Enough, already

 Aaaand here we go again.

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there because she's white and the black players who are mugging her are racist.

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there because she's getting ALL THIS ATTENTION and everyone else in the WNBA is jealous (and racist!)

Caitlin Clark is getting mugged out there beca-

Wait. 

Stop.

Enough, already. 

I've watched several times the video of Angel Reese knocking Clark to the floor Sunday in the Indiana Fever's win over the Chicago Sky, and, sorry, I don't see any of the above. I see a hard foul I'm not convinced should have been a flagrant-1. I see Reese going for the block, getting all ball, but catching Clark in the head with her free arm. 

Hard contact, but incidental from all visual evidence. And not a mugging by any stretch of the imagination.

No, what I see is a pro hoops foul that would not have been a miscarriage of justice had the official whistled it as a common foul. The head contact is the only element I see that turned it into a flagrant-1.

And, sure, some people will say it was only a flagrant-1 because it was Angel Reese, and Angel Reese has said some things about Caitlin Clark that certain people have taken objection to, because how dare she not agree that Caitlin is the best thing to hit basketball since Naismith nailed up the peach baskets?

And other people will say it was more proof those mean WNBA girls are targeting poor Caitlin because she's more famous than they are, and why doesn't the league protect poor Caitlin?

And the worst people of all will say (because this is the world we live in now) that it's an innocent white girl getting picked on by black thugs because she's a white girl in a largely black league, and why doesn't anyone have the guts to admit it?

What I say about all that, again, is this: Enough, already. Enough.

Time for everyone to chill.

ime to take our cues from Caitlin herself -- who seems to be the only level head in the building right now, and who, when she gets knocked down, simply gets up and plays on.

So play on, already. And that goes for everyone.

Oh, Rory

Maybe it's just not supposed to happen for him. That's what the mystics would say.

Not being conversant with fate or destiny or perhaps second sight, all I could do yesterday, watching Rory McIlroy give away another major, was gasp when those two teensy putts slithered past the jar on 16 and 18. The first erased what was left of a two-stroke lead; the second handed the U.S. Open to a wonderfully giddy Bryson DeChambeau.

DeChambeau made the shots Rory couldn't down the stretch, including that remarkable save for par on 18 that sent him howling to the heavens. The guy was in jail, absolute jail, with his ball resting under a tree against a root in Pinehurst No. 2's hinterlands; then he was in jail again when his shot from there skittered across the fairway and landed in a bunker 55 yards from the cup.

No worries. DeChambeau just pulled out a wedge, took a measured swipe at the ball, and it fetched up four feet or so from the pin. It was all cake from there.

And Rory?

He fled the premises, and the questions from the media, as soon as DeChambeau's putt dropped, a chickenstuff exit for which we should be willing to forgive him. It has, after all, now been a decade since he won his fourth and last major, and again Sunday he had a fifth in hand until he didn't.

Until, after dueling DeChambeau all day in the North Carolina sun, he missed two putts inside three feet for the first time since, I don't know, disco was in. And again I was reminded of something a friend said once when golf bit him in the ass: "It's an evil game."

True then. True now.

Your moment of karma

 Things weirdly symbiotic are No. 1 with a bullet this week, or so it seems. A couple of examples come to mind, the latter perhaps less symbiosis than something else.

First off, it's weirdly symbiotic how much the storylines of  the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final have exactly mirrored one another, and never more so than this weekend.

In the NBA, the Boston Celtics won the first three games and shoved the Dallas Mavericks to the precipice, only to the Mavs crush the C's by 38 points in Game 4 -- yes, you read that right -- to force the series back to Boston.

In the NHL, meanwhile, the Florida Panthers won the first three games and shoved the Edmonton Oilers to the precipice, only to have the Oilers crush the Panthers 8-1 in Game 4 -- yes, you read that right -- to force the series back to Florida.

Weird, right?

But not as significant as a couple of other things that happened this week.

In Newtown, Conn., the 2024 graduating class from Newtown High School turned their tassels, on a day far more freighted than usual. That class, see, was missing 20 members. They were all gunned down a dozen years ago by a madman who burst into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 28 people in a matter of minutes -- 20 of them children between the ages of 6 and 7 who would have been turning their tassels with their classmates if this country were a less mad place itself.

At the graduation ceremony, graduates wore green-and-white ribbons in their memory. And everyone listened as the names of the lost 20 were read out.

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile, in Texas, another madman got his.

Alex Jones, the ranting cuckoo who was the voice of the extremist right-wing media vehicle Infowars, was ordered by a judge to liquidate all his personal assets in order to pay the parents of the Sandy Hook victims $1 billion in damages. They were awarded those damages after Jones tormented them for years, claiming they were all "crisis actors" and their children weren't dead at all.

Imagine losing your child in the worst possible way, and then have to listen to some vile creature like Alex Jones call you a liar.

Now imagine all those names being read out at the Newtown graduation ceremony, in the same week the man who told America all those names were just cosplay was punished for doing so. 

No, symbiosis probably isn't the right word for that.

But karma sure as hell is.

Father's Day: A memory

 Went out to an area winery last night -- beautiful place, with an open field and woods at the back and a pond and live music -- and a boy walked past our table at one point.

Took me right back to the neat brick home on the southeast side where I grew up. 

The kid was wearing a ball cap with shades propped on the bill, see. And he was carrying not one but two baseball mitts.

The significance of the latter was not lost on me.

It suggested, see, that at some point on this soft June evening he and his dad were going to walk out to that open field and have a catch, and that's where it took me back to 3029 Castle Drive. Because every so often in the summer my dad and I would go out in the backyard, and he'd lob a baseball at me, and I would swing and miss.

"Swing level," he'd say. "Don't try to kill it."

Then he'd lob the ball to me again, and I'd swing level. And I'd miss again.

I've told this story before. It was six years ago, when Dad passed. It served to illustrate the fact that our relationship was different from some fathers and sons, partly because Dad was never much of a sports fan, and partly because his son had the athletic ability of a kumquat. I was never gonna be that kid who hit home runs or jump shots or the tight end up the seam with a laser pass, and he was never gonna be the proud dad sitting in the stands cheering me on.

That was OK, though. We bonded over other things -- nerding out on the Civil War; finding value and fascination in the past and its various relics -- and I like to think he got to be a proud dad anyway when (weirdly or not) I grew up to be a sportswriter and he got to see my name in the paper every day.

"I don't know how you do what you do," my dad, a master electrician and even more masterful woodworker, used to say. Or words to that effect.

