Promises Are Like Babies: Easy To Make, Hard To Deliver

Predictions get tossed around in the sports world all the time. Guys guarantee their teams will win a game or a series. They guarantee that they will not be back with a certain team. They guarantee postseason appearances. The say that their team is the team to beat before the season starts.

You always hear announcers talk about how that makes great "bulletin board" material and occassionally a player will say that it was a motivating factor, but it seems like all the guarantees are so run-of-the-mill these days that few bat an eye at them.

When Jim Fassel angrily declared to the New York media that the 7-4 Giants were going to playoffs, it wasn't so much that it was a groundbreaking prediction; coaches and players say this type of thing all the time. What makes this moment memorable was that the normally mild-mannered Fassel blew up and essentially told the world famous New York sports media to sit down and shut up for the rest of the season...and then he backed it up.

Before this last Super Bowl, had Plaxico Burress given a run-of-the-mill "we're gonna win" prediction, no one would have cared...likely any player would have said the same thing. But Burress gave the score as 23-17, which was so far below the Patriots' average that it raised some eyebrows, but was still mostly laughed off as harmless fun. When the Giants wound up winning, holding the Pats to a lower score than Burress had predicted, and Burress himself scored the winning touchdown, that became an all-time great prediction.

Perhaps the three most famous sports predictions are Babe Ruth famously calling a home run by pointing to the bleachers right where he hit the ball on the next pitch (or maybe he just stretched his arm, no one is sure). Joe Namath called the Super Bowl upset in 1967. And of course Kramer's two-home run prediction on behalf of Paul O'Neil to a sick boy.

But every year some guy you haven't really heard of says his crappy NBA East team will beat some other crappy NBA East team and no one cares. So what makes a great prediction? What makes it memorable? Why was Joe Namath's Super Bowl III prediction a seminal moment in sports history but so many other guys have done the exact same thing and been forgotten?

First: the stage has to be big. Boldly declaring that your 7-year-old son will score in a YMCA league basketball game is not exactly the stuff of legends.

Second: the odds have to be against you. If a first place team's manager declares his team will make the postseason when they have a 10 game lead with 11 to go, no one will really take notice.

Third: you get points for originality. Hundreds of coaches have probably told writers at some point that their struggling teams would put it all together and make the playoffs, but Fassel did it with fire, with (apparently real) anger, and most importantly with style.

Fourth: the predictor needs to have first-hand impact on the game. No one cares what the owner's dog walker says will happen. But if the shortstop guarantees a World Series sweep, that's getting in the papers. Abe Lincoln once said, "We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot."

Fifth: it has to come true. If you make a bold enough prediction and use bold enough words and fail, you will perhaps be remembered, but not how you want to be. Had the Patriots beaten the Giants 41-17, do you think there would be any stories on Super Bowl Monday about how Burress' relatively mundane prediction had been wrong, or would the press have written about the 19-0 story?

Sixth: there has to be an intangible endearing quality to it. If Roger Clemens came back and predicted that he would lead the Mariners to the World Series this year, it would come off as arrogance from a world-class jerk - not a prediction. If he pulled it off, history would find a way to cheapen it (steroids, etc.) so we wouldn't have to appreciate it like we do the Jets in Super Bowl III or Base Ruth's possible shot-calling.

Recently Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, Jr., has been proclaiming that his horse winning the Belmont Stakes is a "foregone conclusion." He boldly stated, "Forget about it. There's no way in the world there's any horse that's doing any better than Big Brown. It's impossible...I don't even care about the post position...We don't need to worry. He will handle things."

So how will this prediction be remembered? This passes the first three tests with flying colors: it is the biggest stage in his sport, and one of the biggest in all of Sport. While his horse will be the odds-on favorite, the odds are against him that he'll win - no one has done it in 30 years and there have been odds-on favorites many, many times. Originality! Even Bob Baffert never mouthed off like this.

