situation, where the only assets were draft picks and the fact that the owners and fan base would sign off on anything that actually smelled like a plan. The Process was exactly that, and the reason why there's still a fan base. No matter what you might think of the potential of Nerlens Noel, Dario Saric, Embiid, Jahlil Okafor and the rest of the Sixers roster, you have to admit it's better than than the Spencer Hawes / Evan Turner / Thaddeus Young flotsam that he inherited. Having sifted through so much fertilizer, Hinkie and the fan base deserved to see the green shoots.

Oh, and two other points that just plain rankle, at least in the short term.

1) There's no chance that Hinkie gets another gig after this. Having more or less executed the coup here, there's no way that Silver and the NBA will let this man near another front office. Or any organization that will be able to pitch this kind of pain to their fan base. And if the Sixers do get good, it will be all about the Colangelos, not Hinkie.

2) The fact that this will give aid and comfort to elements of the truly loathsome Philadelphia sport media is, honestly, something that makes me nearly want to give up my fandom to the laundry. My need to focus away from traditional media and sites is going to have to border on exceptional discipline... and there's going to be, likely, years of utter bullspit tossed on Hinkie's grave as the team wins multiple factors against what the old regime won.

Neat trick, really... to make me resent the franchise winning more games and becoming more watchable. Mostly because it makes me seriously question the ownership, who, please remember...

Enabled the Doug Collins group that went all-in for Freaking Andrew Bynum before giving the keys to Hinkie, and pretty much have shown their hand now as having no clue, or no discipline to see a plan to completion.

Maybe I should just go all-in on my Warriors love, right?

The Sixers Avoid Ignominy

Oh, The History

Tonight in South Philly, against a New Orleans Pelicans team that has been utterly devastated by injury and was somehow even more anonymous than the Sixers, the home team got Win Number Ten. And with that, they avoid tying the worst record in NBA history, which is also something owned by this franchise. The 12-game losing streak is done, and they can play the last few games free and easy. Hell, maybe even win two games in a row, given that the Knicks are also playing or no reason.

The final win total shouldn't really matter, of course, other than it totally does. This franchise really isn't very far away from competitive and intriguing -- just a hair of injury and lottery luck would honestly be nice -- and there are more than a few of these guys that will continue to be in the NBA, at least at some level. Ish Smith can be a tolerable PG2, and TJ McConnell can be someone's who cares PG3. Carl Landry played fantastic tonight, and should be some team's poor man's Mo Speights, even though he brings about as much defense as the real one. With a minute left tonight, fans chanted "M-V-P" at him, which is outstanding work, really. Robert Covington played good defense and rebounded, which was mature of him, given that he couldn't put the ball in the ocean. I don't know if he's a starter for a good team, but he's an NBA player. Nerlens Noel has had a very disappointing year, but he's still got worlds of potential as a deluxe defensive hammer, and he's still young enough to develop an offensive game that isn't just alley opp related. Jahlil Okafor does many things that 19 year olds can't usually do on an NBA court, and while I'm not sold on the idea that he's going to be a front-line guy for a good team because he's a defensive sieve, that kind of thing can be coached up.

Here's the thing about this year... as disappointing as it's been to live through Year Three of Absolute Tank, I still hold that there was no other path for this franchise to go that would have been any better. The last three years of NBA drafts have offered no better options than what they've taken. They haven't been burned in a trade; I'd still rather have the potential of Dario Saric than the utterly compromised Elfrid Payton. Other than missing on stuff like Kendall Marshall over a full year of Ish Smith, or failing to recognize that Tony Wroten was never going to get a clue regardless of coaching, there's just no other feasible way to go. Winning 30 games a year with Spencer Hawes, Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young, or ten a year with Smith, Covington and Noel, is the easiest choice in a lifetime of choosing this laundry.

I'm glad they got Win #10, because they try too hard to be known as the worst team in NBA history. They honestly could have gotten it earlier than this; that loss in Denver last week was absurdly unlucky, and had they somehow snuck past the Warriors in that home loss, they'd still be smiling about it. This off-season, they bring in Saric, maybe finally see Joel Embiid, sign people hat other teams actually want, draft a few people, and become Actual Fun, rather than whatever this has been.

Oh, and a final point? As bad as this year has been, I can still look down on a bunch of teams. The Nets are worse. The Knicks are locked into Declining Carmelo and will never be any good. The Lakers have poisoned the well with this absurd year of Kobe, and it looks like D'Angelo Russell and Julian Randle have become compromised by the losing without plan. Sacramento is going to lose Boogie Cousins because they hired the worst possible coach. Phoenix has worse talent, honest. Denver is going to have to build around Emmanual Mudiay, a PG they could have had, and a PG that absolutely can not shoot, and will be as obviously a dead end as Payton really soon.

