Weekly Sporties

-Thursday night our long national nightmare finally ended when Dwight Howard was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers as part of a four-team trade. Now, as a Celtics fan this bother me because the Lakers always seem to get the best players and that gets annoying. However, I can't get too upset, because I think we all knew it would end this way. Howard seems like he wants attention more than wins and somehow he'll get both in LA. Plus it takes two to tango (or in this case four), so my real displeasure is with the people running the Orlando Magic. Even more than where Howard ended up I'm annoyed with the Magic because of the deal the accepted. Honestly, the deals they reportedly turned down from Houston and the Nets were much better than the one they ended up accepting. If you were willing to take back next to nothing than why did you drag this saga out for this long? I didn't go to business school, but I'm pretty sure they don't teach you to hold out for a worse deal. And if I were a Magic fan I would be irate. How can you trade the best player and only take back the 5th best player in the deal? The Magic didn't even unload any bad contracts or get many great picks because the first rounders they got are either protected (meaning the Magic only get them if they are below a certain number) or from teams which are regularly picking players in the late stages of the first round. So, to sum up: the Magic shipped out the best center in the game and in return got some players who are just alright, a couple late picks for the future and no salary cap relief. Oh, yeah, that was totally worth the 20 month wait.

-I think we can all agree that the Bobby Valentine experiment is not working for the Red Sox this season. For whatever reason the players just don't seem to like playing for him and it has shown on the field. It has gotten so bad that reports began to surface contending that if Bobby didn't turn things around he wouldn't make it to the end of the season. Now, the Sox did manage to cobble together a few wins to cool that talk for now, but you've got to wonder if Valentine will be one-and-done here. It probably didn't help that on Wednesday Valentine was given the dreaded "vote of confidence" by Sox owner John Henry. It doesn't matter the sport - a vote of confidence by ownership is pretty much useless. Honestly, most of the time it means you are about to get fired. And it really wasn't a good sign that Henry couldn't even be bothered to phone it in - he wrote it in an email. Yes, I will grant you it was a lengthy and thought-out email (it even appeared to be spell-checked), but at the end of the day that doesn't change the fact that Henry is more concerned about watching the Olympics than he is putting out the fires here in Boston. I will say this - his apathy has actually done more good for Valentine than he probably intended. Now people are focused on Henry and the other owners, pointing out how Valentine was stuck with coaches he probably didn't want but who were hired first and that Sox ownership doesn't appear to be as invested as they once were in how the team performs. I don't think it happened in the way he thought it would, but Henry may have actually found a way to take the heat away off his manager. Still, I wouldn't hurry home from London if I were him.

-The good news for Valentine is that not only does it look like Sox fans are turning on ownership, they still have John Lackey to kick around. Lackey was disappointing from the start in Boston and last season was seen as one of the leaders of the 'chicken and beer' brigade that helped guide the Sox to the biggest September collapse in history. You knew it was bad when everyone agreed that Lackey getting hurt and needing Tommy John surgery which would mean missing the next season was the best thing for everyone involved. But despite the fact that Lackey won't pitch for the Sox this season it appears his presence is still being felt. Just the other day there was a report that Lackey was walking through the clubhouse after a loss with a beer in both hands - a direct violation of Bobby Valentines "No beer in the clubhouse" rule he claimed to implement in Spring Training. Now, you can quibble about how necessary that rule is some other time, but the simple fact is that the manager made the rule and Lackey apparently was ignoring it which just makes him look like a dick. There was talk that maybe a year away would make people forget the way Lackey acted in 2011, but this definitely isn't going to help. Also, he's lost the media, as evidenced by the fact that they are questioning why he is even travelling with the team while rehabbing - something which would probably be applauded as "showing leadership" if it were any other player. I know the Red Sox have a lot of issues to deal with before next season (sadly, they can start addressing them now), but getting Lackey out of here is at the top of that list.