Where Dutrow's prediction gets hurt starts with #4- he doesn't have enough to do with the prediction coming true. Sure, he knows better than anyone what his horse can do. He knows better than anyone how much steroids have been pumped in him. But he won't be the one running, nor the one riding. If the jockey made this kind of prediction, that would be interesting. If the horse did, it would be astounding! If he doesn't win, Dutrow will likely be a laughing stock (for a day or two until we all forget about him) for being too bold. And if Big Brown does win, because the prediction is just so sleazy and self-righteous, and the guy keeps yelling it into any microphone he can find, we won't remember this fondly. We will blame it on a weak field and overt steroid use, and we will likely remember this more clearly as the last of the old-fashioned, inhumane Triple Crown seasons.

Now Petr Sykora's prediction in Monday's Stanley Cup Finals should be remembered as one of the all-time greats, and may be the best ever depending on the series plays out. Sykora played his shot-calling down later, saying he was just trying to loosen up his teammates, but regardless this is a classic:

The Red Wings were 35 seconds away from a Stanley Cup win. The Cup was polished and in the tunnel leading to the ice. The champagne was chilled in the home locker room. But the Penguins spoiled the party by pulling their goalie and scoring to tie it up with the extra attacker. Midway through the first overtime period, NBC's sideline reporter Pierre McGuire announced that Sykora had told him that he was going to "get the next one." Two overtimes later, he did and the Penguins won, sending the series back to Pittsburgh for Game 6.

Now this is a fantastic story, but if the Penguins go on to come back and win at home and then go back to Detroit and steal the Cup, it will be immortalized in sports legend. Stay tuned.

Referees Decide Finish By Not Deciding Finish

Clearly the play at the end of the Lakers-Spurs game was a foul. But it is basketball tradition that that foul won't be called in that situation. The thinking here is that you don't want the refs to decide the game. This thinking is flawed because by not calling a clear violation, didn't they decide the game?

Wouldn't it have been Derek Fisher who helped decide the game by biting on a pump fake and jumping into the ball handler/shooter? Wouldn't it have been Brent Barry who decided the game by drawing the foul and then having to knock down the free throws? Wouldn't it have been a Laker who decided the game when they got the ball back after the potentially made free throws?

If a guy jumps up and lands on another it is a foul. Should an umpire not call a third strike if a batter doesn't swing in the ninth inning because he wants to make sure the players decide the finish? Should a referee not throw a flag on a clip on an overtime kick return? Should a hockey referee allow a last second, game-winning goal that is thrown in? The rules are the rules. There should be no superstar rules, no playoff rules, and no last-second rules.

I thought that almost everyone handled this no-call well however. Greg Popovich said that it was not a foul and that he is not upset with the officials. Barry said that you can't call that there and took the blame himself. Phil Jackson quoted 3rd century Taoist philosophy or something but I think his point was that it probably was a foul and that he is glad his team was the beneficiary of the no-call (but that plays like this happen throughout the game and we're only talking about it because it was the last one). The consensus was that it should have been called but was not and in that situation, one cannot fault the refs. The Spurs had 47 minutes at 57 seconds before that to make one more shot and have that play not matter.

Then there was Kobe Bryant. Craig Sager, staring off into space rather than at his interview subject, asked Kobe about the play and with his adorable little smirk he said and repeated, "that wasn't a foul," as though His Eminence knew something that all the rest of us didn't (even though we'd seen the play in slo-mo from four angles at this point). He is a bad loser (remember his "there is no way I will play for the Lakers next year - I'd rather play on Pluto" comment or his famous quitting-job in game 7 against the Suns?) And he is a bad winner as this episode shows. I usually don't wish injury on anyone but...well I don't think I have to finish this sentence.

And seriously, what the hell is with Craig Sager's suits? Is it that he has given up on being an intelligent person known for his interesting and insightful interview questions and instead just wants to be remembered for anything at all? The way the guy stares off into space when he is doing interviews and the way he dresses makes me think that he may actually be blind and whoever dresses him hates him.