"Well, I don't know how you do what you do," replied his son, who would have either electrocuted himself or sacrificed a finger to the Clumsy Gods if he'd tried to fix a broken circuit or whittle a piece of wood into something exquisite.

And then we'd laugh.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Think about you often; miss you always.

Exit strategy

 Slowly, now, the phenom slips away from us. Instead of blazing across the firmament, he hobbles. Instead of high noon, you see sunset in every pained step.

Once upon a time Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his generation, maybe of any generation, and he carried his sport to an extent perhaps no athlete ever has. When Tiger played, America watched golf. When he for whatever reason didn't or couldn't, America watched something else. It was that simple a thing.

But now?

Now he's 48, his body and his game ruined by infirmities both self-inflicted and not so, and it's shocking sometimes to watch him. He has become an old man, it seems, between one swing of the club and the next. 

This week he shot 4-over 74 and 3-over 73 at Pinehurst in the U.S. Open, and missed the cut just like he missed the cut at the PGA last month. The month before that, he finished 60th in the Masters, shooting 16-over after an ugly 82-77 weekend.

He's played just one other tournament this year, at Riviera Country Club. He withdrew after two rounds.

And so you can watch him now and say, "Why doesn't he just retire?", but if you do you miss the fact he pretty much already has. After he missed the cut at Pinehurst he said this might or might not have been his last U.S. Open, just as he said in April it might or might not have been his last Masters. His body dictates that now, his body and time.

Woods more than anyone seems to accept this, and with an equanimity that seems odd considering how pitilessly he used to hunt down and crush all pretenders. When he slipped on his Sunday red with another major in his sights, it was almost always game over. Everyone else went into what can only be described as Tiger Cringe Mode.

Maybe that's why the galleries still follow him whenever he plays, even though he's just another P. Malnati or R. Mansell on the leaderboard these days. It's memory that draws them. It's nostalgia. And mostly it's a tribute, the way it was a tribute when Michael Jordan came to a town in his last years with the Washington Wizards, and the arena would jitter with camera flashes every time he touched the ball.

Why doesn't Tiger Woods just retire?

Look around. This is his retirement.

Good times, rolling

 Sometimes you forget IndyCar has a whole series and not just one race, and by "sometimes" I mean "pretty much all the time." This is because IndyCar is and has been for a long time epically clumsy at marketing its product.

But occasionally the sun does shine on its hindparts. Or, you know, something like that.

To start with, the one IndyCar race America actually watches, the Indianapolis 500, was an instant classic. After a four-hour rain delay that only ramped up the anticipation, the race was a three-hour carnival of crazy: Eighteen different leaders; drivers barreling three and sometimes four-wide down its long narrow straights and through its square-jawed narrow corners; and finally Josef Newgarden passing Pato O'Ward for the lead in turn three on the last lap after O'Ward had passed him for the lead as the last lap began.

It was a hell of a show, and even people who barely know motorsports exists thought so. As did the 345,000 fans who crammed the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's massive expanse to watch it in person.

Then came yesterday.

When IndyCar finally, finally announced it was dumping an increasingly disinterested NBC as its network partner, and was signing a new deal with FOX that is expected to raise the series' profile and pump some needed cash into a product whose operating costs -- especially for the smaller teams -- have become problematical.

Under the new agreement, FOX will air every one of IndyCar's 17 races on its flagship  channel, as well as carry live qualifying and practice sessions on its streaming and cable entities. What IndyCar hopes (expects, really) is this will bring more eyeballs to its product, and by bringing more eyeballs attract the sponsorship dollars that are lifeblood of any motorsport venture.

An all-flagship schedule might even enable series owner Roger Penske to lure a third engine supplier -- something that has consistently eluded IndyCar, and (let's face it) would remain a hard nut even with the expected ratings bump the FOX deal should provide.

In any event, IndyCar's in a yea better position now than it was with NBC, which is airing roughly half this season's races on either Peacock or USA. It even announced it might have moved the 500 -- the biggest motorsports event in the world -- to USA had the rains stuck around and pushed the race to Monday.

The network suits likely would have characterized that as a business decision. More invested folks (i.e.: me) thought it was NBC sticking its thumb in IndyCar's eye in the most blatant way possible.

So good for IndyCar for going with FOX, which is now the motorsports network because of its dual alliance with NASCAR. And here's hoping it can do for IndyCar what it's done for the stock car boys -- because NASCAR, while diminished these days, remains America's dominant motorsports series almost 30 years after Tony George and CART tore IndyCar apart and left the field wide open for Jeff Gordon 'n' Dale Earnhardt 'n' them.

In the Blob's completely biased view, IndyCar right now is a better product than NASCAR, as competitive and thick with talent as its been since long before the Split. Now it gets its best chance in a long time to show it off.

Let the good times roll, in other words. Like, really fast.

Statue wars

 They brought Tom Brady back to Foxborough last night to induct him into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame, and Bill Belichick was there and team owner Robert Kraft was there and 60,000 fans were there, which is pretty impressive when you consider it's summer and the Cape beckons and Foxborough is not exactly the least remote place on earth.

But, hey. When you're honoring the greatest player in franchise history, and one of the greatest players in the history of the game, people will come, Ray. People will come.

So they came and Kraft got up and announced that no New England Patriot would wear Brady's No. 12 ever again, and then he announced that sometime this year the Patriots would erect a statue of Brady outside Gillette Stadium.

The statue, naturally, will stand 12 feet tall.

And right off that got me thinking about Peyton Manning.

Who of course was Brady's great rival all those years, and who made a surprise appearance at Brady's induction last night. And whose own statue stands outside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, looking downfield for Marvin or Reggie -- who, judging from the orientation of the statue, must have been running a slant through the lobby of the JW Marriott across the street.

Peyton's statue is nine feet tall. I looked it up.

And now, somewhere in the inner recesses of my diseased mind, I can see Brady acknowledging this, and I can already hear the exchange ...

Tom: "Ha! Beat you again, Manning! Neener-neener-neener!"

Peyton: "Dammit!"

On it goes.

Identity theft

 OK, class, to here's your pop quiz for to-

("Aw, gee, Mr. Blob, a pop quiz? That ain't fair!" you're saying now)

Well, tough noogies. Here's your pop quiz for today anyway:

What did the Dallas Mavericks say after they lost AGAIN to the Boston Celtics last night, which put them down 3-0 in the best-of-seven and virtually ended the NBA Finals?

