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By Mark D, July 21, 2012 9:54 pm

Growing up as a fan of the New York Mets, and eventually becoming a fan of the Jets, Knicks and Islanders, I was used to a shitty decade sports wise. The 90s were pretty bad for 3 of the 4 teams. The Knicks were the exception, especially once Jordan retired for a bit to try Basketball. Knicks fans will always be haunted by John Starks inability to sink a basket in Game 6 of the Finals against the Rockets. We don’t talk about his Game 7.

The Knicks seemed to be going downhill in 99 when they went on one of the most incredible runs, taking down the hated Miami Heat as an 8th Seed, then taking out the Pacers to reach the Finals. Sure they were taken out by the Spurs in 5 games in the finals, but the future looked bright. Then the team was mismanaged by GM Layden, only to be taken over by the even more grossly incompetent Isiah Thomas.

There are not enough words to describe what Thomas did to the Knicks. Not only was he a bad GM and a bad Coach, but he embarrassed the organization with a sex scandal. But even that wasn’t enough to get him fired and finally NBA Commissioner David Stern stepped in and forced Owner James Dolan to replace Thomas with the amazing Donnie Walsh. Walsh finally slowly but surely cleared the Knicks of crappy contracts, hoping to eventually bring in LeBron James.

This hope though fell short, but the Knicks became a better team and managed to pick up Amare Stouduamire and were looking like a possible playoff team under Mike D’Antonio and a bunch of promising youngsters. But this wasn’t enough for Dolan, who wanted his shiny new toy. He forced the team to gut itself in order to trade for Carmelo Anthony who was going to be a free agent anyway.  The Knicks went 13-13 after the trade, following a 28-26 start without him. The Nuggets went 17-7 without Carmelo.

This season Carmelo openly argued with Coach D’Antoni as the team went 29-36 with him in the lineup. Eventually everything between Anthony and D’Antoni came to a head, and D’Antoni said it was either him or Anthony. So now D’Antoni, one of the better coaches the team has had who has worked the team back to respectability is gone. Walsh eventually left because he never wanted to make the Carmelo deal.

Finally a Miracle falls into the Knicks laps in the name of Jeremy Lin. Injuries force him to start, and he ends up being one of the best stories of the year. It got to the point that he got Knicks fans more excited about the team then they have been in years. The stocks for MSG shoot up for the first time in years. The Knicks went 20-15 before Lin went down to an injury, and were 4-4 in games in which he played less then 10 minutes.

Now Lin was going to become a Restricted Free Agent, but what’s that matter to Dolan who was spending hand over fist for the last Decade and paying for all of Isiah Thomas’ mistakes while keeping him around? Apparently everything. The Knicks decided to let him go out and get offers from other teams to figure out “His Value” and then are somehow shocked when he goes out and signs an offer from another team.

But hey, that shouldn’t matter, the Knicks have a chance to match that offer. Money has never been a thing for Dolan. But apparently not this one time. Nope, obviously at this point Dolan considers the fans someone he can piss all over and ignore. It’s his toy and he’s going to play with it how he wants to play with it. Celebrities and corporations don’t help things when they pay for insanely overpriced seats that keep Dolan rolling in the money.

It makes me sick that it seems like the Islanders, a good organization that seems to try to do right gets pissed all over. But the Knicks are the Knicks and apparently free for the most part from greater scrutiny. Not signing Lin is one of the worst moves the Knicks have made and they don’t even have a real excuse for doing it.

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By Mark D, April 12, 2011 5:15 pm

The last few years the “Everything” Sports Programming Network has largely been Football and Basketball. They were buoyed in this by the NHL’s jump to VS following the lockout, and their parent network ABC’s ownership of NFL (originally Monday Night now Sunday Night) and Basketball. It hasn’t been a bad business for the most part, as both sports cover the  fall/winter/spring. But with the NFL lockout, you can sort of tell there’s a sick desperation on their side of things.  Basketball is looking like it’s going to lockout too.

The question is, will there be enough sports around to talk 24 hours for? ESPN takes a dead horse and beats it deader then words can describe. And that’s with sports going on. Sure NASCAR and MLS exist and ESPN could talk about those two entities. But with Nascar only running one race a week and MLS not being taken seriously by Soccer fans, could they really full up their programming with that? ESPN has created this monster themselves and it’ll be funny to see what the outcome is. Ever since Disney (which owns ABC) bought ESPN they have been giving superior treatment to sports which are broadcast on either ABC or one of the ESPN networks. They could have given a fair shake to the NHL and any number of sports considering they have 24/7 sports coverage on multiple networks. But over the last few years it seems that ESPN exists mainly to hype their own propeties.

I hope both leagues miss this season and ESPN is screwed. If I was Gary Bettman I’d ignore ESPN. They are going to treat the NHL like the prettiest girl at the prom. But the second the NBA and NFL come back it’s going to be the bastard red-haired child again. There is no reason to believe that ESPN is going to magically start spreading it’s coverage around to keep this from happening in the future. Nope, it’s going to ride the NBA and NFL (is Farve coming back?) like it always had and leave the NHL out to pasture.

It’s funny that I dislike ESPN as much as I do now. Even Sportscenter I can’t stand anymore. I mean it used to be THE SHOW for me to watch in the morning and get all my sports updates for. But the way they do Sportscenter now, it just doesn’t feel like it’s bringing you news and highlights. It feels like it’s just being used as a promotions tool. To make matters even worse, you can seemingly never tell when the show stops or starts. So instead of watching for an hour and being up to date, an hour in you find yourself wondering where the first news story you had caught was.

To make matters worse, most of the shows on ESPN are unwatchable or overkill. The few bits of Sports Nation I’ve seen make me question anyone who watches it’s sanity. Meanwhile Around The Horn and Pardon The Interruption, while good ideas, are played back to back and talk about nearly the same dam topics. A lot of the other shows have questionable hosts/co-hosts when it comes to ESPN bringing in far too many former players to host. Now while some players can add a lot to the conversation, the addition of seemingly every QB whose ever played in the NFL seems a bit disingenuous. It’s like they are hiring these guys (Trent Dilfer cough) just because they want to hang out with them.

I’ve ranted enough about ESPN, I just can’t wait to see what they do if both the NBA and NFL are locked out. Hopefully the NHL doesn’t sign a deal with them, and ESPN gets to lay in the bed it’s made.

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By Mark D, June 11, 2009 1:10 pm

I have long held that the NHL Playoffs are easily superior to the NBA Playoffs for one easy reason. The NHL Playoffs are 2-2-1-1-1 and the NBA Playoffs are 2-3-2. This means that if the home team wins all its games in the first four for the NHL the series becomes an even tighter best of 3 series. This Stanley Cup is a perfect example, as it looked like the Wings after game 5 would rout the Pens and take the cup. But the Pens were obviously playing their best in front of their home fans.

In Comparison, in the NBA if your the visitor your looking to just split the first two games because then if you sweep your home games you’ve won the series. The other problem is that if the home teams gets all the wins, its now a 3-2 in favor of the lower seed. That means that the upper seed has to win two straight games at home. I’ve never understood why the NBA uses that formula.