Finally, can we now move on from the idea that Sasha Vujacic is a great defender and has shut down Manu Ginobili? In three games Ginobili has stunk, but he went nuts in the other one. Vujacic guarded him in all four. If you do a test four times in the same beaker and get different results each time, it wasn't the beaker causing the change! If you still believe that Vujacic is a great defender and not just another annoying, flopping, soft, European whiner, you need look no further than his "defense" of Tony Parker on a fast break with about 3:30 to go in the third quarter of game 4.

He backpedaled into the lane as Parker came at him. Then Vujacic stopped and tried to set his feet to draw a charge. He prepared for the contact and then just flew backwards onto his butt when he expected Parker to be there. It looked like Parker had pulled a Frodo and vanished right in front of Vujacic's eyes. I watched it like 10 times. Parker had faked him out so bad that Vujacic flopped despite Parker not being within 5 feet of him. Classic. I found it on another site so click here to watch (sorry if they take it down).

Today is a pretty big sports day with the Pistons going back to Boston for the all-important game 5. This one will decide the series. And the Red Wings go to Pittsburgh for the Stanley Cup game 3. If Detroit wins, that series is over of course as well. And the US is in London playing England in soccer which doesn't matter for a number of reasons (it is soccer, it is not in a tournament or qualifier), but it would still be nice to beat England's butt again. We could get Thierry Henry come and play for us and it would be just like the Revolutionary War.

Stars Lay An Egg, Spurs Lay Doubts To Rest

I was very excited all day on Monday for the Spurs-Hornets game and the Stars-Wings game. Sadly, both were pretty much over in the first half hour.

Yes, the basketball game wound up going down to the wire after New Orleans scraped their way back into it, but tell me: did you ever really think San Antonio was going to lose that game once they got a lead? The Spurs were never going to lose a 9 point halftime lead. Even on the road against a "better" opponent.

The Lakers cannot be happy with this match up. Derek Fisher can't handle Tony Parker at either end. Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol can be cancelled out by Fabricio Oberto, Kurt Thomas and Tim Duncan. Vlad Radmanovich sucks. And Kobe Bryant is always an impossible cover, but Bruce Bowen is as good as anyone at doing it. And I didn't mention Manu Ginobili. The Lakers won't be able to run away and hide from the Spurs, and remember what happens to Kobe when games are close or they are down? The "new" Kobe vanishes.

In the Jazz series, in games that the Lakers won (none were particularly close) here are Kobe's average stats: 33 points per game, 8.5 for 15.8 shooting (54%), 1 for 2 on three-point attempts (50%). Here are Kobe's stats in Laker losses: 33.5 points per game, 11.5 for 29.5 shooting (39%), .5 for 8 on three point attempts (6%).

The Jazz did not do anything differently defensively in the two losses. Kobe just starts trying to take over and single-handedly erase leads...he stopped playing the offense and his teammates started watching. In losses he doubles his shot attempts, but his shooting percentage drops 15%! Forced offense leads to bad shots, which only lets the other team get layups at the other end.

Sure, the Spurs do not have great depth, and that is supposedly a great strength of the Lakers, but seriously, which bench would you rather reply on: Kurt Thomas, Ime Udoka, Michael Finley, Brent Barry and Robert Horry or Jordan Farmar, DJ Mbenga, Ronnie Turiaf, Luke Walton and Sasha Vujacic?

Spurs in 6. I don't think San Antonio can win three straight at home, or I would say Spurs in 5. The Spurs will win one in L.A., the Lakers will win one in San Antonio and the the Spurs will close it out in game six in L.A. (remember the Conference Finals mysteriously switch to a 2-3-2 format).

As for the other big game last night, Dallas pulled one out of Philadelphia's playbook and didn't show up for their big elimination game. I stopped watching after the first period. But how good is the Stanley Cup Final going to be?

Stay tuned for a recap of the Major League Baseball First Quarter-Season coming tomorrow.

