Hope you like college Billy, because you're dead to the NBA

We've all had times where we're not sure we made the right decision. This frequently happens to me. I'm not sure that it was a good idea to supersize my Big Mac meal at McDonald's last night. But sometimes you just gotta live with your decision.

Especially when you make a $27.5 million decision.

For Billy Donovan, once he signed that contract with the Orlando Magic last week, that should have been it. No second guessing, no looking back. No "pulling a Kobe." Donovan had always been interested in the NBA and now his greatest long-term goal was finally coming to fruition.

But some time over the weekend, that changed. We're not sure how this is going to play out, but we know one thing. Billy's up shit creek, seeing as right after he inked his contract with the Magic, 200 season ticket packages were sold. It seems that Billy will get a hefty fine if the Orlando Magic let him go.

And let's be honest here. The Magic have to let him go even though he inked that deal. Imagine the first day of training camp if the Magic kept him. "Hi guys, I'm your new coach, and as you probably well know, I don't want to be here."

Not exactly inspiring. But the longer term problem here for Donovan is that his one time goal of coaching in the NBA will now never be realized. I don't think he'll have any problem going back to college and recruiting. College is a very forgiving place if you won a lot there as a coach. And Florida is a marquee hoops power now. Kids will still want to come and play for Billy.

But if I'm an NBA team, regardless of how many more NCAA Championships Donovan wins, I'd never in a million years think of hiring him. He balked at a fairly decent NBA job with great pay that was close to his home after he signed a contract. He's a liability, you don't know what he'll do. And until some other news comes out, you also have to assume that Donovan was scared to make the leap and start coaching pros.

None of these things are qualities you want in an NBA coach.

We hope you enjoy college Billy, because the odds of an NBA team - including the Atlanta Hawks - ever knocking on your door again are slim to none.

-WCK

Crap, Yanks show some life

The Yankees managed to get out of Boston taking two out of three. Even worse was the fact that Alex "I like she-males" Rodriguez got the game winning home run on an 0-2 pitch from Jonathan Papelbon.

Of course, Boston has nothing to worry about. They still have a 12.5 game lead over the Yankees and the teams don't meet again until August.

If I'm the Yankees though, I still wouldn't be real pleased with this weekend. Despite winning 2 of 3, the Yankees coughed up some big leads, highlighted by the Sox jumping all over Pettitte in the 5th on Sunday.

Also, the "Where is Roger?" chant by the Sox fans was definitely pretty hilarious after the Sox took a 5-4 lead in the 5th.

Since I'm a Yankees hater (I have no real allegiance to the Red Sox), I was hoping for a Red Sox sweep this weekend just for the fireworks. Had that happened, I think Old Steinbrenner would have woken up and we would have seen Torre fired and A-Rod shipped to Siberia where there are no she-males to be found.

It's a long season, there's still hope all those things can come true.

-WCK

The best of Gary Sheffield

By now, most of you are familiar with Sheff's bizarre GQ rant about the reason why there are so few African-Americans in baseball.

• "I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them," he told the magazine.

If you want to read the rest of his rant on Signal to Noise, here you go. He also recently said he'd uncover a huge conspiracy in baseball for being suspended for three games [via Deadspin].

As we all know, Sheff is the ultimate savvy PR guy. This was just a minor slip-up. And by "a minor slip-up" I mean "par for the course."

We perused the internet for most of Sunday afternoon to try and track down the best Sheff quotes of all time. Some of these are just hilarious beyond belief, especially when you get him talking about his days in Milwaukee. Let's all just sit back now and let the words off Sheff wash over us.

THE BEST OF SHEFF

September '92 on his days in Milwaukee: "The Brewers brought out the hate in me. I was a crazy man. . . . I hated everything about the place. If the official scorer gave me an error I didn't think was an error, I'd say, 'OK, here's a real error,' and I'd throw the next ball into the stands on purpose.' "

On his hatred of Milwaukee: "Everything you asked for in Milwaukee you didn’t get—Ask for good weather, you don't get it. Ask for a good playing surface, you don't get it. Ask for a first-class organization, you don't get it."

On his having two kids with two women by age 17: "That was part of my plan. I didn't want to be the typical athlete who's single all his career. I wanted the all-American family, and I did it the wrong way."

On carrying a gun (he also took one to school in eighth and ninth grade): "It ain't changed because I got in the league. It just made me get more of them."

Sheff, a born-again Christian, on teammate Shawn Green missing a game with the Dodgers because of Yom Kippur during a crucial pennant stretch: "Religion is an important thing as long as you worship the right God."

