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As Roger Clemens testified before congress about the perpetual purity of his urine, many people pointed out it appeared as though he was living in his own fantasy world. After Mindy McCready’s confirmation that, yes, she did in fact have an affair with Clemens, I think it’s time to consider the fact that Clemens may, in all seriousness, no longer be living in the same reality as the rest of us.

This was the statement released by Clemens’ lawyer yesterday:

At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her. It is unfortunate that the Daily News has chosen to report anonymous allegations that are completely unfounded, have no basis in fact, and have nothing to do with Roger’s baseball career or the issue of steroid use in baseball.

Why in the world would Roger Clemens attempt to refute this story? He knows it’s the truth. He knows people who know about it will testify under oath if it becomes relevant in his lawsuit. He knows that she’ll confirm the story. Why doesn’t he just say “no comment”?

Now Clemens has zero credibility. Before this week there were probably 5 or 10 people left out there who still believed he never used steroids. But how can they believe him when he says “I didn’t take steroids” and “I didn’t have an affair,” and the latter statement is proven to be false?

There’s no explanation for why Clemens would effectively proclaim himself a blatant liar by issuing such a straightforward denial of something he knows will be proven to be true. Clemens truly is living in some kind of fantasy world. He believes “I’m Roger Clemens, bitch,” and that whatever he says is the universal truth.

These must be some tough times for Virginia Foxx.

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Remember how excited everyone was for the upcoming Western play-offs? Blockbuster trades created a buzz not felt in the NBA for some time. For two months there were great games and constant debate about the best team in the West (remember the Lakers-Suns game right after the Shaq trade?) Every night the ordering of the play-off berths changed. Then play-off time came and guess what happened? Yawn.

Eric was right a week ago when he said that the Western conference play-offs were going to be much less exciting than people thought. As it turns out, the best four teams in the Western conference are… the top 4 seeds in the play-offs. Ho-hum. Only one series has gone to a game 6. Except for the double OT between the Spurs and Suns, no game has been within 4 points (the only decent series, Jazz-Rockets, have had three games within 4 points).

The Suns, with the addition of Shaq Diesel, looked flat and listless against the Spurs. Not that I fault Kerr or D’Antoni. A shakeup was needed. It just did not pan out.

The Dallas Mavericks looked pathetic against the young and athletic Hornets. Chris Paul ran circles against Jason Kidd, who has been a huge disappointment since his acquisition. Nowitzki continues to solidify himself as the softest guy in the league. Looks like Cuban needs to completely overhaul his team (except Josh Howard).

Utah is much better than people have been giving them credit for all year, and if not for the anomaly of a win streak (there was so much hype around this, and after this season it will never be talked about again), Houston would not be this high a seed. This was a mismatch, and (despite the blow-out last night), I think the Jazz will take this.

I don’t know why Denver even bothered showing up. If you are not even going to pretend to play basketball (and it wasn’t just their defense… every offensive possession was a one-on-one with no ball movement), can they just petition David Stern to let them start their off-season early and forfeit the whole series? I know Melo wants to be able to practice his late night drunk driving. Forget ragging on McGrady. Melo is 0-6 in play-off series, and doesn’t even seem to care.

(On a side note, I feel really bad for Allen Iverson. This guy has never had the opportunity to play on a really good team. I wish A.I. could have at least one more championship appearance before his body finally does give out after years of punishment.)

The Eastern conference, on the other hand, has provided us with three good series. The drama between LeBron and the Wizards team has added a little spice to a nice little rivalry. The 76ers and Hawks are showing that young, athletic, and motivated guys can give some of these vets a run for their money. The Celtics and Pistons have had a long season, and their age and stamina might catch up with them. And the best moment of the play-offs so far has to be Zaza getting all up in Garnett’s face (especially with Stern in the audience… he looked MORTIFIED!!)

So after an amazing last three months of the season, where you couldn’t turn on any talk show without hearing how this the West is the best conference in NBA history, the 1st round was a complete dud. However, I do think the second round will bode much better for the West. I think Utah will give LA a run for their money, and the dynasty Spurs versus Chris Paul and the Hornets will be contrasting styles and talents. Onward, ho!!!

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$126 million for a relief pitcher? Since the advent of modern free agency, there have been some serious free agent busts. The ability of teams to freely bid on players means that sometimes teams spend extravagant amounts of money on players that turn out to be not worth it. This has become increasingly true since the strike in 1994, and now teams are under even greater pressure to spend big bucks and take big risks. And while a couple of recent free agents may some day make this list (Barry Zito, Carl Pavano and Andruw Jones, I am looking at you) here are the five biggest busts in baseball free agency history.

