Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Reports – “Victor Oladipo now expected to play”; good for Victor and great for the @Pacers!

Was Vic just teasing when he threatened not to play in Orlando?

So now, according to reports, Victor Oladipo is expected to play for the Indiana Pacers in Orlando.

What are we to make of this turn of events?  Is Oladipo a flibbertigibbet who makes whimsical proclamations without thought or willingness to follow through?  Or, was he screwing around before leaving for Orlando by saying that he would not play.  Maybe he was using the old Bob Knight ploy of saying no before saying yes, so he would be a hero to fans.

Those will be good questions a couple of months from now as we ponder Oladipo’s future in Indianapolis as a prized asset in the final year of his contract, but right this minute it is a hell of a lot more fun to project Oladipo’s availability upon the immediate prospects of a team headed into a completely unique situation where almost anything can happen.

Click here for your copy of “Oops – the Art of Learning from Mistakes and Adventures” by Kent Sterling

The Pacers were playing pretty well when play was suspended, winning eight of their last 11 including a home and home split with Eastern Conference favorite Milwaukee Bucks.  In the last five of those games, Oladipo showed growth averaged 18.6 points per game after averaging 10.8 over the previous eight games.

Add double-double machine Domas Sabonis, healthy Malcolm Brogdon, leading scorer T.J. Warren, and recently productive Myles Turner (averaging 16 and 10 over the final three games of the season prior to it being suspended), and the Pacers starting lineup is bordering on very competitive.

This could wind up being a seriously spunky unit once play resumes on August 1, and the Pacers will be tested during the eight game sprint to the finish – especially during the final four games.  After playing the 76ers, with whom they are tied for 5th in the East, the Pacers have four very winnable games against the Wizards, Magic, and Suns – teams that are a combined 34 games under .500.

The last four games match the Pacers against the Lakers, Heat, Rockets, and Heat again.  Those teams are a combined 85 games over .500, and none are less than 16 games over.  Yikes!

Pacers better eat early, right?  And they better stay healthy if they want to climb past the Sixers and over the Heat, who are just two games in front of the Blue and Gold.

Health is going to play a huge role in who succeeds and fails in Orlando as the NBA has tried to build a Covid-19-free bubble to ensure players finish the season without missing weeks of games because they contract the virus.  But this is a sneaky pest that cannot be trusted to behave.

Covid-19 presents another wild card to consider when trying to project winners and losers in this odd re-start, and if the Pacers can get a break or two while repelling the viral horde they could find themselves advancing a long way toward the franchise’s second trip to the NBA Finals.

That’s a lot to process without being certain Oladipo is going to play, but it’s sure a hell of a lot more fun to think about than all the political and viral crap we deal with on a minute-to-minute basis in the strangest stretch of road in most of our lifetimes.

If Oladipo plays, Indianapolis is going to feel a lot better about him as a Pacer and man, and that would be a victory before the Pacers tip against the Sixers in two-and-a-half weeks.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski says he’s sorry to Senator Josh Hawley, but Hawley owes Woj his own apology

Based upon his ESPN performances and social media profile, Adrian Wojnarowski might be the least likely guy in media to drop f-bombs in an email.

To an email sent by the office of United States Senator Josh Hawley, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski replied succinctly, “F**k you!”

The senator then took a screen shot, tweeted it, and Woj was suspended and he subsequently apologized.  Woj tweeted, “I was disrespectful and I made a regrettable mistake.  I’m sorry for the way I handled myself and I am reaching out immediately to Senator Hawley to apologize directly. I also need to apologize to my ESPN colleagues because I know my actions were unacceptable and should not reflect on any of them.”

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But now, Hawley should apologize for exposing the email in a way that caused unnecessary harm to Woj’s career.  People are on edge, and occasionally operate without thought of consequence.  While Woj was wrong for the obviously angry tone and profane content of the email, Hawley’s office could have operated with a little tolerance or dismissal of his message.

In the initial email, Hawley questioned the NBA’s selective activism.  While it is very active in making sure all are aware Black Lives Matter, the league is reluctant to use that same verve to voice concerns over human rights issues in China and Hong Kong because of financial concerns.