A. "I hate it when a plan comes together, and it's not our plan."

B. "Well, hell, that didn't work."

C. "Hey, wait a minute! We're supposed to be the ones with the dynamic duo!"

D. All of the above.

The correct answer is "D", of course. Also, perhaps, "Gee, nice of you to finally show up, Kyrie", and "My back hurts from carrying all y'all around. Think I'll commit a couple stupid fouls and check outta this game so I can sit down and rest."

That last, of course, comes from Luka Doncic, whose back probably does ache from carrying the Mavs in these Finals, but who didn't have to go and foul out of Game 3 last night the way he did. It killed whatever shot the Mavericks had of salvaging both game and series, and it squandered a 35-point night from Kyrie Irving, who finally stirred himself, looked around and said "Wait, these are the FINALS? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

So he goes 13 of 28 from the field and 4 of 6 from the 3-point arc (after going 0 for 8 from there in the first two games), and, well, big deal. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum combined for 61 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists for the C's, and now the Mavs not only are down the well right and proper, they also have to cope with the fact the real dynamic duo in this series is wearing Celtic green.

Prevailing wisdom was it would be Luka and Kyrie against the best team in these Finals, and some folks actually were picking the former. But until last night it was only Luka against the best team, and now that team has stolen even the Mavs' Luka-Kyrie identity.

Best team. Best dynamic duo. 

Looks like you Blobophiles were right after all.

It ain't fair, mister. It just ain't.

Gone West

America called him Zeke from Cabin Creek, way back when. 

He was a shy, skinny kid from West Virginia who could shoot out every light in little old Cabin Creek, and he did it there and in Morgantown for the University, and later in the footlights of L.A. And by the time Jerry West was done, people called him a lot of things.

Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain and bunch of other Los Angeles Lakers -- hell, maybe even their nemeses on the Boston Celtics -- called him The Man. 

The NBA called him All-Association 12 times, and an All-Star every season of his career, and its NBA Finals MVP in 1969.

Kareem and Magic and Kobe and Shaq and many, many others called him boss.

The Basketball Hall of Fame called him a member in three different categories.

How good was Jerry West, who died this morning at 86?

He was so good he won that aforementioned Finals MVP in '69 as a member of the losing team. In 55 years, it's never happened since.

How giant a shadow did he cast over his game as a player, coach and executive?

The freaking NBA logo is his silhouette. Or so virtually everyone agrees.

West never beat the Bill Russell/Sam Jones/Red Auerbach Celtics, but neither did anyone else in the 1960s. Year after year he'd show up in the Finals, and year after year the best he could manage was to be brave in the attempt. Until he finally won with Wilt, Gail Goodrich and that crowd in 1972, he was the living embodiment of nobility in the face of defeat -- so much so that even though he lost and lost and lost, no one anywhere regarded him as a loser. 

He was just the guy who didn't win. The man who didn't win.

That maybe makes up for the unfairness of his last years on our mortal coil, the mean twist of fate that defaced his legacy for those who didn't know any better. In the sunset of his life, see, a bunch of hacks from HBO made a limited series called "Winning Time" that chronicled the early years of the Lakers' 1980s dynasty.

Now, there are a million directions they could have gone with that tale, but they chose to make it a cartoon, or the next-door neighbor to a cartoon. And no one suffered for that decision more than West, who was portrayed as a bitter, ranting lunatic for the sake of comic relief.

Hell of a sendoff for the man, that was. Because anyone who watched it whose institutional basketball knowledge began with LeBron 'n' Steph 'n' them would have come away believing that was Jerry West. Dear God, what a kick in the teeth.

And now the man has gone West, to pun terribly. And the only upside to that is maybe, in the perspectives on his life sure to pour forth in the coming days, the LeBron 'n' Steph generation will discover the circus-clown Jerry West from "Winning Time" was as fictitious as Forrest Gump or Jimmy Chitwood.

One can only hope.

A-cricketing we will go

 And here you thought the U.S. hockey team beating the Soviets in Lake Placid was the greatest upset in the history of sports.

Not even close, BUD.

No, that happened last week, when the U.S. national cricket team (yes, we have a national cricket team) upset the No. 1 team in the world, Pakistan. Understand, Pakistan has been a world power forever, and it doesn't lose to anyone, except occasionally to fellow world power India. And it sure as hell doesn't lose to a bunch of Americans, most of whom think cricket is what you put on your hook when there's bluegill to be caught.

And yet, the Americans beat 'em. And without Jim Craig or Mike Eruzione, even.

Now, you might be asking why I'm bringing this up a week late, and my answer is "Because it's not hockey or basketball or soccer." If it were any of those, see, I wouldn't have forgotten about it. But because it's cricket, and I'm an American, I did.

Provincialism in the first degree. Guilty on all counts, your honor.

I know this is an affront to cricket aficionados everywhere, but cricket is pretty provincial itself. It's played in England and in all those places the empire once stole blind, er, touched. Aside from that, it's not really anyone's cup o' tea, if you catch my drift.

Mostly this is because no one understands it, even the people who profess to understand it. The scoring, to begin with, would have stumped Alan Turing. (Look him up. I can't do all the work around here.) And in America's case, it's especially hard to grasp because our eyes are used to baseball, and even though cricket looks like baseball, it's not.

Therefore we get confused when a batter whacks the ball and it goes directly behind him, and it's not a near-whiff foul ball but perfectly placed because the area behind him is in play. Pretty much everywhere is in play.

I learned this more than 20 years ago when I was in Ireland, and it seemed every time I turned on the telly, there was a cricket match being broadcast. I got to the point, watching it for awhile, that I could almost tell what was going on 10 percent of the time. I also learned that cricket has every other sport in the world beat in terminology.

 In baseball, for example, a snappy curveball is just a snappy curveball. In cricket, however, they call it a "wicked googly." How fun is that?

Also, in cricket they don't name positions boring stuff like first baseman or third or left fielder. No, sir. Instead, there's a "silly midoff." Also, as night follows day, a "silly mid-on." Also a "gully", a "square leg" and a "bowler", which is what the pitcher is called in cricket.

I learned all this a few years back, when I discovered that a group of Sri Lankans in Fort Wayne had hacked a cricket pitch out of an empty field at Kreager Park and were playing host to the Midwest Sri Lankan Annual Cricket Tournament. I also learned cricket actually has a rabid following in the U.S., albeit one largely comprised of immigrants from cricket-playing countries.

I'm thinking they were over the moon when the U.S. took down the Pakistanis last week.

