Consolation Road to No Where

As seen in a March 18 Blog Post in "The Heights" blog, 'SidelineSuperfan'

It’s a sad day for Boston College basketball. The NCAA tournament is just around the corner, and the Eagles can’t boast a team in either the men’s or women’s fields. Worse than that, there is no NIT. No CBI. Heck, the collegeinsider.com tournament didn’t even bother sniffing around Conte Forum.

Perhaps what’s most surprising is neither team was without options. Al Skinner refused to put his team in anything below the NIT. For that reason, Rakim Sanders will be free to travel -- excuse me, jab step (or was that a crab dribble?) -- wherever he wishes instead of hosting the likes of Fairfield in the CBI.

Sylvia Crawley and the Lady Eagles flat-out rejected an NIT birth despite the fact they could quite possibly win the tournament without leaving Chestnut Hill. The locker room was apparently divided over their participation, and rather than play as a team divided, they will sit as a team united.

I generally support playing as much competitive basketball as possible. An NIT or CBI title might not be a National Championship, but you have the chance to win some hardware and be one of only a few teams (two for women, four for men) that can say you ended the year with a W.

When it comes to Skinner and Crawley, I actually agree with their decision. One hundred percent. I may not have said that much about Skinner much this year, but for these teams, they fell well short of expectations, and they didn’t deserve to keep going.

If you watched BC basketball this year, you saw a pair of enigmas. For every high, there were more than a few lows. If the teams didn’t feel they were worthy of a second or third-rate tournament, good for them.What makes tournaments like the NIT great theatre isn’t the BC’s that don’t deserve any recognition for failing to do what they were supposed to.

The NIT is for the teams like Stony Brook. The Seawolves have only been one Division I team since 1999 and have never been in the postseason. They lost to BU -- and not even in Hockey, which is depressing -- in the America East tournament, but were granted an NIT berth thanks to their regular season title.

Stony Brook may have been given an eight seed, the lowest the NIT has to offer, but thanks to Cirque Du Soleil booting top-seeded Illinois from Assembly Hall, the school from the north shore of Long Island got to pack out their 5,000-seat gym for a postseason game Wednesday and host what they called the biggest game in Stony Brook history.

I’ve been in the gym. I've played on that floor. It bears a strong resemblance to a high school gym in that your high school gym may actually look more imposing. But they were pumped to have this opportunity for the first time ever. They sold out and were louder than every non-Duke crowd BC has seen. Because of that, an American East state school pushed to the limit a team that Skinner would likely have lost to by double digits (of course this IS Boston College, so an absolute stomping behind a 28-18 for Corey Raji is within reach as well).

Do you think Conte Forum would see that kind of support for a postseason tournament that is ultimately meaningless? I didn’t think so. Would it see even half capacity? The women’s team hosted an NIT Final Four game last season, and I bet most students reading this didn’t even know that.

Unable to get their goal, the Eagles didn’t want the token “set of steak knives” that comes as the door prize. As much as I’d like to see a few more games of Ayla Brown or Tyler Roche, I can’t say I want a consolation road to nowhere, either.

Where 2010 Happens

As seen in the Feb. 22 Edition of The Heights, Boston College's Independent Newspaper

The world of the NBA trade is an animal in and of itself. Deals are not often struck for the purpose of two or three teams coming out the other side better. You get players’ actual talent traded for the proverbial bucket of balls –- only if that bucket of balls was Jerome James.

If you were paid way too much once upon a time, and can now attach the words “expiring contract” to your bio, you become instantly valuable. A few years ago, it turned Raef LaFrentz into one of the league’s most sought after big men.

Trades are made to get under the luxury tax threshold or the salary cap, and young talent or future draft picks are nowhere near as valuable as is the freedom from having to pay them.

You end up getting contract swaps like Brian Cardinal for Darko Milicic, or the pure salary dump of Matt Harpring and 2009 first-round pick Eric Maynor for the rights to 2002 German second-rounder Peter Fehse, whose entire value lies in the fact that he is not in the NBA and never will be, making him as much of an asset as I am.

The NBA has always been a freak animal, but something has come over the league recently. It’s the mythical “Summer of 2010.”

LeBron James. Dwyane Wade. Chris Bosh. They all are free agents this summer, and whatever sacrifices are made between now and July 1 are just water under the bridge.
My New York Knickerbockers were the poster child of horrendous NBA deals under Isiah Thomas, and now they are trying to reverse that trend. Donnie Walsh has, in under two years, managed to jettison Stephon Marbury to China, get rid of Jared Jefferies, Jamal Crawford, and the aforementioned Jerome James, though James most likely would have eaten all traces of his contract anyway.

In the process, he has brought in a potential star (that right there is called a New York bias) in Danilo Gallinari and has a chance to sign Tracy McGrady at a steep discount, as his albatross of a contract will come off the books at the end of the year.

With the final shedding of Jefferies, the Knicks can attempt to woo two top-class free agents with maximum money. As long as he doesn’t spend it on the likes of Michael Redd and Jermaine O’Neal, two guys who really don’t deserve the close to $20 million they are making this year, he could be a hero.

Largest media market in the country? Coach famous for a run-and-shoot offense known as “seven seconds or less?” Knicks fans are dancing like Jeff Jagodzinski after beating Virginia Tech.

The only blemish on Walsh’s record is the failure to get rid of Eddy Curry, the man who was once a solid post presence, but as he aged, it became clear that his “baby fat” was actually man fat, and the only thing he could do in seven seconds or less is pound down a Big Mac and large fry.

The summer of 2010 has replaced the draft as the place where teams go for hope. Everybody that wants a shot has one.

New Jersey is saddled with an NBA team that will almost certainly fail to crack 10 wins, in addition to the sad fact that, well, they are in New Jersey. Still, they could have the most cap space in the NBA and can offer LeBron a fresh start in Brooklyn with his boy Jay-Z.

The Bulls can offer Wade a hometown crowd.

The Clippers can offer the second biggest media market in the country and Blake Griffin.

The Timberwolves can offer … okay, not much, but they can throw down tons of money.

Teams see the horizon, and every one of them sees the superstar they want in their jersey. All these pointless trades create cap space and the possibility to be an immediate championship contender. The consolation price if LeBron and friends don’t want to spend their time hanging out in a city like Milwaukee? I guess you can still have Fehse.