I don’t know why Anna-Megan Raley blogs for CBS Houston under the name Claire Crawford, but after last week, I assume it’s because it allowed her to get away with writing incendiary click bait with headlines like, “Is This Girl ‘Too Chunky’ To Be An OKC Thunder Cheerleader?” Yeah, sh*t just got real.

First, let’s consider some actual talking points for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. For starters, there’s the question of how the team plans to return to the Finals with Russell Westbrook out for the playoffs after knee surgery. One step further, there’s the timing of Kevin Durant’s Sports Illustrated cover, on which he claims he’s ready to be the NBA’s No. 1, as he must now carry the Thunder on his back. And there are obviously many more angles one could run with, but Raley believed that a Thunder dancer’s muffin top was the Pulitzer magnet.

Raley drew the ire of her site’s readers and beyond when she asked the aforementioned question of Thunder dancer Kelsey Williams, who you can see in the banner image.

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File photo.

Last week, Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs wrote a fantastic response to Sports Illustrated’s Thomas Lake, who penned a scathing, fart-sniffing letter to Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan about what he supposedly owed his former high school basketball coach, Pop Herring, who suffers from a mental illness, among other things. You can read Lake’s humongous pat on the back to himself here, and then I’m sure you can track down the online fundraiser that he started to really stick it to Jordan. If it helps Lake sleep better at night, then good for him, but I’m more curious about what it all represents.

At some point in the last few years, it became a trend to hate Jordan. As I pointed out during the NBA Lockout last summer, players picked him as the bad guy, because – aside from maybe Mark Cuban – Jordan is the most recognizable owner. But they also obviously picked him because he actually played the game, and they felt that he should have had their backs. I wrote that he shouldn’t, because A) he’s already done so much for paving the way to fortune for the league’s stars and B) he’s an owner now, and he has to worry about himself and his team.

Now, if people want to argue that they hate him because he sucks as an owner, I can get on board with that. However, the idea that he owes certain people something because he’s rich is just lazy. And yesterday, our friends at Buzzfeed found something even lazier.

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"Your eyes are like oceans on a faraway star."

Earlier this week, we checked in with our With Leather political correspondent, Dick Tughard, to find out if any professional athletes had been grumbling about President Barack Obama’s sudden support for same sex marriage. Sure enough, professional boxer and Filipino congressman Manny Pacquiao was the first to step forward and stomp his feet in disgust.

OR DID HE???

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When it comes to sports “writers” I’m pretty bipolar over Jason Whitlock. On one hand, I think he’s absolutely hilarious in his unapologetic relentlessness of shoehorning himself into stories. His accusation that Derek Fisher is in cahoots with David Stern to convince the NBA players union to end the lockout by taking a deal that favors the owners is a riot, from the anonymous source to the way he peppered his rambling idea with comparisons to “The Wire.”

On the other hand, the same traits that make me laugh so much are also so incredibly abhorrent and pathetic for someone who claims to be a journalist. But that’s who Whitlock is and that’s what Fox Sports pays him to be, so we have to live with it while he “does the damn thing.” And the latest damn thing that he’s doing? Exposing Michael Jordan for being the greedy corporate pig that he is.

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Things are just an absolute disaster for the Boston Red Sox right now. First, they managed to produce one of the biggest regular season collapses in Major League Baseball history. Then, they made manager Terry Francona the scapegoat and booted him despite the fact that he led them to two World Series victories after an eternity of disappointment and dismay. Yesterday, General Manager Theo Epstein signed a 5-year contract to be the GM (and more!) of the Chicago Cubs. And now the Sox ownership and anonymous players are kicking Francona while he’s down by labeling him a drug abuser and emotional sissy boy. It’s quite the fahkin’ soap ahperah!

So can it get any worse? Hypothetically, yes. You see, David Ortiz spoke with ESPN’s Colleen Dominguez the other day and he admitted that he would play for the… *GASP* NEW YORK YANKEES!

“There’s too much drama, man,” Ortiz told Dominguez* in reference to the Red Sox. “There’s too much drama. I have been thinking about a lot of things. I don’t know if I want to be a part of this drama for next year.”

But would Ortiz really consider defecting to the other side of baseball’s biggest rivalry?

“That’s something I gotta think about,” Ortiz said. “I’ve been here on the Red Sox a long time, and I’ve seen how everything goes down between these two ballclubs.”

For instance, he’s seen how Johnny Damon was treated when he went from being an “idiot” to being the enemy. But that’s neither here nor there, because Ortiz is simply a free agent DH. He had a phenomenal contract year with 29 home runs and 98 RBI. But he’s also old and large and those things don’t bode well for a free agent. So let’s look at this for what it really is – a non-story created by a question that can’t actually be answered.

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The banner image is from an article on Huffington Post yesterday about reports from Media Takeout that Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom and his wife Khloe Kardashian were in a horrific, terrifying, catastrophic car accident and apparently almost died in the process. In fact, Media Takeout called the wreck “DEVASTATING” while describing how Odom’s new car “SMASHED” into a motorcyclist while Odom was DRIVING TO A BARBER SHOP. Sorry, I was bitten by the sensationalist bug there for a second.

In reality, the accident was pretty bad… for the motorcyclist and a pedestrian. Lamar and Khloe – or Khlomar, as they’ve asked me to call them – are just fine.

The cyclist is now in ELMHURST hospital in Queens. Early reports are that a YOUNG BOY – who was a pedestrian IN THE VICINITY when the accident occurred was also SERIOUSLY INJURED.

We’re told that neither Lamar, nor his wife Khloe Kardashian who is in NYC with him, were injured. (Via Media Takeout)

Seriously, the people at Media Takeout write like they have Tourette’s, but the main emphasis in this report is on Khloe being unharmed. Mainly because it would have been remarkable for her to be injured when she wasn’t even with her husband. But I know I shouldn’t be surprised that a tabloid gossip site like MTO would stoop to posting misleading headlines to attract traffic (says the guy throwing out 50-page slideshows of Kate Upton’s big ol’ bags) but I expect a little more out of Huffington Post. I’m not sure why, but I do. As for MTO, though, I think the site’s ambitious headline writing and target audience can best be summed up by commenter, urboysdreamgirl504…

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