U-S-A! U-S-A! C-H-O-K-E-D! and more Case of the Mondays

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More Riverside Rants in the middle of a Wimbledon that might have a couple Andys in the semis and Williamses in the final...

• Boy, there is just nothing better than a bunch of loud, drunk Americans being wheeled into one bar on a bandwagon to watch the rarest of rarities: a relevant USA soccer game, huh?
• There were a surprising amount of Brazil soccer fans there, too, which made things fun. Particularly when the American team went up 2-0, the bar went bazooka-bonkers twice, and the poor Brasilian hooligans looked like they were contemplating how to go into hiding for the next 28 years. I loved the part where our table started up the "U-S-A! U-S-A!" chant on both occasions.
• Of course, just like any low-budget horror movie, it ended badly. When Brazil scored the game-winner with 10 minutes to go, the table of yellow-and-green-clad patrons started mocking us with their own version of the U-S-A chant. I won't reprint what qualifier they added; this is a family sports-and-hot-chicks blog.
• The funny thing is, I seem to recall reading a story about how much the rest of the world hates that U-S-A! chant. Like it's beyond obnoxious to any foreigner. I think I read that during the Olympics, maybe.
• I guess I can appreciate that, in all honesty. The chant is plain, it's simple, and it basically boasts, "we're better than you" in a sing-songy fashion. I suppose the foreign-language chants hold less personal entitlement to them, so whatever.
• But it was all in good fun, and no bad blood lingered between the two fan groups on the way out or anything. Besides, our group forgot about the not-so-devastating result halfway on our commute from Brats to the Terrace; we wouldn't have wanted our Brazilian amigos to stay depressed until the 2036 World Cup.


• And now, our Riverside Rant of the Week. Enjoy.
• Three big-time trades went down in the Association right before the Draft. Well, big-time if you're a fan of the Cavs, Magic or Spurs. Not so much if you're sticking with the Suns, Nets and Bucks.
• Hmmm...three playoff teams make moves to get better, while three non-playoff teams give away top players for basically nothing. Anybody still wonder why the same 16 franchises make the postseason each year?
• The East champs, Orlando, picked up Vince Carter, which kind of was all right, since they couldn't hang on to Rafer Alston and the Nets do receive Courtney Lee in return. But I don't know what New Jersey intends to do with Alston - who just "point"ed the Magic to the NBA Finals - seeing as Devin Harris isn't about to give up time.
• Then the stupid Bucks-Spurs deal, which involved five players - four of them completely irrelevant. Rip Jefferson is now in San Antonio, in exchange for bag of balls.
• Not the actual basketballs; just the bag. An empty bag.
• Bruce Bowen will get bought out, Kurt Thomas is now useless and Amir Johnson is terrible. The Milwaukee Bucks: ready to rise? More like ready to slap that snooze button and get another 45 minutes of sleep.
• "The Bucks' incentive to make the trade is largely financial," according to the AP story. A true statement, if you leave out the 'largely' part. Milwaukee GM John Hammond said this gives the Bucks "much-needed options in the short- and long-term."
• What short-term? Somehow, giving away a 20-point scorer and deadly shooter for whom you just traded the farm 18 months ago is good in the short term? Replacing him with a 36-year-old center and an overpaid, fourth-string forward helps your team in the short term?
• John, John...just call it what it is in your pretty little statement. "Our franchise is hemorraging money and selling out fans, so we're just going to put more money in our already-fat pockets. Thank you, and go to hell."
• And then, that Shaq trade. You might say, 'the Cavs shouldn't start printing up a banner just yet; the Diesel is running out of gas at age 39.' This may be. But they got him basically for free.
• The Cavs sent Ben Wallace (probably retiring) and Sasha Pavlovic (probably getting bought out and returning to the Cavs) to the Suns. Wait, scratch that sentence. Neither of them are going to Phoenix. So why'd they do it?
• "For the Suns, the O'Neal trade is a straight salary dump." Ah, I see. A team that won 60 games LAST YEAR made a blockbuster deal that made zero basketball sense to it. The economy didn't crumble THAT fast, fellas.
• Here's the actual rant: I understand there are reasons behind cutting salary. Heck, the Nuggets made a straight salary dump with Camby and ended up with the greatest season in franchise history. But they were already a good team, and LA was trying to add pieces. That deal made some sense to both sides.
• Now we're seeing these teams basically GIVE UP. And why? Because the owners wanna slash expenses in a bad economy?
• That's the part, good readers, that makes me the sickest. The next owner who makes any sort of B.S. statement about tightening his belts should take a gander at the unemployment lines in their city. Or read the disturbing headline that 19.7% of May 2009 college grads are now employed within a month of commencement, compared with 51% in May 2007. Or do any other sort of actual research involving impoverished families who can barely afford the day.
• Then tell us, your paying customers, about tightening your belts.
• It's this simple, you 120 owners: you're filthy rich. And you own a sports team. If you don't care about winning and care about making money, sell your team. There's got to be a few more Mark Cubans out there that will spend, spend, spend to win.
• Because that's what makes sports go around: 30 teams in each sport that are extremely competitive, not 8 haves and 22 have-nots. Enough of these excuses.
• One more thing: if you type the words "salary dump" into Google Search, followed by the word "NFL", "NHL" or "MLB", you get somewhere in the range of 25,000 maybe 30,000 results. If you type in "salary dump NBA"? 40 grand.
• David Stern, you have a call from a dirty, disgusting little secret on line one.


