March Malaise

I’m in sort of a funk right now. I watch sports and not much interests me. Ditto what I read on ESPN.com or CBSSports.com. 

There’s nothing really meaningful going on at this time. Football is dormant, although the trade and free agency markets will be heating up and the NFL Draft is on the horizon. 

Pro basketball is at its All-Star break. With the late start due to COVID-19, an early March All-Star Game seems totally out of place. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver reminded the fans that this year the spectacle in Atlanta is a made for TV production. 

Remember this—the players didn’t want to go this year. With the coronavirus wreaking havoc with their lives and vaccinations for players not happening yet, the risk factor for travel was higher. 

And, with good reason, the NBA is worried about the players not headed to Georgia for the game and other contests. While there are strict requirements for testing during this hiatus, the fact that the protective bubbles which the players have found themselves in during the season won’t be there. This could create chaos—all in an effort to market the stars of the sport.

Do I like that the 3-point and dunk contests along with the Skills Challenge are on the same evening? Yes, very much so. To accommodate TV and the game itself, the number of participants is slightly limited. Still, seeing Steph Curry compete in the 3-point contest is worth my putting the event on. I can pass on the dunking and the Skills events. 

Team LeBron and Team Durant made their roster selections. While Kevin Durant is still out with that nagging hamstring issue—c’mon, Dr. O’ Malley, get him better for the remainder of the season—he was sort of “stuck” with drafting Brooklyn teammate Kyrie Irving first, while Lebron James’ first and second picks were Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry. Durant countered with Joel Embiid from Philadelphia, a legitimate M.V.P. candidate. 

Here are the rosters:

Team LeBron: Giannis; Curry; Luka Doncic (Dallas); Nikola Jokic (Denver);

Damian Lillard (Portland); Ben Simmons (Sixers); Chris Paul (Phoenix); Jaylen Brown (Boston); Paul George (LA Clippers); 

Domatas Sabonis (Indiana); Rudy Gobert (Utah).

Team Durant:  Irving; Embiid; Kawhi Leonard (LA Clippers); Bradley Beal (Washington); Jayson Tatum (Boston); James Harden (Nets); 

Devin Booker (Phoenix); Zion Williamson (New Orleans); Zach

LaVine (Chicago); Julius Randle (Knicks); Nikola Vucevic (Orlando); Donovan Mitchell (Utah).

I like Team LeBron’s first seven selections a tiny bit better than Team Durant’s choices. But when you have Zion Williamson picked eighth and Donovan Mitchell as the last pick, Team Durant has great scoring power. 

A couple of interesting sidelights to the rosters . First, not all teams are represented in Atlanta for this version of the ASG. Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Oklahoma City, Miami, Cleveland, Sacramento, San Antonio, Minnesota, Memphis, Charlotte and Toronto did not land a player among the starters or reserves, even with an injury replacement. 

Second, the Utah Jazz players—Mitchell and Gobert—were the last two picked. A coincidence? 

Finally, the NBA is dedicating the weekend to the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The officials will be from HBCU schools. The court will be reflective of the HBCU. Many of the limited number of fans in attendance will represent the HBCU. Interviews will highlight the HBCU. Uniform patches will salute the HBCU. The sales of merchandise from the ASG will go directly to the schools. Plus much more. 

Thank you, NBA, for doing the right thing and making an event its members didn’t want to attend into a celebration of something good. With their format of actually playing the fourth quarter for real, this might be a night worth viewing. 

Moving to colleges, Rutgers had an absolute clunker at last place Nebraska, blown out of the gym by over 20 points. The Scarlet Knights have no one to blame but themselves for such a poor showing. 

Saturday the team is in Minneapolis to take on the floundering Minnesota Golden Gophers. RU handled Minnesota at the RAC. They will need to win on the road to keep in the discussion of a wild-card berth into the NCAA Tournament. 

While pundits still have RU as high as a #9 seed, a loss to Minnesota would critically wound their chances to end the 30 year drought from the tourney. This would mean that RU has to make a run into the semi-finals of the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. Which is highly unlikely. 

