Thursday, May 08, 2008

Thursday 05/08 A.M. Quickie:
Pats, Kobe, Magic, Lee, Votto, More

The Pats are still cheaters. Some want to use yesterday's Walsh tapes situation to argue that the scandal is put to bed, but I think it even more officially diminishes their accomplishments.

That's the lead of today's Sporting News column.

(By the way, if I was a Steelers fan, I would be demanding that my owners -- the venerated Rooneys -- come down a little harder on this than "No big deal." What Would Cuban Do?)

Meanwhile, Kobe must have watched Chris Paul and Kevin Garnett and said, "But I'm the MVP." So he put on an MVP display against the Jazz. The best thing that could happen to the Lakers is for the Hornets to oust the Spurs.

On MLB, here's an interesting debate posed in the question: What is more exciting -- Hitting for the cycle (a la Carlos Gomez) or hitting 3 HR in one game (a la Joey Votto)? SABRmetrically, it's a no-brainer (3 HR). The cycle has more romance, but give me the triple-shot of longball.

There's a lot more in the column today: Barry Zito, Vicente Padilla, Carmelo Anthony, DC United (yes, soccer!), the Olympic torch on Mt. Everest, Alabama State's 600-plus NCAA violations and more. Check it out here.

More later.

-- D.S.

5 comments:

John said...

Clearly you can spin this story two ways now. The Patriots are still cheaters, or that Matt Walsh didn't have anything new and the allegation of them taping the Super Bowl walkthrough was false. ...and to no one's surprise, Shanoff went with the Pats are still cheaters route. I think the bigger story at this point is where the false allegation came from, but since everyone outside (and some inside) New England hates the Patriots, this most likely won't get the attention that it deserves. Someone needs to be held responsible for that and I hope the Pats and/or the NFL take some action in that regard.

Papelbon a dud? Uhhh...not really. The bottom of the ninth went like this...

Infield single
Julio Lugo error
Sacrfice
Ground out (run scores)
Bloop single to left (run scores)

Anyone who watched the game, knows that loss was all Lugo.

Unknown said...

Aren't you jumping the gun on the Pats thing a bit? Game tapes are legal aren't they? Won't know until we see exactly what was taped during the game, and who's to say he did this on the Pat's say so? HE has the tapes, you think Bill B would leave them with Matt Walsh so they could come back on him like this?

Unknown said...

Dan, the patriots scored 3 offensive points in the second half of that game. care to take a stab at how taping the defensive signals helped them win that game?

also, would love to hear how this "new" information further damages the pats rep when Belichick admitted back in September that he recorded every single game leading up to the Jets "spygate" game and that it was standard operating procedure -- which is why they had a guy in a New England shirt operating the camera on the sideline in full view of 60,000 people -- because they didn't think it was a big deal.

David "SirFozzie" Yellope said...

Told ya so, Dan.

Or as I said to one of my other friends:

"Wow, what's that sound? Oh, I know what it was, it was all the rabid Patriots-haters crying themselves to sleep that Walsh isn't going to extend Spygate any more.. oh well, I'll enjoy the silence for the about 45 seconds it takes for everyone to cry coverup and conspiracy..."

Real Men Eat Haggis said...

re: what Walsh DOESN'T have...

Dan Shanoff = Gregg Easterbrook

Time to let it go