The Great Lakers Mystery

My bench seat is this wide

Tonight in Los Angeles, the Lakers took the floor against the Hornets. Entering the game, the home team had a record of 9-40, the second worst in the Association. Here are the starters:

G Lou Williams
G Jordan Clarkson
C Roy Hibbert
F Julius Randle
F Kobe Bryant

Let's consider each in turn.

Williams is a 10-year-pro. He's 6'-1", a tolerable bench scorer who can't defend, and not really a point guard. If he's used properly, the way he was last year in Toronto, he can be an asset. Giving him starter minutes has never made any sense, and it has especially does not make sense on a team that is 9-40.

Clarkson might be on the next Laker team that isn't a laugh out loud embarrassment. He's in his second year, the only good thing to come out of last year's dumpster fire, and in the 15/4/3 range of Not Really A PG or a SG. I don't love his game, because he's terrible on defense and seems more athletic than intelligent, but you could do worse than giving him 35 minutes a night and seeing what happens.

Hibbert, man alive, he's just brutal. I have no idea what happened to make him so old so fast, but right now, he's just a 7/7 slug who seems to just be out there to show the world that lumbering 7-footers no longer have a place in the Association. Maybe he could help a team as their de facto goon, along the lines of a taller Kendrick Perkins, but his spiraling career in Indy showed that he doesn't really have the heart for that. Every minute he's on the court is a minute that Laker Fan should hate.

Randle might be the most depressing part of this year for the team, as last year's first round pick has delivered more empty calories than any young guy in recent memory. He gives you 11/10/2 now, but the limitations to his game -- can't pass, can't go right, can't elevate, can't shoot from distance, can't defend -- are seemingly set in stone. You give him minutes because he's young and might get better, and you deal him to any GM that asks about him, because he's just a reason to lose.

And then there's the sad remains of Kobe Bryant, all 16/4/4 of him, a 35% (!) shooter who is proving that sad memorial tours don't have to just be for Derek Jeter. Bryant's sole remaining goal for his last 30-odd games in the Association should be to avoid injury and get a half dozen more moments on SportsCenter, because he might be the worst player in the Association. No, seriously.

So what we have here is two out of five starters that you might actually feel good about, kind of. You have to give Bryant 25 minutes a game for the gawker crowds, but not a second more. Which makes the way the Lakers delegate their remaining minutes all the more perplexing, because the bench is where you will find D'Angelo Russell, the 2nd overall pick in the draft last year, and outside of Clarkson and maybe Randle, the only assets on the team that might be here after the purge. (I'm going to ignore Larry Nance Jr., who looks OK only when you compare him to Randle, and has no more ceiling to his middling game. Trust me, he's nothing.)

Now, Russell has *not* been good. So far, he's 12/3/1 on 41% shooting as he adjusts to life as an NBA point, with way too many turnovers and poor body language. At age 19, he's not helping anyone win games... but FFS, this is a 9-win team with no one who would start for a .500 club. Winning games is not an option. What they should be doing is not playing the guys who can play -- you don't have those -- but the guys who might figure it out later.

So, why are the Lakers doling out minutes to their younger players as if they were fighting for the 8th seed? Well, three reasons.

1) They have to stay high in the NBA draft -- as in top 3 -- or they lose their first rounder to Philadelphia next year. If you think the Sixers have been tankers, wait until you see what the Lakers do once they get Win #10, so they can avoid the 1973 Sixers Infamy Record. I think they might bring back Lamar Odom and start him. In his current medical condition. Hey, he'd have as much left in the tank as Bryant, and some other check collectors on the Laker bench...

2) They really are this stupid. Also littering the Laker bench? Metta World Peace -- no, seriously -- who wasn't good five years ago, prior to traveling the world and discovering that real Chinese food is wildly fattening. Nick Young, more proof that exposure to reality TV is wildly destructive to your health and basketball utility. Robert Sacre and Tariq Black, who somehow make Hibbert look mobile. Brandon Bass and Ryan Kelly and Anthony Brown and dear Lord in heaven, if you are going to have guys that can't play, at least give them names that are different from guys that we all knew could not play five years ago.

