Degenerate Friday - Bucks Fans as Bad as Philly Fans?

You would think that living on the East Coast for the past 5 years I would be used to insane and clueless fans. Living in Boston, Sully and O’Malley continually solved the Red Sox pitching woes and knew exactly how to get Manny Ramirez to play hard. Living in New York, Vinny from Staten Island and Tony from Queens know more about how to develop a young pitcher like Joba Chamberlain than Joe Girardi, Brian Cashman or the Steinbrenners could ever know. And in both cities I was in close proximity to the most irrational and moronic fans of them all – Philadelphia fans. They have no self-awareness and are the most fair-weather fans I’ve ever seen.

So imagine my surprise when I’m perusing the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and read an article on Keyon Dooling joining the Bucks and the ways in which he can help Brandon Jennings. A very nice article by Charles Gardner about the 10 year veteran who once was a top ten pick and seems to finally have found his groove in the NBA.

At the end of the article, the first couple of comments from fans almost knocked me out of my chair. Here were the Milwaukee fans, typically a little over-optimistic, but not as cynical or insane as the fans in many other cities, declaring that Kenyon Dooling has nothing to teach Brandon Jennings. Really? Are you serious? There is nothing that Jennings, an offensive dynamo but horrendously bad defender, can learn from a very good on-ball defender who has been around the league for 10 times as many seasons? The fans’ reasons were all based on the fact that Jennings has more talent than Dooling, so there is nothing he can learn.

Did Kobe Bryant learn things from Derek Fisher? Who on the Lakers controls Bryant’s temper, competitiveness and has his ear continually? Fisher. And there is no doubt that Fisher has much less given talent than Kobe. And Kobe’s coach? Phil Jackson was a solid, but not spectacular NBA player, so having less talent than Kobe, I guess he can’t teach him anything……oh wait, they’re positioned to win their second three-peat together.

-------------------------------------

In other news, since it is Degenerate Friday…here are the things not to bet on this weekend:

Don’t Bet On:
- Fat Albert Haynesworth passing his conditioning test
- Brett Favre staying out of the headlines for the next week

- Tiger Woods winning the Bridgestone tournament this weekend
- Darrelle Revis being in training camp anytime soon
- ESPN not cramming the Red Sox – Yankees series down our throats when it’s pretty obvious the Red Sox are not going to catch the Yanks or Rays
- Every story you read about Nolan Ryan and his financial backers buying the Texas Rangers will have a picture of Nolan giving a noogie to Robin Ventura.

Weekend Hangover - All-Star Weekend

A quick version of Love/Hate today for the President’s Day holiday. Most people have the day off, unless your company doesn’t like presidents?

Love

- Random notes from flying back from Milwaukee after helping my sister move:

o On most flights, that couple moments as the plane taxis out to the runway are typically quiet with everyone wrestling to own the arm rest and getting into their newspapers/books/etc. Not on flights coming out of Milwaukee. The people are all so friendly, asking everyone where they’re from, where they’re headed and just generally the friendliest people on earth. “Eh, Marge! Dis guy is from da north side a da city just like yer nephew, Daryl.”

o Only on flights out of Milwaukee do you have the overwhelming smell of pizza and cheeseburgers dominating the flight…..at 10:15 in the morning. And that’s of course before those Midwest Airlines chocolate chip cookies get delivered.

- I thoroughly enjoy a good beat down of Tom Crean, whether he was the coach at Marquette or now that he’s running the Indiana program into the ground. In addition to being an insufferable arrogant prick, I have to ask, Tommy – is there a tanning bed in your office? I just came back from the Midwest and let me tell you, there is no one there as tan as you. The only people close are those that just came back from Arizona, and since you supposedly work 18 hour days as the coach, when do you have time to sit in the sun and work on your tan? I have met Tommy Tan on multiple occasions and heard him give a bunch of motivational speeches. The guy just likes to hear himself talk and just about throws both arms out of socket patting himself on the back while trying to motivate his audience. So it is with great delight to watch TT take regular beat downs outside of the comforts of the pathetic Conference-USA.

- Speaking of Tom Crean, congrats to his meal ticket, Dwayne Wade on his All-Star MVP award last night. And Nate Robinson won the dunk contest over some guy that I guarantee no one other than his mother and his crew knew was even in the league. It seemed like the biggest story from the All-Star weekend was the stadium and the fact that over 100,000 watched the game live at the Jerry-Dome. Although most of them just had to watch it on the jumbo screen where the pictures of the players were actually larger than the real-life version that was playing below the screen.

Hate

- Valentine’s Day in New York. Even the flower places jack up the price on Valentine’s Day in New York. There are very few things that are cheaper in New York than anywhere else, but the two important ones are flowers and dry cleaning. There are so many little places selling flowers and offering dry cleaning (and yes, some of those places are one in the same) that it’s actually very cheap and most places will pick up and deliver for free. However, come Valentine’s Day, those same flowers I was getting for $10 are now jacked to $30. Just another reason why I am a firm believer in buying flowers at random for your wife/girlfriend/girl that you drunkenly make out with every Friday night dancing on the tables so that you’re off the hook for flowers on cheesey holidays. And don’t get me started on the prefix menus at every restaurant forcing you to get 4 or 5 courses each. First, I don’t need that much food because I don’t want to be a deuce (again). Second, your wife/girlfriend/drunken hookup is not going to want to be seen plowing through all those courses either, so she’s going to waste the food, and it’s a waste of your cash that you could be saving towards that 55” flatscreen television.

- When did NBC become the Lifetime network for women? I’ve already covered my lack of interest in the Olympics, but then again, the sports menu is fairly limited this time of year, so I will be checking it out ocassionally. Of course there are only a few sports I am willing to watch, starting with the hockey. Yet NBC has decided to show ice dancing instead of the hockey game between the USA and Canada. Really?!?! Really?!?!?! Honestly?!?!? No S#it!?!?! Who is in charge of their programming, Oprah? And right after ice dancing, they will be showing an after school special “Jenny Eat Something” or “He Beats Me Because He Loves Me”.

- Let me see if I have this straight, the Daytona 500 is the “Super Bowl of Racing” for NASCAR, right? What other sport do you know of that starts it’s season with the Super Bowl? Then again, I guess it’s fitting for a sport where the most exciting parts of the race are the pit stops and crashes. Otherwise it’s just watching people make left turns over and over again.