People are on edge, and Woj’s email reflected the stress many feel as stressors are stacked upon each other in a way few of us have seen in our lifetime.

  • Covid-19 and the rules we are being asked to follow to curb the spread are making many fearful.
  • The economic fallout is still felt by many.
  • There are the racial protests that demand our society moves toward equal treatment for all that have caused many to question their core beliefs.
  • And normal day-to-day issues we always need to deal with – like mortgages, family issues, health, etc…

The most ruinous response to 2020 level stress has been an explosion of violence in America’s cities.  That cannot be forgiven and forgotten, but an occasional profane explosion in a private email could be allowed to pass without using it to gain political leverage.  It didn’t;t need to become a GOTCHA moment.

That’s not to excuse Woj, but there is no glory on either side of this fence.

Arizona State football coach and former ESPN analyst Herm Edwards famously counseled student and professional athletes – as well as the rest of us watching – to not press send when tweeting invective in anger.  That applies to both Woj AND Hawley in their email exchange.  This could have been handled calmly and privately by either, and maybe some understanding could have been reached by both.

These are weird times.  Instead of responding in anger to everyone who presses our buttons, we would be wise to take a deep breath and try to empathize with the source of our discontent.  The world seems unfriendly right now, so let’s respond to it by trying to diffuse anger instead of reacting with more of it.

Maybe we can take the two screw ups by Woj and Hawley, and move toward a better understanding of each other.  Maybe we can listen with more energy than we speak or write.

Maybe 2020 can be remembered for something positive.

Right on cue, Big 10 announces conference only football schedule; disaster for non-Power Five schools

Right of the heels of yesterday’s Ivy League announcement that there will be no fall sports for 2020, the Big 10 has announced it will scale back fall schedules to include only conference games.

This is a big deal for all Big 10 athletes and coaches, but is of massive importance for football programs that feed the schools’ financial furnace, including those scheduled to serve as opponents.

The trickle down effect of the cancellation of non-conference games will have a huge negative impact on the athletic programs that rely upon their game checks from Big 10 opponents.  Guarantees vary in size, but all serve as an important funding source for football as well as their other sports for these cash-poor schools.

Click here for your copy of “Oops – the Art of Learning from Mistakes and Adventures” by Kent Sterling

That lack of cash may cause smaller athletic departments to trim the number of scholarships and sports in the short term, and may accelerate a separation of the Power Five (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Pac-12, and Big 12, plus Notre Dame) from smaller programs.

And that is long overdue.

Nothing against athletic departments that don’t have significant revenue from conference media deals that include football, but the difference in resources is striking.

Big 10 schools received $54 million each at the end of the 2017-2018 academic year through conference media agreements.  When the cash they brought in through tickets and marketing is added, their gross revenue dwarfs that of non-Power Five schools.

This is not an apples to grapes comparison – it’s apples to raisins.  There is just no way for the little guys to compete.  Add to that the lack of interest in games between the haves and have-nots, and the logic of the shift only makes sense.  Let’s face it, even Ohio State fans don’t want to watch their Buckeyes destroy Miami of Ohio 76-5, as happened last year.

How silly is it to have the same NCAA compliance manual govern Michigan and Central Michigan or Penn State and Ball State?  Exceptionally silly because recruiting and player value are vastly different in the Big 10 and the MAC.  When pay to athletes for NIL (name, image, likeness) is discussed, it’s rarely applied to players in the MAC, WAC, MEAC, or SWAC.

And if you are going to argue that a separation will doom the upsets in March Madness, that is a challenge that can be overcome in a 15-minute meeting, as in:

NCAA Administrator #1 – “What do you think about maintaining the selection process for the NCAA Tournament as it exists today?”

NCAA Administrator #2 – “Yeah, that makes sense!  I second the motion”

NCAA Administrator #1 – “Alright.  All in favor of keeping the NCAA selection process the same, say Aye!”

NCAA All administrators: – “Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph…AYE!”

NCAA Administrator #1 – “The eyes have it.  On to more pressing business.  Who else believes Rick Pitino should have to peel potatoes for team dinners for two months if he wants to stay at Iona?”

It will be that quick and that easy.

This switch also gives the Big 10 the chance to move schedules around to serve regional conditions within the conference footprint without causing mayhem for teams outside the Big 10.