July '05 after punching a fan in the right-field stands at Fenway: "What did I do to be a villain?" Sheffield listened patiently as someone recounted the reasoning. "Well, I mean you can't look at it that way. I didn't initiate it. It's a situation where I showed restraint, and I moved on from there."

May '89 on Milwaukee pitchers who won't throw at opposing batters even though opposing pitchers kept throwing at him: "Only two, three pitchers have helped me out. The rest have been girls. They won't throw at anybody if you paid them. I've been thrown at in every park I've played in."

In June 2005 On whether he would participate in next year's World Baseball Classic: "My season is when I get paid. I'm not doing that...I'm not sacrificing my body or taking a chance on an injury for something that's made up. This isn't the Olympics. That's a big difference. This is something you made up."

On the '04 Red Sox: "They're a walking disaster. They act like they're tough, how they care so much about winning, but it's all a front. They're just a bunch of characters."

On his non-reaction to getting intentionally beaned by Boston's Curtis Leskanic in 2004: "I know Leskanic. His brother did my pool."

Explaining that a hitting slump in 2007 was mental: "I could have bad mechanics and get hits. I don't worry about that, because I'm not really a mechanically-sound guy. It's more between my ears."

June '05 after being rumored in a trade to the Mets for Mike Cameron: "It don't make a difference who it is. If I didn't choose to go there, things are gonna have to change about my whole situation, contract, years, everything. Other than that, you might as well not bother trading for me, cause you're gonna have a very unhappy player. You gonna inconvenience me, I'm gonna inconvenience every situation there is. I mean, the only reason I'm playing is 'cause I wanna play for the Yankees."

January '02 to the Associated Press: "Barry told me what I have to do to finish my career as a Hall of Famer. I want to end my career with the Atlanta Braves and be a Hall of Famer with the Atlanta Braves."

On "Game of Shadows," which spells out Bonds' alleged use of steroids: "I don't even know what the book says. I never read it."

From a 2006 interview with Newsday on who on the Yankees would look out for A-Rod now that he (Sheff) was gone: "Nobody. You all got to get ready. You all got to get ready. There’s nobody."

In response to the Hartford Courant asking him in 2004 about whether winning an MVP award would mean anything to him: "No."

On his childhood: "I was hyper as a kid. My parents sent me to the hospital to get checked out. I was probably ADD (attention-deficit disorder). Still am."

On life in general: "Most people figured I’d be in jail. I’ve been proving people wrong my whole life."

Great stuff Sheff. Great stuff.

-WCK

Let's juice and hit home runs!

I'm not even sure this picture of this guy is real. I sure hope it isn't. Anyway, the guys at Deuce of Davenport, who excel at finding all sorts of interesting things, keyed us in to a new blog that's been recently put up by a guy called Dr. Asterisk who is taking a pretty detailed look at the steroids era of baseball. It's worth it to take a look.

I have one issue though, and since you can't comment on the blog, i'll have to do it here. Dr. Asterisk thinks Bonds has had an easy time thanks to AT&T Park's short right field (309 ft). He says during Bonds's record 73 home run season, 12 home runs would not have happened had the Giants still been playing in Candlestick. This is because Candlestick was 330 ft down the right field line and during the 73 home run season Bonds hit 12 home runs between 309 and 330 ft. Although that's not an unreasonable theory, I don't think it's 100% right.

The reason why is that while right field is short, it has a 24-foot high wall. As an SF native, I have seen Bonds hit laser beams onto the right field walkway at AT&T. They don't use physics to determine how much further the ball would have gone had it not hit me in the head as i'm walking on the walkway. Therefore, just because a homerun is listed as having gone 315 ft at AT&T Park by Bonds doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't have gone out at Candlestick. When you factor in that the ball is at least 25 ft off the ground and still traveling before it hits my noggin' at 315 ft, there's a good possibility it could have gone 330+ feet and made it over an 8 ft wall.

Plus, AT&T Park really only helps you out right down the right field line. Deep right center field is where home runs go to die (421 ft). The law of statistical averages would say that for every down the line cheap home run Bonds gets, he loses at least one in that deathtrap of deep right-center field. In addition, AT&T Park has always been known as a pitcher's park. How do I know? Because Scott Spiezio's back breaking home run in Game 6 of the 2002 World series in Anahiem would have been a flyout in San Francisco. God that hurt like hell, and it was all because of that stupid ass "win the All-Star Game get home field advantage" bullshit. F_ck you Selig.

