ESPN Is Pathetic

Patriot_Reign

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Apr 21, 2011
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From what I can find, Woj responded to a press release (email?) from Senator Hawley calling for the NBA to put pro-military and other jingoistic messages on uniforms. Not sure if that's instead of the planned BLM messages or instead of, but frankly, I think Woj's concise response was good. Maybe unprofessional, but someone needed to say it anyway.
Why?
I don't have an issue with BLM, but China is crushing humans rights in Hong Kong/ Singapore yet the NBA remains silent - because China is a huge money maker.
Steve Kerr is outspoken on any number of social topics, but when asked about China it's immediately "uhh, umm, I don't know enough, umm, uhhh can't comment until I learn more, uhhh, next question". Same scenario can be applied to players with enormous clout like LJ.
Easy to be a warrior for human rights when it's convenient.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Why?
I don't have an issue with BLM, but China is crushing humans rights in Hong Kong/ Singapore yet the NBA remains silent - because China is a huge money maker.
Steve Kerr is outspoken on any number of social topics, but when asked about China it's immediately "uhh, umm, I don't know enough, umm, uhhh can't comment until I learn more, uhhh, next question". Same scenario can be applied to players with enormous clout like LJ.
Easy to be a warrior for human rights when it's convenient.
Because I had no idea it had anything to do with China. Like I said, what I'd found suggested Hawley wanted the NBA to put pro-military and pro-police messages on uniforms like they're doing with BLM. I think "fuck you" is a perfectly reasonable response to that request. I'll admit I have no idea what the deal is with the NBA and China. I don't follow the league at all.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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Why?
I don't have an issue with BLM, but China is crushing humans rights in Hong Kong/ Singapore yet the NBA remains silent - because China is a huge money maker.
Steve Kerr is outspoken on any number of social topics, but when asked about China it's immediately "uhh, umm, I don't know enough, umm, uhhh can't comment until I learn more, uhhh, next question". Same scenario can be applied to players with enormous clout like LJ.
Easy to be a warrior for human rights when it's convenient.
I'd like to see some evidence of a player asking Silver for an anti-Chinese slogan in a jersey before I get all whataboutism here.
 

DJnVa

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Dec 16, 2010
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I'd like to see some evidence of a player asking Silver for an anti-Chinese slogan in a jersey before I get all whataboutism here.
The whole point is they won't because the NBA has made it very obvious that no one can really criticize China.
 

Kenny F'ing Powers

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https://www.businessinsider.com/nba-china-feud-timeline-daryl-morey-tweet-hong-kong-protests-2019-10
The senator in question likely doesn't actually give a shit about China and is just looking for culture war points.
That's the point.

My understanding is that he wrote an email about putting police stuff on jerseys. When Woj replied, "fuck you", Hawley tweeted, but added in the China comment post email.

Woj gave a "fuck you" to the police stuff. The China stuff was never on the table in the email. Hawley added it into his tweet to win internet points.
 

Patriot_Reign

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Twilight

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Apologies for stepping on the Hawley/Woj discussion, but I wanted others to see this and didn't know where else to post it. Please move if appropriate.

Tom Junod from ESPN wrote a long and captivating article about a man who was hit by a car at Goodall Field in Sanford a couple of years ago. Folks from Maine (and probably beyond) may remember the news stories, but there was so much more to it. One of the best articles about any topic I've read in a while by a truly gifted writer.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29394527/the-hero-goodall-park-true-crime-drama-50-years-making
 

InstaFace

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Tom Junod from ESPN wrote a long and captivating article about a man who was hit by a car at Goodall Field in Sanford a couple of years ago. Folks from Maine (and probably beyond) may remember the news stories, but there was so much more to it. One of the best articles about any topic I've read in a while by a truly gifted writer.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29394527/the-hero-goodall-park-true-crime-drama-50-years-making
Whoa. That was an hour-long read. 16,000+ words. Hadn't been aware of the story before this - surprised I can't find a mention of it on SoSH.

I got through the first few chapters and thought "this is something I can read later". But I decided to give it another go, and momentum gathered.

It's got a very "Crime and Punishment - abridged" character to it. The terrible crime for no reason at all, the guilty man, the guiltier conscience, the relentless inspector(s), the repentance but not the forgiveness. It's a little moving, a little "hug your kids a little harder tonight", but still leaves you kinda empty, like a Camus story. The randomness of life, the unequal and unfair distribution of joy and sorrow, the inadequacy of both justice and retribution.

As far as craftsmanship goes, I expected the major revelations of coincidence and karma would give me chills, but they were so foreshadowed that their impact was lessened. That said, there were a few very well-crafted passages, particularly every time a detective interviewed somebody. This Junod fellow is not a Posnanski-level writer, but he's not too many rungs below, either. And now I've gone and looked him up - several magazine-writing awards in his career, and also a few bits of controversy. It definitely seemed by the end like he had put a lot of himself into the story, a lot of time and diligence and affection.

