BOSTON IRISH: June 2011

Monday, June 27, 2011

Laziness and or racism in sports reporting: Making fun of European names is still racism.

So we’re all still laughing at sporting pundits horribly botching foreign names? This still passes as humour? Sporting commentary really needs to come into the 21st century. Memo to ageing, decaying-before-our eyes sports casters, it is not cool to say ‘I can’t pronounce foreign names!’ any more. It’s not cool to say it, it’s not cool to joke about it. No matter what way to try to pass it off, it isn’t funny. At best it’s lazy, at worst it’s racism at its most basic level.

Be it Paul Merson’s mumbling, bumbling act on Sky Sports, or Jeff Van Gundy during the NBA draft, making jokes about a foreigner’s name is nothing short of pathetic.

The NBA draft on Thursday night really brought it to light, however we have been accepting this shoddy, simple minded behaviour for years now, and if we truly are an evolving species, its time to say, enough is enough. How on earth is it okay for an extremely well paid professional to lazily fart out a pathetic, erroneous attempt at a mans name just because he is from another country? Also, how is this funny?

Let’s flip the coin for a second.

Imagine an NBA team is playing in Europe. Imagine the only live feed available is the European commentary team, and for whatever reason (come on, were ‘imagining’ here) their broadcast is in English. That’s the broadcast that airs in the States. Now, imagine if the European commentary team constantly made fun of the Black NBA players names, looks, style and habits.

Can you imagine the sanctimonious uproar in the United States?

Well that’s exactly what is going on right now amongst wide swathes of the mainstream US sporting media. Apparently it is absolutely okay to make fun of foreigners.

Think this piece is going too far, and think this isn’t an issue? Well if you want to blindfold yourself and walk away from the obviously racist undertones, if you want to stick your head emu like in the sand, how do you explain the lack of professional preparation? These idiots are being paid very, very good money to report on sports to us. It’s a simple task, and an enjoyable one too, one that many of us would give a limb to partake in. And yet these simple minded, lazy fools can not be bothered to do the minimum level of research to find out how to pronounce a players name? Really? And we’re all cool with this?

Of course this phenomenon, of sports broadcasters and media types barely managing to disguise either that professional laziness or their inherent racism (take your pick) is not exclusive to the TV or the radio. The written word is a perfectly good vehicle for the unimaginative, lazy mind to belch out their semi-passive yet ultimately toxic wares.

There’s a new, enormous online sporting media project going on as we speak, trying to lure us all in with its quasi laid back attitude and colourful coating of popular culture. They are painting themselves as some sort of enlightened, new, fresh look at sports reporting. They are validating that desired image by jamming stories about similar ventures down our throats. Meanwhile, in terms of content, they are doing the exact same thing those tired hacks, who they are apparently trying to distance themselves from, partake in.

Check out the running score on a recent article from their feature writer, with added bonus attached!

Completely racist jokes/comments about foreigners and or foreign names: 7
Sexist references Benny Hill would have been ashamed of: 1

Enough is enough. Sports journalists. Grow up. Cop on. The world is a big, colourful place with athletes of all shapes, sizes, nationalities and creeds. They are all proud, dignified people. Jonas Valanciunas is as proud of his name as Ron Artest is. Nikola Vujevic deserves the same dignity and respect afforded Kobe Bryant.

You want to poke fun at their names, style or habits?

Find another profession. The rest of the world is passing you by.

American and European culture mixing in fine art.

Linkage

Comments
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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Boston Bruins and the $156,679.74 bar tab

Charlie Sheen take note. There are some new bad boys in town. And they are after your bottle of champagne. Much to the delight of Vancouver and the rest of Canada, which reacted with grace, class and dignity, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup last week. Much to the delight of the bar staff at Foxwoods, Connecticut last Saturday night, six of the Bruins celebrated there. In style.

Yes, just six of them. See, perhaps a few of you have already seen the snapshots doing the rounds of the incredibly outrageous $156,679.74 bar tab and thought to yourself, ‘We’ll, how many guys are there on a hockey squad, 20? 30? That aint so bad!’ That’s the proverbial kicker. This tab was run up by a mere six of those legendary Bruins of Boston.

You can almost guess which six. Go on, try it. If you guessed Tim Thomas, Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand and Shawn Thornton, come on down, you are a winner. Seriously though, how predictable was that murderer’s row of Chug Monkeys? The only shame of the entire affair is that the legendary bar tab isn’t itemized by player.

