Yardbarker: Anthony Mason

Premise: There is a reason to love every college basketball team: The sequeling

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:46:00 -0500

Okay, this is going to be the culmination of three weeks of ridiculous speed typing. One man. 347 teams. My goal. Hope and faith for all. But before we get started three ground rules. 1) It's one man typing 347 paragraphs with no research team. I am bound to make errata in these posts. Let me know and I will fix them. 2) I try and avoid the obvious. So you know what that means? If you're Luke Harangody, you may not make the list. Stay Tuned Notre Dame Fan! 3) Odds are I will have to p...

The 2009-2010 Card Chronicle Big East basketball preview

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:44:03 -0500

Predicted Order of Finish1. West VirginiaThe Mountaineers laid a huge egg in the NCAA Tournament against Dayton, but Bob Huggins’ third West Virginia squad is loaded. Da’Sean Butler may be the most underrated player in the country and Devin Ebanks is primed to breakout and become a full-fledged superstar. 2. VillanovaLosing Dante Cunningham is an enormous hit, but the sensational guard trio of Scottie Reynolds and the Coreys (Fisher and Stokes) return from last year’s Fi...

Simulated Season Part 2: Righting The Ship

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:59:36 -0500

After the big win over Pitt, the Cards enter a critical four game stretch: former CUSA rival Southern Miss at home, followed by road games at UConn and Cincinnati, capped off with a Halloween home game against Arkansas State that could be considered a "trap game" - coming between important Big East road games against rivals Cinci and WVU and hosting a "directional" opponent that we should be seems like a CJ headline writers dream. A loss here and the words trick ...

Marquette's Big East Opponents Revealed With Predictions

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:01:52 -0500

The Marquette Golden Eagles’ 2009-2010 Big East opponents were announced yesterday and from the looks of it, they fared well in the schedule. While the timing of these games will make a huge difference as well as factors that occur throughout the course of the year, it’s never too early to make predictions about how the Warriors will do in the Big East next year. Home Games Depaul Just as it was last year, the Golden Eagles will play DePaul twice this year in a home-...

2009 Recruiting Breakdown - Big East

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:00:41 -0500

by Joey Whelan The summer months can be long and cruel for basketball fans. The NBA season is done, college coaches can’t get within a mile of their players when on a basketball court and even though the AAU circuit is in full swing, it doesn’t receive the same kind of easily accessible coverage that the others do. Still, it’s never too early to start looking ahead to next year and with the vast majority of high school seniors having signed letters of intent, its particularl...

I suppose I should explain myself, yeah?

Tue, 26 May 2009 12:07:20 -0500

You see. I live in Wisconsin. I was born and raised in Wisconsin. This means my basketball fandom is inexorably tied to two things. Nellieball and the George Karl era. You see, like most sports fans of the 80's, I grew up watching sports with my dad. Juan Nieves means a whole lot more to me than he means to you, unless you are indeed Juan Nieves or a member of the Nieves family. In which case welcome.But that's Brewers baseball. And we will inevitably return to that subject on my twic...

St. John’s Is Screwed

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:20:36 -0500

Anthony Mason, Jr., their best player, is out for the season.A This could signal the end for coach Norm Roberts as well.

NBA Punchlines: Derrick's Debut Not So Rosy

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:04:44 -0500

Blazers forward Martell Webster will miss 8-10 weeks after having surgery on a stress fracture in his foot. (Seattle Times)

How much will Oklahoma City embrace the NBA and their team in particular? (SacBee)

The great JJ Redick debate still rages in Orlando. (Orlando Sentinel)

Wow, haven't seen a more unlikely duo since Jay Fiedler and Anthony Mason. (NY Post)

This will help sell tickets: Vince Carter left the preseason game in Paris with a strained hamstring. (Star Ledger)

Nene is going to become a US citizen. (Rocky Mountain News)

Six turnovers in 27 minutes is not going to cut it, Derrick Rose. (Chicago Trib)

We didn't watch the game but did Bill Walker get a Tommy Point for his duck on Theo Ratliff Wednesday night? (Boston Globe)

Second to None: The Best Second Round Picks in the NBA's Modern Era

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:33:17 -0500

Think you can fall asleep once the first round of the NBA Draft is over? Think again. It seems like every year, a player or two from the second round emerges into a solid NBA contributor, eventually developing into an All-Star caliber player. Here is a list of the Top 10 second round picks in the modern era of basketball. (Most people believe that the modern era of the NBA began when the three-point rule was instituted, in the 1979-80 season.) The criteria are simple: how good was the player ...

Hop Aboard the New York Knicks Time Machine

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:41:47 -0500

Walk with me into the happy past of Metropolis basketball. The year was 2003. A prodigal point guard blew into the city with the Sound and Fury everyone knew would signify nothing. Mt. Mutombo had been reduced to a towel-waving bench fixture, the rebirth of Penny Hardaway got stuck somewhere on Canal St., Kurt Thomas had not proven to be the antidote to the Anthony Mason blues, and Keith Van Horn was just discovering the Italian Job that is life as a versatile white player in the NBA.