Not to sound an alarm regarding future Covid-19 related alterations, but if eliminating non-conference games is the only bitter pill we need to swallow for college sports during this wacky period, that would be the best news since Red Panda played the halftime show of the final Big 10 Basketball Tournament game between Indiana and Nebraska.

Unlike other non-epidemiologists in the media, I refuse to look ahead to what may happen with either optimism or cynicism.  What comes will come, and further challenges don’t need to be rushed into.

Let’s just deal with what we have and try to make hash browns out of those taters Pitino will have to peel if Administrator #1 has his way!

Ivy League cancels fall sports – the rest of college football hopes they are wrong this time #iufb

Can college students be trusted to avoid parties like this in order to save the 2020 Big 10 college football season? (This picture, by the way, is of a party at an Alabama college that was thrown to see who could get infected first – if that tells you anything about the responsibility that can be expected of some college students.)

The Ivy League has announced what many already assumed – fall sports are canceled.  That’s bad news for student-athletes and fans at those institutions, but what does it mean for college football elsewhere?

Two days prior to the shutdown of college basketball conference tournaments and the NBA, the Ivy League pulled the plug on its event, so they have a history of being a little bit ahead of the curve.

Remember, when we thought they were hysterics for calling off their tournament?  Then Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive, and American sports hit a big fat pause button that for the most part has remained engaged for the almost four months since.

Click here for your copy of “Oops – the Art of Learning from Mistakes and Adventures” by Kent Sterling

Despite the lack of a vaccine, fans hope college football will be played in front of fans in two months.  We know Ivy League folks are smarter than other people, and just a little less concerned about the economics of their athletic departments and businesses neighboring their campuses.  The bigwigs of the Big 10, however, are neither encumbered by the fear of reality geniuses are known for nor a disengagement from financial concerns, so maybe we can be right this time!  And we better be.

Not only does the Big 10 crave games and the cash that comes with them, conference ADs understand that the financial well-being of college towns like Bloomington, West Lafayette, Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Iowa City, and Champaign need those football weekends to sustain themselves.

Hotels that normal rent for $129 per night draw more than $300 with a three-night guarantee.  Strip those bounties as well as the huge nights at restaurants and bars throughout those areas, and nuts are left unmade.  Businesses fold.  Jobs are lost.

Football weekends are the life blood for these communities.  Without seven Saturdays with tens of thousands of well-heeled fans flocking there from all over their respective states, lives change for the much worse.

So the Big 10 is hoping for a miracle.

They want players to sequester themselves from the rest of the student body as best they can, practice excellent hygiene, and wear masks whenever practical.  Other place like Clemson seem to be negotiating with Covid-19 in a slightly different fashion.  It appears the Tigers have begun a campaign to build herd immunity prior to the season by having many players contract and recover from the virus.

The Big 10 has been less pragmatic but far more humane than Dabo Swinney’s squad.  Safety first for 18-23 year-old college students is a hell of an experiment.  I can only speak for my own experience at Indiana University, but I tenaciously avoided being sequestered from a specific demographic of the student body, failed to practice a responsible level of personal hygiene for virtually my entire tenure there, and wore a mask only on Halloween.

The chances of 14 teams of 100 football players enforcing the difficult-to-maintain level of discipline required to avoid Covid-19 are longer than Indiana’s odds of winning the National Championship.

There is a lot riding on the minute-by-minute decision making of 1,400 young men who will be the targets of an even greater number of young women on Big 10 campuses.  All it will take is one player to forget the rules for a brief time, and the whole shooting match will end the way the Ivy League closed theirs today.

It will cost those college towns and athletic departments millions of dollars.  Businesses, jobs, wealth, and a hell of a lot of fun will be lost, and perhaps worst of all, those high-minded pinheads running Ivy League institutions will be right – again.

Sportstalk hosts do society a huge solid when they stick to sports

Sportstalk hosts like Dan Dakich of 1070 the Fan in Indianapolis do society a favor when they “stick to sports.”

Some people do not deal well with stress.  Given recent events, that seems to be the mantra of 2020.

Covid-19 changed our lives in ways we never anticipated.  Some gravitate toward the worst possible news of the Covid spread, and others embrace great news, whether it exists or not.