This team has gone from a world-beater to an erratic, mistake-filled group. This is sad, for when they play well, the hope of RU fans is enormous and the promise of the team is great. Except that it is hard to turn on the light now when there seems to be chaos on the floor when they play. 

Prove me wrong, but I don’t see them making the Big Dance. Which would be a shame. 

The same mantra applies to Seton Hall. Once a formidable Big East team, the loss to UConn on Senior Night was a shot in the foot. Those same pundits have the Pirates on the outside looking in. Which means they have to come up with a big run at the Garden to have a chance to make it into the Tournament. When I saw the players either saying goodbye or thinking about coming back for the extra year the NCAA granted because of the coronavirus, I observed a team not wanting to play further in March. 

The National Invitational Tournament, a staple at the Garden for the entirety of my life, will be a 16 team event in Dallas. Once a competitor for the best teams, it has sadly morphed into a get together for the has beens who couldn’t make it into the NCAAs.  Which would make it a fitting place for RU and SHU to meet for the one time this season.

A sometimes reader remarked that he was sure that Butler University, located in Indianapolis, was a Catholic school. Just because they are a part of a predominantly Catholic school league in the Big East does not automatically make them a Catholic school. In fact, Butler was started by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and had originally been named the North-Western Christian University. 

Butler is one of the host schools for the NCAA Tournament this year, conducted in Indiana at Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler; Mackey Arena at Purdue; Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall at  Indiana University; Bankers’ Life Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis; Indiana Farmers Coliseum, also in Indianapolis; and at Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts. 

Hinkle Fieldhouse is the sixth-oldest college basketball arena still being used. Hinkle Fieldhouse is on the National Historic Landmark list and in 1987 was named a National Historic Landmark. Its capacity has been reduced from 15,000 to its present 9,100. Hinkle Fieldhouse even served as a World War II barracks, and hosted the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament Finals, which included the memorable 1954 title game when Milan High School downed the much larger Muncie Central High School—which served as the inspiration for the movie Hoosiers.

The arena was renamed for longtime Butler coach and athletic director, Paul D. “Tony” Hinkle. What was Hinkle’s claim to fame? He converted the basketball to its orange color. 

In watching a plethora of college and NBA games lately, I have been bored beyond belief. Maybe it is the poor shooting I have witnessed. Perhaps it is the over reliance of three point shooting, which is spectacular if it works, but the percentages aren’t that great—even for 

Steph Curry, who has struggled at times. 

More troubling are the amount of layups which have been missed. Whether it is off the glass or rolled toward the rim, these shots simply are not falling. Easy baskets are not happening. 

I am not limiting this to the colleges. I saw Curry miss two layups and Draymond Green and his teammates blow a few more in losses to the Lakers and Trail Blazers. The LAL game was a blowout, so it didn’t matter. The Warriors lost by 2 to Portland. Make two layups and you don’t lose. 

Also, free throw shooting is horrible. I even saw Curry, a 94% shooter from the line, miss two. 

What does this tell me? Fundamentals have been forgotten in an attempt to make the glamour shots. Glams does not win games. Fundamentals do. Which makes it that much harder for me to watch as the colleges wind down their regular season and head into the post-season. With the NBA, we have over two months to watch poor play. Ugh. 

Let’s talk some football. J.J. Watt surprised almost everyone with his deal to sign with the Arizona Cardinals. He is getting a ton of money, with $23 million guaranteed. The Cardinals defense will be that much more formidable. The offense won’t necessarily have to carry the team. 

Watt’s pick is curious in that Arizona is no guarantee to make the post-season. He does have familiarity with some players and coaches. Plus, the NFC West is a very tough division—Seattle, if they retain Russell Wilson at QB, is always a winner. The Rams have Matthew Stafford at QB and still have Aaron Donald anchoring the defensive line. The 49’ers are better than they played last season. I wish him an injury-free 2021 campaign. 

Sam Darnold is in the news. GM Joe Douglas said he likes Darnold’s abilities. Yet, when asked if he would listen to trade offers for his QB, Douglas said he would take those calls. Not exactly a glowing endorsement for Darnold to be a Jet in September. Get the guy some real receivers and let him play. 

