An Open Letter to Adrian Wojnarowski

In Reply to: "Miles separated Blazers GM from greatness" Woj, I wanted to reply to your recent article on the Darius Miles-Kevin Pritchard fiasco. There are several pieces of rebuttal that you never even begun to shed light on, and you seem to perpetuate this personal attack on the Blazers' front office with no real argument. First of all, independent doctors deemed Darius' injury to be career-ending - they are the ones that stamped the label of "medical retirement" on Darius - not the Blazers front office. But, the front office, obviously, relished that it had a "dirty" bill of health for Miles. Pritchard has made no secret that his goal was to change the character of the Blazers organization - and Darius was the man that needed to be gone to make that image complete. During his years as a Blazer, he showed his continued immaturity and presented absolutely no passion for the game. Darius was the "poison pill" that allowed writers like you to keep up the "Jail Blazers" tag on the franchise. Not only was Darius a malingering drain on the franchise, but his contract made him virtually untradeable (a fault of the Blazers, I know). So why shouldn't Pritchard, and more importantly Paul Allen, try and see the injury as the only means of escape from a bad situation? Keep in mind, this is Paul Allen, he didn't get to where he is by handing out money in 8 million dollar chunks willy nilly. Why shouldn't he feel personally attacked when his own money is as stake? Would you, for example, roll over for millions of your own dollars in a case like this? Put yourself in Paul's shoes. You protect your investment. Did the Blazers' do everything right? Absolutely not. But, did they also receive some injustice in being thrust into this situation? Absolutely. I applaud Darius in coming back from this injury - it shows a lot more character than he portrayed in Portland. It's a shame that the Blazers' fueled the fire for Darius to play again, but no one is blaming Darius. And no one should. Perhaps the blame is on writers that continually use this as a personal dart board with Kevin Pritchard's face plastered on it. It's lazy writing and by no means a new story (why don't you research the Fortune 500 companies that protect their investments in an even more unethical way?). I hope in the future to read much less ireful, and hopefully more insightful, BASKETBALL commentary from the writers at Yahoo! Sports. Sincerely, Rosco P.S. More insightful commentary from someone WAY smarter than me here.

Happy New Year, Idiots

So it took exactly one day into the New Year for Ol' Woj to come up with an apologia for Good Ol' Brett vis-a-vis a non-comparison comparison with Aaron Rodgers. Gene tries to set it up like it's a wash while constantly bringing up little asides on how Favre's division was tougher, how Rodgers had more prep time (and who, exactly is to blame for that?) and how Rodgers sucked from coming from behind. Oh yeah, and Favre threw a ton of picks. A league-leading amount of picks, in fact. His skill players were worse though, so it's cool. I'd also like to set an over/under of a week for Ol' Woj to respond to Thomas Jones calling out Favre for being selfish and a shitty teammate who distanced himself from the other players. Double or nothing if he compares Jones disfavorably to Obama. To move across the pond, sad news from Soccernet, where Phil Ball, half of the writers on that site worth reading (the other half being Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger*), has moved on to ply his trade else where. This means that rather than thoughtful and nuanced pieces that manage to take a reasonable and knowledgable stance on the sport itself (not to mention understanding that there's more to sport than just sport), we're stuck with dross like this. The weakest part of a weak article is the passage making fun of Marouane Fellaini, whose main fault seems to be that he hasn't become a worldwide star in his three months or so in the EPL. Oh, sorry Marouane, your ability to adjust to an incredibly physical and demanding league in a short time and become an integral part of a good team while showcasing your ability to both attack and defend while playing multiple roles as the team suffers an injury crisis is made moot because you have a silly haircut and cost more money than the cheap shit that whoever writes this crap gets lashed on every night. Happy New Year, motherfuckers. * - And it's no conincidence that these writers are more strongly affiliated with the mighty good When Saturday Comes rather than the corporate blockheadedness of The Worldwide Leader.