It should be noted that $100,000 of the tab was cordoned off for a bottle of Ace of Spades Midas Champagne. What, you don’t normally order a $100,000 bottle of bubbly on your Saturday night out? Subtract that insane single bottle cost and you are left with a piffling tab of $56,679.74. May as well call them the Utah Bruins.

Two items stand out most on the tab to end all tabs. First of all, Americans and Canadians (and Slovakians actually) need a stern talking to in terms of beers. With all that spending power the six Bruins spent $680 on Bud Light? Really? All those tasty, rewarding beers in the world, you know, the ones without a content 70% chemical, and they chose Bud Light?

Secondly, that infamous bottle of champagne. Made by luxury brand Armand de Brignac and produced by Champagne house Cattier, it is the largest bottle of luxury Champagne in the world. The gold metallic bottles are crafted entirely by hand, inspired by fashion designer Andre Courreges. There were just six of the 30-litre bottles in existence. The bottle ordered by the Bruins was hand-delivered by the owners of the club. Word on the street is Shawn Thornton drank directly from the bottle.

No doubt at this stage there are many left wing, environmentally friendly trolls (like myself) who’s reaction reading this is something along the lines of ‘Oh so much waste! Won’t somebody think about the children?!’ Well still your sense of outrage, the Bruins have you covered. The Midas bottle was signed by all six of the Bubbly Bruins, and is on display at the club and set to be raffled off to benefit the Bruins foundation. That is one seriously cool piece of Bruins memorabilia and someone will no doubt pay big bucks for it, benefiting the charity greatly.

If you still find yourself outraged by the Bruins bad-ass bar tab, then perhaps you should be focusing on the main issue, those crazy, rioting Canadians. The Vancouverians who made Ghengis Khan look like Michael Bublé. Speaking of the latter, the incredibly scary, hard core Canadian crooner, actually born in Vancouver (assumedly in the middle of a raging riot) has come out all Chuck Norris in the wake of the troubles. He has promised those guilty of rioting something special, something very special. He promised them "…a very, very special round of applause".

If you are a Canadian who participated in those riots, take note, and be afraid, be very afraid. Then head down to Foxwoods and grab the fifth last bottle of Ace of Spades Midas Champagne.

That is unless Michael Bublé has already bagged it.

Linkage

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Put the iPad down and go see a ball game

Have you noticed lately, with some notable exceptions, attendances at sporting events appear to be down across the globe? This decline in attendance is not rooted in any one sport, or to any one country. See any Yankee baseball games lately? Notice those swathes of empty seats, particularly behind home plate? How about Irish soccer at their brand new stadium? Attendances at the recent Carling Nations Cup were nothing short of embarrassing. There were empty seats all over the court during the recent Miami NBA playoff run. In Ireland, people complain constantly about having nothing to do, but Irish league soccer often plays out in front of five people, a cat and a dog.

That’s it in a nutshell really though, isn’t it? We just love to blame something or someone else. If you ask someone, even though they love sports, why they never go to any live games, they will trot out the same old tired excuses.

They blame the economy, they blame high ticket prices, and they blame the parking expenses or the lack of amenities at stadiums. Oh so many obstacles! In this day and age it is safe to comment that sports fans would much rather sit at home in front of their big screen TV, laptop in front of them, surfing other results, statistics and sports news, rather than venture outside and actually attend a sporting event.

Let’s blow the first fallacy up. Ticket prices. There are certain teams that are completely out-pricing their fans, granted. The Yankees are a decent example, with their disgustingly priced, fall-of-the-roman-empire like, $2,500 seats. Even they, however, have cheaper alternatives, assuming you are willing to co-exist with the Bronx bleacher creatures.

For every New York Yankees though, there are ten smaller market teams begging you to come watch them. For every lazy team that is out-pricing the blue collar fan, there are ten that are coming up with new, fun, interesting initiatives to get you to the match, the game, the field, the ballpark. A little bit of thought, and I bet you can think of a team near you that you could go see play without re-mortgaging your house.

It isn’t just the expense of course. Many fans don’t identify with over paid, spoilt and bratty players. Take the NBA. Their players will earn $2.1 billion dollars in 2011. That’s a lot of cheddar. Most of us are lucky to have a few dollars, euros or pounds left after paying the bills. The NFL is no angel either. The average Joe Punter on the street may find it easier to identify with a hard nosed, blue collar lineman than an aloof, business-man like NBA power forward, however Joe Punter is not impressed with that same NFL lineman’s inability to come to agreement with his league as to how to divide up the Kajillion dollars they are making together annually.