But back to normal. My point is that some of those 12 home runs still would have cleared the fence at Candlestick. And some of the balls he hit into deep right field at AT&T Park that didn't go out, would have gone out at Candlestick. So in other words, who knows. You can't really say with any certainty that he would be better off at AT&T Park versus Candlestick unless we get some MIT guys to figure this out by using physics and ball flight paths.

This is all sort of a moot point anyway, since Bonds did steroids and is wiped off Dr. Asterisk's home run list. I just had to stick up for my thick-skulled home town steroid abuser.

-WCK

Boobielicious pulls a LeBron (and a partial Sleepy Floyd)

The Pistons definitely did what they were supposed to tonight on LeBron. They hammered him, double teamed him, and fouled him when he drove to the bucket, which is what we said they should do - but they had no answer for Daniel "Boobie" Gibson. And quite frankly, why should they have had an answer for him? Before tonight, Gibson was only famous for this. No one, and I mean no one, expected Gibson to do what he did tonight.

Yes he's played well this series. He scored 21 crucial points in Game 3. But who on earth could have predicted this? He was the scoring version of LeBron tonight.

I'm sure the Pistons said to themselves before Game 6 that if we can limit LeBron's scoring we'll have a good chance of winning this thing. I mean that's what everyone had to be thinking. LeBron is the head of the Cavs. Cut that head off and you waltz your way to victory.

But Gibson was just on another plane of existence in this one, and he gave LeBron - who shot like crap tonight - one hell of an escape outlet. Boobie was 5 of 5 from three point land, hit 7 of 9 from the field and made 12 of 15 free throws. He scored 31 points in 29 minutes, with 19 of those points coming in the 4th quarter. Talk about some good production from your bench.

All this from a guy who was the 42nd pick in last year's draft, only played in 60 regular season games, and was averging only 6.1 points a game in the playoffs. And his nickname is Boobie. I like how Kerr stressed this point about 847 times during the game. You know Gibson's got to be saying to himself - Why didn't my mom call me T-Bone?!

You'll have to go deep into the playoff vault to find a performance better than this one coming from a somewhat anonymous commodity with such a bizarre nickname. I think you have to go all the way back to the Sleepy Floyd game (Warriors!), where Sleepy scored 29 in the 4th and 51 total against the 87 Lakers during a thrilling come from behind victory in the Western Conference Finals. Of course Sleepy was an All-Star in 87, but he wasn't exactly a household name.

Even though Gibson's performance wasn't anywhere near Sleepy's, it is probably even more bizarre considering the fact that Gibson, for the most part, has been little more than a minor role player. I'm sure Gibson will be happy to take second place to Sleepy, since Gibson was on the team that ultimately won the conference final, while Sleepy was not.

And as for the Pistons, you're just the 3rd team in NBA Conference Finals history to be up 2-0 and lose the series. Ouch.

I think tonight also marked the official end of the Pistons era in the Eastern Conference. You could see it exploding out of Rasheed's head when he got those 2 technicals.

They really seemed to miss Ben Wallace's intensity in the playoffs this year, and especially his interior defense in this series against Cleveland. Chris Webber and Antonio McDyess just aren't enough to duplicate Wallace. The fact that Webber also sucked in this series didn't help either.

With Billups looking like he's leaving as well, it doesn't look good for Detroit. The question now is, when will the Cavs win a championship? Or will they become basketball's version of the Buffalo Bills?

Cause let's be honest. I'm not even sure Cleveland would have gotten out of the second round in the Western Conference playoffs.

But that said, lord knows I'll be cheering for them in the NBA Finals.

-WCK

Full Court NBA's take: And All the King's Men

The Real Deal: Part I

If you haven't heard of Cole Hamels yet, you will soon.

This Phillies 23-year-old southpaw has quickly risen to the ace of the staff in less than two full seasons (thanks partly to Brett Myers moving to the bullpen to become the Phils' closer). And he just made the San Franciso Giants cry, throwing a complete-game, five-hit, two-run victory to get to 8-2 on the season - the National League leader in wins by the way. The Phillies won 5-2 to break a four-game losing streak.

He throws consistently in the low-90's - even in the late innings - and has one of the nastiest changeups you will ever see that clocks in around the high-70s. He struck out five Giants, including Barry Bonds, last night with his fastball-changeup combo and earlier in the year, posted a 15-strikeout game against Cincinnati in mid-April.

And after last night's game, he is only one strikeout behind San Diego's Jake Peavy (92) for the league lead in K's.

