CLASSLESS CRASH AND BURN by ST

I recall Phil Jackson as a player. As you might recall or even figure, he was very insightful, intelligent and pretty solid in the fundamentals. He was far from spectacular but productive. He was a part of those incredibly unique Knicks teams that regularly played for titles in the early 1970's. Like or hate the Bulls or Lakers, they carried themselves pretty well and obviously won like 8-thousand championships. That leads to my question. What the hell happened at the end of their season killing loss at Dallas? We're talking about a level of classless unprofessionalism rarely seen since the Malace at the Palace, or most days with Terrell Owens. In a recent article that appeared in Sports Illustrated LA's Andrew Bynam was portrayed as a very soft spoke, intelligent, cool kind of guy. That's flushed. He came off as a total punk ass. I hope they suspend him for half of next year. Lamar Odom is now viewed as the most whipped pro athlete since Doug Christie. More on that later. Odom has always been Dirk Light. A talented big man who is a match up problem. While Nowitzky brings it on a nightly basis, Lamar is hit or miss and in this series the numbers weren't bad but he just looked disinterested at times. I commend the Mavs and Tyson Chandler for not responding to the Laker crap and not running into suspensions. They're now poised to emerge as the favorite to win the West versus the Thunder/Griz victor.
Gotta send a shout out to my guy, Derek Jeter. 1st two homers of the year as part of a 4 hit day in the romp against the Rangers. Raised the batting average 26 points in the series to a semi respectable .276 though well below his career number of .313. He's 40 hits shy of becoming the first pinstriper to reach 3K.
Awful weekend for the Oregon Baseball team. They mustered just 2 runs off a very good UCLA pitching staff. The bottom line is they can forget the post season. It's also critical to remember they're 3 and playing in one of the most cut throat conferences in America. The foundation is strong under George Horton but they've clearly been given a jolt of reality this year, especially at the bat. Tough week with games at Seattle tomorrow and Wednesday before hosting Stanford this weekend.