Because of the effect of Covid, financial concerns caused us moments of terror that Americans and their children might go hungry and become homeless.  Those fears turned more of us jittery.

The senseless and brutal murder of George Floyd unleashed anger and disappointment in both whites and blacks, tired of tolerating the stupidity of racism.  That added a another massive stressor to our pile of growing concerns.  Protests became riots which morphed into takeovers.

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Leaders continue to use to lever our fear by dividing us against each other, and the misery index skyrockets yet higher.

During normal times, we have distractions to keep our minds occupied, even as our confidence wanes that the world around us is a kind, decent, and fair place.  Sports, concerts, theatre, movies, vacations, and dinners with loved ones have always allowed us to forget the fear and keep our anger outside of easy reach.  Until now.

With all of those diversions removed from our lives, we have little to think about but Covid, racism, wearing masks, riots, nooses, those who don’t wear masks, financial tremors, and the squabbling of leaders who should try to calm us rather than exploit these bizarre times for their political gain.

If things continue as planned, Major League Baseball will be back July 23, the NBA will return July 30, NFL training camps will open July 28, and college football camps should open around that same period.  That will give us a little something to think about and look forward to without dwelling on our problems and the behavior that results from the stacking of stress.

That is why sports are so important in our society.  It isn’t about bulky and speedy men jumping, swinging, blocking, tackling, and throwing.  Sports distract us from mundanity, injustice, and fury.  They give us a shot of frivolity in a world of filled with too many reasons for anguish.

Without sports and other distractions, we yell at each other about wearing a mask, or refusing to wear one.  We stay glued to news networks who understand fear is the fuel for our continued patronage.  If they can frighten us sufficiently, we will eventually refuse to watch anything else.

And that is why many viewers, listeners, and readers plead with people who are paid to report on and talk about sports stay in that lane.  They covet something a little bit normal – a return to the silly respite sports talk and games present, rather than bathing ourselves in a torrent of terrifying realities.

Hosts tend to view talking about sports in troubled times as a wasted opportunity.  They want to shout too – to use their pulpit to help make sense of the bizarre and torturous cocktail of discomforts that surrounds us.  But that is not what we need from them.  We need laughs, NFL news, NBA updates, and conversations about who was the best at his or her position.

There are plenty of manipulative pundits who are paid to provoke us with video and descriptions of terrifying micro-realities.  But, we also need an outlet to decompress for a few minutes, a safe place where we can embrace the ridiculous instead of recoiling in horror.

That’s the role of the sports guy.  As frivolous as sports may be, the break listening to people talk about them is incredibly important in maintain our societal ecosystem.

Staying in your lane is not a silly choice – it’s an incredible help to those who need something in their lives that resembles normal to hear and watch.

ESPN Radio will try to get back mojo in lineup shuffle that cans Golic & Wingo

Look who’s coming back to ESPN radio August 17th – my old co-worker Mike Greenberg!

Radio is easy to dismiss for a giant media company like ESPN, but they weren’t going to sit idly by and watch their lineup founder as affiliates continued to shave hours of network programming.

So when the network debuts its new lineup on August 17, morning drive team Golic & Wingo will be ghosts.  The show debuted a little over two and a half years ago, and never found its footing.  There was a casual aimlessness to the show that works on the weekends and overnights, but does not satisfy commuters who are looking for meaningful and focused sportstalk.

The show missed Mike Greenberg, who moved over to ESPN’s Get Up.  Greenberg is the best ringmaster in media.  He’s a conductor able to steer clear of tedious self-indulgent moments to showcase guests and a cast of regulars.  Greenberg will come back to radio to host a two hour show from 12p-2p after he clears his head from hosting Get Up.

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The new morning show will be hosted by Jay Williams, Keyshawn Johnson, and Zubin Mehenti.  The key for the success of this show will be patience for the three hosts to find their chemistry together.  ESPN knows it takes two years – always two years – to get a show right or decide it can’t be gotten right.  They waited for Golic & Wingo, so they will certainly wait for whatever this three-headed beast is called.

Dan LeBatard for follow from 10a-12p.  Whether you love it or hate it, this show delivers a consistent product segment after segment.  I can get a little too much of the schtick, and it can be a little clubby, but of all the problems this network has, LeBartard’s show is not near the top of the list.