Of course not all the news from the world of professional sports is negative and or gloomy. Take the Cincinnati Reds gregarious slugger Brandon Phillips. In mid May Phillips stunned the players and fans at an Ohio little league game by showing up on the back of an invitation from one of the young players via Twitter. Phillips stayed for the game and interacted with fans and players alike.

Phillips simple, friendly venture is a fabulous example of someone unplugging themselves from ‘The Grid’ and taking a time out to invest themselves in some genuine human interaction. Phillips has left an ever lasting positive impression on those Little Leaguers.

You, as a fan, probably won’t have that much effect on the game around you, however you can have that effect on yourself. As a baseball fan, I will always be grateful I was lucky enough to sit behind home plate and watch Pedro Martinez pitch. Witnessing him live had a permanently positive effect on my life.

Sure, there aren’t many Pedro’s around, however lately I find myself more and more wanting to at least look for his ilk. Those balmy Boston summer days and nights sitting in the stands alone or with my brother when he came to visit me, those are the sporting memories that stick with me most. Not the result from last weeks game, where I had the laptop going to check other scores, and the iTouch belching out fantasy stats.

I believe we all know it, we all know live sports is vastly superior to the alternatives, and yet we still avoid going to live sporting events. You can blame any of the above factors, however we all know we are kidding ourselves. The reason you and I aren’t getting off our fat backsides and going to live games isn’t anything to do with the ticket prices, the expensive concessions (or lack of same) or anything like that.

It’s pure unadulterated laziness.

It’s taking the easy way out. It’s raising the white flag at life. No thanks, I am going to work on this ass-groove I am creating on the sofa.

Get off your posterior. Go see a game. Leave your iPhone, iTouch, iPad, HTC, Acer laptop, Blackberry, Blueberry or Dingleberry at home. At the very least turn it off until the end of the game. Invest yourself in the sights and sounds of the event. Soak it all in, digest it, think about it and enjoy it. With each tweet, each text, each glance at our fantasy teams on the laptop as a pitcher winds up to throw right in front of us, or as a striker sizes up a free kick, we are starting to let life pass us by. We are completely and utterly ignoring The Journey and instead taking nibbles at fast food bites of information, instantly gratifying yet completely malnourishing long-term.

We are slowly rotting our own brains voluntarily, reducing our own ability to concentrate, focus and in the end, enjoy live sporting events.

Stop blaming everything and everyone else, stop blaming the economy, spoilt players and greedy owners. Take action and take control. Shake your own life up a bit, rattle your own cage a little. Turn your smart-phone off and go to a game, invest yourself in it, for your own sake. Sure, it takes a little bit more effort than pressing buttons on a remote, but in the end it’s considerably more satisfying.

Pull a Brandon Phillips one of these coming days. You owe it to yourself.

Linkage

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Captain Clutch strikes again: A-Rod slams long home run against Red Sox

The scene was set. Like the Batman symbol glowing eerily in the Gotham night sky, the call went out, Captain Clutch was needed in The Bronx. With the Red Sox clinging precariously to a 7-0 lead, A-Rod came to bat with no one on base in the bottom of the fourth inning. As most Yankee fans gorged on $12 hot dogs in the plush confines of New Yankee Stadium, A-Rod stepped in against flame-throwing Red Sox veteran Tim Wakefield.

Wakefield reared back and fired a 63mph, rolling, tumbling knuckle ball down the middle of the plate. A-Rod was ready, and swung out of his shoes, connecting mightily and launching it a whopping 390 feet to right field. He hit it so hard the hide nearly came off the ball. The Yankee fans not swilling $10, 1% beers in the depths of Yankee Stadium cheered wildly, once again their hero had come through. The Yankees were right back in it against their hated rivals, now only down 7-1.

The previous night, in a far more meaningless game, A-Rod struck out to end the contest on a hard fast ball from Red Sox closer Jonathon Papelbon. Asked about ending the game with a swing Joan Rivers would have been ashamed of, A-Rod said

‘’I was just finding my range, man. You all saw the outcome of that today. Papelbon just got me mad, Angry. I was ready today.’’

Without A-Rod’s clutch blast, the Yankees could have been looking at an 11-5 scoreline, instead of the much more palatable 11-6. A-Rod timed his blast perfectly, launching the 63mph knuckle ball into the New York sky early.

