Of salary caps and forgetfulness

I had a great idea for a post, so I logged onto the blog and decided to rant my guts out . Then... I forgot what my great idea was and am left floundering in the world of indecisive no man's land.


But there are always dynasties. There has been much talk lately that the Spurs are either at or approaching Dynasty status. Their main boast? They have won four titles in nine years. What? Nine YEARS?! That isn't even one every two years! That is crap! In the middle of their "reign", another team won three times in a row, and is probably closer to dynasty status than they are. Four titles in nine years for the NBA is nothing. Are the Lakers a dynasty right now because they have won three titles in eight years? This entire idea is absurd. Never mind the fact that their first victory was in a strike year where no one really has a clue who the champion should have been, or that the only remaining player from that team on the current team is Tim Duncan. Even if that championship was legitimate, they have never even won twice in a row.


Several times they have been bounced in the second round. And who have they won these "championships" against? In 2003 they only won because the Lakers, a vastly superior team, couldn't get by their own egos to go ahead and win the dang thing. In 2007 they got the title handed to them by David Stern, who screwed the Suns like no team has been screwed since the Raiders and the tuck rule. Heck it was even worse than that. At least that was a call on the field, not a dirty team playing so cheap and so below the belt and then getting rewarded for it. The only championship they didn't simply win by default was 2005. Some dynasty.


But this underlies a problem of more impressive proportions within the sports obsessed community. Dynasties are not this common! Winning a couple titles in a couple of years doesn't make you a dynasty. The argument could be made that only two professional sports teams are really dynasties: The Celtics of the Russell era, and the Yankees, period. The first won nine championships in a row or some other outrageous number. The second wins championships all the time, and has for EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS. Yeah that is a long time. If we are going to include slightly lesser teams in this discussion, the Jordan Bulls get in (6 in 8 years, and they would have had 8 in 8 years if Jordan had never wasted time striking out), the Steelers' 4 out of 6 get in (for football, that is mildly amazing), and maybe, maybe the Lakers of the eighties get in. But this nonsense about teams that sort of, kind of win four titles in nine years? Outlandish. Outrageous. And in the words of Jim Rome: Riiiiiiiiiii-DIC-u-lous.



The Yankees are awful. They are really, really awful.



Oh yeah! Well I was originally planning to write about my revulsion at the overused and loony phrase: "They're a blue collar, bring your lunch pale to work team"



Alright, first of all, the bring your lunch pale to work thing is nonsense. Never mind the fact that most of the morons who spout these phrases (I'm looking at you, Mark Schlereth) shorten the phrase to simply a "lunch pale" team. As absurd as that is (a lunch pale team? What are the other teams? Lunch BOX teams?), the ridiculous thing is that none of these guys bring any type of lunch-carrying device to work.



Blue collar? Well football, basketball and baseball players don't even have collars, so I find this inane, but since they are all making more money than Harvard Lawyers, blue collar simply seems to come up short as far as describing exactly how we should look at these teams.



Another problem is that "blue collar" teams like the Steelers usually lose to... uh, I guess we'll call them "white collar" teams like the Colts, so this moniker is hardly a compliment, even though the analysts usually intend it as such.



But finally, these supposed "blue collar teams" who play hard and rough and "smashmouth" (i abhor that phrase) football/basketball/baseball scarcely work any harder than those precision machines like the Colts. Peyton Manning works harder than anyone. But he is not "blue collar" because his team scores too often. It really boils down to this: blue collar teams don't score much, and "white collar" teams do. So I guess that even in sports, we should to ditch the blue collars?



It just doesn't make any sense.



Anyway, the NBA draft came and went without any interesting events. A few trades and such, the necessary Pheonix middle finger to their fans, and basically enough dull crap to suck the life out of any sports writer anywhere.



I suppose I could have warned you before you suffered through this post.



~The Sports Maunderer~