The Sacramento Kings must be nervous about the emotional maturity of their first round draft pick, DeMarcus Cousins, because there’s no other reason the franchise would hire Cousins’ high school coach, Otis Hughley. Cousins, the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft, is like a 10 year old in a giant 10 year old’s body, so hiring someone to serve as an authority figure is a good idea. Better to be safe than sorry, and in this case, sorry is having the second coming of Eddy Curry.

Cousins was the No. 1 pick by the Kings and Hughley coached him at Mobile (Ala.) LeFlore High.

“Otis has a wealth of experience working with young players and is ready to jump to the NBA,” said coach Paul Westphal. –USA Today

The Kings are hoping that Hughley can be the Bizzaro Don King. Here’s a tip, Sacramento management, when DeMarcus starts dressing like JaMarcus Russell cut him. At which point, you should hire me to run the team, because I know everything about basketball. I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you I was Bill Simmons. Read the rest of this entry »

Syracuse won that game, by the way

Dick Vitale has been a fixture at Tampa Bay Rays games for as long as the franchise has existed. When not day dreaming about Coach K, Vitale can be seen chillaxing at Tropicana Field. But yesterday, his leisure took a turn for the worst when he was nailed by a foul ball.

“First pitch got me right in the rib area,” Vitale told Fox Sports’ Todd Kalas. “(It was the) first time I’ve ever had a line drive in 11 years come into this box since I’ve been here. And I’m going to tell you, man, it came like a bullet, and I was really worried. But fortunately, I feel fine.” –USAToday

Video of said shellacking after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Look, podcasts are still too tech-intensive to be considered out of Dork Domain yet. Any given podcast will never be mainstream, because you have to go off the damn stream to find it. I would know, as I host such an on-and-off piece of media that you could find on your own. But podcasts basically lo-fi radio on the internet–and that’s fine–but let’s not pretend that these things are shaping culture or society in any way. Which brings me to Adam Corolla.

Corolla’s podcast, which was spawned after his nationwide radio talk show was canceled, might be Numero Uno on the internet, iTunes, and anywhere else. So you can imagine his surprise when he was told that ESPN would not allow its staple web writer, Bill Simmons, to make an appearance on Corolla’s show.

CAROLLA: Let me just say a little something to the retards who call themselves bosses over there, because we live in a f`cking time where everyone does that, “good call, good call, good call.” You’re running a f`cking business. This is one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet. Your two clients — Bill Simmons does a podcast, popular, probably not as a popular as this podcast but very popular, and Dave Dameshek does a podcast as well, not nearly as popular as Bill Simmons’, but he still does a podcast. Now, you guys generate income via those podcasts. We share the same audience, essentially. White guys who don’t have delicate sensibilities who are in their 30s and like to play fantasy football.

TERESA: There’s no white guy in his 30s who does not read Bill Simmons.

STOP. I don’t know who “Teresa” is, but there are PLENTY of people that either don’t care about Simmons or have given up on his Boston-centric sports ramblings. Because Simmons, whose writing DID admittedly pave the way for other media outlets like this one, has shut himself off from the outside world. Some people still read him all the time. Great. But he is not this all-encompassing figure in sportswriting. Dude peaked. Bill Simmons is too busy being Bill Simmons now, and while that’s not a bad place to be, Teresa Strasser, Carolla, and their circle o’friends need to wake up and realize that, yeah, we don’t really care.

Turns out Simmons wasn’t banned from the show after all. Either way, Craggs transcribed the Corolla rant in full, which is worth reading for the “retard chicken p`ssy coward” alone. That’s amazing, really, because that’s exactly what I had planned for dinner tonight. Maybe the podcasts are catching on…

Satisfying the demands of at least one person, a game of H-O-R-S-E has been added to the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in Phoenix.

TNT today announced the addition of the popular basketball shot-making game H-O-R-S-E to its programming lineup during its four days of NBA All-Star 2009 coverage… The H-O-R-S-E game will air live during TNT’s two-hour Inside the NBA (5 – 7 p.m. ET) on Saturday, February 14.

Honestly, this news would barely register with me if I hadn’t read Bill Simmons’s constant demands for such a game over the years.  I’m sure he’ll approach this triumph with modesty and deflect any and all attention away from himself.  Except, um, the exact opposite of that.