‘’I was just trying to get my pitch, I was just trying to you know, set the tone. I know the guys feed off of me, off of my energy. I just wanted to square a ball up, hit it hard somewhere and, you know, lead by example’’.

The wildly under-paid, $24 million a year A-Rod inspired his team mates to a fifth inning rally also, as he stood in the on deck circle the Yankees started to chip back and got the score to 7-4, before A-Rod flied out to center to end the inning, with a runner at third. After the game A-Rod looked back at the rally killing moment and said

‘’You know, right there, I had already hit that massive home run, and I was thinking to myself, get the guys back in the dugout, they already had 3 runs there, get in the dugout quick, and let’s start again’’

More than ever, as each clutch bomb leaves the plush confines of New Yankee Stadium, A-Rod’s former Texas Rangers team mates look incredibly foolish for the nickname they appropriated the clutch slugger, ‘The Cooler’.

Linkage

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

LeBron drops eight points total in crucial game five: We await ESPN’s reaction.

Waking up this morning and checking your iPhone, HTC, iPad, laptop, tablet, smoke signals or whatever it is you use to stay plugged into the Zeitgeist, seeing LeBron James was sitting on eight points in the crunch Miami/Dallas game, you would absolutely have been forgiven for rubbing your weary eyes and melting back in to bed in the belief it was still 4 am Irish time and the game was in the second quarter.

However, no, that was his actual output for the entire game. That’s right. Eight points. And no, despite what ESPN might have you believe, LeBron points don’t count double. It will be very interesting to see how the sports media giant spins this one, you know, considering they are not allowed say anything bad about The K$ng.

On the plus side, at least LeBron is going to be seriously well rested before game five, seeing as he basically took game four off. Cleveland fans all over the World are wincing as they remember LeBron coasting through his last Cavaliers playoff series against Boston. He was anonymous then, and he was anonymous last night.

Eight points? Big Dirk Nowitzki had an eight points before eight minutes had elapsed. Big Dirk rolled out of bed this morning and scored eight points.

The lowest ouput the great Michael Jordan ever submitted in an NBA playoff game was 22 points.

Ever.

Maybe we are going to hard on LeBron. How on earth is he supposed to get his practice time in with all the side projects he has going on? The interesting author Malcolm Gladwell writes in ‘Outliers’ that most brilliant athletes have one thing in common, 10,000 hours practice at their given discipline. He wrote that researchers came to that figure after looking at the best of the best very closely. How the hell is LeBron supposed to get 10,000 practice hours clocked in? He has LeBron headphones, LeBron boxer shorts and LeBron label prophylactics to sell!!

Then again, maybe we aren’t going hard enough on LeBron at all.

ESPN has been screaming at us all playoffs long why we should appreciate the Heat, and in particular LeBron. Only yesterday there was a sycophantic article on how we should be really admiring what LeBron has been doing in these finals. ESPN also had an incisive, hard hitting ‘news’ report on how LeBron had announced he was going into ‘attack mode’ for the rest of the playoffs. That’s ‘attack mode’? One would hate to see, ‘defence mode’ (Cleveland fans would argue we already have!)

The problem is, ESPN clearly has some manner of relationship with LeBron. Would you be shocked in any shape or form to log into ESPN and see a massive headline, ‘LeBron, greatest of all time? Probably!’ No you wouldn’t, right? We will probably never know the business plan or money that is behind it, but for whatever reason ESPN has basically become LeBron’s propaganda machine. Or, one of them. Twitter is always a fun place to be when whoever LeBron pays to ‘tweet’ is, well, ‘tweeting’.

So here we are, wading through a decent NBA finals series, with ESPN roaring at us to appreciate how awesome a player is, how that player is amongst the games legendary greats and how we should appreciate this F.A.C.T or feel stupid. Meanwhile said player drops eight points in a pivotal game four.

That’s the problem with life in this shallow, fast paced, Internet based World we have created. So much of the content of same is all bluster and no substance.

So much of it is, ‘all talk’.

Linkage

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Liverpool table £20 million bid for Jordan Henderson. Henderson prepares for a couple of seasons on the Liverpool bench.

The script is almost as old, worn and replayed as often as one of those asinine teen dance movies. Every summer or winter transfer market you are guaranteed a few instances where a big club swoops in and overpays for a promising young player from a ‘smaller’ club. More often than not, the young player then rots on the bench watching the big clubs stars play.

