A mixed review

 Well, OK. So maybe the kid isn't the next Bob Gibson. Not yet, anyway.

This just in from PNC Park in Pittsburgh, where my always underwhelming Cruds lost to the Cubs yesterday in phenom Paul Skenes' major-league debut, but not because of the Phenom:

The kid can bust the fastball.

And, the bullpen is trash.

The first we kinda already knew, but yesterday pretty much confirmed it. Skenes gave up six hits and three earned runs in four innings' work in the 10-9 loss, but he also struck out seven and cracked 100 mph on the gun 17 times. So he's got that going for him.

And the bullpen?

Gloriously Cruddy.

After Skenes departed with no one out in the fifth inning, see, it took three more arms  for Pittsburgh to retire the side. Before they did, however, those three arms had issued six bases-loaded walks. Six. It was the most walked-in runs by a major-league team (or, in this case, an alleged major-league team) in 65 years.

Sixty-five years! Good lord, Ike was still president then. Sputnik was a thing. So were hula-hoops, Bill Haley and the Comets and big honkin' cars with big honkin' tailfins.

The names of the perpetrators of this historic buffoonery?

They were Kyle Nicolas, Josh Fleming and Colin Holderman. Together, in the fifth, they walked six batters -- including three on 12 straight balls by Nicolas.

(And, no, before you ask, I don't know where the Cruds found these guys. In the beer line at PNC would be a good guess. Or maybe waiting for a sandwich at Primanti's.)

In any case, the Phenom showed flashes of Phenomhood, and also flashes of being just 21 years old. And so, on balance, he's probably not going to turn out to be Kyle Nicolas, Josh Fleming or Colin Holderman.

Good enough for now.

Coachin' 'em up

 Alrighty, then. So maybe the coach of an NBA team does serve some constructive purpose, other than being a suit who calls timeouts, plots sub rotations and wrangles wayward egos. 

Maybe he can call out his players when necessary. I know, what a concept.

Hard so say if that was the case last night with Nuggets coach Michael Malone up in Minnesota, but something happened to the defending NBA champs on the flight from Denver to Minneapolis. After losing the first two games of their series with the Minnesota Timberwolves at home, the second horrendously, they put a whuppin' on the Wolves last night in front of Minnesota's home crowd, 117-90.

And maybe it was just a coincidence that the win came a day after Malone scolded his guys, telling them they were the defending champs and it was time they started acting like it. Or maybe they were actually listening and responded.

Jamal Murray, for one, responded with 24 points in front of a hostile Target Center crowd that booed him incessantly, two nights after he shot 3-for-18 and threw a heat pack and towel onto the floor during the Nuggets' 26-point loss in Game 2. The NBA lightened his wallet by $100,000 for that little tantrum.

Last night, he scored 18 of his 24 points in the first half and splashed 11-of-21 shots. League MVP Nikola Jokic added a 24-point, 14-rebound, nine-assist stat line, and all five Nuggets starters scored in double figures.

In other words, they were the defending champs again.

Reminder or no reminder.

Arms alert!

 I hesitate to bring this up, first off. Past experience may not guarantee future results, after all, but it does guarantee present howls of derision and, I don't know, maybe even showers of rotten fruit.

Know what happens tomorrow, boys and girls?

My Pittsburgh Pirates will send the Next Nuclear Arm to the mound against the Chicago Cubs.

Yes, my Cruds are calling up Paul Skenes, whom they took with the first pick in the 2023 draft and who has been mowing down batters like a zero-turn Toro goes after your grass. Skenes, a 6-foot-6, 235-pound righty, has a 102-mph heater according to the gun, and mixes in a 95-mph combo splitter/sinker, a high-80s slider and an 88-mph changeup just for funsies.

And lest you think the Cruds are acting a bit rashly, considering this is Skenes' first full pro season and he's only 21 years old ... well,  in their defense, to which I rarely feel compelled to come, the kid's wasting his time in Triple A. In 27 1/3 innings in Indianapolis, he's allowed just three earned runs with 45 strikeouts. That's a shade under two strikeouts per inning to you and me, kids.

"Greeaat," you're saying now. "Like you needed another excuse to talk about your stupid Pirates and their stupid cruddiness and, geez Louise, where's the off switch on this Blob?"

