When I heard Joe Maloof's comments about Reggie Theus on the Rise Guys radio show last week, one thought popped into my head. Welcome to being a Kings fan Joe.
The Maloofs bought the Kings at the tail end of the 90s and got insanely lucky when the '99 lockout ended. In the years before the lockout, and coincidently before the Maloofs owned the team, the Kings flat out sucked. They couldn't rebound, they blew games in the 4th quarter, they turned the ball over constantly and they barely played anything resembling defense. Sound familiar? You think Brad Miller's bad defensivly? You've obviously forgotten a time when Olden Polynice patrolled the paint.
As most people know, the post-lockout team differed vastly from the Kings of the 90s. We drafted White Chocolate, traded Mitch Richmond for Chris Webber, finally lured Peja over from the Greek league, and signed walking chimney Vlade Divac. I was at the first post-lockout game at Arco. I recognized one player from the 90s (Corliss Willamson), if there was one thing I took away from that game it was that change might finally have come to Sacramento.
Fast forward 9 years or so and change is once again arriving in Sactown. One of the big offseason storylines was the impending youth movement. The last few people holding onto the glory years of the early '00s finally realized that it's over. I get the feeling one of those people was Joe Maloof.
Now I don't fault Joe Maloof for saying what he said. It's his team and he can say whatever the fuck he wants. I just wish he didn't think what he thought. But I understand why he thinks so. He's not used to his team reeking of sucktitue.
Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a die-hard vs. bandwagon debate. I'm just pointing out that Joe Maloof is pissed because this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel for him. Sure, the team sucked when he bought it, even if not for very long, but at least he could always count on a sold out Arco bringing in revenue. Now? Notsomuch.
The result? A Maloof freakout of epic proportions. They gave us what we wanted! Ron's gone, Bobby Jackson's back, no more playoff delusions, double the amount of $10 tickets. What more could we posisbly want? Why aren't we showing up to games? This is Reggie's fault! Fans would show up if we could defend better from behing the arc! Quick! Someone call up the Kevin Nash so we can do a basketball version of Fuse's "Redemption Song"! (Unfortunately "Rebuilding the Kingdom" will probably be hosted by Angela Tsai.)
Well, I'm here to offer Joe and the rest of the Maloof family some advice from a lifelong Kings fan. Calm the fuck down. For one, I don't know if you've been paying attention but the team's actually not that bad. Sure things started out kind of ugly, but we're a young team. We still have to find our rhythm. Plus, we're injured. El Flacco hasn't played a game this season and Kevin Martin's been out. We've played pretty well considering our best player and our best 6th man have been out most of this short season.
Why be negative? Reggie didn't sprain Kev's ankle. He didn't take a golf club to Cisco. The only thing Reg is guilty of this season is denying us his glorious lip warmer (and posisbly leaving Mikki Moore in the starting lineup way too long).
Attendence will pick up too once people see the exciting brand of basketball the team can play when at full strength. You saw that New Orleans game last night right? That was fucking awesome. Remember the game before that? Yeah, it blew. That's how this entire season is going to be. Highs as high as Brad Miller and then lows as low as Kenny Thomas' self-esteem with a bit of Shock and Hawes interspersed throughout. Yes, it's frustrating. Consider it your right of passage. You want to be accepted instead of regarded as the outsider billionaire from the Carl's Jr. ad? Take your lumps like I had to in the 90s and you'll be fine. Trust me, the past couple years have been a cakewalk compared to the 90s. The 90s had the youthful frontcourt combo of Brian Grant, Yogi Stewart, and Mike "The Animial" Smith. The 00s has Jason "Shock" Thompson and Spencer Hawes. Your lumps aren't that bad. But still, welcome to being a Kings fan.
Showing posts with label sports column. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports column. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
In which we finally say "fuck it" and write the sports column the Record should have
Since the Record's apparently ditched the concept of a sports column, I've decided to pick up the slack. Feel free to print this up and glue it over whatever bullshit they put on the front of the sports section this week. Noone cares about women's basketball anyways. And yes, I purposely picked a subject the Record all but completely ignores to point out how shitty their overall sports coverage is. So here goes...
UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar, good or bad for MMA?
Being a fan of both Mixed Martial Arts and pro wrestling, a lot of my MMA fan friends would ask me what I thought Brock Lesnar's chances against Randy Couture were. Most people I talked to thought Couture was going to pick Lesnar apart and expose him as the fake wrestling fraud they thought he was. I wasn't so confident.
While Couture is superior to Lesnar in pretty much every facet of MMA, people seem to forget just how big, strong, and fast Lesnar is. That may not completely make up for his still-developing fighting skills, but the discrepancy between Lesnar's size, strength, and speed and Couture's is almost a big as the new heavyweight champ himself. Plus, having fists the size of a Thanksgiving turkey helps.
As most people know by now, Lesnar caught Couture in the second round right on the temple with one of those turkey-sized fists and became the first man to become both WWE champion and UFC champion. And as with all sports the negative Nancys came out almost immediately, calling his title reign a disgrace to the sport MMA. The guy did fake wrestling for fuck's sake. Now people will discredit UFC because they have a former fake wrestler champion.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I disagree with those claims. For one, people tend to forget (or ignore) the fact that before he was WWE champ, he was an NCAA Champion in wrestling. Most MMA experts agree that wrestling is the best base skillset a fighter can have when getting into the sport.