It would appear Liverpool are about to swoop in on Sunderland and pay £20 million for young English midfielder Jordan Henderson. Henderson went through the same mid season sump as the rest of his Sunderland team mates, however anyone who watches him on a regular basis agrees the raw talent is there. He has a great engine, runs all day and can pick out a team mate with pin point accuracy from almost anywhere on the park. Towards the end of the season he bagged a few goals too.

There are several problems however with this potential transfer.

First of all, Henderson has literally just signed a five year contract with his home town team, Sunderland. Secondly, Liverpool already have four established players sitting in the posotion Henderson would play.

The player homself obviously bears a large weight of responsibility in these situations. In this case it would appear Henderson, instead of knuckling down and honouring his brand new five year contract, would rather follow the turgid stench of pound notes all the way to the Liverpool bench.

The bench? Correct, the bench. Henderson is a central midfielder. Most teams like to play with two central midfielders at maximum, depending on formation and needs. Liverpool currently have Steven Gerrard, Lucas Leiva, Raul Meireles and Jay Spearing to preform that role. You could argue both sides of the coin as to who is better, Henderson or Spearing, but does Henderson honestly think he is going to walk straight into the Liverpool side ahead of Gerrard, Lucas or even Meireles?

How Henderson can not see this is alarming. On one hand, he could knuckle down, dig in, develop and learn as a player, playing in front of adoring home town fans, leading his boy hood club up the Permiership player, under the secure blanket of a wealthy five year contract. On the other hand, he can play for Liverpool reserves in week night matches against other reserve players in empty stadiums.

Hopefully the extra few pounds in his pay check will keep him happy at night.

Whatever about the player, what on earth are Liverpool doing? Midfield cover is one thing, but spending £20 million on a luxury player that is willing to walk out on a five year contract before the ink is fully dry?

Sunderland are no innocent party in this. For them, no matter what way they try to dress this up, the potential £20 million sale of Jordan Henderson is nothing but a dirty, ugly stain on their copy book. Sunderland will no doubt try to sell this as part of a rebuilding process, insisting the £20 million will go towards other players, but the problem is, why are they selling in the first place? Sunderland already has an open minded, generous owner (Ellis Short, one of the more successful American Premiere League owners) and a big wad of cash remaining from the Darren Bent sale. They don’t really need the money.

In terms of talent, how are they going to upgrade on a young, fit, healthy, regular in the England under-21 side? How do you possibly upgrade on that? You can dress it up any way you want, but selling off your best players (Bent/Henderson) is nothing short of selling out on your loyaly fans.

Sunderland managers down the years have often complained loudly about not being able to attract top talent to the North East. Well, you can’t really complain about not being able to cajole top players to come play with you, when you are so readily willing to cast off the ones you already have. Until Sunderland start keeping talented young players like Henderson they will always be a second tier junk side, wallowing around mid table in the English Premiership, acting as some kind of feeder team for the likes of Liverpool, United and Chelsea.

Obviously every single sport has its problems, but the English Premiership, much as we all love it, can sure be an ugly place. What we are about to see unfold before us, in this potential transfer can be simplified down to the following.

Medium size club spends money and effort developing home-grown player to international level. Home grown player says all the right things and signs sparkling five year contract with boy-hood club. Big club swoops in and overpays for player, with players agent gleefully progressing the move whispering in the players ear, Iago like, how the move is best for him while rolling around in the commission money. Medium club wastes the fee on mid level journey man players while big club sits new player on bench for two years until he gets sold on for half the original fee to another mid level club.

Rinse, repeat.

Linkage

Saturday, June 04, 2011

World Baseball Classic expanding: And Ireland has beaten some of the competition!

The World Baseball Classic of 2013 will be just that little bit more colorful. It will also include, for the first time, International teams that the Irish National baseball team has played (and indeed beaten!).

Yes, in case you didn’t know already, Ireland does have an International baseball team, and it has participated admirably in European competitions since 1996. Ireland came fourth in the European Pool B Championships in Germany in 2004 and then came second in the European Pool B Championships held in Belgium in 2008. As we speak, a youthful, energetic and skillful Irish baseball team is gearing up to take part in the Pool B Championships in Barcelona this July.

More on ‘Team Green’s’ exploits later.

Back to the World Baseball Classic(WBC). The 2013 tournament will be expanded by four teams. These will come from a pool of 16 first time teams that will play out a qualification tournament in 2012. This will consist of four groups of four teams with the winner of each ultimately being ‘promoted’ to the WBC proper.

In terms of the makeup of the 2012 Qualification series, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Panama and South Africa have been effectively relegated to this new playoff group, after not winning a single game amongst them in the 2009 WBC. The brand new teams include European sides France, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic and Great Britain.

