LIKE MOST of you, I'm not exactly mourning the NBA lockout. The last time I watched a game from tip-off to buzzer before Christmas was in person, at a Grizzlies-Rockets game in November 2005.
Even then, there was a large interruption, thanks to the worst concession operation in all of major-league sports.
But I feel for the victims in all of this silliness, including ground-level workers and cities who were held up for tax money to build arenas to keep their teams. Those buildings are losing event dates every time David Stern opens his mouth.
There are a number of players for whom I sympathize, and I'm not talking about Kobe, LeBron and Dwyane. I speak of Hassan Whiteside, one of the most entertaining but enigmatic Marshall basketball players I've seen.
The 7-foot shot-blocking whiz needs this season, and needs it badly. He needs to prove that the Sacramento Kings didn't blunder in picking him with the 33rd overall pick. He surely didn't prove it last season.
His problems were (a) a balky knee, (b) his immaturity or © more likely, a combination of the two. Whatever the case, he played two minutes in the Kings' 2010-11 opener and hasn't played an NBA minute since.
Even worse, he apparently failed to make use of a stint with the NBA Development League's Reno Bighorns, averaging just 101/2 minutes in 14 games before getting sent back to the Kings (to the inactive list, not as a promotion).
He's got something to prove now, and can't do it. Several reports indicate 2010-11 draftees or anybody playing that season cannot play in the D-League, either.
Forced to work out on his own, the best Whiteside can do is maneuver himself in NBA 2K12. I just hope he is handling his finances well.
In all likelihood, we will have a 2012 season, instead of a 2011-12 season. The NBA players' union will cave, just like it did in 1998-99, probably when New Year's Eve parties are affected. But Whiteside will lose roughly half a season, which will lengthen his considerable odds against his success.
Which you could have predicted nearly two years ago, when the rumblings of Whiteside turning pro first surfaced. Shoot, I don't consider myself knowledgeable about "the association" in the least, and I smelled this day coming.
Obviously, Whiteside should have stayed put, and be playing his junior year now (if he could survive whatever Tom Herrion threw his way). Amazingly, there was an idea that he should leave after his freshman year because the lockout was coming in 2011.
With that and other really bad advice from any number of people, he didn't return to class after his team's season ended. Big men take longer to develop, I am repeatedly told, and he wasn't ready for the NBA.
When this extended offseason ends, he probably won't be much more ready. Future NBA shot-blockers are toughening up in the college ranks, and he'll be challenged further down the line.
I'm sorry to see it come to this, but I'm not the least surprised.
nn
The "Game of the Century" has come and gone, with Louisiana State victorious over Alabama. (I steadfastly refuse to use "LSU" on first reference. Is it the University of LSU, or LSU University?)
And now, the moping begins: Does the Crimson Tide have a chance to sneak into the BCS national championship? No, if the season ended Saturday, which it didn't. But if you remember 2006, you know crazy things can happen in the final three weeks. Oh, yeah, I'd watch these two teams again.
Isn't it a shame the perceived top two teams in the nation reside in the SEC West? Well, no, it's not.
LIKE MOST of you, I'm not exactly mourning the NBA lockout. The last time I watched a game from tip-off to buzzer before Christmas was in person, at a Grizzlies-Rockets game in November 2005.
Even then, there was a large interruption, thanks to the worst concession operation in all of major-league sports.
But I feel for the victims in all of this silliness, including ground-level workers and cities who were held up for tax money to build arenas to keep their teams. Those buildings are losing event dates every time David Stern opens his mouth.
There are a number of players for whom I sympathize, and I'm not talking about Kobe, LeBron and Dwyane. I speak of Hassan Whiteside, one of the most entertaining but enigmatic Marshall basketball players I've seen.
The 7-foot shot-blocking whiz needs this season, and needs it badly. He needs to prove that the Sacramento Kings didn't blunder in picking him with the 33rd overall pick. He surely didn't prove it last season.
His problems were (a) a balky knee, (b) his immaturity or © more likely, a combination of the two. Whatever the case, he played two minutes in the Kings' 2010-11 opener and hasn't played an NBA minute since.
Even worse, he apparently failed to make use of a stint with the NBA Development League's Reno Bighorns, averaging just 101/2 minutes in 14 games before getting sent back to the Kings (to the inactive list, not as a promotion).