Getting back to Wilson, Las Vegas was one of his preferred destinations. Both the GM and Coach said they like their QB, Derek Carr. That means that Chicago and New Orleans are more likely destinations—unless Dallas’ Jerry Jones suddenly decides to swap Dak Prescott for Wilson. The rift between Head Coach Pete Carroll and Wilson is said to be real and large.

It has also been very quiet regarding Deshaun Watson. Houston said they are keeping the unhappy QB. Watson said no dice to that. This looks to be a stalemate for now. 

In case you missed it, there is spring football for a number of Football Championship Subdivision schools. North Dakota State and the schools in the Northern Plains have been playing for a while. Delaware and Villanova open their schedule this weekend. The patriot League has a 4 game slate—Lafayette and Lehigh play 2 at home and 2 on the road, with the final game the annual tussle, this year in Easton. 

The Centennial Conference did authorize strong sports competition. F&M Baseball has two games at Montclair State at the end of March. In any other year, my wife and I would attend. There is a prohibition in place for campus visitors and this comes a week after we receive the second COVID vaccination, so we wouldn’t feel safe anyway.

What I do worry about is the safety of the athletes in FCS Football and in DIII baseball. They aren’t vaccinated and the testing cannot be as rigorous as that of the major colleges or the pros. 

I watched the Rangers and Devils from the Prudential Center on Thursday night. I thought to myself—who are these guys on both teams? And the Devils are a bad team, having lost 7 out of the last 8. I even had some difficulty knowing all of the Islanders when I watched them defeat Buffalo on Thursday. 

The team with the best record is Toronto. Long-suffering Leafs fans are ecstatic. Does this make them the best team in the NHL? Hard to tell, because the Leafs are playing all Canadian teams and both Montreal and Calgary replaced their head men this week. 

Just like it is hard to tell if the Capitals, Lightning and Golden Knights, all division leaders, are as good as Toronto. I think that the level of competing in the other divisions is a bit stronger. That does not mean that Toronto isn’t the best team in the league. It just means that they have amassed a ton of points in what appears to be a weak division. 

Presently, three NHL players are on the COVID-19 list. One is the Penguins captain and future Hall of Fame player Sidney Crosby. When I watch the Penguins, he is the most amazing to watch. He may have aged and slowed a trifle, but I root for him to succeed. Most of all, to beat the virus if he is infected. 

I have seen so much written about baseball. Remember—it is Spring Training. The homers and bad pitching do not count. Dellin Betances looked awful for the Mets. I am rooting for the kid. The Yankees may have been onto something when they didn’t resign the big reliever. 

It has been conjectured that pitching staffs, especially in the National League, will be severely tested with the expansion of the schedule from 60 games in 2020 to the expected 162 games for 2021, and the lack of a universal DH. That means that there has to be a reservoir of starting and relief pitching which will be major league caliber. 

Staffs such as Washington have aged—Jon Lester, who will have his thyroid gland removed, is 37 and Max Scherzer is 36 and showing signs of wear. Or Philadelphia, where Aaron Nola and Zach Wheeler anchor a less talented group. 

Or the Mets, where there is tremendous depth after otherworldly Jacob deGrom. The acquisition of Carlos Carrasco in the Francisco Lindor trade was insurance that the Mets could field experience on the mound. If Noah Syndergaard returns as the top pitcher he was, look for the Mets to thrive.

We all wish Yankees manager Aaron Boone the best in his recovery from surgery where a pacemaker was installed. Born with a congenital heart valve issue, that failed to deter his playing career (ask Red Sox fans about him). The heart issues caught up in 2009, when he had open heart surgery to repair the valve. 

Being the Yankees manager is stressful enough. Boone is expected to make a full recovery and be as productive as ever, Wouldn’t it be a nice story for the Yankees to win the World Series in the year that their manager had a pacemaker installed?

For now, I sit in New Jersey, watching sports on TV with some misgivings and more disinterest. Must be March Malaise.