I also disagree with the notion that his percieved inexperience is a bad thing. What happens if Couture wins? He beats the winner of next month's Nogueira/Mir fight and then the slow burn towards Fedor/Couture would have continued. He's already pretty much mowed through all the viable heavyweights so the only real money fight he had left was the fight with Fedor.
With Brock winning the title, the UFC has multiple fresh matchups they can build PPVs around. Some of the more intriguing matchups would be a rematch with the only guy to beat Lesnar, Frank Mir. Especially if he beats Nogueira to make it a title unification fight. Chuck Liddell's flirted with moving up a weight class, which would make for a great battle of punching power. And you can't tell me a potential Lesnar/Gonzaga fight doesn't get your dick a little hard.
Perhaps the biggest reason Lesnar winning the title is good for MMA is it could mark the return of the legitimate heavyweight. Don't get me wrong, I think Couture is a tremendous fighter, but he doesn't look like a heavyweight. Lesnar out weighed him by 40 pounds (officially, legitimately it was more like 60) in their fight. Couture is a heavy light-heavyweight. Lesnar has to cut weight to make heavyweight. I don't have any stats to back this up, but having a dude who looks as imposing as Lesnar does can only be good for the UFC. Hell, EliteXC only survived for as long as it did because of the imposing-looking Kimbo Slice. If there's one thing casual fight fans want to see, it's two big dudes beating the shit out of each other. Sure the lower weight classes provide entertaining fights, but the heavyweight division has been the money division going back to the days of boxing.
Look, I understand the arguement against Lesnar's quick rise in the UFC. Lesnar himself said before the fight that he probably didn't deserve a title shot this early in his career. But at the end of the day, anything that increases the exposure of MMA (Ok, anything that doesn't involve a hit-and-run in an SUV with your likeness plastered on the side) is a good thing for the sport.
UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar, good or bad for MMA?
Being a fan of both Mixed Martial Arts and pro wrestling, a lot of my MMA fan friends would ask me what I thought Brock Lesnar's chances against Randy Couture were. Most people I talked to thought Couture was going to pick Lesnar apart and expose him as the fake wrestling fraud they thought he was. I wasn't so confident.
While Couture is superior to Lesnar in pretty much every facet of MMA, people seem to forget just how big, strong, and fast Lesnar is. That may not completely make up for his still-developing fighting skills, but the discrepancy between Lesnar's size, strength, and speed and Couture's is almost a big as the new heavyweight champ himself. Plus, having fists the size of a Thanksgiving turkey helps.
As most people know by now, Lesnar caught Couture in the second round right on the temple with one of those turkey-sized fists and became the first man to become both WWE champion and UFC champion. And as with all sports the negative Nancys came out almost immediately, calling his title reign a disgrace to the sport MMA. The guy did fake wrestling for fuck's sake. Now people will discredit UFC because they have a former fake wrestler champion.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I disagree with those claims. For one, people tend to forget (or ignore) the fact that before he was WWE champ, he was an NCAA Champion in wrestling. Most MMA experts agree that wrestling is the best base skillset a fighter can have when getting into the sport.
I also disagree with the notion that his percieved inexperience is a bad thing. What happens if Couture wins? He beats the winner of next month's Nogueira/Mir fight and then the slow burn towards Fedor/Couture would have continued. He's already pretty much mowed through all the viable heavyweights so the only real money fight he had left was the fight with Fedor.
With Brock winning the title, the UFC has multiple fresh matchups they can build PPVs around. Some of the more intriguing matchups would be a rematch with the only guy to beat Lesnar, Frank Mir. Especially if he beats Nogueira to make it a title unification fight. Chuck Liddell's flirted with moving up a weight class, which would make for a great battle of punching power. And you can't tell me a potential Lesnar/Gonzaga fight doesn't get your dick a little hard.
Perhaps the biggest reason Lesnar winning the title is good for MMA is it could mark the return of the legitimate heavyweight. Don't get me wrong, I think Couture is a tremendous fighter, but he doesn't look like a heavyweight. Lesnar out weighed him by 40 pounds (officially, legitimately it was more like 60) in their fight. Couture is a heavy light-heavyweight. Lesnar has to cut weight to make heavyweight. I don't have any stats to back this up, but having a dude who looks as imposing as Lesnar does can only be good for the UFC. Hell, EliteXC only survived for as long as it did because of the imposing-looking Kimbo Slice. If there's one thing casual fight fans want to see, it's two big dudes beating the shit out of each other. Sure the lower weight classes provide entertaining fights, but the heavyweight division has been the money division going back to the days of boxing.
Look, I understand the arguement against Lesnar's quick rise in the UFC. Lesnar himself said before the fight that he probably didn't deserve a title shot this early in his career. But at the end of the day, anything that increases the exposure of MMA (Ok, anything that doesn't involve a hit-and-run in an SUV with your likeness plastered on the side) is a good thing for the sport.
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