After Greenberg, Max Kellerman will hop on from 2p-4p.  Kellerman has two things going for him as a radio host – authenticity and likability.  If a host is not authentic, he or she has no chance to succeed.  If he is real and likable, anything is possible.  My guess is that producers will use some of the best audio from First Take, which Kellerman co-hosts on ESPN from 10a-12p with Stephen A. Smith, to shorten the show a little bit.

Mike Golic Jr. will co-host from 4p-7p with two-time WNBA All-Star Chiney Ogwumike.  Afternoon drive is the slot where even small market affiliates devote their time to local talent, so this is a nice developmental slot for young talent with promise.  With a small potential audience, the pressure won’t be so high for Golic and Chiney to sound great quickly.

The night schedule makes sense.  From 7p-9p, Spain & Fitz takes the stage.  I’ve always liked Sarah Spain, so I’m glad to see that she has a regular show again.  They will be preempted often by local play-by-play in the east and local programming out west, so they will also be under very little pressure to crackle immediately.  Following Spain & Fitz, the always capable and fun Freddie Coleman will be joined by football analyst Ian Fitzsimmons.

This kind of shuffling happens, especially on national radio.  Runs like Mike & Mike enjoyed don’t happen very often, and their 17 years together might never be equaled.  Does what ESPN Radio has put together make the network more valuable to affiliates?  Probably not.  Affiliates appreciate ESPN for the play-by-play and accommodate the talk – at least since Mike & Mike ended.

Talk radio at its best is a local medium – a town hall where people gather to hear about what is going on in their town.  ESPN’s 24/7 schedule allows local affiliates to churn sports content all week long, but the money and the magic are in local shows.

Hopefully, station owners and managers across the country understand that relying on network radio, no matter the quality of the product, costs stations both rating and revenue.

During a time when podcasts are exploding in popularity, radio needs to embrace locality and uniqueness more than ever.

 

How can anyone ask whether Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes cheated himself signing a 10 yr/$503M extension?

Patrick Mahomes is a Super Bowl Champion, Super Bowl MVP, and now the highest paid player in American professional sports.

“Did Patrick Mahomes leave money on the table in signing this contract?” asked Mike Greenberg this morning on ESPN’s Get Up.

The contract Mahomes signed is a 10-year extension worth a minimum of $140,000,000 and a maximum of just over half a billion dollars to play quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, and Greenberg has the temerity to ask if he left money on the table?

At some point, the question of how much money a man needs should be asked.  Not to sound like a socialist, but if people are questioning Mahomes wisdom in signing this level of mega deal at the age of 24, who are we as a society?

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Would Greenberg be more content if Mahomes’ contract was worth $600-million?  700-million?  A billion?  What’s the number if a half a billion does not suffice?

I don’t begrudge Mahomes his cash.  He is the best player in the NFL and also has the brightest future, but he is one play away from never taking another snap.  The Chiefs will sink or swim based upon Mahomes, and he should be paid like it – and he will be – but at some point enough is enough.

Greenberg’s position, and one echoed by everyone else on the show, is that contracts have tripled over the last five years, and Mahomes might be grossly “underpaid” by the time he gets to the latter years of his deal.  If $45-million per ever winds up qualifying as underpaid for a professional athlete while teachers and police earn $60K, America is in big trouble.

Mahomes is a huge star at age 24, and will be the face of the NFL until his health balks or he decides to walk away and cruise around the world forever on the yacht he buys – because with a minimum of $140M coming his way, why wouldn’t he buy a sick yacht and cruise the oceans?

This is a great deal for Mahomes, guaranteeing the financial future of his family for generations never-ending, and also a likely great deal for the Chiefs who will have a chance to remain competitive by not overpaying for the most important player in the NFL.

As a comparison, this season the Colts will pay roughly $57-million to the quarterbacks they have under contract.  Granted, the Colts are covering six QBs with that cash – including Andrew Luck’s $6.4M – but the Chiefs will likely never reach that level of expense for QBs during Mahomes contract.  They will retain the opportunity to remain competitive despite the biggest extension in American sports history.