I'm thinking the Americans, in doing so, didn't make a lot of "hoiks", which is cricket for swinging wildly for the fences and missing. I'm also thinking they avoided the "agricultural shot", which is cricket for playing a shot awkwardly.

For context, I committed a lot of hoiks and agricultural shots in my thoroughly undistinguished Wildcat youth baseball days. If that helps.

And if it doesn't?

Just think of Eruzione swinging a bat that looks liked a fraternity paddle and smacking the ball past the silly mid-off for, I don't know, some sort of points. And raise a pint to our brave lads for kicking some Pakistani butt.

Now there was a wicked googly for ya.

Eating disorder

 Read the other day that Joey Chestnut, the only professional hot dog eater in America (or so it seems), has been thrown out of the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. And I don't know how to feel about that.

I don't know how to feel because he's being banned for signing an endorsement deal with a rival hot dog company -- a vegan hot dog company, for heaven's sake! -- and I had no idea hot dog eating had advanced to the branding-wars stage.

I also don't know how to feel because he's being banned by the ruling body of professional eating, Major League Eating, and I didn't know there even was a ruling body for professional eating. Let alone a ruling body that, you know, actually named itself Major League Eating.

Makes me wonder where Major League Digesting comes down on the Joey Chestnut issue. Or how the renegade splinter group Major League Gorging will deal with this, seeing how Major League Gorging is currently planning a spring eating competition with another renegade splinter group, Major League Stuffing Your Face.

"Oh, come on!" you're saying now. "You made all that up!"

Nuh-uh.

OK, so I did, but can you blame me? I mean, over and above the fact there actually is something as ridiculous as competitive eating -- only in America, amiright? -- there are now turf wars like in actual sports.

And how dumb is Major League Eating, using its apparently vast legislative powers to ban the only reason America even cares about competitive eating?

Or maybe MLE thinks the attention the Nathan's contest gets can be attributed solely to people rooting for Joe Blow from Idaho. Yeah, no.

No, the only thing that matters to anyone is whether or not Joey Chestnut wins another Mustard Yellow Belt, which he's won 16 times and is not to be confused with the yellow jersey donned by the winner of the Tour de Syringe, er, France. Or with the Lombardi Trophy, the Borg-Warner Trophy or the Stanley Cup.

All of this reminds me, kinda-sorta, of the Dream Team flap at the 1992 Olympics. Remember that? Remember how Michael Jordan, a Nike client, played for the U.S. team even though its outfitter was Reebok? And how he used the American flag to cover up the Reebok logo as he stood on the medal stand?

It was either the most disgusting thing ever, or evidence that MJ understood better than anyone what America was all about. You can go either way on it, or both.

Anyway ... the MLE is not about to let Joey C. get away with that sort of thing. So he's been banned, to the MLE's and Nathan's detriment. Never underestimate the power of bigotry to get people to act against their own interest.

And by "bigotry", I mean "pro-beef bigotry." In other words: Don't you DARE bring that hippie plant-based crap into THIS bastion of meaty American virtue! You think our boys could have stormed the beaches of Normandy if they'd grown up eating plant dogs in Yankee Stadium? WE THINK NOT.

Or, you know, something like that.

Money, and history

 Well, then. Guess the past really isn't past, just like Faulkner used to tell us.

Guess history still matters to some folks -- even in a day when so many know so little of it, and the unscrupulous are hard at work rewriting it as a fairy tale. This does not include Dan Hurley, apparently.

To the University of Connecticut's profound relief.

Hurley shocked a lot of people when he decided to turn down the Los Angeles Lakers and their choke-a-horse offer yesterday, opting to stick with UConn and the groves of academe. Or, this being 2024, the groves of Professional Basketball Lite, which is only marginally distinguishable from the full-bodied version.

Smart guys everywhere thought Hurley would surely make the jump to L.A. and the NBA, on account of he'd apparently expressed a desire to someday coach in the Association and, what the hell, if it didn't work out, he'd have a fatter bank account and job affairs from every major college program in America. But what do the smart guys (and even the less smart guys, like, say, me) know?

Turns out the lure of history trumped the lure of LeBron, and, hand-in-hand with that, the lure of unfinished business. It's been half a century since John Wooden and UCLA reeled off seven straight NCAA titles, back when it wasn't nearly the task it is today. No one since has managed so much as a three-peat; Hurley and UConn, having gone back-to-back, now have the chance to do that.

So, Hurley will remain in Storrs, and deal with the blinding migraine Professional Basketball Lite has become. Unfettered NIL deals ... the virtually unregulated transfer portal ... yeah, bring it on. The three-peat awaits.

Well. That and a rather hefty salary bump.

This raises an obvious question: If college kids have become untrammeled money grubbers, as so many grumblers grumble they now are, who do you think they learned it from? 

Yes, they're choosing schools these days based on how much jack their NIL collectives are willing to cough up, but their coaches have been doing the same thing forever. And so Dan Hurley will stick with UConn, as Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont -- the governor, for pity's sake -- promises the Constitution State will "make sure he's the top-paid college coach."

This for a guy who's already making north of $5 million a year to coach basketball at an academic institution.

Know what that makes Dan Hurley?

A history nerd, sure. And perhaps the most adroit transfer portal strategist ever, because no one leveraged his own personal portal better than Hurley, whether he intended to or not.

See, kids? There's still a lot to learn from the grownups.

Snub or no?

 USA Basketball left Caitlin Clark off the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team, and if some people think this means USA Basketball has dryer lint for brains, other people think it means USA Basketball has dryer lint, dust bunnies and grass clippings for brains. 

I get where they're coming from, sort of. But I also get where USA Basketball is coming from, sort of.

I get that Caitlin Clark is the biggest draw in women's basketball since, like, forever, and that putting her on the Olympic team would have thrown not just a national but an international spotlight on women's Olympic basketball in general -- which veteran journalists who've covered Olympic women's basketball for decades say has been routinely, and shamefully, ignored. 

Put Clark on the U.S. team, they argue, and she'd be one of the three biggest names at the Paris Games. And maybe the international media and viewing public would finally realize there's more to women's Olympic sports than pocket-sized gymnasts and the occasional lung-capacity-monster swimmer.

For those folks, it's not about whether Clark has done enough yet to deserve a spot on the team, or whether she's the best women's basketball player ever. She's not, at least yet. She's not even the best player in the WNBA, nor even close to it.

