One More Reason Why ESPN Is The Worst

Whore Until Proven Virgin

Today in a courtroom, ex-ESPN broadcaster Erin Andrews had to, as part of her civil suit against the criminally negligent hotel that allowed a stalker to get nude footage of her through her motel room keyhole, say exactly what happened in the aftermath of the assault on her privacy.

Which turns out to be that, well, ESPN treated her about as well as her stalker did, when he passed the footage along to the Web for immediate and world-wide sharing of her body. You know, without consent or reimbursement.

ESPN, you see, put conditions on her coming back to work. Because they decided, in their repugnant corporate perfidy, to believe that the whole thing was a work, a ploy for Andrews to get more public attention and Web traffic, as if this was something she was in desperate need of at the time. Because women be crazy, amirite?

I realize that the jock sniffers in Bristol didn't meet a lot of women when they were growing up. Well, perhaps that's less than fair; the meet isn't hard, especially if you've found yourself near money or power, and women who want to work have to learn to navigate all of that. But they sure as hell haven't ever listened to them, or thought about anything as it might seem, through their eyes.

Even the most out-there woman, with a distance between her mind and her body that would border on pathological... would not, as a rule of base intelligence, want to give that up without control or compensation. Everyone who has ever taken a picture knows of the importance of lighting, how even the most flawless can be made to look off in fluorescent glare or unflattering shadow. Even the most brazen would, want, in short, some degree of control over her body, some say in what happens to it.

You know, the same as what any sane man would.

Probably also children.

And yet, ESPN's first impulse was, well, let's not be too hasty here. Andrews might have been getting away with something on you swells, you geniuses, you troglodytes. So they made her take public interviews before letting her work again, and tried to ramrod her into their sister network on "Good Morning America", because hey, why not get some extra ratings juice out of our employee's victimization?

Andrews wound up on "Oprah", and seemed to appreciate the experience, in that Winfrey was, unlike her employer, an actual human being, with a measure of compassion for her plight. (God knows why Winfrey went along with being ESPN's de factor deodorant, though I suppose there was also ratings tied to it. But still.) Having moved on to Fox and getting the top sideline job there, Andrews is now at one of the few lateral moves available to her in sports broadcasting, and she probably has the usual career in front of her, with the typical fruit fly life span. There's very few jobs in this field, and there will always be more where Andrews came from...

But woman alive, how low do you have to be, to show that little support for a co-worker? Let alone, well, a woman who's been victimized?

Shaming people who work at ESPN is, of course, impossible; that's part of the blood oath you sign with Big Mouse. So I'm wondering if it's possible to learn Who raised these people, and maybe get their names and addresses, so we can let them know, in no small lack of detail, what horrible jobs they did raising their sons.

It won't have any lasting impact. Nothing short of a widespread boycott of any and all Worldwide Lemur programming will do that, and maybe a class action lawsuit where we finally get ESPN off of basic cable, and stop having the cable paying public of America subsidize these lovely men.

But you can dream. And, if nothing else, make it very obvious to everyone why this network has been on a long slow ride to obsolescence, with league-direct channels and better humans taking over for them, bit by bit, body by body, scandal by scandal.

What happened to Erin Andrews was a crime. Twice. And the second crime was much worse than the first.

Gerrit Cole's Countdown to Meathead

Cole Cash

Item: Pittsburgh Pirates SP Gerrit Cole. age 25, with an All-Star appearance under his belt, went public with his unhappiness about his $541,000 contract for 2016.

The club has said that they understand his unhappiness, but that they can't do anything, due to the way the contracts are worked. It's also noted that Cole, a former #1 pick, picked up a sizable signing bonus back in the day, so, um, sucksies.

And this is the part of the story where the club's fan base splits into meathead / worried camps, with the former talking about how much money that is to play a children's game. while the latter worry that he's going to sulk, get hurt, or demand a trade.

But what's really at issue here is MLB itself. Remember last year, when Kris Bryant was the best hitter in spring training, but went to the minors anyway, because, um, contracts? And how he came right back on the first available date, then destroyed the National League for the rest of the season?

Well, unfortunately, Chicago wasn't justly penalized for karmic issues on that one, unless you count the fact that they lost in the playoffs, and are still ring-less for a famously long period of time. Pittsburgh might not be so lucky, but on some level, this is worth a class-action lawsuit, honestly.

Major League Baseball is propagating a system where the people who consume the product -- i.e., the ticket-buying public -- are not seeing the best available players for the entirety of the season. While still, of course, paying full freight. If you walked into a bar and were sold top shelf, but got bar grade, that's clear fraud and theft. What the Cubs started at third base before Bryant? Same thing.