And next year?

There's going to be a lot more teams on this list.

(Please, dear God in Heaven, let there be a lot more teams on this list.)

Scottie Pippen Does Not Care For Your Disrespectful Youth And Their Three Pointers

Old And Out Of The Way

In the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, there is a wonderful recurring motif as the author describes how the game changed, from decade to decade. Going back as far back as the early part of the 20th century, there were retired players who were more than happy to tell anyone with a notepad that why, back in their day, they had *real* players, and they'd mop the floor with these punks. Decade after decade, James has nearly identical pull-out quotes on how Babe Ruth had nothing on Old Hoss Radbourne, and Ty Cobb would have owned Bob Gibson, and Don Drysdale would have just put Ricky Henderson on his ass and showed him what's what, and so on, and so on. T'was ever thus, t'was ever shall be.

Adding to that file is one Scottie Pippen, who keeps finding it necessary to run down the historically great current Warriors team, by saying that his own record-setting Bulls team of a generation ago would sweep them. And, well, sure, whatever, pops. But actually no, because bullspit is bullspit in any era, and we do not need to suffer with the weak opinions of older people, even when they were one of the 50 best to ever play the game.

Here's the thing that no one seems to understand: in the theoretical video game match up of best versus best when both were at their best, what is never discussed is the setting. If the refs are from the mid-90's game, where hand-checking was pretty much an art and Detroit taught the Bulls how to win by thuggery, sure, the Bulls have a chance. Dennis Rodman would collect a lot of boards, Michael Jordan would do things to Klay Thompson that would get you fined today, Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green would try to reciprocate and get off their game, and Steve Kerr would rack up some technical fouls in a hurry. It wouldn't be pretty, but it also would not stay that way for good, because ball movement works in every era, and eventually the Dubs would move the ball.

But what would the game look like if it were the Bulls who had to adjust to modern officiating? Jordan, a notorious referee jockey, would have exceptional issues. Rodman, a functioning lunatic who lead the world in technicals back when standards were lax and his team won all the time, probably would not last a half. Phil Jackson, used to controlling the game through the zebras, would rack up significant fines. And so on.

As for the actual play on the court... well, to be kind, Pippen might be able to take some of the sting out of Curry. But it's not as if the man guarded point guards routinely anyway, or would be able to do so for every minute without sacrificing his own, very necessary, offense. That job would fall to Ron Harper, one of Jackson's fetishy big guards who Curry simply owns, and who just wouldn't be quick enough to hang in this game.

By the way? The Dubs are a lot more than Curry. Andre Iguodala, last year's Finals MVP, shut down LeBron James for much of that series, and (shh!) James is a harder cover than Jordan, what with the 50 extra pounds of muscle and more inches of height. There are Bulls like Harper and Toni Kukoc who simply have no place in this game, what with the modern advantages in size and conditioning, Kerr would have a fun time targeting himself as a player, since he's going to exploit that matchup with the Dubs' superior bench mob. Jordan's also not going to have otherworldly effectiveness on penetration, since zones are legal now and were not then. And so on.

Finally, there's this. Saying you can cover Curry and keep him to 20 points a game pretty much means that you don't think very much of the dozens of NBA coaches and hundreds of NBA players who are currently drawing a paycheck. Does Pip think that no one in the current era is trying to stop the man? Having the best range and release in NBA history kind of matters, actually. It's not a problem that you can fix by just saying you more macho than these lousy millennials.

I understand, really I do, the urge to declare that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. I am, after all, in my mid '40s, and there are a great many things that *are* going to hell -- the movies, the climate, Congress and the Supreme Court, rock music, drinking water, offense in baseball, and so on.

But hoop is not one of these things. The great teams of today are almost always going to beat the best teams of yesterday. Jordan and Pippen's Bulls would have rolled my childhood dominant 1983 Sixers, who would have handled the Bill Russell Celtics, and so on. The game grows. It draws players from more and more parts of the world, feeds them better and better things, trains them on better and better machines, changes the game through better and better analytic measures, and so on.

If those Bulls sweep these Dubs, the game is in trouble.

This just in: the NBA is not in trouble.

And Scottie Pippen might want to stop shaking his fist at clouds, and maybe go hang out with Oscar Robertson, or whoever's next up in the never-ending conga line of Those Damn Punk Warriors to grab the mic...

In This Year's Baseball News You Could Not Possibly Care About

Smoking Cuban

Here is the results from yesterday's draft. Players with asterisks were keepers, and as this is the ninth year for this league, the market does a solid job at policing values.