This will lead to an extremely exciting two year spell for the lucky teams that win each playoff grouping. The following year they will take part in the 2013 WBC proper against the likes of USA, Japan and Cuba.

Back to the Irish baseball team. Seeing the Czech Republic and in particular Great Britain gain entry to the preliminary round is very interesting for all involved in Baseball Ireland. The Czech Republic is a very solid baseball team, and has been so for years. They were actually Ireland’s first ever International opponents back in 1996, and beat us soundly. There is no shame in that as the Czech’s have been dominant in general European competition all that time. Fascinatingly, the only time Ireland has faced neighbours Great Britain, they came out on top.

The Irish National Baseball team @ Fenway Park in 2001

In 2006, as a warm-up for the successful Belgian European venture, Ireland played a two day, three game series against Great Britain. Ireland won two out of three to take the series, and their only loss was a one run thriller where Great Britain came back to win it late on. Ireland not only competed with their bigger, more illustrious neighbours on their home turf (London), they actually beat them twice.

Putting one and one together, you have to think Ireland should be in the considerations of further preliminary round expansions? Perhaps with continued development on the home front, Irish baseball can someday be in the running to take part in the WBC.

In the meantime, it’s kind of enjoyable to know that Ireland knows via its previous results with England, and previous successful European tournaments, it definitely belongs on the same playing field as some of those teams now playing for spots in the WBC.

That, in itself, is pretty cool

Baseball Ireland links

The Baseball Ireland official page

The Emerald Diamond movie site

The top ten games in Baseball Ireland history

Former LA Dodgers owners Peter O'Malley and Baseball Ireland

Linkage

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Feeling the Heat? No thanks.

So apparently we are supposed to care about the NBA finals. It’s there in print for all to see. On Monday ESPN quite literally published a piece screaming at us, insisting that everyone cares about this particular NBA finals.

Well, I want to see the raw numbers. I don’t buy it, and I don’t buy the Miami Heat.

The Heat are about as genuine as an over produced Simon Cowell boy-band. They are a product of a massive pre-season collusion that the NBA never bothered looking into, fronted by a narcissistic business man who held a one hour infomercial announcing his choice of team with the arrogant air of royalty, all hosted, aided and abetted by ESPN. Do you follow LeBron on Twitter? It’s a blast. You are given every opportunity to buy into the LeBron brand. He hocks LeBron Headphones, LeBron boxer shorts, LeBron James smoky mesquite marinade. LeBron James will do anything to get your dollar bill.

What’s most worrying is sports media giant ESPN’s manipulative, sycophantic coverage of the Heat’s glorious quest. Launch ESPN and key into the NBA coverage and you would be forgiven for thinking you had landed on the Miami Heat official team page. All week ESPN has bombarded us with reasons why we shouldn’t hate the Heat. They came at us from all angles. Online in print and later on their various shows. It was almost Orwellian in content. You should love the Heat, you should not hate the Heat, these NBA finals are going to be awesome!

Have a look at this laughable excerpt from ESPN’s report on game one;
‘’The Miami Heat are three wins away from the reason why the Big Three came together in the first place.’’
What, the Heat are three wins from a massive truck of money pulling up at their Miami mansion and dumping seven bazillion dollars on their lawn? Really?

Of course, how dare we accuse ESPN of bias, they raised some very serious questions in their coverage. Take the notes section of the game report. ‘’In his annual state of the league address David Stern was asked about how James, Wade and Bosh all ended up in Miami last summer. ‘’I don’t consider it colluding’’

Oh, well that’s that then! Aggressive, Incisive reporting by ESPN, really cutting to the bone of the issue. Give me a ducking break. Quack quack. Lest you be in any doubt about ESPN’s true colours on the Heat, just remember ESPN is the same media giant that removed one of its own articles an hour after publishing it for no other reason than LeBron’s team didn’t like the way it portrayed their ‘product’, LeBron James. Thankfully the Internet is an elephant that never forgets and you can read the article here. Read it in full and then ask yourself if you want to root for LeBron during these NBA finals.

The fact of the matter is, you will not read a bad word about LeBron or his Heat boy-band on ESPN. It simply won’t happen, and if any ESPN journalist goes AWOL and tries to sneak one up, it will be yanked down faster than you can say ‘disingenuous’.

When journalism gets corrupted like that, it can only be a bad thing.

Now, when does the hockey start?