• Ladies and gentlemen, the best player currently under contract to the Cleveland Cavaliers is either Mo Williams or Antawn Jamison. LeBron James' contract expired a little more than 12 hours ago, and he is now beholden to no man. Until he signs his next contract, of course, at which point he'll be more beholden than ever, because it's going to have some very large numbers following dollar signs on it. He's going to spend the next few days meeting with representatives from several teams (the Nets are in town right now), who will probably do anything he asks in hopes of signing him. This is a family blog, so all I'm going to say is that there's really nothing I'd put past some of these team owners.
• After it looked so certain yesterday that the Cavs were going to name Brian Shaw as their next coach, the reports today are that Byron Scott is the guy. I frankly prefer Scott, since he's got head coach experience in the NBA and has even taken a team to the Finals. (Of course, so has Mike Brown ... Stop that, Steve.) Scott's agent has said he's agreed to be the next coach, which is a pretty strong source. Regardless, as I said yesterday, the only thing that really matters, as far as who the next coach is, is whether it makes LeBron want to stay. No matter who the coach is, they're title contenders with LeBron, but without him, they're the Clippers.
• Break up the Indians! After last night's 3-1 victory over Toronto, the Tribe is now riding a four-game winning streak. And for winning pitcher Aaron Laffey, it's been an enormous week. Not only did he just get his first win in the majors this season, his wife gave birth to their son on Tuesday. Laffey was very good last night, limiting the Blue Jays to one run on five hits over six innings, striking out five and walking two. Matt LaPorta, who has taken over first base after the Branyan trade, homered for the second-straight game; and Shin-Soo Choo also went deep. And Chris Perez, who had so many white-knuckle moments early in the season as the closer while Kerry Wood got healthy, slammed the door in a 1-2-3 ninth. Perez was closing this one because Wood had pitched three days in a row, and has really turned his season around.
• I will pass this factoid along without comment, but it's something I noticed: The Indians' starting lineup for today's series closer against the Jays has exactly two players who have spent the entire season with the Indians at the major league level this year: Choo and Travis Hafner.
• I was looking on the Yahoo fantasy sports site today, and found they have rated the Browns 31st out of 32 teams in the NFL from a fantasy perspective. The piece, by Andy Behrens, which you can read here, notes that the Browns figure to have a strong running game, featuring Jerome Harrison and second-round draft pick Montario Hardesty; but the passing game figures to be dookie, behind Jake Delhomme. An excerpt:
Seriously: If a team wants to deliver a groin-kick to its fan base, the best way to do so is to acquire Delhomme. He's turned the ball over 27 times in his last 12 games, dating back to his catastrophic playoff performance against Arizona. Jake threw 18 interceptions in 11 appearances last season.Well, we do have Seneca Wallace waiting as his backup ...At this stage in the 35-year-old's career, he's simply not someone you want at the controls of an offense — not in real-life, not in fantasy. Delhomme was a mess in Carolina when he had Steve Smith at his disposal; there's no reason to expect better results with the Browns' receiving corps.
1 comment:
I believe that LeBron makes a difference of about 30 wins: 55-60 with him, 25-30 without him.
Without LeBron, fans will stay away in droves, just like is happening with the Indians this year (read: last by a large margin among 30 teams in Major League Baseball).
See it here:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance
The sports scene in Cleveland will return to being irrelevant nationally, just like before LeBron arrived 7 years ago.
They better hope he re-signs.
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