The Yard has often effused that the NCAA Men’s basketball
championship is the greatest event in all of sports each year. This season has done nothing to dispel that
notion. The Yard knows that there is a
Women’s championship as well. But
ladies, you are kicking our male asses all over the place, maybe you can let us
hang onto The Madness! Zion could not
save the Blue Devils which their championship had been forecast in the Dead Sea
Scrolls. It is strange to have one named
Zion leading a Devil of any color. The
Virginia Cavaliers have gone from being the biggest upset in tournament history
to winning the championship in 388 days.
It is the most remarkable story in recent March Madness lore. Tony Bennett is a class act. He and his team owned their loss to the 64th
ranked team in the tournament in 2018.
They went straight back to what they had been doing and won the whole
thing this year. Yard enthusiasm for the
Cavs victory is because of their story and we picked them to win in the Yard
pool. Texas Tech and Chris Beard are a
great story as well, but the Cavs are the champs.
In 2016, UNLV thought they had found a new head coach in
this same Chris Beard. Beard coached
Arkansas Little Rock to a 30-5 record and an NCAA bid in his only season
there. He got a lot of attention and the
Running Rebels were looking for a new coach and they hired Beard. In another time and space, UNLV had hired
Rollie Massimino to replace Hall of Famer Jerry Tarkanian. Rollie had won an improbable NCAA title with
Villanova and was thought to be the answer but there were many questions. Unbeknown to the University Regents, Massimino
had cut a side deal with the athletic department in addition to his main
contract. He essentially was getting
paid an extra $375K per year that was “off the books” in addition to the $500K
the Nevada Regents had agreed to pay him.
No one was the wiser until Rollie got canned and demanded the side deal
be included in his severance package.
The ensuing feces fest lead to new requirements for Nevada Collegiate
sports contracts. The new vetting
process extended and delayed the final contract that Beard was to sign to coach
UNLV. Texas Tech had fired Patrick
Knight and swooped into the contractual purgatory and snatched up Beard before
he coached even a single game. The Yard
is not sure Beard could have had the success if he had been stayed but it
cannot get much worse for UNLV. UNLV still considers him a former coach. Myopia is not just a Yard thing.
The Yard’s earliest narratives were to trash the San Francisco
Giants and the USC Trojans with myopic prejudice. There have been other targets of our praise
and our disdain, but the Giants and the Trojans were our villains that drove our
earliest key strokes of disdain. Now
traditional media outlets have usurped us because there is just too much shocking
material blasting at the foundations of these two institutions. The Yard is
left with mere table scraps of vitriol.
Giant President and CEO Larry Baer has been suspended for a viral video
of a physical alteration with his wife. The
Giants have a first-place payroll and a last place record. As far as USC goes,
just google “USC Scandals” and make sure your anti-virus software is up to
date. Larry Baer should weather his
storm, do a mea culpa with Oprah and be back at the helm by the All-Star break. USC alumni are not sure when their reign of
terror is going to end. No academic
institution was more villainous than USC in the recent admissions scandal. Dr. Dre stepped up and let everyone know his
daughter got into USC without any bribes.
The rapper turned billionaire did donate $70 million to USC. We are sure that did not have any influence
on his daughter becoming a Trojan, right?
He should have just said he got her in the old-fashioned way.
Robert Kraft apologized for the shame he brought the NFL and
his family for the events at the Orchid Day spa in Jupiter, Florida. His attorneys then went on to plead not
guilty and demand a jury trial. The two
sequences seem contradictory. To
apologize for something that you are legally contending did not happen is
strange at best. Kraft’s attorneys are
fighting the legality of the video tapes of his activities inside the spa on
those two fateful days. There certainly are some sketchy court orders that
allowed the FBI to bum rush the spa and install cameras without their knowledge
or Kraft’s. Who knows how many times he
had been there before that fateful weekend? No one is denying Kraft was at the spa, they
are contesting what happened in the spa.
A billionaire at a seedy day spa in a strip mall, what do you think was
going on for the 30 minutes Bobby was there on Saturday and Sunday? If the tapes are admitted, it is going to be
like the Marv Albert trial a few decades back.
Marv vehemently denied that he had bit a woman while in the throws of
passion. Then she testified in open
court about Marv wearing women’s clothes and singing show tunes before he bit
her. Marv ended the trial right then and
took a plea. If the video tapes are
allowed, and we hope they are, Mr. Kraft will be on Oprah as well.
Ernie Grunfeld was fired by the Washington Wizards last
week. He had been the general manager of
this moribund franchise for 16 years.
Owner Ted Leonsis said, “We did not meet
our stated goals of qualifying for the playoffs this season and, despite
playing with injuries to several key players, we have a culture of
accountability and a responsibility of managing to positive outcomes”. Granted
Leonsis inherited Grunfeld when he acquired the team, but Ernie has been one of
the more inept President of Basketball Operations in the NBA for over a decade. We are not sure when the whole accountability
thing started in Washington, but it should have been before they signed John
Wall to that ridiculous contract.
Grunfeld is the guy who gave Gilbert Arenas life. And he is a doppelganger for Ron Jeremy to
boot.
Magic Johnson stepping down from the
Lakers needed to happen sooner rather than later. The Yard is thrilled he realized his full
hearted, half assed efforts to turn around the Lakers was an abject failure. Rob
Pelinka should be next to the curb. Luke
Walton is the least of this dysfunctional franchise’s problems. DeAngelo Russell is thriving in
Brooklyn. Julius Randle put up big
numbers with NOLA this year. They are
the pieces that could have worked with King James this year, but they were
dispatched to wait for this summer’s free agents. Magic knows it is not going to be pretty and
whatever he promised James when he lured him, he no longer wants to face. Magic
has a multitude of business interests including the Dodgers. He has projects all over the US and he is
involved with the Lakers because…?
Jeannie needed a familiar shoulder to lean on when she was throwing her
brother out the door. No one does not
like Magic including Lebron, but he was more ceremonial rather than the
operational requirements the job demands.
Ernie Grunfeld may have failed in Washington but at least he was 100%
committed to that failure. Johnson is
about 20% committed to a Laker team that has become second fiddle to the
Clippers in LA.
Overtime:
The DNA testing revolution that is happening is interesting and
terrifying. In dystopian novels,
subjugated humans are forced to provide their genetic data to control them. In 2019, people are paying to give up this information
to unknown data sources. Cold cases
being solved is being heralded as a benefit of this unprecedented disclosure of
personal data. We are not certain on how
we feel about it and we are double helix curious for sure. The Yard is no fan of the Kardashians and keeping
up. But we would watch the episode where
the girls, mom and any of the other unsavory characters take the test and share
the results on television. It will be
the highest rated episode in their history.
Kris, set it up. Your ratings are
down and there are only so many men your daughters can bang into the show.
Double Overtime: NBA players, stay away from the Kardashians. Your marriage could end in 31 days, you will
still want to cheat on them, and you could end up in coma in a whorehouse in
Pahrump. Consider this a PSA and it will
keep you off Oprah.
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