There are two ways this deal goes south – if Mahomes gets hurt early in the contract, or if the NFL suffers some unforeseeable financial reversal that cause the salary cap to regress.  I’m not really sure what might cause that regression.  If fans en masse suddenly decide tickets are too expensive, gamblers start investing elsewhere, and fantasy football owners decide gardening is a better investment of their energy, maybe the NFL takes a step back.

Otherwise, the NFL is the freight train that will continue to print cash.

The odds of the contract being a win-win for Mahomes and the Chiefs are way too good for media types to criticize.

Khristian Lander reports to Bloomington and it’s silly that I know it and care

Khristian Lander left being the green and orange of Indiana Elite for Indiana University’s candy stripes.

A kid who should be headed back to Evansville Reitz High School for his senior year reports to Indiana University’s campus, will begin workouts with the basketball team, and it is news.

It’s more than a little creepy that a fanbase is so totally engaged in the comings and goings of a college hoops program that they monitor the movement of a non-adult as he arrives on campus.

Social media makes following the activities of those who are active on it easy to follow.  Lander tweeted very simply yesterday, “We here Hoosier Nation.”  That prompted 2,900 likes and 160 retweets.  Jeff Rabjohns wrote a quick story at peegs.com, which I’m sure is performing quite well in the race for clicks.

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That’s not a criticism of Jeff or Peegs.com.  It’s Jeff’s job to relate minutia on that website – especially during a pandemic when nothing else of substance is going on.  As for Lander, he’s a kid in an age when social media has become a scorecard for importance, so I don’t blame him either.

I blame us.  Fans.  Kooks so immersed in Indiana Basketball that the comings and goings of a kid calls for us the click on a link to read about it.  How have our lives become so empty otherwise that we revel in a kid who was a high school junior just two months ago driving up I-69 from Evansville?

Hey, I’m not getting pious here.  I did the same thing.  Oh, Lander is in Bloomington?  That’s great!  I want to read about that.  But after finishing the story, I felt icky.

It’s especially odd because I disagree with the decision Lander and his family made to skip his senior season in order to play for IU a year earlier.  This appears to be a sprint toward NBA millions of dollars that might or might not await Lander in a year or two.  Nothing wrong with getting rich, but it’s important to enjoy life’s precious moments, and there would have been plenty of those during at Reitz for Lander’s senior year.  Hurrying into manhood can short-circuit the process, leaving important lessons unlearned.

Of course, just as it is none of my business that Lander is in Bloomington, it’s also none of my business that he is skipping his senior year to accelerate his path to a potential NBA career.  Maybe Lander’s family is destitute.  Maybe Lander is so well put together as a kid that he will evolve into a fine adult regardless of when he graduates high school.  Maybe we should stop concerning ourselves with the comings and goings of a 17-year-old from Evansville.

Lander is a kid embarking on the next step of a journey to reach his potential as a player – and hopefully he spends as much time trying to figure out how to be the best version of himself as a human being.  That’s what happens in college for people open to that transformation.  He’ll do it in a weird fish bowl that can bring glee and pain, fraternity and loneliness, and successes and failures.

The hopes of Indiana fans can weigh heavy on the shoulders of a young man, and that will be part of Lander’s journey too.  He will be cheered, adored, retweeted, derided, and mocked.

It ain’t easy being a Hoosier, and it ain’t easy being a Hoosier fan either.

Victor Oladipo will sit out Orlando season re-boot – if he isn’t 100%, he’s right to rehab

Like all athletes, the last thing Victor Oladipo wants is to re-live painful, exhausting, and endless rehab. Nothing wrong with that.

Vic will sit, and he is right to do it.

Instead of competing for the Indiana Pacers, guard Victor Oladipo will continue to focus of recovering from surgery to repair a torn right quad tendon.  That’s according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who spoke to Oladipo.

He’s making a decision that will benefit both his long term physical health and financial wealth.  After next season, unless Oladipo and the Pacers come to terms on an extension, he will become a free agent which will make him exceptionally wealthy.

Hell, it will make his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren wealthy.

But that wealth will come only if he’s healthy.  Without two legs capable of playing basketball at a high level, Oladipo is a good karaoke singer with a broad smile and sunny disposition.