She is, however, the biggest draw in women's basketball history. That's not even debatable for anyone with an ounce of cognition, and that is what it's about for the pro-Clark folks.

Also, putting Clark on the Olympic team as something of an outlier would hardly have been without precedent. Steve Alford made the 1984 U.S. Olympic team after his freshman year at Indiana largely because Bob Knight was the Olympic coach that year. And Christian Laettner made the 1992 Dream Team because the selectors apparently decided they needed a Designated College Guy for appearance sake.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, USA Basketball is tasked with putting a team on the floor to win a gold medal, the key word being "team." It's the reason their supporters have given for past snubs, some of them far more egregious than Clark's snub-or-no. As Jemele Hill pointed out the other day on the Magic Twitter Thingy, one year they left the WNBA's MVP (Nneka Ogwumike) off the roster. Another time they left off two-time Olympic gold medalist and former MVP Candace Parker. 

Clark has nothing like those on-court credentials yet. So ...

So, here we are.

With a roster put together to maximize experience, which is why 41-year-old Diana Taurasi is on it and 22-year-old WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark is not. 

With a roster so stuffed with talent -- veteran talent -- it's hard to conceive whom you'd leave off it to make way for Clark, accomplished and uber-celebrated though she may be. 

With a roster that will almost surely win a ninth consecutive gold medal, and that USA Basketball figures will draw millions of viewers worldwide even without Caitlin Clark, because it's, you know, the Olympics. Who doesn't watch the Olympics?

All of that said, one of USA Basketball's reported reasons for leaving Clark off the roster was because it didn't want to deal with a storm of online blowback from Caitlin Maniacs if she wasn't getting the minutes the Maniacs thought she should. If true, that's just damn silly. And kinda gutless.

What might not be so silly?

That Clark's celebrity might in some way prove disruptive to USA Basketball's concept of team.

 Now, I may be all wet here, but if you send Clark to Paris, yes, she'd bring unprecedented attention to women's Olympic basketball. But the attention would primarily be about her. How long before some of her Team USA mates, professionals though they are, would weary of Caitlin Clark constantly being the focus even if she's playing, like, 12 minutes a game? Would the world really discover the awesome talents of A'ja Wilson or Breanna Stewart or Jewell Lloyd because of the spotlight on Clark, or would that spotlight only further obscure them?

I could see it going either way. Which is why, in perhaps a too-close-to-call finish, I tend to come down on the side of USA Basketball here.

Clark eventually will get her shot at Olympic gold, just as Olympic newbies Kahleah Copper, Sabrina Ionescu and Alyssa Thomas will get theirs this year after putting in their time. And they'll get more pub than ever even without Clark, because the very fact she won't be in Paris already has put them front and center in a way they've never before been.

Or perhaps you remember all the headlines about the release of the women's Olympic roster from four years or eight years or 16 years ago. Yeah, me, either. 

A little Stanley provincialism

 I know who I want to win the Stanley Cup Final that begins tonight, and it's the Edmonton Oilers. And that's not because I have anything against the Florida Panthers, or am a STINKING TRAITOR TO AMERICA, and IF I LOVE CANADA SO MUCH WHY DON'T I JUST MOVE THERE?

Although part of this is about geography, come to think of it. Not to say my cockeyed notions of propriety.

See, I want the Oilers to win because, whether we like it or not here in 'Merica!, hockey is Canada's national sport, and so it only would be right and proper for a Canadian team to return Stanley to his ancestral home. Especially since the last time a Canadian team won the Cup, Turk Broda was still in goal for the Maple Leafs, and Rocket Richard (or maybe Howie Morenz!) was still skating a regular shift for Les Habitants, aka the Montreal Canadiens.

OK. So not really. 

But it has been 31 years since the Habs brought Stanley home to Canada, and that's an intolerably long time for the citizens of our neighbor to the north. For pity's sake, Anaheim, Calif., has won the Cup since then. Two Florida teams have, including the Panthers. Teams from North Carolina, Texas and, oh my God, Las Vegas have.

So, yeah, I'm all in on the Oilers. For one thing, the best player in hockey (Connor McDavid) plays for them. Shouldn't the best player in hockey bench-press Stanley at some point, if only to maintain the integrity of the game itself?

I think so.

I think, even years and years after the NHL metastasized all over creation and back, that there's something weird about Stanley possibly being paraded through the streets of Miami, and not for the first time. When it was Dallas vs. Tampa Bay in the Stanley Cup Final a few years back, I was sure the end times must be near. Hell, I'm still mad about the North Stars fleeing Minnesota -- Minnesota, for God's sake -- to become the generic Dallas Stars deep in the heart of Texas.

And that's despite the fact Minnesota now has another NHL team, the Wild.

But, hey. Times change. Geography and such becomes elastic. The Phoenix Coyotes are headed for Salt Lake City, and apparently they're leaving behind a heartbroken fan base. 

Hockey angst in Arizona. It's a brave new world.

But not that new, dammit. Not that new.

Exit strategy

 So apparently the Los Angeles Lakers are going hard at UConn's Dan Hurley as their next coach, and I'm thinking, sure, why the hell not? It's not as if UConn is throwing wads of cash at him to keep him around.

Oh, wait. UConn is.

The word out there is the Huskies are willing to make Hurley the richest college basketball coach in America if he sticks around, but here's the problem: For one of the few times in the history of business transactions, it might really not be about the money this time.

 Oh, the Lakers will pay him more than enough to keep Hurley in hair, er, bald product, make no mistake. But this is more about Hurley's none-too-secret desire to give the NBA a whirl. And what better time than now?

First off, he's won back-to-back NCAA titles at UConn, so what's left for him in the college ranks but more of the same? Cutting nets down is fun, but after awhile, it's just origami with scissors. The Lakers will give him all the scissors and basketball nets he wants if he misses it.

And then there's this: College hoops ain't college hoops anymore.

Back in the day, when Rick Pitino and John Calipari bailed for the NBA and Mike Krzyzewski told the Lakers, nah, he was good in Durham, it was mostly about the money, not to say ambition. The Celtics and Nets lured Pitino and Calipari with both large green and an appeal to their outsized egos, and Coach K told the Lakers no because he didn't need either the money or the ego stroke.

Plus, he'd already gotten his fill of coaching NBA players when he coached the U.S. Olympic team. So thanks but no thanks.

Now, however ...

Well, it's all different, right? The NBA dynamic is now the college dynamic, courtesy of the out-of-control NIL monster and the transfer portal. College coaches -- who for decades ruled like pashas, holding absolute sway over their subjects, er, players -- now awaken every day in an alien landscape where the players hold sway over them. It can't be the most comfortable feeling in the world.