Player	TM	2016 $	2017 $
Wilson Ramos	WAS	1	4
Yadier Molina	STL	1	4
* Mark Teixeira	NYY	15	19
* Dee Gordon	MIA	19	23
* Manny Machado	BAL	14	18
* Carlos Correa	HOU	7	10
* Javier Báez	CHC	10	14
* Xander Bogaerts	BOS	10	14
* Matt Kemp	SD	20	25
Marcel Ozuna	MIA	6	9
Matt Holliday	STL	7	10
Evan Longoria	TB	20	25
* David Price	BOS	33	38
* Jon Lester	CHC	14	18
* Scott Kazmir	LAD	7	10
* Sonny Gray	OAK	18	22
* Santiago Casilla	SF	7	10
* Trevor Rosenthal	STL	15	19
Justin Verlander	DET	9	12
Dellin Betances	NYY	2	5
Shawn Tolleson	TEX	5	8
Yulieski Gurriel	FA	1	4
Ryan Zimmerman	WAS	3	6
JJ Hoover	CIN	1	4
Brett Lawrie	CWS	1	4
Total		246	335

A quick word about the non-obvious protects. Baez is clearly overpriced for his current situation, but I just can't imagine that the Cubs will piss away another year of service time, and his improvement in contact rate last year struck me as mechanical and sustainable. In terms of pure offensive potential, I think he's got 30+ HR ability in a middle infield position with a modicum of speed, so, well, it's worth the risk to me. Kazmir had a poor spring training with velocit y issues and is officially worrisome, but he's been better recently and I love his situation. So he stays.

Now, the actual picks. Catchers were taken late when everyone was either clear of cash or catchers, and are both past the first 20 went off the board. Having said that, they've both hit in the past, are in the middle of decent lineups, and will hit the wire if they don't produce. I don't generally believe in paying for catchers, as the injury chance and year to year variability seems higher than any other place. Evan Longoria was my pick at 4th overall, under the theory that Baez needs bench time to start the year, power in a corner was relatively hard to come by, and he's a bounce-back candidate in an offense that almost has to be better. With the number of protects that I came in with, I also wanted to cost control my first round pick, and Longoria has entered the state of his career where he's kind of dull, so it worked out.

Next, the outfielders. I know that Miami has dicked around with Osuna in the past, but his second half was solid, the tools are undeniable, and the fences are in this year. I'd have gone $10 higher for him, as I think he's been overshadowed by the other MIA OFs. (For, well, reasons.) Holliday is past his prime but still an OBP machine (we do that instead of BA), and seems likely to add 1B coverage soon, which is useful in a situation where I'm depending on Teixeira to stay healthy. Ryan Zimmerman and Brett Lawrie add the possibility of health, power, and a cheap keeper if they can move things up to the next level. Reasonable lottery tickets in an era of baseball where 20+ HRs is about all you can really hope for.

Pitching-wise, I did what I could with a short stack, but was unable to lock down the quality young starter or shutdown closer that would have made for a better draft. Counter-punching around the room, I loaded up on affordable relief options, with Betances having a chance to have early value with the Aroldis Chapman suspension, and Hoover and Tolleson currently having the gig on their teams. Realistically, one of these guys will wash out, and I'll stream a SP from available options. In a 12-team mixed league, that's usually not hard to find. Verlander is simply a case of putting out a big name to try to draw money out of the room, then just taking the nice price when it was offered. His dominance in the second half last year tells me there's still something in the tank. 

That leads me to my idiosyncratic moment of the entire draft, the selection of a player that wasn't even on the radar of the nerdiest nerds in the room, Cuban star Yulieski Guerriel. Yuli is in his low 30s, defected a month ago, and is a true free agent who is, in all likelihood, ready to step in an MLB lineup today. He's got plus power and plate coverage, a little brother who is also a prospect, and could be the focus of a bidding war and/or immediate playing time. With Jose Abreu, Yoenis Cespedes and Yusiel Puig all having high success right away, I'm hopeful that Yuli can do the same, and for when I named him (with slots to fill, and the desire to get a $1 guy), it was a highlight of a difficult draft.

Roster-wise, you never win a league on draft day; you can only lose it. I'm not sure if I've done either, really. I just haven't had the fire in the belly for baseball for a long time now, and doing the draft prep was a real slog for a long time. Part of this is the dread of the A's this year, who are just going to waste another year and move assets around like always, and part of it is just not loving this era of pitching, pitching, and more pitching. As I wrote this, the Cards played the Pirates and I willed myself to watch it, and I'll be honest with you: it's been hard to stay awake. 3-0 Pirates in the eighth, and, um, yeah. Why am I not watching the NBA right now?