Above is a link to a instant replay story I covered for amNew York. It’s short, it’s sweet and its goal is to review whether or not Major League Baseball made the correct decision with instituting replay.
Reviewing MLB instant replay
29 06 2009Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: amNew York, instant replay, Kyle Stack, MLB
Categories : Miscellaneous
NBA kicks parity on its ass
28 06 2009Which scenario for the upcoming NBA season would you prefer? A collection of decent teams, nearly all of which have one major flaw, or a handful of truly powerful squads who can trade punches throughout the year on their quest to the ring?
If you’re like most of America, chances are you’ll vote for the former option. We’re a country that roots for the underdog and believes that every team should have a fighting chance to win it all. It sits in line with our belief that people are created equal and all deserve a fair chance at glory. Yet, I don’t believe sports works that way.
Sports, like life, is a grueling process filled with disappointment, glory, fulfillment and, most of all, an eat-or-be-eaten mentality. To have parity — a word that to some equals opportunity but to me signifies boredom — is what sports leagues will sell as drama.
In the case of the NBA this upcoming year the real drama will lie with five teams, as it should. And we’ve seen the stakes rise in the past week. With three separate trades sending All-Star caliber players — Richard Jefferson (Milwaukee to San Antonio), Shaquille O’Neal (Phoenix to Cleveland), Vince Carter (New Jersey to Orlando) — from porous franchises to ones with realistic championship aspirations, we’ll see a scenario in which arguably five teams can be considered in the Heavyweight division of the NBA’s league-wide weight class.
The defending champion Lakers, assuming they re-sign Lamar Odom and Trevor Ariza, will return with a core of Kobe-Gasol-Odom-Ariza-Bynum (he’s a key to that team next year). San Antonio has its own star-laden core of Duncan-Manu-Parker-Jefferson. Cleveland brings the LeBron-Shaq duo to the table while Boston returns with its healthy core of Garnett-Pierce-Allen-Rondo and Orlando has a Howard-Lewis-Carter-Nelson quartet that could be devastating with the return of Turkoglu. Or maybe Turkoglu goes to the Cavs, which would give them another shooter and, more importantly, a second player who can create his own shot.
If you want drama, then the upcoming season of title contenders has drama fit enough for TNT (which incidentally will broadcast many of the best games). If you don’t believe that a season full of contenders taking turns punching each other out can be fantastic for the sport, then take a look at the ’89-’90 season, when the NBA’s popularity began rising to another level that would culminate in the ’92 Barcelona Olympic Games. During the ’89-’90 season, six teams won 55 or more games, and another, Phoenix, won 54 and got to their Conference Finals. Want to know the powerhouse cores of those teams? How about a young Jordan-Pippen-Grant triumvirate on the 55-win Bulls and the Isiah-Dumars-Laimbeer trio on the eventual champion Pistons? The West had the Jazz (Stockton/Malone in their prime), the Spurs (Robinson-Cummings, who were more than one Cummings ‘board per game from being a 20/10 duo), the Suns (Chambers-KJ duo with deadly shooters in Hornacek, Majerle and Eddie Johnson), the Trail Blazers (Drexler-Porter-Duckworth-Kersey) and Lakers (Magic-Worthy-Scott). That season was so ripe with contenders that even the 63-win Lakers couldn’t make it past the second round.
Of course, each team this year has at least one core player with major durability issues (Shaq, KG, Vince, Bynum, Manu), but the stage is set for a season that could top last year, a year in which three teams (Boston, Cleveland, Lakers) surpassed 60 wins and another, Orlando, which straddled the line at 59. You think about San Antonio winning 54 without Manu for most of the year and obviously sans Jefferson, and we’re looking at the possibility of five teams reaching 60 wins in ’09-’10. The season can’t come soon enough.
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Categories : Miscellaneous
Kobe before he could buy cigarettes
25 06 2009I was watching old YouTube videos of various Lakers game-winning shots, which I do at an unhealthy rate, when I stumbled across one which I’ve never seen: Kobe’s alleged first pro game with the Lakers. I’m not talking regular season. I’m not even talking practice! I’m talking NBA summer league ball. (You’ll notice him as the bald-headed dude in the gold jersey rocking #32. Also apparent in the video is Young Derek Fisher!)
The most arcane of all NBA events, the summer league has long been a refuge for the babies of the league to sharpen their skills before October training camps. I couldn’t find exactly what year the NBA began the league, but Kobe’s video below is obviously from ’96. And look at how raw Young Kobe is!