A good read for a summer's night, sitting here in a log cabin on vacation. Thanks for linking.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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This is gross:
Late Tuesday night, an anonymous party sent a Deadspin reporter four videos, which appeared to be a cell phone recording of a video feed, that shows ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, host of the afternoon NBA show The Jump, in a phone conversation with an unidentified man about personnel matters at the network.
The more disturbing story, however, is that the videos appear to be that of a video feed streaming out of Nichols’ hotel room in Orlando, Fla., where she is currently ensconced in the NBA bubble. Nichols is clearly unaware the video feed set up in her room for remote filming of her show is running while she discusses internal ESPN matters. Rather than alerting Nichols that her video stream was still live or simply shutting the feed off on ESPN’s end, according to sources, an unidentified ESPN employee began to record the video feed on a phone, cut it up and disseminated it to others in the company. Deadspin is not certain whether anyone inside ESPN sent the recording of the videos to our reporter.
https://deadspin.com/espn-creep-used-the-jump-video-feed-to-secretly-record-1844398846
 

kenneycb

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Meh, it's a cheeky way to say the MVP is a crapshoot. More interesting than reading the standard list of the same 10 people and 2 darkhorses or whatever.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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It's not really a crapshoot though or at least not that big. Only 3 out of the last 20 have been someone who doesn't play QB and those were RBs, which no longer seem to matter anymore as a key cog. A defensive player hasn't won since '86. But he lists 37 kickers... Barnwell sucks, he always has. He also says Mahomes has already locked up making the HoF in the same article. Choice evaluation here :

My favorite from this group:
Mahomes. Let me be clear: I'm not saying Mahomes is on track to become a Hall of Famer. I'm saying Mahomes already has the résumé he needs to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame right now. Despite the fact that he's 24 and everyone else in this group is 36 or older, he fits alongside this group of legends. Why?

The list of players who have won the AP MVP award and a Super Bowl MVP isn't long: Brady, Rodgers, Mahomes, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Marcus Allen, John Elway, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith, Terrell Davis and Kurt Warner are the only ones in that club. All nine of the eligible players on this list are in the Hall of Fame, and Brady, Rodgers and Manning are obvious locks. The only other player on the list is Mahomes, who has one of the greatest passing seasons in league history (2018) on his résumé. If Mahomes decided tomorrow to forgo his contract and retire to become a professional beer pong hustler, he has already done enough to make it into the Hall of Fame.
that's a little overboard, no?
 

kenneycb

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Crapshoot is the wrong word. "Boring discussion" should probably be in its place. It's likely to be a QB. If it's not a QB, here are some off the wall predictions with a mild degree of thought behind them. Not like anything else is going on in the sports world right now.
 

Patriot_Reign

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Last year they published a list predicting "one of these 233 players could be MVP" this year they are casting an even wider net. One of these 260 players could be MVP. I need to read the article so that I can learn what exactly? They list literally every "name" player in the NFL.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29498237/260-players-win-2020-nfl-mvp-patrick-mahomes-deshaun-watson-kickers-more
Heh, this feels like a "after months and months there's still not much to talk about, so let's dive into this massive time consuming project!" task.
 

BaseballJones

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It's not even going out on a limb, really, to suggest that the 2020 NFL MVP will be one of these guys:

Lamar Jackson
Patrick Mahomes
Aaron Rodgers
Drew Brees
Russell Wilson
Deshaun Watson
Tom Brady
Christian McCaffrey
Dak Prescott
Kyler Murray
 

Silverdude2167

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File this to things that don't matter but annoy me.

Apparently do nothing to improve your team qualifies as the best off-season ever by a Superbowl winner...

Ranking Super Bowl champs' offseasons from 27-1: Why the Chiefs are crushing it https://es.pn/3f4Z8EK
 

khalid1973

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Apr 4, 2006
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File this to things that don't matter but annoy me.

Apparently do nothing to improve your team qualifies as the best off-season ever by a Superbowl winner...

Ranking Super Bowl champs' offseasons from 27-1: Why the Chiefs are crushing it https://es.pn/3f4Z8EK
This annoyed me as well. Mostly because all the other examples had the hindsight of what happened the next year. Of course all the Chiefs moves look great, there are no results to judge them against.
 

bigq

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Jul 15, 2005
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I agree it was a good read. There was a fair amount of discussion in the 2019 Rockets: China Hates Us thread and other places on the Port Cellar regarding the NBA in China.

The NBA appears to have subjected themselves to a self inflicted wound by opening an academy in Xinjiang where human rights violations against Uighurs has been rampant. The Xinjiang academy has recently been shut down or at least the NBA's involvement there has been discontinued. However there appear to be ongoing problems in other academy sites as well. I am fairly confident that the NBA will steer clear of discussing or taking a position on humanitarian issues in China.
 