3) Coach Byron Scott thinks that the way to develop young players is Tough Love. So when Russell turns it over -- as if he's alone with that problem on this roster -- it's time to sit that teenager's ass down and show him the error of his ways. The fact that no one on this team runs simple cuts and gets open, preferring to go iso as if they were all channeling mid 1980s Michael Jordan? It's all the teenage point guard's fault.

This will all continue for another 10 weeks, which is how much longer the NBA regular season will run. The Lakers will clean house in the off-season, with Scott getting run out on a rail with any number of distressed assets. NBA writers will talk extensively about how the Lake Show is going to attract big name talent with all of their available cap space, high picks, prime location. And none of that will actually come to pass, because you don't have to go anywhere near the bright lights and big city to make real money anymore. Damian Lillard, in Portland, appears on State Farm ads. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook cash checks in OKC, where the money probably spends 2X as well as it does in Cali. LeBron James went from Miami to Cleveland and didn't lose a dime. The Association plays to the world, and the world does not really care what your jersey says, so long as your team wins games and is fun to watch.

Is there a way out for them? Only one, and it's so obvious that even Scott might stumble into it. Give Russell the keys to the car, play him with Clarkson and Randle and the two least regrettable other guys regardless of position, tell them to run at every opportunity and don't pull the kid until his tongue is on the floor. Maybe you force feed him into a 20/10 volume guy, and give everyone in town a moment of hope, or pump up his trade stock, the way the Sixers did with Michael Carter-Williams. If he flops, he flops; you're losing these games either way.

And as to why they aren't doing this?

I have no earthly idea.

And no one else who has been watching this franchise does, either.

Five Ways To Prank A Gymnastics Meet

Prank These People

Tonight was the second to last meet for my eldest daughter in her third year of competing as a gymnast. So when I add it all up, that means I've been to a couple of dozen meets at this point, and have spent over a hundred hours in the crowd, waiting and watching.

And in all that time, I'm pretty much struck by one consistent thread.

Nearly everyone is taking this *way* too seriously. Especially the kids.

So, without further ado, here are five pranking possibilities that would liven up the proceedings, without really harming anyone. (And before some parent has a meltdown and reports me, not so much that I'll do it myself. Besides, I don't have the connections or skills.) Let's get pranking!

1) Ringer Rejection

The kids who perform at these meets are amazing, dedicated and talented, but they aren't the best in the world. So what I'd like to see happen is have someone at that level brought in as if she were an ordinary kid, and have her take the first spot, probably on floor, and do her absurdly over the top best... and have the judge give it a low score. Just to film everyone's reactions. You want to do better than 5.5, kids? You are going to have to beat *that*.

(Then, you reveal the guest's actual identity, and maybe have her do the other three apparatus and sign some autographs before leaving. Sure, it might delay things by a half hour, but it'd be memorable.)

2) Floor Magic

How hard is it, really, to swap in a different audio track for a movie file? Not very, which means that we should be able to replay floor exercises during dead time -- which for the spectators, is a substantial amount, given that each change of station adds 15 minutes of warm up time, not to mention the close of business nonsense before the awards -- but with substantially different audio.

Sure, some folks might get upset by Tibetan throat singing, goats singing Christmas carols, or the theme music to "The Venture Brothers" and "Archer" as the background to their precious charges, but, um, eff those people. There's humor to be mined here, and so long as you make things goofy enough and treat everyone the same, it'll work out. Plus, hey, goat singing. Everyone loves goat singing.

3) Foam Fight

Every gym has them; pits filled with foam that are used to teach the kids how to fall properly. Since gyms are also pretty limited in terms of size and layout, these pits are pretty much just waiting for some kind of use. Any, really.

So instead of doing stuff like handstand contests at the close of the event, let's just give the kids what they really want, after all of these months of training... the chance to either chuck their coaches into the pits, or drown them in foam bricks.

Oh, and if you want to give the parents a few bricks to chuck? We're on the hook for thousands of dollars a year. I think we've earned some foam.