Baseball Celebrates Interleague, And No One Notices

Major League Baseball's first interleague series blew by without really making any particularly interesting news. I think the honeymoon is over for Interleague and the fans. I am sure ticket sales were solid in most series (LA vs. LA, NY vs. NY for instance), but in general, did anyone really care?

When the Mets and Yankees used to play and ESPN would cover it, leading up to the game we were seemingly bombarded with commercials, animations during other games, etc. for weeks. I didn't see any ads for Sunday night's game besides their normal Sunday Night Baseball teasers.

When the Mets and Yankees used to play, the games carried all kinds of weight with them. The teams seemed to hate one another. Roger Clemens used to throw things at people all the time. It was big news!

Last night we went to a sports bar-ish restaurant and where there is one giant tv screen (that can be split into four different channels) with two large TVs on either side and then a few more big TVs scattered around the walls. The big screen was split up and the Mets-Yankees game was on one small portion of it. The other three were NASCAR, ESPN News, and the NFL network and the other two large TVs had ESPN News and the NASCAR.

That's right, the Steelers-Browns game from Week 10 got as much attention at a sports bar as the live Mets-Yankees game. This brought me to three conclusions:

1- Interleague is no longer any different for the casual fan than any other baseball game is. And for the devoted fan, is it really any different either? Was I more interested in this game than a Mets-Braves or Mets-Phillies game? Perhaps a bit, but it is just not as timeless and interesting as it once seemed.

2- The ratings of the 2000 World Series were some of the lowest for a World Series of all time. No one cared about New York playing New York despite that it was one of the more intrigue-filled Series in a long time. If that was the case, then the ratings were last night for a regular season game featuring two teams that were a combined 1-game under .500 must have been horrible.

3- The NFL Network is totally and completely wrong in their argument with the cable companies. NFL Network wants to be given a spot in the basic cable line-ups so they get wider distribution (thus they can sell commercials for much more money). Cable companies say it is a specialty-channel and won't get the wide-spread audience that basic cable channels typically get, so they want to add it to their sports packages (thus shrinking distribution and making commercials less valuable). I am a huge sports fan. I love the NFL. I would basically watch any team play any team on Sundays in the fall and winter. However, besides the eight live NFL games that the network carries, there is absolutely nothing that that channel airs that even I want to watch. They want NFL Network to go on basic cable, which would raise cable rates by the price of a cup of coffee (as the NFL network likes to say). If I don't think it is worth it to pay more for "24 hours per year of live NFL football and about 8,736 hours of filler," then do you think a non-sports/NFL fan would be willing to pay?

The Mets vs. Yankees and the NFL were not the only sporting events this weekend that no one cares about until they mean something.

-The NBA has finally gotten to the Conference Finals (once the Spurs finish off the Hornets tonight) so NBA games will be interesting even in the first quarter now. Isn't it funny that after all the BS of the last seven months, we ended up with the four teams that it was always going to be? This is further proof that the NBA season should be two months long, with only four teams from each Conference making the playoffs.

-The NHL has reached the Stanley Cup...well almost. Detroit roared out to a 3-0 lead but Dallas is now scaring the hell out of them. Dallas now plays at home in game six with a chance to tie it up. Note: when looking for NHL coverage on ESPN.com, even though they are in the most important two weeks of the season, the NHL is listed 10th behind women's basketball, NASCAR, racing (not sure what the different is there), college football (which will start in six months) and general college sports. Ouch.

- Big Brown won the Preakness and made NBC very, very happy because now someone will watch the Belmont in two weeks. No Triple Crown winner since 1978 and now horse racing (in perhaps its darkest hour) may Crown a champion. Never mind that Big Brown is widely considered one of the worst champs racing against easily the worst field in history.

Finally, can we all agree that baseball needs instant replay in the instances of home runs and foul balls? It is a good thing that the Yankees bullpen sucks as bad as it does or I would likely have strangled someone if that Delgado home run-blown call had come back to hurt the Mets.