Oh, pipe down. These are the Cruds we're talking about, remember. I give Skenes two seasons max before his arm either explodes in a shower of tiny arm bits, or he asks to re-do his deal and the cheaper-than-Jim-Harbaugh's-khakis Cruds swap him for prospects the way they do all their other homegrown studs.

In which case, you won't hear another word about him from this precinct. Unless it's how dashing he looks in Dodger blue or Yankee pinstripes, that is.

So you've got that going for you.

Nah, they're good

 I wouldn't know Ethan Strauss if he went upside my head with a ball-peen hammer. But let me start out this morning by saying I do know a couple things about him:

1. He's a guy. (I'm pretty sure)

2. Like some guys, he thinks guys suggesting ways to help out wimminfolk is just what an enlightened, 21st-century, equality-huggin' fella does.

I understand that impulse, being a guy myself. But I also understand how that impulse can come off sounding not enlightened by condescending, and therefore insulting in an entirely unintended way.

I say this after Strauss, whoever he is, went on Bill Simmons' podcast recently and suggested the sudden surge in the WNBA's popularity could be helped by tying it more closely to its male counterpart (and subsidizer), the NBA. His solution, or part of it, was to have all the WNBA teams change this nicknames to their NBA counterparts -- i.e., the Indiana Fever would become the Indiana W-Pacers, the Los Angeles Sparks the W-Lakers, the New York Liberty the W-Knicks. And so on and so forth.

The Blob can't speak for the women of the WNBA, but I figure this is not the path they'd prefer to follow to raise their league's profile.

This is because the women, one would assume, don't want to be seen as just the NBA's little sister, a perception which Strauss's suggestion would inevitably create. One would assume, again, that they want to forge their own identity and their own brand, tied to the belief that the women's game is not the men's game, but its own unique entity with its own unique appeal.

In other words, the women are likely saying this right now: "Nah, we're good." And that's especially true now that Caitlin Mania has thrown an even brighter spotlight on the WNBA than ever before. 

The Fever, after all, drew 13,000 fans to Gainsbridge Fieldhouse last night for Caitlin Clark's first home game, and it wasn't even a regular home game. It was a preseason home game. No. 22 Fever jerseys are almost literally selling out as fast as they can be produced. Consequently, every semi-conscious person in America knows exactly who the Indiana Fever are.

Why would you need to rename them? Why would the WNBA need to be Lil' Sis when the Caitlin Effect has already shoved it to the front of the American sports consciousness -- to the extent that the league announced this week it will begin providing charter flights for its teams the way a big-time professional sports entity should?

Shoot. Way it's all going, maybe the Pacers should change their name to the M-Fever. Just a thought.

Just play basketball

 The Indiana Pacers are down 2-0 to the New York Knicks in the NBA conference semis after losing the first two games in Madison Square Garden, and now the Pacers are hollering "No fair!"

They're saying the officiating in New York was atrocious, and most of the atrocious landed on their doorstep.

They've submitted to the league office 78 calls against them they claim are suspicious,  and want to know what the hell's going on with that.

Pacers coach Rick Carlisle even went to the conspiracy well after Game 2, hinting the Association is agin' 'em because Indiana is just a little ol' small market team, and it would be better for the NBA if a major player like New York advanced instead of, ugh, Indianapolis.

Me?

I think Tyrese Halliburton has a better grip on reality than Coach Rick does.

Here's what he said after Game 2, for instance: "Let's not pretend like (officiating) is the only reason we lost. We just didn't play good enough. We just got to be better."

In other words: You want to take officiating out of the equation? Start guarding Jalen Brunson. Stop letting the Knicks' starting five use our starting five like Handi-Wipes. Just play some damn basketball, the way we did against the Bucks.

Look. The Blob is not going to tell you the Pacers haven't gotten hosed on some calls at crucial times. They have. But running off to the league office to whine about it isn't going to magically turn around the series. Because that's what losers do.

So what do winners do?

Well, they don't do is what they did last night, which is let the Knicks' starters combine for 118 of their 130 points. They don't let Brunson drop 29 on 11-of-18 shooting two nights after dropping 43 in Game 1. They don't let the Knicks shoot 57 percent -- 67 percent in the decisive third quarter -- and 46.7 percent from the 3-point arc. And their starters don't go a combined minus-87 on the night.

Minus-87. Man, you have to be trying to be that bad.

Oh, Halliburton bounced back after his no-show in Game 1, scoring 34 points to give with nine assists, six rebounds and three steals. But no one else in the starting five took his cue.