In the meantime, a system that's entirely based on tenure, which is being gamed by the wildly profitable franchises, is allowed to persist.  Year after year after year.

And in the meantime, Cole will pitch every fifth day, with the possibility of his next monster pay day exploding because human arms do that, while people who can't fathom the amount of risk / reward that he's going through will bitch about the money he makes now. As if it's not something that's going to have to last him for decades afterward, or that it would come back their way if it were somehow not paid.

Have a great season, Gerrit! Oh, and don't turn on the radio, or read the newspapers, or look at the Internet. For a good long while, really...

Stephen Curry, The Man Who Ends Conversations

Not In Picture: The Basket

Tonight in Oklahoma City, the Warriors played, honestly, one of their worst games of the year. Their bigs were crushed routinely, with a 2-to-1 rebounding deficit that you rarely see outside of a college basketball tune-up game. Klay Thompson didn't make his first three until the fourth quarter, and took a good number of them. Draymond Green had some kind of meltdown in the locker room at half time. No Dub benchie played all that well, and their third leading scorer was Andre Iguodala, with 12. They were down double digits in every quarter of the game, and led for less than a minute.

On the other hand, they had Stephen Curry.

OKC played *very* well. Their early defense against the Dubs was as good as I've seen in the NBA this year. Kevin Durant was the best player on the floor for most of the game, and Russell Westbrook applied his new-found Jedi ability to be a point guard first, and a superstar second. They were at home and rested. Golden State was on the final game of a 7-game road trip. Curry went down for half of the third quarter with a rolled ankle.

On the other hand, Curry came back.

The reigning MVP tied the NBA record for made threes in a game with 12 (on 16 attempts, also absurd) and the game-winner is probably going to be the lead highlight of the 2014-15 regular season highlight roll. After rebounding the miss, the Dubs didn't call timeout with 5 seconds left. Instead, they advanced the ball, and Curry simply launched from 32 feet -- at least, that's the official listing, others have it at 38 -- and drained it.

Take a look again at the screen shot of where Curry is, and how much time is left on the clock. Every other player in the league would get closer to the hoop. Many would try to find Thompson, who might be able to beat Westbrook to the rack. Maybe you call time, given that you've advanced it to the front court, and 2.8 seconds is plenty of time to get a set play, screens and execution. Instead, he just hoists it.

It's a terrible shot for anyone else in the NBA, but not, it turns out, for Curry... who is now 35 of 52 on shots of 28 to 50 feet this season. Dude is making 67% of his attempts from the part of the floor where no one else in the NBA is likely to even be routinely guarded, which is  statistically better than a 100% diet of all 2-point dunks.

There are, of course, old-school guys who hate what Curry is doing to the game, the same way that old-school guys hated Babe Ruth for hitting home runs instead of bunting, or Wilt Chamberlain for dunking the basketball, instead of laying it in. What they think, of course, does not matter, not that we really need to be rude to people who built the league, made comparatively little, and endured racism that makes today's look like weak tea. But still.

Here's how good Curry is... he made a game with many missed layups, blown free throws, questionable coaching decisions (I'm not sure what it is about Durant and Westbrook that makes a coach forget to swap offense for defense late, or why a team can't move the ball in crunch time), whiffed ref calls and the unbearable ABC/ESPN prime time crew absolutely riveting. My Twitter feed thought this was the game of the year, and I guess it was... only because it was the latest game between these teams, and OKC seems unique in being able to stay close to the Dubs routinely.

What Curry is doing to the game is defying description. We've got a lifetime of knowing what a good shot is, and what it is not... and then there's this guy. We've got a sense of knowing that the best pure shooters in the league are always stand still catch and release guys who aren't also accomplished point guards... and then there's this guy. We know that the best way to get a three point shooter off his game is to make him shoot off the dribble, and Curry might actually be better at that. We know that the further away you are from the rim, the harder it is to make a shot, and yeah, um, maybe not. We know that basketball is a game of bigs, except that Curry is the best player on the planet right now, and just won a road game against a top five opponent playing a borderline "A" game without all that much help.

I'm not sure what else to say about him now, frankly. The Dubs have a lot more than Curry, so he doesn't have to play monster minutes and do this all the time. If this was old-school NBA, when you could beat the crap out of the guy as a strategic measure, it might not work as well. He's in the best moment for his skill set, in a system that's ideal for his gifts. If he were on some struggling .500 level team, he might play and score more, but he wouldn't do so any more efficiently, or be any more fun to watch.

