Give Dallas News columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor this much credit, of the three easiest to defend versions of the Don’t Trade Player X article, he choose the most interesting player to discuss in this past Sunday’s column.  He could have written that the Mavs should not trade Dirk or Terry.  Either of those articles would have been much easier to write but would not have been very interesting.

Defending the “decision” to keep Jason Kidd on the team is slightly more interesting.  Sadly and predictably, JJT still found a way to write a terrible article though.  For such an easy to defend subject, he makes the argument very difficult on himself.
 

So, the fine folks in Seattle got hosed by some rich dudes from Oklahoma.  It feels pretty crummy any time you get beat by folks from Oklahoma, but when they swipe your hometown NBA franchise you have plenty of reasons to be seriously grumpy.

But the deed is done.  The organization that was known as the Seattle SuperSonics will soon be re-introduced as the OKC [somethings].  While I never really have understood the Seattle franchise’s name I’ve never been concerned enough to spend the 30 seconds at wikipedia to look it up.  I would ask a Sonics fan, but I can’t recall having ever met one in person.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I’m sure you are not happy right now and the last thing you need is somebody to make a snide remark about drowning your tears in latte or making some other generic statement about the rainy city of Seattle.  Noooo.  We are not going to stoop to that level on this, ahem, fine site.

But if it will make you feel better, we will tell a couple of lame Oklahoma jokes.

 

Q: Why do the Oklahoma license plates say OK?

A: Because they could not spell mediocre.

 

Q: Did you hear about the Texas A&M Aggie that graduated and moved to Oklahoma?

A: He raised the average IQ of both states.

 

Lucky for you, dear reader, I’ve never bothered to waste any extra brain cells with Oklahoma trivia or jokes. Just those two.  [Insert Aggie joke here.]

Anyway, if those two lame jokes don’t make the Seattle fans feel any better, how about a plan to get a franchise back in Seattle?

The best thing that could happen to the league would be for that goofball in LA to sell the Clippers to somebody who would move them to Seattle.  Then we could have basketball back where it belongs and perhaps Señor Stern can fund a black ops team to erase the world of the Clippers ugly legacy.

But… that doesn’t seem very likely.

So, what if we move the hapless Memphis Grizzlies to Seattle and then swap the division assignments of the OKC Mediocrity and the Seattle SuperSonic Grizzlies?  Seattle gets a team back.  The Grizz stop wasting time in Memphis and the divisional alignment gets repaired.

Seems like a plan to me.  Anybody got Stern’s phone number?

Lamar Odom was supposedly the most talented and proven player sent to LA in the infamous trade of Shaq. But after several years of regular season and playoff failures, everybody knew that Odom was not good enough to be Robin for Kobe’s turn as Batman.

And then the Lakers fleeced the Grizzlies and Pau Gasol joined the boys in gold and purple to be Robin. And while they proved to be a more successful Batman & Robin pairing, Kobe and Gasol fell short of the ultimate goal as well.

Lamar Odom fans (I suppose there are in fact Odom fans other than his mother) have now seen Lamar fail to be Batman with the Clippers, Robin with the Heat (to a young Dwayne Wade), Robin with the Lakers and now he fails as the Cat Woman in LA as well.

Next season, with the hoped for return of Bynum, Odom shouldn’t even rank as Cat Woman. I’m not sure what comes after that. Maybe the butler?

Odom seems uniquely talented, but with this much failure on his resume is legacy seems in doubt. His future path now appears to have more Shareef Abdur-Rahim or Antione Walker in it than Rasheed Wallace or James Worthy. And no, I’m not trying to make a direct comparison between Worthy and Rasheed. Lay off the caffeine people.

Most basketball and baseball fans know that Mark Cuban has been trying to buy the Chicago Cubs for a while.  When this subject comes up, sports columnist and radio talking heads usually gravitate to one of the following related topics.

1. Will Major League Baseball let Mark Cuban purchase the beloved Cubbies?
2. Can Mark Cuban “save baseball?”  Whatever that means at the moment.
3. Can Mark Cuban successfully “manage” the Mavericks and the Cubs at the same time?

