Category: Sports

I caught Miracle this afternoon, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. The acting was great, and the semi-final game against the Russians is enough to support the fairly bland script. If you don’t like sports, there’s nothing there for you, but if you do like sports it’s one of the great stories. The hockey is really well filmed.

Couple of bonus points for the reaction shots of the Russians after the game. They look human and their pain at losing is clear. Beat the hell out of Rocky IV.

Last night was an important turning point for the Celtics; they started Brandon Hunter, the second round draft pick, and he responded very well. (6-12 from the floor, 9 rebounds). Up until last night, John Connor had been giving people more or less the same minutes as O’Brien. It looks like that’ll change now.

However, he did have 15+ games with the team before then, which means we can compare apples and apples as far as his coaching and O’Brien’s. And boy, the result is illuminating.

With the current team, O’Brien went… roughly .500, as far as I can count. 8-8 or so; I might be off by a game either way. Connor, without making a whole lot of changes in terms of minutes, did — somewhat worse.

The question becomes this. If you have a team which is ready to contend for a championship, would you hire Jim O’Brien? You don’t want to develop the new kids, you want to take what you have and win. We can pretty much compare apples and apples, here, and I don’t see how anyone can argue that O’Brien was not getting a whole lot more out of these guys than Connor has.

This is in no way going to be good for me. I can tell.

Adriaan Tijsseling posted a comment about an hour after I bitched about ecto and offered to help. So kudos; that’s good support. If I’d read the help files, I’d have found the support email address, albeit it doesn’t appear on the ecto home page.

Good things about ecto: Textile preview support. Customizable HTML tag insertion. Per-blog default settings. Debug console.

Things I don’t like as much: Can’t see the continuation and the main entry in the same window. Still somewhat confused about the local copies vs. posted copies of any given entry. Current blog should be displayed somewhere so I don’t have to guess/remember. No free beer.

Few software packages provide that last, however.

So as I’ve noted before, Curt Schilling is answering baseball questions over on the Sons of Sam Horn board. Good for him, I said and say. However, he doesn’t want anyone quoting what he writes there. That is what we in the business call a can of worms. It opened up wide this week.

David Pinto quoted Schilling’s SoSH thoughts over on his blog. The guy who runs SoSH, Eric, told Pinto to take them down in no uncertain terms. Pinto did. Others became upset at SoSH.

Eric then came back and did the right thing in comments:

I do apologize for questioning anyone’s ethics… in hindsight it was foolish to respond so quickly to a request without thinking it through and emailing Pinto beforehand.

In re-reading the “Real Baseball” thread, I see that Schilling didn’t use his typical ‘the following is off the record and intended for sosh readers only’ disclaimer… so yeah — I rushed to judgement and said something I now regret.

I think Eric is the guy who made the first mistake, though, and I’m not entirely sure he fixed it.It’s not so much a matter of being impolite to David Pinto in this case. Rather, he should have set Schilling’s expectations appropriately. Eric’s been around the Internet a while and he should know better than to assume everyone would respect Schilling’s wishes. He should have said, flat out, “You can post here but you can’t expect people to respect your request. Some will, some won’t. I can ask people who don’t to change their mind, but I can’t force anyone to do so.”

Given Eric’s comments — “I see that Schilling didn’t use his typical… disclaimer” — I’m not sure he wouldn’t make demands in a similar case, and he really doesn’t have the right to do that. Requests, sure. Demands… not so much. And it’s important that Schilling understand that.

Ah well. As Jay Jaffe concludes: “I hope that he [Schilling] continues to patronize SoSH, that the results remain in public view, and that some kind of balance between respecting his wishes and remaining true to the spirit of the medium can be struck.” Alternatively, as gwen says: “Seriously folks, anything you put on the web is like posting it to a telephone booth. If you don’t want the public to know, don’t put it there. Period.”

Every time things calm down for the Celtics this season, I get ready to write down my thoughts on the team and then something huge happens. Screw it. Here’s my snapshot of the moment; next month, when Pierce is traded to Indiana for O’Neal, I’ll revise it.

This is why Jim O’Brien was fired, except the personal issues were more important than the writer thinks. As were the trades. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

So the Celtics have a few kinds of players. First off: wingmen. This is Pierce, Davis, and Welsch. Maybe Jumaine Jones, if Ainge wants to get him minutes, but I think Jones will have trouble cracking the rotation. The Celtics are actually quite strong here. Pierce and Welsch are decent to strong defenders, and they’ve all got offenses of rather varying sorts, which is nice. This is the least worrisome area of the Celtics.

Point guards. The Celtics have no real point guards. Maybe Marcus Banks will be a real point guard if he gets 20 minutes a game for the rest of the season? We can but hope. Mike James is a fill-in like the other fill-ins they’ve had since they let Kenny Anderson go. Welsch does not appear to have the point guard nature; he can fill in as a combo guard but that’s about it. Without a quality point guard, this team can’t contend.

Big men. This is the mystery position. Mark Blount is an asset who doesn’t rebound much. The article linked above claims it’s because of the defense. If Blount starts pulling down 10 rebounds a game I’m gonna be delighted. Other than that, what you see is what you get. Hunter, Mihm, Perkins, and LaFrentz are mysteries. The first three might develop into great players (well, probably not Mihm) or they might not. LaFrentz might have an injury-free year… OK, so that’s unlikely.

But they’re all fairly young. While the Celtics don’t have a solution at power forward and center right now, the chances that a solution will arise out of those five players is fairly high. Mihm was looking pretty good in Cleveland playing at the power forward spot. Hunter is intriguing. If Perkins doesn’t develop as a center, maybe Mihm can improve his center play and Hunter can start as the hard-nosed power forward. We don’t need a lot of offense out of these guys; mostly we need rebounds and defense and low post play.

Oh, and then there’s McCarthy and Stewart. McCarthy is Lou Merloni, except taller. Stewart is an unfunny joke. Don’t worry about them.

None of it helps without a point guard. There is precisely one possible long term solution available at present. No pressure, Marcus! Possibly without Baker on the books, and if they expose LaFrentz in the expansion draft, they’d have the money to sign someone like Steve Nash. OK, someone exactly like Steve Nash. The Celtics slogan: “Boston — it’s much closer to Canada than Dallas.”

Give Nash a decent four year contract and you’ve got possibilities.

Speaking of the Red Sox, Curt Schilling’s answering questions over on the Sons of Sam Horn. You gotta be a member to post, and you aren’t gonna get to be a member, but the answers are still fascinating.

Speaking of Curt Schilling, the Boston Dirt Dogs are running a quote about pitching under pressure from the afore-mentioned thread on the current front page. To illustrate the point, they have a scan of the cover of Grace Under Pressure, a Call of Cthulhu adventure from Pagan Publishing. Strange world.

There is something deeply pleasing about the Cubs hiring Grady Little. Yeah, he’ll help you guys cope with all manner of superstitions. I see he’s not actually going to be coaching much, though.

Pete Rose is still gambling. What kind of idiot would let him back into baseball now?

Curt Schilling, Internet-savvy Boston Red Sox pitcher, has taken to commenting on blogs. If you ask me, which nobody did, I’d say it’s important to take his actions in our little corner of the Internet as the actions of a man who’s experimenting. People express themselves on the Internet every day. First-time blog commenters make mistakes; everyone has to get used to the culture of a particular web board when they start reading it.

Curt’s gonna be the same way. I don’t particularly care if he’s a Major League Baseball player; I’m personally inclined to cut him the same slack I’d cut anyone new to the game. Which is to say not an infinite amount, but I gotta figure he won’t be perfect.