1. Mike Hampton: $121 milllion/ 7 years ($17.3 a year) – Rockies and Braves
Although he has had 3 seemingly decent (I stress decent) seasons since his signing, this has to be the absolute worst free agent bust. Perennially injured (he hasn’t started since 2005), even when he was healthy Hampton went 46-48 with an era of 4.92. That’s $2.6 million dollars a win. Watching him hurt his pectoral while warming up for his first start this season summarizes this guy’s career.

2. Mo Vaughn: $80 million/ 6 years ($13.3 a year) – Angels and Mets
After putting up monster numbers for Boston, the Angels banked on this guy to elevate them into the 21st century. Unfortunately, his weight and fitness caught up with him. After two good seasons with the Angels, he got hurt and never returned to form. He ended his career a liability at first base for the Mets and eventually the highest paid pinch hitter ever.

3. Albert Belle: $65 million/ 5 years ($13 a year) – Orioles
The only reason he is behind Mo Vaughn is because he signed for one year and $300k less. This guy was trouble the day Peter Angelo signed him. After destroying the AL central with Cleveland and Chicago, Belle brought his attitude (and an injured hip) to Baltimore. Belle put up 60 homers and 220 RBIs his first two year, but then was forced to retire.

4. Darren Dreifort: $55 million/ 5 years ($11 a year) – Dodgers
The only reason this guy is not the worst bust in history is the money. For some reason, after going 12-9 with a 4.16 ERA, the Dodgers gave this guy a monster deal (despite having a career losing record). And this was right after they had just dropped 9 figures on Kevin Brown. He proceeded to immediately get hurt, only started another 26 games, ended up in the bullpen, and since his signing finished his career 9-15 with a 4.53 ERA. $55 million for 9 wins. Woof.

5. Chan Ho Park: $65 million/ 5 years ($13 a year) – Rangers and Padres
Park went from NL ace to AL dud. He ended up languishing with the Rangers, never quite living up to his hype. Injuries and inconsistency led to Park never pitching more than 150 innings in a season, or getting more than 10 wins.

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Forget about game one of the Suns-Spurs series. Forget about past and future heroics of Kobe and LeBron. The greatest moment of the NBA playoffs came in tonight’s Boston-Atlanta game.

Just moments after TNT interviewed David Stern (and Stern pretended to be excited about the Hawks strong play jeopardizing his plans for a Lakers-Celtics Finals) Kevin Garnett gave Zaza Pachulia a little elbow. Pachulia did not take kindly to that elbow and jumped in Garnett’s face. Joe Johnson stepped in between them, but Sam Cassell thought Johnson was a little too aggressive and he went after him. Almost instantly all 10 players were jawing and both coaches were on the court trying to clam things down.

Right at that moment TNT cut to a shot of Stern in the crowd. I want that producer promoted. The look on Stern’s face was priceless. You knew exactly what was going through his head. Fuck. Now I have to call TNT and tell them to tell Nike we have to cancel half of their playoff adds because we need to triple the amount of “NBA Cares” commercials in order to make up for this.

Fortunately for Stern the situation was diffused, and the worst thing to come out of the night for him was the Celtics continuing to look old and unathletic.

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After weeks of speculation and bargaining the Titans finally agreed to trade Pacman Jones to the Cowboys for a 4th round pick. What took so long? Was Jerry Jones busy recovering from reconstructive surgery?

This isn’t the first time there’s been an NFL trade that took weeks to happen, and then when it finally did happen, involved a single late round draft pick. I want to know what goes on in those trade discussions? Does one team counter a 3rd round pick offer with a 7th rounder, then a week later counter a 4th rounder with a 6th rounder, then a week later finally agree on a 5th round pick?

These lengthy trade discussion are just one symptom of teams overvaluing mid-round draft picks. Very few 3rd-7th rounders become NFL starters, yet nobody wants to trade them—even for proven starters who have manageable contracts. When the draft rolls around NFL GMs become like fantasy team owners—they don’t want to give up the excitement of making a draft pick that will surely prove their genius. Maybe they should. (I think the Vikings will be happy they did.)

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NFL rookie contracts are going to destroy the league’s salary structure. I touched on this last year, but since the league has no intention of coming up with a solution (which is good news for Jake Long), I’ll rant about it again.

In case you haven’t heard, the Dolphins just made Jake long the highest paid lineman in the league. He has played zero NFL games.

For those who think it’s a good deal for Miami, take a look at the offensive lineman who have been drafted in the top 5 since 2001:

Joe Thomas, Levi Brown, D’Brickashaw Fergeson, Robert Gallery, Mike Williams, and Leonard Davis.