4) Team Goofus

This one's easy, and honestly, I know any number of kids that would gladly volunteer for this. The idea is to have an unknown gym compete as the Goofus Squad, and have them do as much weird or absurd stuff as possible. Maybe do a routine on the beam while checking their phone, a floor routine that involves standing in place for uncomfortably long periods of time, or break dancing on the vault. Give a kid the chance to do safe but weird, and I think you'd get high entertainment value. And the most popular team in town.

5) Coach Lottery

One more for the dead time: by lottery, a coach is chosen, and has to perform a routine on the apparatus of his or her choice. What would work here is how much the kids would mark out for seeing something they've never seen before, not to mention how much it would rule if the coach in question played up just how little they wanted to be there, or how rusty they were. (And sure, fix the lottery if you're worried about injury. I trust these people to make it look like they aren't prepared before they do something.)

Any further ideas, fire away...

Hey, Fox, Was It Something I Said?

Got this in the mail today. This is, literally, the first time that Yardbarker has acknowledged the existence of this blog since March 2013.

No warning, explanation or class

Now, I've been terminated before. I'm a grown up, cost real money to hire, have worked in shaky places and have made some mistakes in my life. I don't really regret any gig that I no longer have, because I try very hard to have no regrets as a rule. Regrets are stupid, make everyone around you feel like you would rather not be in their presence, and are just aren't a good choice.

But man alive, was Yardbarker not a good choice.

Let's go back in time that no one cares about. Years and years ago, I was invited to write for Bleacher Report, and did it for the better part of a year. As the invitation was right up there with being invited to write for the Huffington Post (i.e., we'll get rich from your work, and pay you squadouche), I did it for a while, saw no gain for my traffic or take here, then bailed. Yardbarker's arrangement was better, in that they put your stuff in their widget, and you got traffic. In the heyday of this blog, because Web publishing became a sadder joke in terms of a per hour working wage, I'd bank checks from them and Google, and get four figures a year from my work.

Anyway, I wound up meeting some of YB's top people, tried to do a deal with them at the two start ups ago start up, and more or less put it out of mind when they sold out to Fox. Those people moved on after the sale to Fox, YardBarker stopped slotting my stuff, and Bleacher Report got Turner Bucks and an absurd amount of exposure from TNT and others. Yardbarker would send out these by the numbers inside sales nonsense newsletters about what hot contract they just did, but the take never got better, and I left them on the blog out of inertia, rather than any actual belief in their vision.

So today's letter just means that I could pull off pixels and ads that weren't worth the trouble anyway. I get to stop paying attention to their crapbait clickbait newsletter. I take some pride in knowing that, to whatever infinitesimal degree, I'm no longer helping Fox do any damn thing at all. And the blog loads faster for you, Dear Theoretical Reader, and with fewer ads that are a lot less relevant than the Google spots anyway.

As for Yardbarker's future prospects? Well, to be blunt, they have none, but that would be true whether they cut me loose or not. It's basically just another URL for Fox, and no one really goes to Fox, because the habit is ingrained for ESPN, the better content has always been at other places, and the fantasy traffic has mostly stayed with Yahoo. If you want gossip, you stay with Deadspin; analysis, nerdery sites that try to upsell to premium content. And with everyone in the biz having no earthly idea how to monetize this stuff in the first place, let alone when it's on a phone screen, we're all humped anyway.

So, toodles, Fox! Please, in the immortal words of the late great Sam Kinison, slide under a gas truck and taste your own blood. You are Satan's Little Helpers, and you can go take a flying f*** at a rolling doughnut.

*Now* it's over, you freaking mooks.

The Eagles Get Their Ends Tight

Before we get into the guts of what the laundry did this week, I'm going to ask you to indulge me in one of my many moments of nerdery.

To wit, I'm fond of the the occasional musical. (Yes, I'm straight. But flattered that you'd ask.) And one of my favorites is "Into the Woods", especially the 1991 stage version, because Bernadette Peters will absolutely cut a bitch. The best of many great moments for what might be the signature role of the play is when the Witch positively spits out these lyrics:

You're so nice
You're not good
You're not bad
You're just nice
I'm not good
I'm not nice
I'm just right

- Stephen Sondheim, "Last Midnight", "Into the Woods"



Seriously, play the clip. You could do surgery with the way she says "nice."

