5-at-10: NBA's sitting bull, Braves' dreadful March, Kaepernick's look for a job, Rushmore of TV villains


              NBA Commissioner Adam Silver arrives at a press conference before NBA All-Star Saturday Night events in New Orleans, La., Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017. (AP Photo/Max Becherer)
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver arrives at a press conference before NBA All-Star Saturday Night events in New Orleans, La., Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017. (AP Photo/Max Becherer)

Sitting bull

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has issued a sternly worded letter to teams about sitting star players.

(Side note: Not sure if you listen to the Dan LeBatard Show on ESPN Radio, but they do this 'Looks Like' game and listeners submit entries on who in sports looks like. One of the best is NBA commissioner Adam Silver looks like he could unzip his human skin and reveal he is a lizard man. And to make it better, it is read by Tom Rinaldi. Good stuff.)

Anyhoo, so the commish is writing a stern note to teams. Well, great. The next draconian step could be putting that in some of the player's permanent files, and we all know, those files follow you around for life. We have ranted about this before. NBA sitting star players is an issue, and one that likely will still be around. But please, Commissioner and the rest of the NBA folks, please do not say this is about the fans.

This about the brand, the business and the TV audiences. Period. Those are fine reasons, but painting the picture of a family of four spending a bunch of coin and LeBron not playing when lil' Jimmy is in the stands is not what this is about.

In fact, if you wanted to serve the masses of fans for each team, sitting makes sense. If you are 90 percent of the Cleveland Cavalier fan base or the Golden State Warrior fan base, you want all your pistons firing come playoff time.

Resting stars - and the same thing for stinky teams in tanking - actually makes sense long-term sense for the fans. It's the individual fan that is becoming the face of this thing, which is as nonsensical as Kemba Walker saying he doesn't have money for pizza and he went to be bed hungry at UConn becoming the emotional trigger for discussions of paying players.

The larger issue for the NBA is that it hurt ESPN's feelings and the powers that be are banging that drum. That drum is not about the individual fan as much as it is the TV audience for these prime-time Saturday night showdown which have delivered two floaters the last two weeks because the Big Three from Cleveland, Golden State's starting five and San Antonio's top two players all did not play.

Is it an issue for the league? Yes it is because it hurts the TV product, and basketball more than any other professional team sport is about the stars. But that issue is not being addressed because of lil' Jimmy and his family. It's being addressed because TV numbers drive the ship.

Put that in your file and smoke it.

photo In this June 29, 2016, file photo, Atlanta Braves interim manager Brian Snitker (43) watches in the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Cleveland Indians,in Atlanta. The Braves have named Snitker as manager, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2016, rewarding him for reversing the team's direction in his role as interim manager this season.

Braves

We wrote last week that the Braves were scuffling this spring training.

Yes, the key words in that sentence are 'spring' and 'training' and the record means little. There are a lot of factors: World Baseball event; Dansby Swanson's lingering health details; you know the drill.

In fact, the positives here are the spring swings for newcomers Brandon Phillips, who has been right around .300, and Kurt Suzuki, who is hitting .391. And the torrid preseason for Freddie Freeman, who is hitting.464 this spring. But the record is terrible. The Braves are 6-17 - the worst mark of any spring training team - and have lost seven straight in large part because they can't get anyone out. In March, the Braves are 3-15-1 and are allowing 6.7 runs per game.

Last weekend, Dave O'Brien of the AJC reported the Braves starting rotation.

Julio Teheran will start the opener, followed by Bartolo Colon, Jaime Garcia, R.A. Dickey and Mike Foltynewicz. Teheran and Foltynewicz have looked great. Garcia has only made three starts and pitched eight innings this spring and been fine.

The aged veterans of Dickey and Colon have been rocked all spring. Colon has pitched 22 innallowed 22 hits and 15 earned runs in 14.2 innings. That's a .367 average against and an ERA of 9.20.

Dickey's knuckleball has been less than stella. In 15 innings, he has allowed 21 hits and eight walks and 12 earned runs. That's roughly a .440 on-base percentage against him.

Ouch-standing.

photo FILE - In this Dec. 4, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick warms up before an NFL football game against the Chicago Bears. Spike Lee said on Instagram Sunday, March 19, 2017, that it was "fishy" that Kaepernick, now a free agent, hadn't been signed." (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

Kaepernick in the middle

First Spike Lee claims that racism is the reason Colin Kaepernick still has not found work in the NFL.

Now, President Trump is taking shots and partial credit for Kaepernick's silent phone. From the AP story on Trump's stopn in Kentcuky:

Speaking at a rally Monday night in Louisville, Kentucky, Trump said he was reading an article about NFL owners' fears about signing Kaepernick and said, "They don't want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that?"