Of those six, Williams and Gallery have been complete busts, Thomas looks like a future star, Davis is a solid player but at guard not tackle, and the jury is still out on Fergeson and Brown. It’s a small sample size, but it’s not exactly the evidence you’d like to see before making a rookie the highest paid lineman in the league.

The problem for the Dolphins and other teams drafting in the top 5 is they have no choice. Every rookie wants to make more than the rookies before them and teams don’t have the leverage to say no. This forces the worst teams in the league to hand out bad contracts, and so instead of being rewarded with a high draft picks, the NFL teams in need of the most help are punished with cap-killing deals. Roger Goodell needs to spend less time destroying video tapes, and more time creating a rookie salary structure.

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E:60’s ambush of Miguel Tejada was flat out wrong. It was television at it’s lowest point. Pure exploitation in order to get ratings. What did Tejada do to deserve being lured into a studio and left bare in front of a camera on live tape-delayed TV? This isn’t “To Catch a Predator.” Nobody can think to themselves that the guy on camera deserved what he got. Nobody can think ESPN was helping out it’s viewers by calling attention to Tejada’s real age. It was simply entrapment. Tom Ferry tricked Tejada into lying and then he had the brazeness to keep yelling questions as Tejada left the room.

I guarantee Tejada was led to believe the interview would be about something else. How do you even describe what E60 did. Unethical? Sleazy? Ruthless exploitation?

The last question Ferry yelled was “does the U.S. government know your real name?” He was indirectly implying Miguel Tejada was some sort of terrorist or a threat to the U.S. government. That’s insane. What’s even more insane is millions of people wasted 30 seconds of their lives being exposed to that idea. And think, when Tejada woke up that morning he thought the tough questions would be about adjusting to National League pitching.

Kudos to the Astros for sticking by Tejada. The new report changes nothing. The affected parties received no new information. It’s fake news, and the team is doing the right thing by ignoring it.

There’s a reason that no legitimate sports magazine TV show has ever had a long run. There aren’t enough important stories to entice enough sports fans to watch large blocks of non-game, non-highlight programming. Apparently E60 is going to do whatever it takes to find (or create) enough stories.

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Unlike the West, the Eastern Conference playoffs have a chance to be pleasantly surprising (thank you, low expectations).

The other reason the Eastern Conference playoffs will be good? The Washington Wizards. They meet the Cavs in the playoffs for the 3rd straight year and that first round series will be the best in the NBA not involving the Spurs and Suns. The Wizards want to beat the Cavs. Badly. Meanwhile, David Stern wants the Cavs to win. Badly.

Should the Wizards prevail (and I think they will), they’ll take on the Celtics (who will be coming off a closer than expected series against a very athletic Hawks team). Right now handing the Eastern Conference to the Celtics is all the rage, but the Wizards will beat them. (I’d like to be higher on the Celtics, but every time I turn on my TV they’re being pummeled by a short-handed Wizards team.)

For the first time in years all eight Eastern Conference playoff teams have potential.  The Hawks are young and athletic. The Sixers might be playing the best basketball in the NBA.  The Raptors could have won ten more games if they weren’t playing for the #6 seed.  Put everything together and you’ve got the best Eastern Conference playoffs in ages.

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The Western Conference playoffs start on Saturday. And I’m more disappointed than J.J. Redick’s life coach.

Two weeks ago it looked like this might be the most exciting Western Conference playoffs of all time. There were be 8 legitimate title contenders, seven potentially spectacular playoff series, and an exciting air of uncertainty. Now all that has changed.

It started with Golden State missing the playoffs. That left only seven real contenders (sorry Denver) and gave the #1 seed a huge advantage.

Then the Lakers (the one team who given the right circumstances could cruise to the Finals) locked up that #1 seed.

Then the Lakers were given the right circumstances—two relatively easy matchups (vs. Denver, vs Utah or Houston) and a conference finals opponent who will be tired and worn down.

In effect, those eight contenders were narrowed down to five (I’m short changing Utah and Houston, but they just won’t be able to beat the Lakers).  Four of those contenders were put on one side of the bracket. The Lakers were put on the other side. So while the Lakers can cruise to the Conference Finals, we have to watch meetings between Phoenix and San Antonio, Dallas and New Orleans, Phoenix and Dallas etc. that will come much to early in the post-season.

Yeah, it will still be better than last year’s Eastern Conference playoffs, but think of what could have been?

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LSU’s new basketball coach has another talent

We can only home that someday there will be a mano-a-mano match between Jonson and Billy Madison to determine who’s #1 at injuring unsuspecting dodgeball participants.

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