It also begs the question: If you're going to work in an environment in which the players wield the power (or at least a chunk of it), why not do it at the game's highest level? Keeping LeBron happy can't be all that different from keeping Billy Bob Jumpshot happy at State U., can it?

And in Hurley's particular case, he won't have to keep LeBron happy for long. Hell, LeBron himself has told the Lakers that they should consider a future without him in their hiring process. Don't bring in another LeBron's Coach, in other words; bring in a coach for all seasons, or at for all Lakers.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Hurley's disciplined, share-the-wealth system is the very antithesis of the NBA culture. What if it doesn't work in that culture? What if Hurley winds up as the next Frank Vogel or Darvin Ham, forced out because they weren't the ones driving the bus?"

Well ... in that case, Hurley will have spent three or four years cashing chunky paychecks, and he can simply go back to cashing even more chunky paychecks at the college level. Because every major program in the country will be lining up to hand him the keys the vault, so to speak.

And who knows? There's always a chance his NBA model won't be that of Pitino or Calpari, who crashed and burned in the Association, but that of Brad Stevens. Whom lots of people (i.e.: me) thought was a bizarre hire by the Celtics, but which turned out to be pretty much genius.

Either way, where's the downside?

Take your time. I'll wait.

Aaaaand we're off

 Aaaaand it's the C's in Game 1.

It's the Boston Celtics, favored in an NBA Finals for the first time since Bird and McHale ''n' them were doing their deal in the mid-1980s, taking down Luka, Kyrie and the Dallas Mavericks 107-89, and not looking particularly stressed doing it. The Celts' dynamic duo, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, went for 38 points, 17 rebounds and seven assists; Kristap Porzingis scored 20 off the bench in 21 minutes; and the Celtics looked like what they are, which is a far deeper team than the Mavs.

The Mavs?

Well, Luka Doncic dropped 30 points and 10 boards, but his running buddy Kyrie Irving struggled, managing just 12 points and going goose-egg-for-five from the 3-point arc. Except for P.J. Washington, who scored 14 points and pulled eight rebounds, no one else did much to speak of. Which has pretty much been Dallas' M.O. in this playoff run.

All five starters and Porzingis, meanwhile, scored in double figures for Boston. Which is going to be the Mavericks' major issue in this series. 

The Blob is lousy at math, see, but even I can figure out that five (or six) beats two almost every time. The Mavs have the dynamic duo in Luka and Kyrie, but the Celtics have Jayson and Jaylen and Kristaps and Al Horford and Jrue Holiday and ... well. You get the idea.

That's why the Blob's official, probably-way-off NBA Finals prediction is this: Celtics in five.

May Luka and Kyrie make me look the fool. Wouldn't be the first time.

Politician to the rescue!

 James "Jim" "Jimbo" Banks, the Trump sock puppet who represents Indiana's 3rd District in Congress, is running to replace Mike Braun as one of our state's two senators. This explains a few things.

Mostly, it explains him inserting himself into stuff that's none of his business, and about which he knows next to nothing.

It seems "Jim" "Jimbo" saw the Cheap Shot Heard 'Round The World from Chicago the other day, when Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter knocked Indiana Fever rookie sensation Caitlin Clark to the floor with a dead-ball, blindside body block.  This provoked days of bloviation (Mea culpa: The Blob was one of the bloviators) about Clark being targeted by opponents jealous of Caitlin Mania, and whether or not one reason everyone's gone bonkers about her is because she's white and straight and not black and gay.

There's probably some truth to that, as the Blob has noted. Some.

In any case, this led to the assumption that Clark being roughed up is a racial thing -- which likely also has some truth to it, though not as much as is suggested by the narrative the always issue-hungry media seems to be pushing. 

And speaking of the always issue-hungry among us ...

Enter James "Jim" "Jimbo" Banks!

Who decided the other day this was an issue with some meat on its bones, and so he fired off a letter to the WNBA office, demanding an explanation for why the league isn't protecting poor Caitlin, who after all has brought goo-gobs of attention to said league. The stench of paternalism in this bothered "Jim" "Jimbo" not at all, of course. Nor did the arrogance of his assumption that as a Very Important Hoosier, it's his job to protect Hoosiers from basketball goonery and such.

Even Hoosiers from, you know, Iowa. And even though this particular Hoosier from Iowa didn't ask, and hasn't asked for, any protection -- let alone protection from a  politician who's just trying to harvest votes.

Now, I don't know what Clark thinks of Banks' little stunt. Wise in the ways of the media, publicly she'd probably say something cushiony like, gee, I appreciate the gesture, Rep. Banks. But I have to think an athlete as fiercely competitive as she is must be privately rolling her eyes and saying, "Stay in your lane, 'Jim' 'Jimbo.' I got this."

And I have to think she does.

Or at least, she does enough not to need an unsolicited got-your-back from some politician who doesn't know a microbe's worth of what she knows about basketball.

Stay in your lane. Good advice.

Day of days

 Eighty years ago today.

Eighty years ago today, Hitler's mad experiment in human extermination began its inevitable fall.

Eighty years ago today, his Fortress Europe proved no match for a bunch of kids who assaulted it headfirst with nothing but their flesh and blood and stubborn will for armor.

Eighty years ago today, the words Omaha and Utah and Juno and Gold and Sword were inscribed in red on the pages of history, and became something more than just words. Eighty years ago today, they were the code names for a handful of beaches in Normandy transformed into death traps by Hitler's Nazis, and then into peaceful strands where people go now to stare out at the English Channel and struggle to summon the violence and sacrifice of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Eighty years ago today.

For context, we're now as far away from then as the kids who walked into the Nazi storm that day were from Grant and Lee squaring off in the swelter of a Virginia summer in the last campaign of the American Civil War.

That happened in 1864, or 80 years before D-Day.

It's now 2024, and again I summon the words of Rick Atkinson, who described D-Day thusly in volume three of his epic Libertation Trilogy, "The Guns at Last Light":

For those who outlived the day, who survived this high thing, this bright honor, this destiny, the memories would remain as shot-torn as the beach itself ... They remembered the red splash of shells plumping the shallows, and machine-gun bullets puckering the sea "like wind-driven hail" ... Mortar fragments said to be the size of shovel blades skimmed the shore, trimming away arms, legs, heads. Steel-jacketed rounds kicked up sand "like wicked living things," as a reporter wrote, or swarmed overhead in what the novelist-soldier Vernon Scannell called an "insectile whine" ...