It’s incredibly surreal to watch him 13 years ago, when I was half my age (!) and the Internet was something you accessed by going to the local mall. (Yes, I would actually go to the old Woodland Hills mall in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley to dial up nba.com.)
What fascinates me so much about this video is how he was already showing the basis for the amazing all-around offensive game he has today. Check out his first few shots — he’s got the free-throw line extended jumper, that incredible baseline turnaround that he has perfected and, of course, his ability to snake his way through an interior defense to get off a seemingly impossible shot attempt. You’ll also notice his propensity to get to the free throw line. It’s amazing to see how he already had the fundamental offensive tools built into his game. He even shows one of his famous up-and-under moves. Kobe definitely looked rough around the edges, but remember that he was 17 in this game!
You might also notice how flat his shot release looks, especially on free throws. He shoots the ball from a higher release point now, probably due to increased arm and shoulder strength and quite a bit of big league coaching. Anyway, I’ll end this so you can just watch Very Young Kobe.
(Okay, so I couldn’t figure out a way to get this particular video embedded into a blog post, since there’s no embed option. Maybe I’m technologically warped, but the best I figured to do was to link the video. Just click on the below link once.)
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Tags: Derek Fisher, Internet, Kobe Bryant, Kyle Stack, Lakers, NBA Summer League, nba.com, San Fernando Valley, Woodland Hills, YouTube
Categories : Miscellaneous
Kendrick gets optioned
13 06 2009A couple days after recommending him as a prime buy-low candidate in my amNew York story, Kendrick was shipped to Triple-A Salt Lake to work on his swing. On a side note, is there a better place to send a young player to focus on his game than Salt Lake City? There is absolutely nothing else fun to do, unless you consider barreling down a mountain and dodging trees on slick, awkward sleds attached to your feet “fun.”
Anyway, the option to the Minors might enhance Kendrick’s buy-low value. If an owner hadn’t given up on him before, there’s a good chance his exasperation has now worn thin. In fact, don’t be surprised to see Kendrick widely available on free agent lists.
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Tags: Angels, Howie Kendrick, Kyle Stack, Salt Lake City
Categories : Miscellaneous
MLB.com Weekend Watch
12 06 2009
David Wright has been raking enough to become the NL batting average leader.
Here’s the Weekend Watch, highlighting players who are heating up, cooling down, and primed for excellent matchups. This is always a great reference tool for Friday mornings when deciding which players might be best to start/sit/add from the free agent list for the weekend.
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Tags: baseball, fantasy, Kyle Stack, MLB.com
Categories : Miscellaneous
Scrounging the fantasy baseball sales floor
11 06 2009Inside today’s amNew York (my article is at the end of the post) are five legit buy low opportunities for fantasy baseball (along with five players who have disparate home/road statistics).
Howie Kendrick’s selection could be a real sticking point for some readers. My RotoExperts.com brothers had a lengthy e-mail chain last week debating the worthiness of Mr. Kendrick. His line drive percentage has crashed to the 12 percent level this year, which is bad news for a guy who makes his living off sharp liners for singles and doubles.
Kendrick might be colder than a Dick Cheney handshake, but he has the hitting tools to turn his season around.
To me, fantasy owners brushing off Kendrick as a has-been is a classic case of short-term thinking. Here is a guy who batted .360 throughout the Minors (he played major parts of five seasons there) and who has hit .285, .322 and .306 in his first three Major League seasons. Yet, holding a .236 mark in his first two months of ’09 has apparently been all the evidence owners need to write him off. They’re going to let two months of poor hitting outweigh six years — Minors and Majors — of largely .300-ball? Really?
Anyway, Kendrick is just one of five picks in here. Read these and give me a payback on the fantasy league winnings you accumulate from this article. Please.
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Tags: amNew York, fantasy, fantasy baseball, Howie Kendrick, MLB, RotoExperts.com
Categories : Miscellaneous
Kayaking in NYC
10 06 2009First, I love writing NYC now that my friend Chris told me he despises people who write or say ‘NYC’instead of New York City. I think next time I hang around him I’ll yell out ‘LOL!!!!’rather than actually laugh at anything.
Second, here’s a new story regarding kayaking opportunities in NYC. This is running in TimeOut New York this week. (For all you non-NYC people — LOL! — TONY is a publication which summarizes all the music, movie, club, restaurant, bar, art, etc. events and news people need to know. In essence, if a New Yorker is looking for something to do in the city, they’ll pick up an issue of TONY to see what’s going on.)