Let the Herb Williams era begin in earnest: A very perkisabeast commentary

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:36:21 -0500

Okay, we admit the fact that we're a little biased here. First a disclosure, I hate the Knicks and I hate Isiah Thomas with a passion. If given a choice though, my hatred for Thomas runs far deeper than it ever does for the New York Knickerbocker organization, who have had some of my favorite players of all time wear the uniform: Oakley, Ewing, X-man, Anthony Mason, Charles Smith (okay, I'm lying about the last three). To me, Thomas has been the perennial snake oil salesman of the NBA for the past ten years. He is a man who trades on his reputation rather than his prowess as a basketball mind, someone who sells the sizzle without the steak, an yet still manages to avoid being outed as a fraud, even by the normally voracious New York media. First, he parlayed his playing career into a gig with the Raptors, where he was largely a failure, even though he amazingly gets credit for being a good "talent evaluator." This label has stuck with him despite the fact that he drafted Marcus Camby over Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, and future homeboys Stephon Marbury and Jermaine O'Neal. And later as king of the Knicks he picked Renaldo Balkman over Rajon Rondo and Marcus Williams. We could give him a mulligan because he got T-Mac the next year but anyone who dismisses one of the greatest players of all time as being "just another player" because he's a racist, or leads his team off the floor without shaking hands as he did against the Bulls, or runs a hall of fame coach out the door because his ego can't handle being challenged, or thinks it's okay to call a woman a bitch doesn't deserve a mulligan. He deserves to be cast out of the NBA and fast. ****Please note we've left off several other minor basketball atrocities that he's committed including threatening opposing teams players, allowing his own players to act like goons, and bankrupting the CBA.*** In fact, the one big positive I can see about Thomas, which is often taken as his biggest negative, is that he's managed to blow a big chunk of Charles Dolan's money on bad contracts. However, after reading what an absolute bastard Dolan is to his staff, I think I'm gonna slide that onto the other side of the ledger, spend away zeke, spend away. I actually thought Isiah was done after his stint in Indiana where he took a championship team and coached them into the toilet for three or four straight seasons. I was at all three games in the Fleetcenter when the Celtics played the Pacers in 2003 and I can say I've never seen worse coaching, and I lived through the M.L Carr and John Carroll eras. In fact, his coaching was so ham fisted that at one point it looked like the Pacers were just looking to start a fight instead of win ball games. It was as if knowing they had no way to beat the Celtics they thought they could earn themselves a reprieve by being tough guys. I can still remember Jermaine O'Neal lamely putting his fists up to try and scare Mark Blount, our third string center at the time, after a particularly hard foul by Blount. O'Neal was booted from the game and the team lost the series. I don't know if he has yet to recover from Thomas' brain washing. However, in retrospect I kind of wish he had decked Blount. But we all knew that bad basketball decisions alone weren't going to spell the end of this man in the NBA. After all, there will always be another owner who is blindsided by Thomas' championship rings and thousand-watt smile. No, it had to end like this, with shameful revelations that reveled his true character. How could a man who degrades his season ticket holders by calling them a bunch of , "white motherf*^kers" (does that include Spike?) be allowed to steer one of the NBA's marquee franchises. If that's not bad enough, how about this beauty that he spilled under oath. "A white man calling a black female 'bitch,' that is wrong with me. I am not accepting that. That's a problem for me," he (Isiah Thomas) said. But asked if he'd have a problem with a black man calling a black woman "bitch," Thomas said, "Not as much." He said that under oath, this is not locker room chatter, this is not Kobe Bryant being caught on tape. This is a man so arrogant, so full of hate, that he is willing to say these racist and sexist things during a deposition. Trust me, it takes a real slime ball to say these things for the record. It's either that, or this man has the emotional intelligence of a gnat. Either way he shouldn't be allowed to run a franchise. And let's not leave Chuck Dolan out of this. He's the bigger idiot to not settle this thing. He had to know what Isiah said in his deposition and yet he still felt like they could win in the courtroom. The truth is that New York doesn't deserve a guy like this and the Knicks organization deserves better. The franchise is at an all time low and being steered straight into the ground. New York is a good sports town so the fans will always support their team but perhaps they should think twice when the first of November comes around, because any ticket you buy to watch this team play while Thomas is at the helm is a vote in favor of vile bigotry and hubris. How could anyone root for the two little lord Fauntleroy's to win? No Knick fans stay away. Stay far away. Boycott this ownership and its flawed management and everything else this group stands for. You'll be better off. That is unless Herb Williams is at the helm, which if there is any justice in this world he will be.