Trump added that he wanted to share this with "the people of Kentucky because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag."

Can we all just stop?

This is not about any color other than green. Not the blackness of Kaepernick's skin or the red, white and blue of the flag that he did not stand for put of protest last year. NFL front office weighs every free agent decision through the split prism of these questions:

Will it help us win and is it a good business decision?

The answers are not always weighed the same and do not have any correlation other than being connected in the discourse. Will he help us win? That answer more than likely, after last year's 16 TD passes to four interceptions on a team that was simply dreadful, is yes. Do you believe he is better or worse than a lot of these other yahoos who are getting deals to be back-ups? Heck Josh McCown signed with the Jets and he's 2-20 as an NFL starter. Nevermind that Brian Hoyer and Geno Smith have already signed too.

(And to be fair, the simple fact that Geno Smith has signed should lighten the ludicrous racism cries. In fact, it's got to be hard to come to a place in which 70 percent of the players - according to the Huffington Post - are black and believe it's a racist league, right? Nice one Spike.)

But, back to the two-piece prism. If the answer is a potential yes with Kaepernick's abilities on the field, it has to be a clouded unknown about his presence off the field and the distractions that come with that.

It hurt Tim Tebow's chances as he tried to find one more job in the league because teams didn't want to deal with the media questions and controversy. And the thing about controversy is, whether it's real or imagined, fair or unfair, controversy is like a self-sustaining organism that just sits and swirls. And other than losing and going for it on fourth-and-1 in their own territory, football coaches hate controversy about as much as anything out there.

And that's Kaepernick's doing. Rightly or wrongly, his protests - and likely the pig socks and the Castro shirt and the hollowness of the gesture since he didn't vote after all and all the rest of it - are his free right. The reaction and the fall out, however, he does not get to control.

So if the on-field skills would be a potential plus and the off-the-field distractions a minus that wiper each other away, that leaves business, and that answer is not as clear as most would think. Kaepernick is the most unpopular player in the NFL, but he also had one of the best selling-jerseys last year.

And of all the political leaders we've ever had, the business man that is Trump should know that. (And c'mon Donald, get your eyes on the bigger picture my man. This is a) nonsense - what's next are you going to claim that because your friends with Tom Brady that's why the Patriots are so good - and b) beneath the office of the President.)

In fact, without knowing what Kaepernick and his people are asking for in the free-agent talks - a pretty big detail, mind you when we are trying to figure out why he is still unsigned - we believe that he will have a job in the NFL next year.

We'll see.

This and that

- Golden State crushed Oklahoma City. Again. Monday's win was without Kevin Durant, so there's that. How one-sided has that series been this year? Glad you asked. In the first round of the NCAA tournament, 2 seeds went 4-0 over 15 seeds with a combined margin of victory of 64 points. The Warriors are 4-0 against the Thunder with a combined margin of victory of 79 points.

- In our haste Monday we forgot to mention that March 20 was the 63-year anniversary of Milan beating Muncie Central in 1954 for the Indiana high school title. That was the game that inspired Hoosiers and, well, any time we get a chance to mention Hoosiers we believe we should. "I wanna win for my dad."

- Reminder for the six folks in the tie-breaker for the First-Out, Last-In Bracket challenge, we need your final four picks by Friday. You know who you are. We will have a daily reminder.

- UConn beat Syracuse by 30 to make the Sweet 16. Again. The Tennessee Lady Vols stumbled against Louisville last night, missing the Sweet 16 for only the second time in school history. Next year will be a monster for Lady Vols coach Holly Warlick, considering UT has lost more than 11 games in only two seasons, and those were the last two seasons.

Today's question

It's Tuesday. You know the score.

True or false, Silver's letter will stop teams from resting players.

True or false, Colin Kaepernick will be on an NFL team next year.

True or false, Shakespeare in Love is the worst Oscar winner ever. (It won on this day in 1999.)

Matthew Broderick was born on this day in 1962. True or false, no matter what he ever does acting-wise for the rest of his life, he will always be known as Ferris Bueller. On this day in 1980, J.R. was shot on "Dallas" and if you are my age or older, you realize how big a deal that was.

It became a national storyline. T-shirts reading "Who shot J.R." There was a pop song about it and reports from across the pond had the Queen of England wondering who pulled the trigger of TV's most hated man. It was crazy.

And it could never, ever happen today. Not with social media and the TMZ's and all the spoiler stuff everywhere. We went an entire summer wondering who shot J.R. and the Dallas episode that following season - a season pushed back a couple of extra months because of an actor's strike - that revealed who did it still ranks as the third-most watched non-sports TV show ever. (Behind the final M*A*S*H and the final Cheers.)

Rushmore of best TV villains. Go, and yes, Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing is a no-brainer.

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