There’s some cool spots listed in the story, and I can vouch for NYC Downtown Boathouse. It’s one of the free kayak places in the city, the only one that I’ve used. I plan on visiting the Long Island City and Red Hook locations as well and would probably splurge on kayak lessons if I had the money to spend on kayak lessons.
I’ve found quite a few people who didn’t know free kayaking was available in the city, so I hope the New Yorkers reading find it useful.
To read this, just click on the title below, then click again on the ensuing image which looks like a sheet of paper.
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Tags: kayaking, Kyle Stack, NYC, TimeOut New York
Categories : Miscellaneous
Game 1 still has meaning
5 06 2009I just came back from the gym and got caught watching ESPNEWS, per usual on a Friday evening. Some segment called Airwaves was running with one of ESPN’s many Stuart Scott-wannabes yelling — and I mean literally YELLING! — NBA Finals questions at three ESPN radio hosts from the L.A., Boston and New York markets.
Mr. Scott-wannabe was trying to hypnotize one or all (I couldn’t be sure) of the ESPN radio guys to admit that the Lakers’100-75 victory over the Magic in Game 1 was a prelude of things to come. Of course, the ESPN radio guys, probably well-versed by now in ESPN studio people’s hyperbolic propaganda, wouldn’t budge. They stated Game 1′s irrelevance to the point of overstating it.
Game 1 did, and does, matter. It matters for the simple fact that the Lakers have three games to win, to the Magic’s four. There is one more Lakers home game before the series shifts to Orlando for three straight contests, where Orlando will have such a tough time sweeping the homestand. Orlando will have to win Game 2 in Los Ang, assuming L.A. can — and should — take at least one in O-town.
Yet by losing Game 1, the pressure has heightened for Orlando to take Game 2. So as a byproduct of future contests, Game 1 does matter.
More importantly, the Lakers look focused. I think that if you watch a particular sport and a particular team long enough, you can get a feel for a squad’s mood. You can get a feel for whether a team is legitimately turning a corner or whether a hot streak is a mirage. I feel that the Lakers are making their third surge.
Their first was to tip off the regular season (14-1 in first 15 games), the second was a 13-1 run from late January to late February that began with the famous road trip during which Andrew Bynum hurt his knee and Kobe Bryant lit up Madison Square Garden for 61 points, and the third is right now. The Lakers played fantastic in the final two games of the Denver series — especially the series-clinching Game 6, their year’s most masterful effort — and looked dominant in Game 1.
The scares put into them by Utah, Houston (especially Houston) and Denver have toughened up a team which needed a couple serious playoff challenges to find the rough edge that had been the team’s most criticized flaw. They’ve come out of a couple elimination scenarios — traveling through a series of clouds to come upon a pristine valley with a theoretical pot of gold, if you will — to make it to the Finals, where they sit just three games from salvation. Their focus has sharpened. As a result, what we saw in Game 1 is certainly more than irrelevant. I appreciated the ESPN radio guys for not succumbing to a sky-is-falling theory for Orlando, but Game 1 meant more than “nothing,” as one of them stated. It meant the Lakers are one step ahead on their road to the NBA title.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Denver Nuggets, ESPN, ESPNEWS, Houston Rockets, Kyle Stack, Lakers, Los Angeles, Magic, NBA Finals, Stuart Scott, Utah Jazz
Categories : Miscellaneous
Deconstructing Adam Kennedy
5 06 2009Yeahhhh, more fantasy baseball here.
I really need to start writing about topics regarding my life. Such as how I love the blackberries, raspberries and blueberries from the street fruit vendor in my neighborhood. How about how much I love grilling pork chops and drinking Sam Adams Summer Ale? Ooo, delectable. I mustn’t forget to let the entire world know that I spray my closet with Febreze or how much more I prefer body wash over bar soap. These are the topics people blog about, right?
Yuck, I’m sticking to sports.
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Categories : Miscellaneous
The Weekend Watch
5 06 2009There’s a good chance you won’t like this if you don’t play fantasy baseball. Read it anyway since you’re here.
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Categories : Miscellaneous
WeightWatchers.com article — Pro sports dieticians
2 06 2009A new WeightWatchers.com article ran today, outlining the essentials of four dieticians’nutrition plans. Each dietician works for a professional sports franchise — MLB, NBA, NFL and MLS are repped.