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Risking hundreds of millions to indulge in eight regular season games and likely a single playoff series would be the irresponsible act of a lunatic.  Oladipo was always either going to be close to 100% or wait for 2020-2021 to prime the pump for free agency.

Fans will whine about Oladipo’s refusal to compete with his teammates, but they have never faced a choice like this.  They look at the $105,487,440 Oladipo will have earned during his eight NBA seasons at the end of next season, and ask how much he needs?  Under normal circumstances, they would be justified because players like Oladipo are paid to compete, but these are not normal circumstances.

We are in the midst of a strange period when all of us are adjusting our perspective as to what is important.  Covid-19 is an ever-present health concern, and it will continue to be that in Orlando four weeks from tomorrow when the Pacers resume the season against the Philadelphia 76ers.  Racial tensions are causing conversations and rallies that might forever change the pitch of racism in America.  Priorities have shifted, and no one has his feet firmly underneath him just yet.

There are rumors of Oladipo being misdiagnosed.  More rumors suggest he will ask for a trade or hopes to sign elsewhere as a free agent.  Whether there is a scintilla of truth in them, we have no idea right now.  Pacers fans remember all too well Paul George stating definitively that he wanted to stay in Indianapolis, so they are a little bit skittish about star players entering the last year of a contract.

Reports say Oladipo will travel with the team to Orlando, so clearly he still feels as though he is an integral part of the fabric of the team, so that’s a good sign for those trying to read the tea leaves.  The bad news is that the Pacers will not be able to replace him on the roster, but this was a potent team without Oladipo, so that’s not much of an issue.

Oladipo is a special person and player (when healthy).  Of course, Pacers fans want Oladipo to stay put and assume the position of generational fan favorite.  He earned his stripes an hour south in Bloomington as one of the most popular players of the Tom Crean era.  He fits here.  It works here.

Impossible to justify blaming Oladipo for opting out given his circumstances, and it’s equally difficult to blame fans for their jitters regarding Oladipo’s future.

These are strange times, and they just got a little stranger for the Indiana Pacers and their fans..

Disgraced Iona basketball coach Rick Pitino turns dopey epidemiologist

Not sure how it happens, but some college basketball coaches seem to believe they know as much about societal issues as they do about basketball.  And they like to share that self-conferred wisdom.

Iona’s Rick Pitino falls into that large pile of self-immersed bloviates.

Yesterday, Pitino put on his epidemiologist cap and tweeted:

Nice of Pitino to weigh in.  It’s a shame he didn’t know as much about NCAA compliance within his program at Louisville as he believes he knows about spread levels and dangers of the Covid-19 virus.

You remember Pitino from Louisville, don’t you?  Hard to forget the book chronicling Katina Powell and her daughter among the hookers servicing Pitino’s players and recruits in a university dorm on the dime of his director of basketball ops.  He’s still facing NCAA charges related to an assistant coach playing drop man in front of the Galt House Hotel with a recruit’s dad.

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So now Pitino wants us to listen to his ridiculous bleating about pushing the season back to “buy some more time for a vaccine and to get things under control.”  Thanks, Rick.  I’m sure NCAA President Mark Emmert will take your generous guidance under advisement right after he penalizes you for your Level 2 violation at Louisville.

Covid-19 is a virus that requires respect, but no one knows what the next four months will bring.  Less that four months ago, college basketball was being played in front of full houses on campuses across America.  No one knows what this will look like on November 1 – not the smartest viral experts, and certainly not Pitino.

Vaccines are entering the third phase of trials and might be ready for deployment at some point in the fall.  A treatment might be found that will change Covid-19 from killer to less severe pain in the ass.  Maybe the worst happens, and the virus evolves into something even more sinister and deadly.  Who knows?

Certainly not Pitino.

Because of their position of authority over a team and in front of media, some coaches begin to believe deeply in the infallibility of their logic and intellect.  They spout ill-founded nonsense at every turn, as though their opinions matter.  In the absence of people asking them societal questions at press availabilities, as is the case for Pitino now toiling at Iona of the MAAC, they take to Twitter as their outlet for ignorance presented as genius.

The result is the proliferation of foolishness.  We can now add that to the ever-growing list of things we do not need from Rick Pitino.