Looks like the Phils have found their ace for the next 10 years. Hopefully, they can make sure he stays a Phillie for life.

This is part I of our continuing series looking at young, up-and-coming players. If you have any recommendations, email them to injuryrate[at]gmail[dot]com

-PB

Watch Your Back, Mike Vick!

I have heard speculation that Michael Vick is not being prosecuted at present because the District Attorney of the County in question is African-American. This is just ridiculous. The fact is that if you are the District Attorney in charge of deciding whether or not to prosecute a case you are not John Rocker sitting on a New York subway angry because you are not sitting next to one your Aryan bothers. No, at this point I'm sure this District Attorney has prosecuted every sort of racial background for far less serious and reprehensible charges and the opportunity to put Vick, a public figure setting a bad example for everyone in society (except Clinton Portis, apparently), in jail for dogfighting is exactly the type of case DA's dream about.

If anything, the problem in high-profile cases is that District Attorneys see this as an opportunity to make a name for themselves, just like the Duke Lacrosse case. This is not a racial issue, it is a political and judicial problem because there is too much intermingling of politics (DA's desire to get re-elected) and deciding who to criminally prosecute. Essentially, even clearly innocent people of all races can get thrown under the bus to make way for another's political maneuverings. If I were Michael Vick I would be seriously concerned about this and since Johnnie Cochran isn't around any more even Vick's pocketbook might not be able to buy his way out... after all, if you make your dog fight, you can kiss your freedom goodnight.

--dwyermaker

Phillies are so bad, they cause Cat Fights

Thank god for the upper deck, right-field seats. You know the ones I'm talking about. The seats located outside the foul pole.

Because if it wasn't for two angry girls sitting out there, Friday night's 13-0 Phillies debacle against the Giants would have been a complete waste of time.

Let's look past the obvious highlights of the game. The Philly faithful giving it to Bonds (my personal favorite insult was yelled by a guy sitting two rows behind me: "Cheating is not good. Not on your wife. Not in baseball. Not Ever!" Well said for a guy that was reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" during most of the game.)

The truth is, that book was probably more entertaining than this contest.

No homers by Bonds, but the Giants managed three dingers (two three-run shots by Ray Durham and Pedro Feliz and a grand slam by Fred Lewis that literally bounced off Pat Burrell's glove and over the fence).

And aside from the constant booing at Bonds and the "Let's Go Steroids" chants, there was nothing really to get excited about.

The Phils used four pitchers within the first five innings (starter Adam Eaton was pulled after two when he gave up five runs on six hits, reliever Francisco Rosario got hurt in the third, and then came in rookie Mike Zagurski and not-so-rookie and not-so-good Clay Condrey). Just look at that quality bullpen.

Phils have now lost four straight and are looking more and more like any playoff aspirations are going the way of the Do-Do bird.

At least Cole Hamels is pitching on Saturday. Can we call him the Steve Carlton of the 2007 Phils? In 1972, the Phillies won only 59 games. Carlton had 27 of those wins (27-10 for the year). See the comparison?

This game should've been called in the seventh, when the rain started coming down hard, just to put the Phillies out of their misery. By the end of the game, only Burrell and Shane Victorino were playing in their starting spots.

At least the rain led to another quality moment of the game because with the rain came strong winds and this comment from one of my buddies:

"There is nothing more beautful than seeing trash floating down from the upper deck."

What happens when all the trash is on the field for the entire game?

-PB

A plan to stop LeBron

Don't get me wrong. I want to see LeBron and the Cavs reach the Finals. It makes for better TV and a more interesting story. But if you're the Pistons, you obviously don't want to see that happen. So, after a night where LeBron was totally unstoppable, especially late in the game, what can you do? Well, obviously you can hope it doesn't happen again, or you can take some proactive steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And here's how the Pistons can do it.

Everyone remembers the good old days of Hack-a-Shaq late in close games. There's even been Hack-a-Ben-Wallace. And that's exactly what the Pistons need to do: Hack-a-LeBron. Albeit under slightly different circumstances. I don't advise bear hugging him after the Cavs get a rebound (and that also wouldn't work considering the NBA's 2 minutes and under off-ball foul rule), but if he begins making any drive to the basket with the ball, foul him immediately and hard (but not like Antonio McDyess did to Varejao) to prevent a continuation and send him to the line.

Now before you go nuts and say, "That's ridiculous! Shaq's one of the worst free throw shooters in NBA history! And Wallace IS the worst! There's no way a modified version of this would work on LeBron!" let's think rationally about this.