Personally, I think the answers to those questions are:

1. Probably.
2. No, but he would help.
3. Too silly of a question to deserve commentary.

But, I think everybody is missing the real story here.  What nobody is really trying to find out is “Why is Mark Cuban trying to buy the Cubs?”   Sure, some people have guessed at this question with business logic and baseball analysis.  Whatever.  We don’t need that stuff here at SansResearch.com. 

Why not? Because we have an edge here.  We already know the answer.  Cuban wants to buy the Cubbies because he desperately wants to help Sam Smith!

You see, poor Sam apparently got passed by during the Internet age and can’t figure out how to contact Mark Cuban to clarify his goofy basketball ideas.  Remember all of those years that poor Sam published scoops on how the Bulls were going to acquire Finley from the Mavs?  One little email the Mark Cuban would have cleared that up in an instant.  But, Sam is an old school sports columnist.  I don’t think he even knows how to check his email.  And since Cuban prefers to communicate with the media via email, Sam is left to his own devices.

Cuban has watched Sam struggle to write useful articles for years.  And it just breaks his little billionaire heart.  It does!  He even looked into adopting Sam to see if he could take him under his wing.  When that option failed, he realized there was only one thing he could do.

Mark has to find an excuse to put an office in Chicago and remove the distance between himself and Sam.  It is the only thing left to do to save Sam’s career as a sports columnist.  With Mark in Chicago more often, they can bump into each other at Starbucks and Sam can ask the important questions like “Are the Mavs going to trade Dirk and Josh to the Bulls for Nocioni and Noah so that they can finally be tough and have the heart of a (college) champion?”

And then, once Mark gets through gagging on his latte he can clarify with simple verbal answers like  ”No, no, no. Sam.  That is categorically wrong.  But we are trying to acquire a shooting guard, backup center and backup point guard this offseason.”

It all makes perfect since once you think about it. Which I did.  For thirty seconds or so before I started writing this article.  Really.  Okay, maybe it was twelve seconds.  Who’s counting?  Not Sam!

I didn’t contact Mark Cuban to confirm this crackpot theory and he didn’t say:

Golly gee, Brad.  You sniffed out my secret plan.  That’s really impressive.  Once I realized Sam needed me close by to save his career I had to find a good reason to open an office in Chicago.  I thought about just claiming I was starting a new business, but that would have attracted too much attention.  

And then I realized that nobody flinches when a guy as rich as me blows his money on something he doesn’t need.  So, I just had to find something foolish to buy in Chicago.  First, I tried to buy the rights to the movie Chicago, but then I realized that made as much sense as trading Dirk for Nocioni.  Finally, I remembered that they had a hapless baseball team for sell and I figured that would do the trick. 

I hope the accept my offer soon or I may get bored and go spend all of my money on some Knicks.

Your pal,

Not-Mark Cuban

And that, my friends, is how the big boys write a Mark Cuban scoop.

It seems fitting that we kick off this site with the latest headline from Peter Vescey. 

“KG, Kobe would have been a winning pair.”

Beautiful.  Insightful.  Deep. 

All the things we’ve come to expect out of Vescey.  Just think of how much Vescey could have done with that mind of his if he had devoted himself to say, history, instead of sports.  He could be giving us insightful nuggets like “Hitler, A-bomb would have been a destructive pair” or “Mayflower, Iceberg would have been a devastating combination.”

So Peter, you think that Kobe Bryant, regarded by many as the best perimeter player in the league, and Kevin Garnett, one of the top 5 post players in the league, could have won a lot of games together?  Wow.  I wish I would have thought of that.  I mean, nobody has ever loaded of a NBA video game and traded somebody like Luke Walton for KG and then romped wildly through their virtual basketball season.  The kids these day don’t have any imagination!

And notice how, even when writing the obvious, Vescey avoids raising the bar too high. Winning pair?  What does that mean?  Dynasty?  A single championship?  An above .500 record?  Awesome.  I tip my hat to you, sir.

But Peter has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve.  Check out his opening paragraph-sentence.

Writing a column hours before the Celtics-Lakers’ first Finals’ play date and not have it go stone cold (worse, still, reduced to rubble) by the time you scan it (for mistakes or mocking material) some time today can’t be so difficult as my mind is making it out to be.

How did he know I was going to be starting a site dedicated to mocking him and his cohorts today?

Spooky isn’t it?!

Thank you Peter, for thinking of me and providing such beautiful source material.