Eventually, there is going to be another shooter in the same realm as Curry. Maybe he slips up, or that his dead eye doesn't hold up over the years. The world is likely filled with kids hoisting from 40 feet now, trying to be the new Steph, and while they are going to make basketball unwatchable for a while, a new crop of distance monsters will arise. Too many ordinary sized humans can be this obsessive, especially when there's this much reward in the long run.

And in the short?

The game will be re-made, in front of our eyes, in fits and starts and with a tremendous amount of old-timer hate...

All of which will be shut down, one make at a time, one win after another.

Super long threes, in a tie game, for the win, off a miss, without a timeout.

Best percentage shot in the Warrior playbook, and allowed them to win a game where they out-rebounded by 31.

Amazing world we're living in, right?

The Curious Case Of Evan Mathis, Or God, I Am So Glad I Was Never Large Enough To Play Football

Damn, Mrs. Mathis

So someone put a microphone in front of Evan Mathis, and the ex-Eagle Pro Bowl guard made the unpardonable sin of speaking his truth about Nero Kelly's reign in Philadelphia.

Mathis, whose choice of team (Denver) and play this season (in all likelihood, middling; the Denver running game or pass protection levels weren't the reason that team has a ring) was good enough to get him the trophy lift that people who stay in Philadelphia never get.

Not surprisingly, he feels that Kelly was unable to manage strong personalities, and ran his squad just to avoid the uppity, rather than, well, people who could play. Mathis also buried the offensive play-calling as too vanilla to stay ahead of the NFL curve. That one's obvious to anyone who watched the games *or* looked at the numbers.

Finally, all of this is likely to replicate itself in San Francisco, given that Nero didn't exactly seem like the learning type during his three years doing the same thing over and over again, and cocky middle-aged white guys who make millions of dollars a year don't generally overwhelm you with their learning ability, flexibility, and willingness to get better from their mistakes.

Now, all of this is mostly besides the point, as well as being spot-on accurate. Mathis was right, Kelly was wrong, and finding anyone who argues otherwise (still) requires a good deal of hunting. Or the ability to look back on their prior bloviations. Kelly had a lot of geishes around town.) But I digress.

Rather, I want to bring this back to Mathis. Here's a guy who won the lottery early in life by growing to 6'-5" and 300+ pounds while still keeping footspeed, then doubled down on the win by staying healthy enough in youth, despite playing, well, football, to get the scholarship ride at Alabama.

He was drafted in the third round in the 2005 draft by Carolina, which means some cash... but not a lot, especially when he washed out after three years there. Cincy and Miami followed, and just when it looked like he was destined to be an NFL vagabond, Andy Reid grabbed him, and 3.5 highly profitable years in Philly as a starter and football nerd loved player ensued. Add in the year in Denver, and he's now eked out a 12-year career in a game where the average lifespan is a third of that.

So when you add up the numbers, he's probably taken home $30 million before taxes, agent and lifestyle dings to his wallet. Even if he's only banked a third of that, he's sitting on more money than anyone you likely know, and assuming his brains aren't too trashed by decades of physical abuse, he's got a good long run ahead of him to do what he pleases.

Plus, he's got the eternal satisfaction of knowing he was right, getting to prove it, and having a wife that's hot enough to cosplay as a wrestling valet when he goes to Halloween parties.

Damn, Mrs. Mathis. Well done.

So here's a guy that we safely state has won at football, right?

Well, maybe... but he's still had to ply his trade in five different cities, and uproot his life on multiple occasions. He still gets to be the target of random character assassinations, and to know that Nero's gotten another gig despite his best efforts to ruin his career for no really good reason.

If he comes back to Philly now that Howie Roseman seems to be doing everything short of signing Vince Young to get the band back together, he'll be trashed by the meatheads in the area for a money grab at whatever level he comes in at, and for being too old the moment that someone who lines up against him wins a play.

Because that's life on the best paid plantation in the world. You may be right, you may be great, and you may be employed for as long as someone can put up with you... but you'll likely pay for the privilege of speaking your truth, and will also be dropped even faster than they drop everyone else, because of that whole truth telling thing.

Short of a dramatic change in our respective fortunes, I'll never be as wealthy as Mathis, or as famous. I'll likely work until old age and beyond, and while I might eventually get past serious stress about making my nut if a paycheck doesn't hit the account every few weeks, I'm not really counting on it. I have daughters, and they have to get through college and weddings, in all likelihood, and cars and the killing zone that is the youth job market. Even if they somehow become self-sufficient at startlingly young ages, and my wife and I remain employed and healthy and lucky, we are not likely to be too much further than where we are now.

And I wouldn't trade my life for Mathis, not for a second, and not just because I love/need to write more than anything, and the idea that my brain might stop working at any time due to my choice of employment is just repugnant on every level.

