Off The Press

 

Off the Press, the 109th running of the the Boston Marathon has begun.  The wheelchair athletes have already taken off from Hopinton, and by the time I'm done blogging this, the elite men and women runners will be well on their way.  Marathon day (officially Patriots Day in Suffolk County, celebrates the pullout of British troops from Boston during the Revolutionary War) is a huge sports day in Boston.  The Red Sox also play a matinee with the Seattle Mariners which should conclude just as the lead runners are crossing the finish line at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. 

 

Just on a tangent, check out this great editorial, On Blacks and Baseball, by William B. Gould IV in the Boston Globe.  Mr. Gould, a Stanford Law Professor and former head of the National Labor Relations Board, threw out the first pitch at Saturday's Red Sox game to commemorate Jackie Robinson.

 

The Boston Globe has comprehensive coverage of the Boston Marathon, including race updates and pictures from along the course.  An American has not won in Boston since 1983 when American Greg Meyer won.  John Powers, of the Globe, reports, that within the pack of possibilities in today's race, several Americans have achance to win.  He notes:

 

Not that it will be easy, with former champions Timothy Cherigat and Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, defender Hailu Negussie, and runner-up Wilson Onsare in the field, plus former Olympic medalist Tesfaye Tola.

''They did a good job of bringing in a great field," said Keflezighi, who's making his Boston debut after finishing twice in the top three in New York. ''They could have made it easier if they just wanted an American to win it, but they didn't."

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!! 

In all seriousness, it would be an incredible upset if an American won today. 

Upsets are also on the agenda in the upcoming NBA playoffs.  ESPN's Greg Anthony looks at a possible early playoff upset in How the Lakers can stun the Suns.  Anthony believes that the Suns can be had, and that the Lakers can to the taking.  He writes:

If and when the Suns and Lakers meet again, here's how I think the Lakers can win. There's a formula that you have to implement against Phoenix, and it requires discipline. It's about controlling tempo.

So this is where a coach like Phil Jackson earns his money.

I liken the Suns to a run-and-shoot team in football. And the way to combat that approach is with a running game in football -- in basketball you stop them by dominating the paint. That slows the tempo down.

Good point, but we'll have to see.

In DC, the Washington Wizards have qualified for the playoffs for a second consecutive year.  I remember how hapless the Wizards (then Bullets) were when I lived in DC that you'd find more Celtics fans at Bullets home games with the Green.  No longer!!  The tables have turned, Michael Wilbon, of the Washington Post, raises the bar for the Wizards, urging, Now it's time to take the next step.  Wilbon will be answering questions about the Wizards, the playoffs and everything else today at 1:15 in the Washington Post's chat house.

If I wasn't so sick, I would hang around to ask Wilbon his thoughts about the Duke Lax scandal.  It would interesting to see what he says if some one does ask him.  Dallas Morning News columnist Kevin Blackistone has just weighed in on the matter, writing, Duke's blind eye illuminates problem.  Blackistone sees the main issue, a rape and the failure of Duke University to police it's athletes, as being occluded in all the subsequent legalese since the initial charge.  He states:

A month passed last week, if you can believe it, since a woman said she was raped at a house where much of the Duke lacrosse team resided, and there hasn't been a single charge. It's been three weeks since the university announced it was suspending the team from play until everything is sorted out. It's been a week since their attorneys said DNA tests failed to connect any of the players to the alleged assault.

And woven through it are questions about what race and class have to do with it all. The accuser is a black mother of two working her way through historically black N.C. Central in part as a stripper, which was why she was at the lacrosse team's house in the first place. The accused are all white men at Duke, where annual tuition is roughly twice the yearly income of the average family in its hometown of Durham, N.C.

All together it's made for the perfect coverup of how such a despicable thing could happen even at such a high-minded place as Duke.

For no matter the outcome of this case, the reason it came into existence at all is because Duke – just like other colleges, be they big or small or private or public – nurtured through eyes wide shut that sense of entitlement that is so dangerously rampant in locker rooms and clubhouses everywhere.

This is yet another installment of Athletes Gone Wild.

All in all, it's nothing we don't know or haven't heard before.  However, it bears repeating and serious analysis.

True dat!