-Just one day after I used this space to complain about the New York Knicks taking 8 months to finalise a deal we all knew was coming, their cross-river neighbors, the New Jersey Nets, pulled off a huge deal with almost no warning or fanfare. They traded their starting point guard and power forward along with a couple of first-round draft picks to Utah for point guard Deron Williams. (Gut-reaction analysis: New Jersey gave up too much. I know Williams is a great point guard, but he's only effective when he has people who can score to pass to and the Nets don't have anybody that fits that description. It would be like me using all my savings to put a home theatre down at the beach house.) So, while I don't love the deal, I do love that they got it done in a day.
-What makes this deal extra interesting is that just a couple weeks ago longtime Utah coach Jerry Sloan quit the Jazz, reportedly over a power struggle with Williams. At the time both parties tried to downplay the fight, but if Sloan suddenly decides to come out of retirement it will go a long way to letting us know just how bad that fight really was. At the very least it tells me that Utah had decided Williams was not going to re-sign when his deal expired after next season. If that is the case you have to respect their decision to cut ties now, rather than go through what the Nuggets just went through with Carmelo Anthony.
-There are reports that the Sacramento Kings are threatening to relocate to Anaheim. This is too bad, because the Kings are one of those teams I root for as long as they aren't playing the Celtics. I pull for those teams in NBA-only cities. Plus, I don't think Southern California really needs three NBA teams, so I'd rather they stay put. However, if the Kings are absolutely going to move I would like to see them either go back to the city they left (Kansas City) or one of the other places that previously had NBA teams but couldn't sustain them because of ownership (Seattle or Vancouver). Sure, the TV markets are nearly as big, but at least they wouldn't be the smallest fish in an increasingly crowded pond.
-Speaking of Kansas City, Royals reliever Joakim Soria would like people to stop referring to him as 'The Mexicutioner' because he thinks the name is in bad taste considering the sweeping violence in his native Mexico. Well, I have good news for Soria: the name should be pretty easy to shake, because I have heard exactly zero people ever call him that. Also, the Royals have a pretty small fanbase and it's not a short nickname, so something tells they will only have to convince 10-15 people to call him something else.
-Last night the Caltech basketball team won their first conference game in 311 tries or, if you're the kind of person who prefers dates for perspective, 26 years. 310 straight conference losses is an amazing number, so here's my question: Every day dozens of collegiate sports teams (most of them better than this one) are cancelled in a move to save the school some money, so how has this team survived? I'm sure that no one expects Caltech to make a deep NCAA tournament run every year, but it's not like they are in the ACC either. They should have been able to steal a win at some point in the past two decades. I know basketball costs less than most sports, but you have to think the money used to send the Beavers to play other nerd-centric institutions would have been better spent on a particle accelerator or extra slide-rules.
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