The idea for the story was to document how a nutrition plan for a pro basketball player might differ from a pro soccer player from a baseball player, and so on. Each sport — baseball, basketball, soccer and football — has its distinct requirements that alter how an athlete should hydrate and fuel him/herself. Of course, there is a common theme in the sports. For the sake of curiosity, I’ll let you read the article to find out what that is.
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Tags: dietician, food, hydrate, Kyle Stack, MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, nutrition, Weight Watchers
Categories : Miscellaneous
Few Finals Thoughts
2 06 2009Oy vey, no sleep isn’t good for most people. My job at MLB.com affords me late hours and sleepless nights, so my sleep pattern is as screwed up as developing a major marketing campaign around a matchup that isn’t set in stone. Haha, imagine that happening! I won’t say much more on this, since it seems to be the topic du jour now that the Cavs have been Cleveland’d out of the playoffs.
Is this really how Kobe dresses off court?
Just a few thoughts on the Finals. I’m not writing 1,000 words, since most people who think they know the NBA — including me — didn’t see the Magic getting to the big show:
– As a Lakers fan, I think I like getting the Magic more than the Cavs. The obvious conflict is home court, which they have against Orlando but wouldn’t have vs. Cleveland, opposed to facing at least three really dangerous options (Dwight, Rashard, Hedo) instead of one mega-dangerous one (‘Bron).
The 2-3-2 format in the Finals obviously plays the key role in this argument. With it, home court becomes even more advantageous. Since it’s so difficult to win three games in a row at any time, the team hosting the middle three contests has to aim for taking two of three, then winning two road games. The Magic are not winning two games in L.A.
– Time for Andrew Bynum to take it to another level a.k.a. become someone who doesn’t cause me to punch myself in the face. I already had one nightmare of Bynum fouling out on six straight possessions trying to cover Howard.
– Who does Ariza cover — Rashard or Hedo? I’d prefer for him to go to Hedo, since there’s a greater chance of shutting him down than Rashard. Dirk Nowitzki probably has the toughest shot to block in the NBA, but Rashard isn’t far behind. He might give a few inches to Dirk, but he can also get more lift on his shot. (Totally disgusting sentence if your mind wanders.)
– Fisher better feast on Rafer Alston. I mean, the dude isn’t that quick that Fish can’t cover him. At least beat him up for a little bit, will ya Fish? On the other hand, who does Orlando have that can cover Lamar? Rashard and Hedo aren’t great defenders. If either them gets stuck on Lamar, man, would I love to see Lamar back them down and draw fouls near the hoop.
– I hate to say this, but Lamar is once again the X factor for L.A. — always is. He’s so multi-talented and creates so many mismatch problems offensively. Of course, if Bynum were to show up for a game, then the Magic frontcourt would be taxed in such a way that some person named Marcin Gortat would be a major factor. Fantastic.
– Kobe is ready. He’s sauntered around the court with a scowl on his face this entire year. It’s been a pleasure to watch him at the peak of his career, with as much determination as a rookie trying to make the team. Unfortunately, this might be the beginning of the end for his career. Sure, he’ll play plenty more years, but his prime is ending this season. No way can he sustain his athleticism after this two-year run in which he’s made back-to-back NBA Finals and play a critical role on Team USA last summer. (What nobody mentions now is how he’s played with a f’d up right pinky AND right ring finger for two years. He’s never had that dislocated right ring digit fixed. Dude’s toughness is incomparable.)
I realize he’s already lost a good deal of jumping ability, but he’s prepped his game the last couple years to make as easy a transition as possible from one phase of his career to the next. That begins next year. I’m getting misty-eyed just writing this.
– I really am rooting for Phil Jackson. I don’t think he’s appreciated enough. When he said in the Rockets series that he wasn’t worried about the surging Rockets, he was vilified on TV and radio for apparently not caring. I’m always amazed when people who cover professional sports consistently under-estimate players’/coaches’competitiveness. What I think Jackson understood is that with a team in a somewhat fragile state — as a relatively young Lakers squad was at the time — it’s best for the coach to remain a steady, calming influence. It wouldn’t help if he were to proclaim, “Am I worried? Hell yeah, I’m sweating more than Patrick Ewing in overtime!” I think it’s safe to say Jackson made the right coaching move by staying calm — the Lakers played their best game of the year in Game 6 vs. Denver.
– Prediction: Dwight Howard wears a cape to one of the games, possibly Orlando’s first home game.
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Tags: Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Kyle Stack, Lakers, LeBron James, Magic, NBA Finals, Phil Jackson, puppets
Categories : Miscellaneous