Now, back to the Eagles.

Yesterday, the team locked up promising young TE Zach Ertz with the fourth-highest salary for his position in the NFL. The deal is a little iffy, because Ertz hasn't been all that healthy, all that great in the red zone, and prone to only brief periods of high-end production, mostly because he's (a) middling at best as a blocker, and (b) prone to the occasional drop and fumble. But what the hey, his best days are probably ahead of him, and it's not as if the club is lousy with pass catchers. Ink him up, play him all the damn time, let him be the 100+ catch a year safety valve in new HC Doug Pederson's West Coast / I'm Gonna Need Me A New Jason Kelce offense. Iffy but defensible. Hope like hell Ertz earns it.

With the move, the Eagles were certain to finally tear the Band-Aid all the way off and give longtime TE Brent Celek his release. Celek, the last link to long-ago days of glory, is coning off his worst year as a pro, not just in terms of catches and yards, but also the devastating back side blocking that was missing from so many long runs from scrimmage the past couple of years. Given his age and lack of separation, it's unlikely that Celek would stick in the league for very long, and...

Um, wait, what's this?

Celek signs 3-year deal worth $13 million

It's not good. It's not bad. It's just >nice<.

Now, I get why you'd do this. 3 years for $13 million really isn't that much. The organization has gotten all kinds of grief for being callous with their best, and the way they treated, say, Brian Dawkins remains a sore spot. Pederson's offense is obviously TE heavy, and Ertz hasn't been so durable that TE2 will get no snaps, or plays of importance.

But man alive, Celek wasn't very good last year, and at age 31, really isn't likely to be better. Trey Burton has looked like a player in limited snaps, and he costs nothing; he probably isn't going to want to be TE3 too much longer. And in a world where salary caps are finite, do you really want to tie your funds up on a part-time player?

I don't do the move if it's my team. But after the Kelly Fiasco, over-correcting by being what the fraud wasn't -- i.e., personable and kind to the Andy Reid survivors -- is totally going to happen. It's time to be >nice<.

Whether it makes any football sense or not.

Cardinals - Panthers Takeaways

No Need To Comment

> For the second straight week, a well-regarded NFC West team got absolutely trucked by the home team

> Imagine how good this Panther team would be with WRs that were better than Ted Ginn Jr. and Name TBD Brown

> It's a good thing that Carson Palmer won his first playoff game last week, otherwise he might have come out flat and turnover-happy in this one

> Patrick Peterson's muffed punt was a back breaker, but to be fair, the Cardinals' back was going to be broken in so many other ways

> Larry Fitzgerald used up all of his Hero Moments last week, obviously

> Palmer's hurt finger might have contributed to his terrible game, and the lack of Tyrann Mathiew also didn't help, both of whom were hurt late in a blowout against the Eagles, because Bruce Arians is kind of an asshat

> The Panthers' ability to compete with Street Meat DBs is more than a little surprising, and an excellent reason why every NFL team didn't hire Sean McDermott to be their new head coach

> Despite the crushing defeat, David Johnson is all kinds of good as a RB, assuming Palmer's career doesn't go Full Delhomme after this

> If LB Stephen Davis is hurt enough to miss the Super Bowl, Carolina should still win going away

> It was nice of Arizona's WRs to try to play as badly as Palmer, so he wouldn't stand out so much

> This 17-1 team with the most obvious MVP in recent NFL history might be really good

> Newton might be the only QB in NFL history for whom 3rd and 10 is a good bet to convert by just running it

> Palmer's injured finger and the absence of Tyrann Mathieu means that Chip Kelly had his revenge on Arians, but um, next year's Cardinals-49ers games won't keep that ledger tidy

> Panthers' HC Ron Rivera went for 2 while up 25 with 5 minutes left, because LOL this game

> There's a really good chance that the Panthers faced their best opponent in their first playoff game

> Arizona threw the ball after the Panthers took a knee, because Arians is also kind of a dick

> Bengal Fan laughed a lot during this game, and Raider Fan too

> I will gladly take the Panthers with anything under 14 in the Super Bowl in two weeks