Captaincoop

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Still thinking about how brutal the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast is. Would it be THAT hard to just hire a competent pbp guy and some affable former player to do color?

For almost the last decade it's been like ESPN is intentionally antagonizing baseball fans with their choices for the SNB booth.
 

Humphrey

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Still thinking about how brutal the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast is. Would it be THAT hard to just hire a competent pbp guy and some affable former player to do color?

For almost the last decade it's been like ESPN is intentionally antagonizing baseball fans with their choices for the SNB booth.
What would Vas sound like if someone hit a homer that really meant something?
 

InstaFace

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Those clips sound like pretty reasonable circumstances for a PBP announcer to crank it up to 10. I dunno, I'll defer to @Conigliaro's Potential if he sees it otherwise, but those seem like exactly the kind of moments in baseball that you want the fans to feel every bit of energy you got, because that's as exciting as regular-season baseball gets. And while he's got some cliches in there (walk-off salami!), it doesn't sound much different than I imagine Orsillo would sound like if you gave him a little extra caffeine on the day and then put him in front of a mic.

And who else is on the crew? A-Rod has been well-documented for disappointing us by being actually a good, intelligent and enjoyable listen. Buster Olney is maybe a little above a replacement-level sideline reporter, but it's not like that's a crucial role. Who would you upgrade A-Rod to? It's not like they've got a Terry Francona waiting in the wings like that one year when he was unemployed. Who would you upgrade Vasgersian to? Jon Miller couldn't do the double-duty grind anymore. We're (mostly) partial to Announcer Boy, but I doubt you could get half of SoSH to agree on even 3-4 team PBP guys beyond him that would be a no-doubt upgrade.
 

Silverdude2167

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On the website how can you not have a quick link in your top bar to the NHL?

33135

We have the above including MMA but no NHL. I honestly bet it is a negotiating ploy as the NHL TV contract is up soon I believe, but still very annoying and angers me when I should just not care.
 

scottyno

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Dec 7, 2008
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On the website how can you not have a quick link in your top bar to the NHL?

View attachment 33135

We have the above including MMA but no NHL. I honestly bet it is a negotiating ploy as the NHL TV contract is up soon I believe, but still very annoying and angers me when I should just not care.
They seem to have 8 "major sports" at the top of the side sports tab, and then a bunch more listed alphabetically. Somehow NHL didn't make the top 8, even when half of those sports aren't even in season.
 

Marciano490

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On the website how can you not have a quick link in your top bar to the NHL?

View attachment 33135

We have the above including MMA but no NHL. I honestly bet it is a negotiating ploy as the NHL TV contract is up soon I believe, but still very annoying and angers me when I should just not care.
ESPN airs UFC. Do they show golf and soccer, or are those bigger sports nationally?
 

Kliq

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I guarantee those categories at the top are based solely on interest. Do people seriously think that they are intentionally making content harder to find?
 

scottyno

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I guarantee those categories at the top are based solely on interest. Do people seriously think that they are intentionally making content harder to find?
I think they're intentionally trying to drive people to the sports that they show on TV and not the sports that they don't, so kind of?
 
Those clips sound like pretty reasonable circumstances for a PBP announcer to crank it up to 10. I dunno, I'll defer to @Conigliaro's Potential if he sees it otherwise, but those seem like exactly the kind of moments in baseball that you want the fans to feel every bit of energy you got, because that's as exciting as regular-season baseball gets. And while he's got some cliches in there (walk-off salami!), it doesn't sound much different than I imagine Orsillo would sound like if you gave him a little extra caffeine on the day and then put him in front of a mic.
Just catching up with this...and I'll just say that I'm not a fan of Matty Vas. It's one thing to get excited, but it's another to turn into a soprano - his energy just isn't controlled enough, and he has the same problem as Joe Tessitore in turning things up to 11 and then having nowhere higher to go. (Actually, Sean McDonough has a similar problem with regard to letting his voice get out of control when he gets over-excited: I really, really like McDonough as a commentator *except* at those key moments when he's at his most excited, his call of that walk-off Michigan State touchdown against Michigan being a great case in point.)

FWIW, I feel like I have a similar problem with regards to getting overly excited about relatively mundane events - e.g., a game-winning three-pointer in a regular season FIBA Champions League game is exciting, but it should be controlled excitement. (I need to save the crazier stuff for a game-winning three or an overtime goal in a tournament final.) So I know that of which I speak here, I think.
 

DanoooME

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On the website how can you not have a quick link in your top bar to the NHL?

View attachment 33135

We have the above including MMA but no NHL. I honestly bet it is a negotiating ploy as the NHL TV contract is up soon I believe, but still very annoying and angers me when I should just not care.
Some of it is you can configure your set up if you're signed into the site. Probably not true in your case, but I have mine set up with the sports I'm most interested in.
 

richgedman'sghost

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The golf tournament they were showing was the US Open. It is a major and not just any tournament. Would you call the Stanley Cup just a hockey tournament?