He's got something to prove now, and can't do it. Several reports indicate 2010-11 draftees or anybody playing that season cannot play in the D-League, either.
Forced to work out on his own, the best Whiteside can do is maneuver himself in NBA 2K12. I just hope he is handling his finances well.
In all likelihood, we will have a 2012 season, instead of a 2011-12 season. The NBA players' union will cave, just like it did in 1998-99, probably when New Year's Eve parties are affected. But Whiteside will lose roughly half a season, which will lengthen his considerable odds against his success.
Which you could have predicted nearly two years ago, when the rumblings of Whiteside turning pro first surfaced. Shoot, I don't consider myself knowledgeable about "the association" in the least, and I smelled this day coming.
Obviously, Whiteside should have stayed put, and be playing his junior year now (if he could survive whatever Tom Herrion threw his way). Amazingly, there was an idea that he should leave after his freshman year because the lockout was coming in 2011.
With that and other really bad advice from any number of people, he didn't return to class after his team's season ended. Big men take longer to develop, I am repeatedly told, and he wasn't ready for the NBA.
When this extended offseason ends, he probably won't be much more ready. Future NBA shot-blockers are toughening up in the college ranks, and he'll be challenged further down the line.
I'm sorry to see it come to this, but I'm not the least surprised.
nn
The "Game of the Century" has come and gone, with Louisiana State victorious over Alabama. (I steadfastly refuse to use "LSU" on first reference. Is it the University of LSU, or LSU University?)
And now, the moping begins: Does the Crimson Tide have a chance to sneak into the BCS national championship? No, if the season ended Saturday, which it didn't. But if you remember 2006, you know crazy things can happen in the final three weeks. Oh, yeah, I'd watch these two teams again.
Isn't it a shame the perceived top two teams in the nation reside in the SEC West? Well, no, it's not.
Shouldn't Alabama and LSU just play in the SEC title game, and forget about the East? No, otherwise you shouldn't have divisions.
Shouldn't the SEC overhaul the divisions? I heard that question on talk radio in the past week, and it's ridiculous. The SEC's divisions are just fine, though I'm not sure how the league should proceed with Texas A&M and Missouri coming on board.
I am amazed how short memories are becoming these days. East Division teams won six championship games in a row from 1993-98 and three out of four from 2005-08. Now, the West is the showcase division.
A similar situation exists in Conference USA. With Houston and Tulsa trying to become the first team trying to be the first team to go undefeated in league play since Louisville in 2004, the balance of power sits in the West - though Southern Mississippi may beg to differ.
When the realigned league was about to begin division play in 2005, the East was the power division of the moment. That brought a complaint or two that Marshall was playing at a disadvantage.
That tale of the tape: The East does indeed have the upper hand, with wins in the last four championship games after the West won the first two. In all games, the East owns a 70-60 lead. But the West is mounting a nice rally, with a 10-6 lead this season.
In the new Pac-12, the North Division is reigning supreme with Oregon and Stanford. But do you think that lasts forever with UCLA, Southern California, Arizona and Arizona State? I don't.
These things are cyclical, folks.
nn
Pity the poor folks at an East Division rival, University of Alabama at Birmingham. It's a tremendous-looking campus, but football-wise, the Blazers live a difficult existence.
First, they put up with renegade sportswriters like me calling the team Alabama-Birmingham on shortened first reference. We're not a branch campus and shouldn't be treated like one, UAB partisans argue.
I think they're picking nits, and they have much greater problems. Such as being treated as a branch campus by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.
If you missed it, the trustees (president: Paul Bryant Jr.). have rejected, Whiteside-style, UAB's proposed campus football stadium. The proposal was not included on the board's agenda, and the board issued a statement saying, "A majority of the Board believes that an on-campus football stadium is not in the best interest of UAB, the University System or the state."
Such a new stadium wouldn't have been grandiose, 30,000 seats or so, but it would serve that community well. And it wouldn't have been Legion Field.
The city-owned stadium sits in an old neighborhood and is ringed with razor wire, for good reason. If you're old enough to have watched an Alabama-Auburn game on a black-and-white TV, you've seen Legion Field as it looks today.
The Iron Bowl left Birmingham for good after 2000. Alabama played its last home game there in 2003. But the folks in Tuscaloosa made sure their little brothers are staying in the former "Football Capital of the South" for years to come.
Reach Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsm...@wvgazette.com.
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