LeBron looks like a reasonably good free throw shooter on paper. After all, in the first round of the playoffs he shot 81% from the stripe. In the second round and the conference finals he's shooting right at 75% - which is about what his career average is. Looks ok, right?

Well, maybe. If you dig deeper into the stats - and I want to thank 82games.com here - LeBron has consistently had trouble shooting clutch free throws. Clutch free throws are defined by 82games.com as "under two minutes left in a game, neither team is ahead by more than 3 points." LeBron's accuracy plummets in these situations to 66%. If I'm the Pistons, I like my odds in sending a 66% free throw shooter to the line rather than letting him get a dunk.

And there have been a lot of "clutch time" moments in this series. The average margin of victory in these 5 games so far has been 3.6 points. And in 3 of those games, the margin of victory was by 3 points or less.

And there's definitely a precedent for LeBron missing clutch free throws in this series. In Game 5, LeBron missed two HUGE free throws with 1:52 remaining in regulation with the Cavs down by 1. In fact, he's fortunate he was able to push the game into OT. Otherwise, you wouldn't be hearing about how great LeBron is but what a choke he is at the stripe.

And let's say you don't buy the 2 minutes and under argument. Ok, then. Since we all know this has been an extremely tight series, let's see how LeBron has done at the free throw line in the last 3 minutes of games in the series. For Game 5, including regulation and both OTs, LeBron was 3 of 7 from the free throw line with 3 minutes or less remaining. For the entire series, LeBron is 6 for 11 from the free throw line with 3 minutes or less remaining. Not so good. If I'm the Pistons, fouling him late in games becomes more and more attractive.

There's also another reason for the Hack-a-LeBron strategy as well. Both Shaq and Wallace were never the primary ball handlers for their teams. So even if a coach decided he wanted to take them out and put in a better free throw shooter, it wouldn't necessarily drastically hurt the offensive flow of the team. Both Shaq and Wallace also had guys like Kobe and Billups and Rip Hamilton who could lead the offense and hit big shots with them on the bench. But LeBron is Cleveland's main ball handler and shooter in clutch moments. If he gets rattled by being constantly fouled and missing big free throws, not only do you hurt the Cavs offense by having LeBron actively looking to get rid of the ball, but you take away the Cavs biggest scoring weapon. If Eric Snow or Donyell Marshall hits the game winner, so be it. But I'd rather have Snow and Marshall taking the potential game winning shot than LeBron.

Besides, it's not like anything else worked in Game 5. The Pistons might as well give this strategy a try.

-WCK

Bonus coverage: Game 6 preview [Full Court NBA]

****Whoa! Can't say we expected Daniel "Boobie" Gibson to pull a LeBron or dare we say it - a Sleepy Floyd - on the Pistons. Our take on Boobie's new rise to fame.

All aboard the LeBron bandwagon!

That sure was some performance last night by King James. Let's all bask in the lyrical prose of the blogosphere describing his feats.

The King to World: "Kiss my ass, again" [Full Court NBA]
Witness to History [Cavaliers Blog]
The greatest 10 minutes you may ever see [Awful Announcing]
NBA blogdome: In Awe [Deadspin]

Your Weekend Sendoff

Even though this video has no relationship to LeBron James, I'm posting it because of him anyway. Sometimes you realize you're watching greatness right in front of you.

At least in terms of skateboarding, this dude, Rodney Mullen, is the LeBron (or since he's much older, the MJ) of street skating. He's created more moves than Shawn Kemp has kids. He does things with a skateboard - like LeBron with a basketball - that no one else can do. Check out some of the stuff at the 3:35 mark, that's when he does some stuff that seems to defy physics.

The video also features one of the greatest songs ever, "Train in Vain" by The Clash, and if you keep your eyes peeled, you'll see Jack Nicholson.

And hey, it's still more xtreme than this.

-WCK

The Spurs: Quantified boredom

We all know the Spurs are boring. But can you actually quantify the boredom? Yes, yes you can. Our basketball buddy site Full Court NBA had a post on the dynamic backcourt of the Spurs recently posted on Deadspin - and hardly anyone read it.

In other words, people care so little about the Spurs, they won't even read a quick blurb on them. I have to count myself as a guilty party. I just post mean rants about the Spurs, but refuse to read anything on them. Because they're more boring than your mom on a Saturday night, that's why.

We need Cleveland and LeBron to get to the Finals so at least some people will watch the damn thing. Otherwise, a Spurs/Pistons series could rival the insanely crappy ratings of the NHL Finals. [via Lion in Oil]

-WCK