Eighty years ago today.

A man and his cars

 Comes now the word that Parnelli Jones has died, and here's where I lose an old debate with my best friend. I knew it had to happen sooner or later.

See, my best friend and I have known one another since we were in what was then called nursery school, and for almost as long we've had this running quasi-debate about motorsports. I say race drivers are athletes; my friend says they're not. And the reason he says they're not is because most of racing is about the cars.

I no longer have a rebuttal, now that Parnelli is gone. Because for me, it was about the cars with him.

Initially it was about one of those gorgeous Offenhauser front-engine roadsters, which Parnelli flogged around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day in May of 1962 at an iconic speed. He ran four laps at a 150.370, officially becoming the first man in history to crack the 150-mph mark in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500.

He didn't win the race that year, but the next year, when he again won the pole, he held off Jimmy Clark to become a 500 winner. By that time, the gorgeous old Offy was iconic itself; built by A.J. Watson and owned by J.C. Agajanian, it bore Agajanian's signature number -- 98 -- and a nickname: Calhoun.

Calhoun was my first race car crush. Part of it was because Parnelli drove the wheels off it; part of it was because it was just so damn beautiful. All those old roadsters are -- even if,  I've been told, they were not exactly a comfortable ride.

Fast forward four years.

It's 1967 now, and Parnelli is driving for Andy Granatelli. His ride is no longer No. 98; now it's No. 40. And it's like no ride Indy has seen before or since.

That's because No. 40 was powered by a Pratt and Whitney turbine engine, and if it wasn't the first turbine-powered car to show up at Indy, it was the first that was actually competitive. Squattier than your average Indy car, it had four-wheel drive, so all the tires were the same size. And just to make it stand out even more, Granatelli had it painted Day-Glo orange, so when it whooshed around the track on gray days it glowed like a Monument Valley sunset.

And when I say "whooshed," I mean "whooshed." Didn't blare, didn't scream, but just cruised quietly around, leaving a sort of ruffling sound in its wake.

And I fell irredeemably in love with Indy because of it.

I was 12 years old in '67, see, and the first time I went to the Speedway was on the second weekend of qualifying that year. Parnelli had already put the Whooshmobile on the outside of Row 2 on Pole Day, running in race trim. But that afternoon he rolled out No. 40 for a brief shakedown cruise, and I was hooked.

I immediately decided it was the coolest car ever, and Parnelli the coolest driver ever, and IMS the coolest place ever. Nothing that's happened since -- including 40 years covering the 500 as a sportswriter -- has changed my mind.

So, yeah, Parnelli is responsible for all that. Peripherally, at least.

He didn't win the 500 in the Whooshmobile, of course. After dominating the race, a six-dollar bearing failed in No. 40 with three laps to run, and Parnelli was done. A.J. Foyt inherited the lead and the win in a standard internal combustion engine.

That made every other driver happy but Parnelli, because the combusties hated the turbine. Taking the hint, in due course USAC legislated it into oblivion.

Dumbest move any motorsports body ever made.

Of course, you can still see both Calhoun and No. 40 today, if you make a pilgrimage to the Speedway Museum. And every so often I do when my eyes get hungry and I need to let them feast on something exquisite.

As for Parnelli, he only raced in seven 500s and only won the one before retiring to become a successful team owner. But he led 492 laps in those seven starts, which I believe works out to an average of 70.2 laps per. That's putting your mark on a thing.

He also saved Foyt's life once when Foyt got upside-down in a stock car in Riverside, Calif. But that's another story for another day.

Today, it's all about another member of American racing's greatest generation going to his reward. 

And those cars, of course. Always the cars.

The race thing

 I've never completely gotten the Pat McAfee phenomenon, except for the fact he can be funny as all get out and he's completely free-range. And therefore is a media guy who's not really a media guy, even if ESPN employs him as one.

I could also say he's white and male, which is why he's allowed to say stuff no one else could get away with saying. I hate to go there, but sometimes the obvious is the obvious.

The other day, for instance, Pat went off on the apparent jealousy of Caitlin Clark in the ranks of the WNBA, and how it's racial in nature. Which is why he said this: I would like the media people that continue to say, "This rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class." Nah, just call it for what it is — there's one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar.

"One white bitch for the Indiana team." Nice.

Now, Pat got away with that one because the clear implication was he wasn't calling Clark that, but it's how he believes a lot of WNBA players think of her. Let's not kid ourselves, though: He also got away with it because he's white and male.

I mean, imagine how quickly ESPN would jettison say, Jemele Hill or any other McAfee-like black talent if they'd said the same thing in the same context. Actually the Worldwide Leader did get rid of Hill for calling Donald Trump a racist -- not even a racist bitch, mind you, but just a racist.

Which frankly isn't all that controversial, if you ask me. Not that anyone is.

Ah, but here we go again, right where the Blob didn't want to go. I realize it's unavoidable, especially in this riven time. And I realize, much as I'm loathe to admit it, there's probably a grain of truth to what McAfee was saying.

But only a grain. 

I don't think it's true, see, that the largely black WNBA workforce is resentful of Clark primarily because she's white. Pat McAfee may think that, but I don't. And I don't because it's pretty damn racist in itself to assume as much.

No, I think the main reason some WNBA veterans resent her (not all, and not even most; that's another false assumption here) is not because she's white, but because she's getting all this attention -- attention they rightly feel she hasn't yet earned. Here we've for years been putting all this sweat equity into building the WNBA into a viable brand, and now this girl comes sashayin' in and gets all the credit for putting us on the map. Hell, we drew the damn map!

Which they did.

And yet ...

And yet, it's undeniably true that Caitlin Mania has elevated the WNBA. People are paying attention now who never paid attention before. They're buying her merch; they're filling arenas to see her play. Her team, the woeful Indiana Fever, exceeded last year's total attendance in just five games.

In the meantime, while she hasn't yet walked on water, she's established herself as one of the top rookies in the league, averaging 17.6 points, 6.6 assists and 5.1 rebounds through a rough first month of the season. Yes, she commits turnovers in bunches. Yes, she's not shooting all that well. And, yes, she may not even be the best rookie in the league.

Check out what Angel Reese is doing up in Chicago. Or Cameron Brink out in L.A. They've hit the WNBA with significant impact, too.