Rather, it's this.

I'm employed, currently, and have been so in the past, to tell people true things. To learn from these things, then figure out better ways to do these things, because, well, that's the gig.

I don't need to keep my mouth shut and endure untrue things because it would hurt my manager's feelings. I'm not told to go along with poor practices or decisions because my lack of belief is going to make Tinkerbell die, given my lapse of clapping. I've never had to have my job performance torn apart by mouth breathers on talk radio, had my social media feeds cross-examined for signs of subversion, or live with the knowledge that there were literally thousands of quasi-bloodthirsty men who were trying to take my job at pretty much every hour of the day.

And remember, Mathis is one of the guys that's pretty much won this sucker bet.

Hope Rosemen gets him back cheap!

After all, dude's pretty much just a stopgap now.

As are we all...

The Unnatural Confidence of the Warriors

Shooter is a wee bit open

Tonight in Atlanta, Golden State ran off to their usual huge lead. The confetti buckets were firing, the LOL ball movement was at full speed, and Atlanta looked as helpless as, well, every other team in the Association has more or less looked against the Dubs this year. And then everything changed, with Dennis Schroeder and Al Horford both playing nearly their best games of the year, and it got contagious. The home team started making threes, the road team, missing them, and a 23-point lead eventually evaporated. Atlanta took a four point lead in the early part of the fourth quarter as Thabo Sefalosha hit the corner three, and Atlanta's telecast team was openly talking about how this win might turn their whole season around.

Golden State seemed mildly concerned.

But I was probably reading too much into it.

Klay Thompson's answer three stopped the run. Atlanta's benchies ran out of gas. Shaun Livingston did his usual I'm Taller And Disturbingly Good mid-range game. Thompson stuck another three, and Andrew Bogut made block after block on penetration. By the time Stephen Curry made his of course make from the corner just after the five minute mark, Golden State was back up seven, and would never trail again. Another 10-point win, with the won-loss record moving to 50-5 -- just the best in the history of the Association -- and, um, yeah.

With the exception of Kyle Korver, who really looks like he's playing with a fork in his back, Golden State took Atlanta's best shot tonight. Horford went 23-16-6, and even had three steals and five blocks, and it just didn't matter. PGs Jeff Teague and Schroeder combined for 34-3-12, which means they damn near equaled Curry, and it just didn't matter. Mostly because the Dub defense made Paul Milsap disappear, with Draymond Green going 6-14-9 with his usual insane versatility, and, well, Dubs.

With 27 games left in the regular season and the team potentially getting stronger with Anderson Varejao joining the bench, I guess there's still suspense about them getting to 73 wins and setting a new record... but honestly, that's "just" 19-4, a winning percentage of .826, as opposed to their current .909. The Florida 2-step of Miami/Orlando is next, then the suddenly reeling Thunder, before coming back to the Bay Area for Atlanta, OKC, a lay up in Lakerland, then back home for six home games, all of them against borderline or strong lottery teams. It's really possible that they are something like 66-6 before the 3-game road trip to Dallas, San Antonio and Minnesota that's likely the Association's last and best chance to make protecting history a matter of suspense.

Even the freakishly talented Spurs are probably not going to put up much of an effort to stop this. Two of the last four games of the year are a home and home with Popovich's men, and that team has been known to rest for games that the rest of the world wants to consider important. But the more important point is just how many ways this team beats you. Guard Curry one on one, and he ends you. Double him, and a roster of knock down shooters has clean looks all night long. Deny Curry the ball, and Green takes over primary ball handling and racks up a triple-double against your big that can't stay with him. Somehow take these two elements away, and you then get to hope that the reigning three-point champion isn't hitting his inevitably open looks, or that Livingston and the bench mob doesn't run away with the game. And all of that presumes that you're scoring enough against one of the best defensive teams in the league, and a club that's just loaded with long athletes that contest everything. You pretty much have to play perfect, and they pretty much have to be having an off night. Good luck with that as a game plan.

I have no idea how you beat this team, and no one else does, either. If they weren't fantastic to watch, I'd resent them for making so much of the season suspense-free. And you have to think that OKC might get things together, or the Spurs will give them a series, or the recent Clipper comeback late augers something, or the Cavs are freshly energized and dangerous after their coaching game and Kevin Love rehabilitation...

Or maybe this is just one of the best teams in the history of the Association, and what you see with your eyes and the numbers is what's just going to keep happening.

Seven weeks to go. Seven more weeks for teams to try to figure out how to stop the unstoppable, or derail the best season ever. I'm watching because it's historic and beautiful, and because I have no dog in the fight against them. And I can't understand why everyone else isn't watching them, too.