The Loss Column — Baltimore Sports Blog and Community

The National Basketball Association.

Words that may make a number of you cringe, undoubtedly. While I understand the typical qualms with the sport, often I find these are just excuses. There’s plenty to love about professional basketball and I’m of the opinion that the sport is improving. Perhaps NBA commissioner David Stern said it best the other day:

“Amazing is where 81 points happens, where Ben Wallace’s hair happens, where Yao Ming happens, where caring happens. Where Donaghy happens, where clubbing happens, where registered weapons happen. We invite our fans to mesh up whatever happens. It’s all there. With the playoffs and preseason, we have close to 1,500 episodes of the best reality programming that plays around the world. That reality happens, fortunately or unfortunately, on the court and off the court. It includes everything. We are the absolute reflection of what’s going on out there in the world. Anyone who doesn’t think so doesn’t know what’s going on in the world.”

Give the commish some credit for being so forthcoming about the league’s more unsavory aspects. Don’t mistake that for him not caring about these issues – on the contrary, he’s been criticized for cleaning up the sport a little too much. But unlike Bud Selig, he’s smart enough to come out and talk about these issues to draw interest to his sport. Because it is interesting. Honestly, do we really want a league full of Tim Duncans?

In order to enjoy the NBA, you have to accept its silliness. You have to understand that yes, the fourth quarter is the most important quarter, after all, and that it’s ok to tune in a little later into the game. And you have to feel strongly about one or two teams. Of course, if you’re a Pacers fan or a soon-to-be-Kobe-less Lakers fan, then I can’t help you – it’s going to be painfully slow brick-fest for most of the year. Fortunately, Baltimore does have a basketball team – it just moved to DC awhile ago – and it’s a good one. Embrace.

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Be safe out there, kiddies, and send pics if you do anything interesting (like carve up a mudflap girl pumpkin).

A few points on the week just passed and the week to come…

– Yes, the Patriots were running up the score, and yes it was a low-class move. This is news to who, exactly?

I was dead wrong in my prediction about the Redskins, but in fairness you have to grant that I didn’t know at the time they’d be without both starting corners for most of the game. I think pretty much any team in that position will struggle to hold the Pats under forty.

– The Steelers have not yet staked a claim as the class of the AFC North, but they’re close. Which means that this week’s game against the Ravens has as many postseason implications as any game in week nine possibly could.

The Ravens have a chance to take this one, but it’s just that: a chance. I put the odds at about 60-40 for the Steelers, but if the Ravens somehow do manage a win then we need to completely rethink our collective read on this team.

At the same token…they also have to watch their back for the Browns. Yup, the Browns. One Monday night game will find Billick’s boys either claiming a share of the division lead or scrambling with Cleveland to avoid a third-place finish. Weird.

– Look out for the Packers, man. Hell of a win last night.

– And, of course, there’s this Sunday’s Patriots-Colts tilt — a game I’m not sure I could possibly care less about. I try to avoid talking about things that are being talked about everywhere else, but I can’t really get away with not at least mentioning this, so here you go.

My sense is that the Colts will find a way to pull it out, but I’m not feeling any great conviction. What I’d really like to see is for Tom Brady to sprain an ankle and miss three or four weeks. Then we’d finally get a feel for just how good the 07 Patriots really are.

And you?

The Red Sox are world champions, and I’ve made my peace with it. As much as I dislike that team and their fans it’s both difficult and pointless to keep up the Hate now that it’s over. And besides, as of now the Sox and the Orioles are tied for first place in the 2008 AL East. We may as well enjoy it all winter because it probably won’t last too far into April.

The difficulty here is that The Loss Column, for a variety of reasons, has become known primarily as an Orioles/baseball site. We’ve started to make the transition to covering other sports, and I think it’s going well, but I want to hammer the point home now that baseball is on hiatus.

For starters, we’re going to have regular Wizards coverage courtesy of a new contributor whose name you’ll all immediately recognize. I’ll ramp up my coverage of both the Capitals and hockey in general, mostly because I like it. We’ll talk plenty of Terps basketball and we’ll talk plenty (even more than we have been) of NFL football. And, of course, we’ll stay on top of the Hot Stove season and we’ll have plenty of room to discuss the Tejada and Bedard trades.

We will continue to be, in other words, a “Baltimore Sports Community”. With any luck we can not only hold onto what we’ve got but continue to grow it leading up to Spring Training.

I’m also open, as always, to suggestions. Email me or post in the comments. Mi Loss Column es su Loss Column.

Thanks as always.

The Ravens may be on a bye this week but that’s all the better considering we’ve got two potentially great matchups on tap.

The Steelers are at Cincy at 1 pm for a game that they need to win after losing at Denver last week. They don’t want to face the Ravens next Monday with outright control of the division on the line.

The Redskins are at New England for the late game, giving up something like seventeen points. Ridiculous. I’m here to tell you two things: one, the ‘Skins have a chance in this game. Not saying they’re going to win, but they have a chance. Two, they’ll cover that insane spread and hold the Patriots under 30, win or lose.

The Browns are at St. Louis. I don’t know what the over/under is for this game, but while you’re putting a few hundred on the ‘Skins you might want to bet the over for this one.

