StumpTownSports

Turns out that “giant sucking sound” is not NAFTA afterall, but rather the sound my fantasy team is most likely to make. After weeks of anticipation, we had my fantasy football draft last night for the Boyz Near the Hood fantasy league that I run with a college buddy of mine. I’m sure you are all busting to find out what happened and so for that reason and for the therapeutic benefit that it might have I’m going to purge my inner doubts and fears and tell you what happened last night and why I did what I did. Enjoy. After having spent most of the day at the office getting absolutely nothing work related accomplished, I decided to leave early. It’s not that I didn’t have work to do or that I didn’t want to do it, it is just that I couldn’t really think of anything not related to football and that just doesn’t allow one the sort of concentration one needs to do legal work. I got home about 5 and spent the next hour rearranging my man room, hooking up the computer to my projector, ch...

Team USA and Fantasy Football One day until my fantasy football draft and it can’t get here soon enough. Unlike many of my buddies who share my love for football and fantasy, I only play in one football league. Every year it seems I get invited to play in others, but to this point I have turned them down. I’ve gone the multi-league route and it has some good points but in the end what I love most about fantasy is the “gives you something to root for” quality it brings to the season. In multiple leagues it inevitably works out where you have a guy in one league and you play against him in the other and then who to root for just becomes too complicated. I like to keep my sports rooting simple. So the league I run, Boyz Near the Hood (a link to which is at your right) is the only league I do and the draft is tomorrow. I have the 5th overall pick in a keeper league. Last year I drafted Deuce McAlister in the first round thinking he was going to have a big year and would also make an ...

Tiger I just noticed that Tiger is leading at the WGC Invitational and I wonder if Phil Mickleson got Clyde Drexlered. As a Blazer fan, I remember all too well the SI cover and article that came out calling Clyde the second best player in the NBA and making all kinds of comparisons to MJ and even suggested that there were some aspects of the game where Clyde was better. Anyone who knows anything about the MJ era in the NBA already knows what happened next. This was right before the Blazers met the Bulls in the NBA finals and reporters were just trying to make a story. Instead, they made MJ feel like he had something to prove and he spent the remaining games before taking home the title, demolishing Clyde and the Blazers. A few short months ago there was all this talk about a Mickleslam and Lefty catching up and maybe even passing Tiger as top player in the world. Then Tiger's Dad died and Tiger went away and then missed the cut at the Open and the people talked Phil up even mo...

Team USA and Football I am a bona fide NBA junkie. I follow it closer than any sane person should. I read out of market papers I watch replays of old games, I can tell you off the top of my head that the NBA channel is 601 on Directv and don’t get me started on how much I love/need my NBA league pass. So, that may make it easier to understand that I have watched ever minute of every game that has been televised anywhere that the current Team USA has played. Frankly, I don’t get why this competition isn’t a bigger deal over here. Here’s what you get with the FIBA World Championships: 1. An NBA all-star team playing games that really matter. We all love the NBA all-star weekend in spite of Stern’s ridiculous refusal to incorporate a huge game of H-O-R-S-E into the weekend. We love watching all those great players on the same court together. We watch our favorite start on their own teams all the time wondering, what would it be like if D Wade was finishing that sweet dish from LB...

August Blues August is a tough month in the world of sports. You basically have Baseball, the PGA Championship and the unfulfilled promise of football. The PGA championship is fine, but it has the downside of being golf. For me, watching golf can actually be fairly entertaining but it really requires Tiger to be in the hunt. I’m an unapologetic bandwagon Tiger fan. I don’t so much like Tiger as I enjoy his dominance. I just like watching Tiger set records and dominate the sport, so if he’s in contention golf is pretty fun, but if not…it’s just golf. So the PGA has a chance to be interesting, but you can’t really count on it. I’m a baseball fan, but mostly I’m a Giant’s fan, so like Tiger and golf, I’m mostly only interested in baseball if the Giants are good. If you follow baseball at all you know the Giants are..ummm…how should I put this….awful. That’s it, they are awful. And that would be bad enough, but to make matters worse they have this Bonds guy, maybe you’ve heard of ...

The Magloire Trade Apparently Steve Patterson and Kevin Pritchard are reading my blog and thank goodness. I guess they heard my plea for NBA action in the sports dessert that is the summer. Now that Landis has managed to ruin the short lived joy gleaned from the Tour de Lance (that name is sticking, at least here), and the Giants have managed to squander some pretty good talent and a very weak division, I need something to supplement my growing football fever. So, even though most of my sports reading these days is about football, the action is still in hoops. The Blazers made their 7th trade of the offseason this past week when they sent Ha, Brian Skinner and Steve Blake to Milwaukie for Jamal Magloire. Frankly, I think this is probably a win/win, but I really like the trade for the Blazers, even though it is a bit surprising. What they gave up – 1. Ha – Ha is huge. I mean really big. Not only is he a legit 7’4 or 7’5, but he is pretty th...