-As predicted in this space a couple months ago, the NFL is holding fast in its negotiations with their regular referees and has been using replacement refs for the first week of the preseason. And, also as predicted, they have been awful. Refs have been taking forever to spot the ball, they've been calling teams by the wrong names and in one particular bad piece of officiating, one ref awarded a touchback on a ball which had been downed at the 4 yard-line (even worse, the Bills had to use a challenge flag to reverse it). Now, I know we all get on refs when they make a few bad calls, but that doesn't change the fact that the refs the NFL had were pretty good at their jobs and the discrepancy is really showing here. I mean, many of these replacement refs have long careers at high levels of college football and yet they look like the Keystone Cops out there. Some of that could be attributed to nerves, but mostly it just looks like incompetence. Honestly, this may be the best negotiating tactic the locked-out refs will ever have. Hell, even the players are calling for the NFL to cave in to their demands and I would tend to agree with them. Fans are willing to let the league slide on a lot of issues, but the one thing the NFL can't afford to have is people questioning the actual game. We should be talking about what is going to happen with Peyton Manning or whether Cam Newton can keep up the play he showed up his rookie season and instead we're talking about how many simple calls these guys are going to get wrong in any given day. I'm not really sure what the main sticking point between the league and the officials is, but they need to just get passed it and get this thing settled. The season is going to start before you know it and replacement refs shouldn't be anywhere near the field when it does.

-Another professional sports league which appears completely willing to eviscerate its season on principle is the NHL. For the third time under Commissioner Gary Bettman, the NHL is facing a prolonged lock-out as the owners attempt to tip the balance even more strongly in their favor. Reports are that the players and owners are far apart and the league expects to shut out the players starting in September. Now, the last thing the NHL needs is to miss significant time because they just had a great, interesting season and should be looking to build off that momentum, not kill it. Also, they were finally starting to win back all the casual fans they pissed off in 2004 when they cancelled the entire season. I'm not sure what the problem is for the owners, because they already have a pretty sweet deal. Some of them may have issues with the long-term deals some players have signed which circumvent the salary cap rules but that is a problem with their fellow owners, not the players who are just taking what is offered. There are always going to be people who find ways to exploit loopholes, but closing those loopholes shouldn't require missing actual games. I shouldn't be shocked that the owners are basically just being greedy, but no matter how bad they think their current bargaining agreement is, I'm sure it makes them more money than if the arenas are dark. What is interesting is that during last year's NBA lockout the NHL players were basically telling their NBA counterparts to swallow hard and take a bad deal, because missing the season didn't do them any good. I'll be fascinated to see if they end up taking their own advice.

-The PGA Championship is going on this weekend and with it comes a new wrinkle. Due to the fact that the Kiawah Island course was built on a sand dune, the PGA of America was not sure they could keep spectators out of all the sand and decided to take the unusual step of declaring every area of the course as "through the green". That means that, technically, there are no bunkers at Kiawah Island just "sandy areas". It actually changes a lot of logistics, because there is a totally different set of rules for a ball in a bunker versus one in a sandy area. For example, not only can the players clean any loose stones they find in what any other week would be normal greenside bunker, but they can also hit practice shots to test the sand or even ground their clubs before they swing. Since these moves would otherwise be a penalty, the telecast has been filled with reminders of this change, along with the announcing team telling any of the rules police sitting at home that they shouldn't call in to report a rules violation. Now, I've previously made my feelings towards the kind of people who watch TV looking for rule breakers to tattle-on known (mostly I'm curious as to how they got a number to call in the first place), but this is also the first time I have ever seen the broadcast team made their feelings on the matter so public. From the repeated reminders it is pretty clear that they hear from these people enough and don't need the aggravation this week. So, if you are the kind of person who is known to call in and thinks the PGA staff appreciates your input you may need to rethink that position. Personally, I'm left to ponder why the rules officials just don't use caller-ID.

-I like to contend that when a person gains some level of success in an industry they shouldn't get greedy, but it never works out that way. Famous people always feel the need to show us how multi-talented they think they are. Athletes try to be actors, actors try to be singers and so on. So, it was hardly surprising when Jamaican sprint Usain Bolt announced that he would like to try out for Manchester United. I'm as impressed as anyone with what Bolt as done by repeating as the 100 meter gold medalist and keeping his title as fastest man on the planet. However, that one set of skills does not mean he would be able to take over every sport in the world. I like to poke at the soccer fans because it is fun, but I'm well aware that the sport requires more than running back and forth. I saw a clip of him kicking a soccer ball around and it looks like he has some familiarity with the sport, but Manchester United is one of the best clubs on the planet. No way could he compete at that level. Honestly, you could make the case that those players are actually better athletes than Bolt. All we know about him is he can run very fast for very short distances. Soccer players have to run for almost the entire 90 minutes, which is more endurance than anything. Given that Bolt slowed down in his 200 meter gold medal effort, you can see why I would have my doubts about his soccer skills. If he can't be bothered to run full-out for 20 seconds every 4 years I don't see this ending well. I'm not saying he'll never make the jump, just that he won't be doing it directly from London to the Premier League. Aim lower, like the MLS. Those guys could always use the publicity.