With Leather editor/patriarch Matt Ufford is in Arizona for Super Bowl festivities.  He will file daily reports from Arizona until at least Monday, February 4th.

My conversation with Rick Reilly was really the highlight of the ESPN party.  (I mean, besides all the hot young tail.  Obviously.)  After that, it was just your typical party — what do you do, where are from, blah blah blah.  A cute Filipino girl stuck her freezing hands in my armpits to warm them up, which is the first time I haven't had to pay for that. 

Then the lights went on and talk turned to after-parties.  I was sober and thinking about going to bed, but I was too curious to see what ESPNers do after hours.  Maybe I'd see Chris Berman doing blow off a hooker's ass.  Maybe Erin Andrew deep-throats bananas as a party trick.

What I got was Bill Simmons and a Real World cast member at a hotel bar.  After last call.

Oh yes, Simmons and the Real World.  I didn't recognize the RW guy — I haven't watched the show in ten years, and all the dudes look pretty much the same any more anyway.  But apparently he's an actor now, and the two were having an LA sort of conversation when I introduced myself.

[A disclaimer here: I don't have any kind of animosity towards Simmons.  I used to read him religiously before I found sports blogs; now I don't read his work at all.  I'm more interested in his role ushering in a generation of bloggers than I am, say, denouncing him or calling him the Urtard or putting a bounty on his hands.]

And so I joined in the conversation — hey! I've been to LA! — and we all got along very nicely, me being the genial guy that I am.  Then came the questions about my occupation.  I'm a writer.  What kind of writer?  A sports writer.  Who do you write for?  Blogs.  Which blog?  With Leather.

"Oh," Bill said, "that's a good one."

"Oh.  Well thank you."  (Note: Sooooooooooo glad I didn't mention Kissing Suzy Kolber.)

"All of this is off the record, by the way."

And, well, that kinda sucked.  Because I'm not out to get anyone, and if I could share the conversation we had, he might come off as looking like a cool guy.  I told him not to worry, I'm way more interested in writing about athletes and hot chicks than I am sports writers, and that I'd only written about him once, when he donned the spandex suit for NBA Live '08 [Ed. note -- after checking the archives, I was mistaken about that.  Also, that image by 289 was hilarious.]

So the conversation rolled along, we'd be enjoying ourselves, and he'd express an opinion or dish some dirt about a fellow ESPN employee, then look at me and say, "Don't write about that, either."  I understand: he wasn't being a douche so much as we was trying to protect himself from possible fallout, but c'mon man!  Give me something!

And that's when he said, loudly, just as I was making my exit, "Is that Michael Irvin trying to steal liquor from the bar?"

Sure enough, there was Irvin, dressed all in black at the far end of the bar.  I can't say what his intentions were, but to me, he appeared to be leaning over the bar and casing the joint. When Simmons spoke, he looked up with a hand-in-the-cookie jar kind of look, then broke into a warm smile and headed over to us.  He embraced John Walsh — the elderly, bearded albino whose behind-the-scenes work brought SportsCenter to prominence — then greeted us with handshakes and smiles. 

I can see why it took ESPN so long to fire him: the guy is impossibly likable.  And he likes coke and hookers!  I should have asked him for tips on body disposal.

Wow.  When today began my heroes were people like Chesty Puller, Smedley Butler, Dan Daly, and John Bobo.  But what the hell have they done for me lately?  My new heroes are the guys behind the StupidFilter Project.  They're developing software that recognizes idiotic comments and refuses to publish them, a development that would save me a couple hours every week.  From their FAQ:

Isn't filtering stupidity elitist?

Yes. Yes, it is. That's sort of the whole point.

 

What do you plan to filter?

The idea is that the most egregiously stupid comments will also be the easiest to detect while remaining ignorant of context; comments with too much or too little capitalization, too many text-message abbreviations, excessive use of "LOL," exclamation points, and so on.

I wanna send these guys all of my money to make it happen sooner.

While we're on the subject of offensive idiocy, how about Bill Simmons's column today?  No, no: don't read it!  The hot air and sense of entitlement will burn you!  Instead, take action and collect the $20 bounty on his hands.

[Tech-Ex]