Myles Turner scored just six points in 31 minutes. Pascal Siakam, who's been virtually invisible so far, scored 14 in 36 minutes. Were it not for the play of Obi Toppin (20 points in 20 minutes) T.J. McConnell (10 points and a dozen dimes in 23 minutes) and the rest of the Pacers bench, this would have been a platinum-grade blowout instead of the nine-point mini-blowout it was.

But, yeah, let's make it about the officiating. As if NBA officiating is the gold standard for the craft, instead of the poop show it generally is.

Enough with that. Time for the Pacers to listen to Halliburton -- a leader who does what a leader does, which is cut through all the noise.

Just play basketball. Just play some damn basketball.

Punishment phase

 Comes now the word that Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel, who became a flash point for the Big Issue brigade when he went full creepy mode on Caitlin Clark last month, is in the midst of a two-week suspension by his newspaper.

The news was announced not by the Star, which for the usual lawyer-ly reasons tried to hide it from the public and, as night follows day, succeeded only in making themselves look like gutless connivers. Instead, it was Bob Kravitz, veteran sports scribe and Doyel's predecessor at the Star, who broke the story. According to Kravitz, the Star not only gave Doyel a two-week sitdown, but will also bar him from covering Clark and the Indiana Fever in person

Which sounds a lot more like a restraining order than it probably should.

This is because the Blob remains convinced that Doyel's skeevy exchange with Clark was not intended to come off that way, but was Doyel just looking for a column hook. I haven't talked to Gregg and I certainly don't know that for sure, but that's my educated guess. I absolutely do not think he's a dirty old man who was hitting on a woman young enough to be his daughter, simply because nothing in his professional background suggests that's the case.

This of course doesn't stop people who have an axe to grind with Doyel from painting him that way. Social media is a jungle that thrives on hyperbole, false generalization and suspect motives, after all, and certain of its species enjoys nothing better than feeding on the carcasses of the fallen.

Not to get all hyperbolic myself, of course.

No, what I think in this instance is a two-week sitdown sounds proportional, and not just because I suggested that's what should happen when this first blew up. Firing Doyel would have been rash overkill, and I suspect most of the people who endorsed that either have some personal beef with the guy or don't like the positions he takes on certain issues. Nor do I agree with the Big Issue people, who tried to turn the whole thing into some referendum on the way predominantly male sports media routinely belittles and objectifies women athletes (which it does).

Sorry. But in this case, all I see is a guy blowing his assignment. Deeper meaning than that I leave to the navel-gazers.

And the notion that he should be cast forever into outer darkness?

I leave that to social media, dark lord that it is.

The sons of the fathers

 I'll credit Dylan Sinn of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, my old newspaper home, for pointing this out. But you know what Marian University hiring Pat Knight as its new basketball coach means, among other things?

It means Pat Knight will be coaching in the Crossroads League, an NAIA powerhouse. And that means Knight's Marian teams will be playing Huntington University on the regular, because the Foresters are also in the Crossroads League.

And you know what that means?

It means Pat Knight, the son of Bob Knight, will be coaching against Huntington's Kory Alford, the son of Steve Alford.

Who of course played for Bob Knight at Indiana. And who got crosswise with him later on when Steve was coaching Iowa, and Knight supposedly snubbed him (although maybe he didn't). And it became his whole thing where Knight supposedly resented Steve because he thought Steve was angling to be his successor at IU, even though Steve was never actually doing so.

Anyway ... 

Anyway, the Blob being the oddly wired creature he is, this immediately made me proclaim the following: "It's like 'Creed II' come to life!"

"Creed II," of course (or maybe not "of course" if you're not into movies), is the film in which Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, fights Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Apollo in the ring in "Rocky IV." Creed the son gets his ass kicked by Drago the son, and then comes back to beat him in the traditional Big Climactic Fight That In Real Life Would Have Been Stopped Long Before The Hero Rallies To Win.

 "Why, that's the stupidest, most trying-too-hard analogy I've ever heard!" you're exclaiming now. 

Yeah, well. I suppose that's true if you consider Pat and Kory won't be out there at midcourt trying to cave in one another's skulls, or looking to avenge their fathers, or probably won't have any feelings about it at all other than their shared bond with IU basketball. But if you ignore all that ...

"It's still stupid!" you're saying.

Man. You guys are no fun.