But the hype is all with Clark, and she's dealing with it as well as anyone could when the hype is as beyond ridiculous as it is. And if the fact she's white has helped that along, that's not nearly as much a factor as McAfee and others want you to think it is.

 If that were true, people would be filling WNBA arenas to watch Brink, who is also white. But they aren't.

They're coming to watch Caitlin Clark. And I'll die on the hill that most players in the WNBA aren't resentful of that, because to suggest otherwise is to suggest most players in the WNBA are stupid.

They aren't. Like the professional golfers who realized early on that Tiger Woods and the attention he got was making them ALL rich, I 'm thinking the WNBA players realize that about Clark, too.

No matter how much the Pat McAfees want to muddy the waters.

Agony and ecstasy

 The best and the worst, all in one. Sometimes you really do get that.

Sometimes joy comes with a side of grief, but not really grief, because the joy diffuses it. Illuminates it. Gives it a gloss of ecstasy even when it is agony that is its core truth.

That all happened Sunday. And not where you might think, I'm guessing.

It happened in Eastlake, Ohio, site of the NCAA Division III College World Series. A team from Wisconsin-Whitewater eliminated a team from Birmingham-Southern College on a walk-off home run, 11-10, after Birmingham-Southern blew a 10-5 lead.

That did not just end the team from Birmingham-Southern's season, it turns out. It ended its existence.

That's because the Birmingham-Southern baseball team was the last vestige of Birmingham-Southern as a whole, its run to the D-III World Series an odd brew of triumph, loss, magic and heartache. The small liberal arts school from Alabama, see, announced it was shuttering its doors at the end of the 2023-24 school year. Like so many small liberal arts schools across America these days, financial woes did it in.

What that meant was the Panthers baseball team was representing its school, it was its school. And when the end came with dramatic suddenness Sunday, it took awhile for everyone to absorb the fact this was not only it, but it.

Then the players, and the alumni who had come to see Birmingham-Southern one last time, lined up along the third-baseline, tipped their caps to their fans and left the field holding hands with teammates.

After that, it was left to head coach Jay Weisberg, who came to BSC in 2007, to sum it all up. He did so eloquently.

"I know a lot of people have pride in their schools, and they should," he said in a Associated Press piece. "We aren't different from many. But it's such a beautiful place, physically. We have the best sunsets in the world. The message about Birmingham-Southern is that it changed lives. It was a place where people came as young men and women and left as mature men and women.

"What this nation has seen over these last three weeks and the joy we brought is exactly what this program is ... Birmingham-Southern could have gone off into the sunset and not many people besides graduates or the Birmingham community would know about it. But now the nation knows there were some pretty special things that happened here."

Indeed.

Timing is everything

 There are a lot of things to like about A.J. Foyt's latest IndyCar prodigy Santino Ferrucci, like the fact he apparently has titanium gonads and drives like his hair is on fire, and also that he's still only 26 years old.

Being still only 26 years old is sometimes a liability, however.

Friday, for instance, he got into a spat with Andretti Global drivers Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta, both of whom claimed Ferrucci was driving like an idiot and tried to run them both off the road during qualifying up in Detroit. Ferrucci, of course, saw it differently, claiming it was Kirkwood in particular who was driving like an idiot.

Then (just for funsies, perhaps) he took a shot at Herta, calling him Kirkwood's "little boyfriend teammate."

Lesson No. 1 here: Guys who are still only 26 frequently engage their mouths before their brains.

Lesson No. 2: Guys who are still only 26, and alpha males on top of it, will always go to the homophobe well if given half the chance. Someone could do an interesting study on why if it weren't so glaringly obvious: No insult is greater for an alpha hetero male than implying someone is gay.

Anyway, in this case not only was a hetero alpha male doing just that, the timing was, shall we say, exquisite. Because Ferrucci chose to do it on the eve of Pride Month, which began yesterday.

And IndyCar is a proud supporter of Pride Month, on account of it has one of the most robust LGBTIQA+ fan bases in motorsports.

Oops. 

"Man, I just apologize for the comments," Ferrucci told RACER, trying to repair the damage. "I was very out of line, very out of pocket, especially in Pride Month ... I just want to really apologize to the (LGBTIQA+) community for that."

Yeah, well. Maybe he could make amends by thinking of every month as Pride Month. Just a thought.

Target practice

 Look, I know what some folks are gonna say these days when you suggest Caitlin Clark has become the WNBA's favorite Mugging of the Week target. I've been around. I know how some folks are.

They've gonna say, waaah, too bad, welcome to the bigs, rook.

They're gonna say them that gets all the exposure always are going to have a bullseye on their backs, so get over it.

They're gonna say it's a physical game and opponents have quickly figured out if you get physical with the league's newest Big Deal you can throw her off her game and knock the Big Deal right out of her.

All of this is true.

However.

However, when you go as out of the way as some opponents do simply to knock the crap out of the WNBA's perceived cash cow simply because she's the perceived cash cow, that's when I get off the boat.

I get off the boat because when Chicago guard Chennedy Carter shoulders Clark to the ground when the ball isn't even in play, someone needs to do something. And I'm not talking just about the game officials, who somehow didn't slap Carter with a flagrant foul even though it was as clearly a flagrant foul as any foul ever has been.

I'm talking about Clark's teammates. Where the hell were they?

One upon a time in a land far, far away, one of Duke University's designated asshats (and Duke always has a Designated Asshat, it's like a rule) stomped on a Kentucky player's chest during a scrum under the basket. Did it deliberately. Did it behind the official's back, and so got away with it.

That player was, of course, Christian Laettner. The Kentucky player whose chest he planted a foot on was Animu Timberlake. Neither Timberlake, nor any other Kentucky player, retaliated.

This is not what should have happened.

What should have happened was, the next time down the floor, someone in a Kentucky uniform should have knocked the Designated Asshat on his ass. Sent the kind of message that regrettably is the only kind of message that should be sent sometimes.

I'm not saying you should routinely turn basketball games into hockey games, mind you. Leave the bench-clearing brawls to the Hanson brothers and Ogie Oglethorpe.

However.

However, when Carter threw that shoulder into Clark yesterday, one of her Indiana Fever teammates should have thrown hands at Carter. And not just because it was Clark. You do it for anyone, because otherwise you're putting a great big Kick Me sign on your backside.

Want to take gratuitous shots at our prize rookie? Sure, go ahead. 'Cause, you  know, we're soft as Charmin.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's not what the Fever are implying at all by their apparent disinterest in stepping up for a teammate.

I'm gonna take some convincing, though. Like, a lot of convincing.