Then later tonight it’s another Rockies-Sox tilt. I bet we can all guess how that one’s going to turn out.

All that and NASCAR and hockey and the MLS playoffs continuing….let it fly.

Fast and dirty, as I’m on my way out. Viva Josh Fogg.

Floor’s open…if you’re around…

It’s that time of year again again. Leaves, Leafs, candy apples, Candy Samples, light wraps (including but not limited to shawls, tunics, neo-wimples, and jumpers), used Type O Negative CDs, Dane Cook, the farthest time from when employees of the PAAS corporation have to think about going back to work again, and best of all, gratuitous use of the suffix “-tober”.

The newest entry to the list (which previously included Z104.3 The Edge’s Rock-tober, Martin Yan’s Wok-tober, Bushwick Bill’s Glock-tober, The Dukes of Hazzard Appreciation Society’s Catherine Bach-tober, etc) comes to us from ESPN’s MLS Primetime Thursday. Yup, it’s “Socc-tober” according to Rob Stone (guy who used to play soccer and now just talks about it on the TV).

After proclaiming this newly crowned “–tober”, Rob went on the show us WHY the prefix “Socc-” is so apt. Apparently, this is when the MLS playoffs happen. And before the DC United v. ,b>Chicago Fire 1st leg match, we got the obligatory “Let’s try to rope in the folks who flipped to ESPN instinctively during a World Series commercial break” feature, which consisted of a comparative baseball/soccer montage: “We’ve got strikes, steals, and slides too!” No lie, that was an actually quote. Now the potential viewer is bored because he realizes it’s soccer (because there’s not that much scoring in soccer and excitement and intrigue only come with scoring and LOTS of it, see the NHL) on the other end of the spectrum, the dedicated soccer fan is insulted and embarrassed at the overt pandering to Joe Nascar.

Add this to the litany of poor marketing strategies the MLS/EPSN has rolled out in an attempt to snag new fans. Instead of marketing to the core audience who knows and faithfully follows the game, they continually choose to alienate that demographic with constant attempts to draw parallels to American sports (”They’re in the red zone!”, “We’re coming up on the 2 minute warning.”, “The attacking midfielder is like the quarterback of the team.”), and the continuous explanations of the rules and practices, made famous by Dave O’Brien and his “This is an example of the spirit of the game!”, uttered every time a ball is purposefully played into touch while an opposing player is injured. That’s American soccer coverage: plenty of dumbin’ it down, hypin’ it up, and Sierra Mist.

The ESPN Thursday night MLS team had previously injected some insta-cred by including international soccer mainstay, the leprechaunish Tommy Smyth, whose catch phrase “bulge in the ol’ onion sack” is the comedy gold at the end of a dreary American soccer commentator rainbow. Instead, we get the Alex P. Keaton of the soccer world, the surly, snarky Eric Wynalda who is best known as Landon Donovan’s less-talented predecessor.

Last night, Eric thought it acceptable to liken the red flames of the road flares fans had set off in the crowd to the wildfires destroying homes and lives in Southern California. Yes. And aside from making light-hearted references to a continuing tragedy, Eric wouldn’t shut up about how “hated” Cuauhtémoc Blanco is despite every other spectator in the crowd wearing his #10 jersey.

This collective hatred that we are supposed to hold can be traced back to Blanco’s Mexican national team consistently dominating Wynalda’s US national team during the 90s. A lack of commentator objectivity due to unresolved issues and past failures (Tony Kornheiser) or blatant homerism (the Redskins radio broadcast team) is usually a recipe for unintentional hilarity, but Wynalda’s agenda is much too pitiful.

Not even the silky, lovable Valium that is Julie Foudy could save this embarrassing production. Instead of letting her do color commentary, which she has done more than competently in the past, they shove her into the Keyshawn Johnson/Shannon Sharpe novelty corner of the coverage desk. “Hey look everybody! It’s a girl! How crazy is THAT?” Julie is too dignified and sleepy to be up that late and not have a major speaking role. ESPN, please for the love of the game soccer and the people who watch it, put Julie Foudy up front where she belongs and give her a new Sierra Mist X with invigorating Ginkgo Biloba and other botanical extracts and sugar. We’re sure she can hit it out of the park, take it to the house, drive the lane for an and-one, and maybe even put the bulge in the ol’ onion sack.

“One Julie Fooooudy!! There’s only ONE Julie Foooooooudy!!!”

Today feels like a good day for some kind of Baltimore sports news to break. It’s a Friday, it’s a Ravens bye week, we’re on a three-day run of rain and chill. If you wanted some news to slip out, this afternoon wouldn’t be a bad time to do it.

So just in case, here’s a place to talk about it if it happens.

In other news, DC United fell at Chicago last night, 1-0. The way MLS playoffs work is that the two-game series is decided on the total number of goals scored, so when Chicago comes to town on Thursday the United are basically starting out at -1. Not insurmountable.

The Capitals impressed me last Saturday in their loss against the Penguins. This team is very tough — much more so, it seems, than other Caps teams of recent vintage. They’re sitting at 4-4 — not a bad start. They’ll look to improve that tonight as the Vancouver Canucks and their rad new jerseys come to town.

Anything else on your mind, let ‘er rip.