• As my cohort in crime Andrew Petersen found today on Twitter, Chase Daniel was pleased to announce that Missouri was "one of two schools to produce a first-round pick in the NFL, NBA and MLB drafts this spring."
• Why, that's nice, Chase. Showing support for your alma mater like that.
• Should I even mention that both North Carolina AND Southern California are in the group with Missouri? Or would that force us to learn whether or not Chase can count past two?
• Ah, screw it. Mizzou-rah.


• Wimbledon picks, or "Wimby" if you're a ruh-tard headline writer at ESPN: Andy Roddick gets past Lleyton Hewitt in a solid five-setter, Andy Murray eases past JC Ferrero in three, Novak Djokovic knocks off Tommy Haas in four, and Roger Federer squeezes past Ivo Karlovic in a surprisingly entertaining four sets.
• On the women's side? I think I mentioned a couple Williamses who might have a bit of success. Dinara Safina might be the worst No. 1 of all time, and Elena Dementieva is the eternal "play to my seed and just go home" player.


• Go see the Hangover. Then see it again. But if you pass up Transformers 2 to see Hangover a second time, at least sneak into the sequel for the first 10 minutes.
• Two words: Megan Fox. Two more words: her legs. And that's all I have to say about that.

Have a good one.

-AJ

Who the f&$#! is Lucas Glover? and more Case of the Mondays

Note: had a looooooooong day at work today so I don't have time to complete an entire Riverside Rants right now. But today serves pretty well for me to just offer some quick-hit thoughts, all of which I will expand upon either tomorrow or later in the week. I can't and won't let you down.

-Lucas Glover (71st ranked in the world) holding off David Duval (882nd) in a tourney led mostly by Ricky Barnes (519th) shows just how golf is just a giant crapshoot. What else does it prove? That Tiger used to be the most dominant athlete in all of sport. Emphasis on used to.
-I am sick and tired of Tiger's excuses, as well as his silly, sophmoric tantrums he throws after a poor shot. You don't see Roger Federer doing this, you don't see Tom Brady, Derek Jeter or LeBron James doing this, and you especially didn't see Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer doing this. Grow up, Tiger. Your days of winning everything are behind you.

-James Blake, retirement calling on line one.
-Roger Federer - LOCK.
-This has a chance to be a historically awful draw for me, picks-wise. Just terrible. Whoops.

-Looks like it's back to the drawing board, UW athletic department.
-Do yourself a favor when reading this article, and start reading at the fifth paragraph, not the top. I could care less about Wisconsin's positive spin on how quick tickets sold out. That's less a symbol of the program's popularity and more about kids realizing, oh shit, I better be online at 8:30 on Monday morning or I'm gonna miss out. Don't try and make us think it's any different than that.
-Derek Zetlin's gonna pioneer change, one way or another. I'm feeling it.

-Here's my big project for tomorrow, or Wednesday. I'm gonna research how many times in the last decade a baseball team has played an 18-game stretch losing one or zero games.
-Then I'm gonna see how many times the same franchise has accomplished that feat - 17-1 or 18-0 - TWICE, in a span of 20 months. In the history of baseball.
-Then I'm going to ask, quite rhetorically, why in the name of Kazuo Matsui has ESPN failed to acknowledge, like at ALL, the Colorado Rockies, both the '07 and '09 editions. If the Sawx had done this, I think the offices in Bristol would explode. It would no longer be Baseball Tonight - in fact, it wouldn't be Yankees Tonight. It would be Red Sox Tonight.
-But, a little ball team from Denver does this, and it's not even Page 2 news. Not even Page 6 news. Doesn't get any press whatsoever.
-Please, sports gods, if you grant me nothing else in the world of sports, grant me a competing TV network to ESPN. Somebody needs to put the Worldwide Leader in their fricking place and cover sports the right way; the fair way.

More on these topics, and other topics, later. Have a good one.

-AJ

2009 Wimbledon Preview

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It's truly a pity that Rafael Nadal won't be back to defend his Wimbledon crown. Even worse, perhaps, is that Roger Federer's eventual record-breaking 15th Grand Slam title won't come with quite as much fanfare ... in fact, an asterisk may be included just because he didn't have to face Nadal to knock Pete Sampras off the mountaintop. (Not, like, a steroids-related asterisk; but an asterisk nonetheless.)

However, that shouldn't suggest this won't be a fantastic fortnight of tennis. I'm going to make my picks here, and for all second-round matchups, I'll tell you why, in 15 words or less (to match Federer's GS total pending this tournament) I'm taking that winner. The idea of picking second-rounders, is so that you can automatically see who my 1st-rounders are based on the matchup. At the end, I'll list my quarterfinal, semifinal and championship picks. I'm going mano y mano with mi papa. We'll see how it goes.

SECOND-ROUND PICKS, starting from the top of the draw
(5) Juan Martin Del Potro def. Lleyton Hewitt
No Nadal at the top means opportunity for Hewitt, but JMDP is ultra-talented
(25) Dmitry Tursonov def. Philipp Petzschner
A suddenly relevant match, what with Rafa taking his bad knees back to Mallorca
(23) Radek Stepanek def. Potito Starace
Two of the better names in the draw go head to head, with experience prevailing
(16) David Ferrer def. Fabio Fognini
Does Fabio have golden locks? What a weak upper eighth of the draw this is
Daniel Evans def. Bjorn Phau
Upset special of the tourney: homeboy Evans knocks out 12-seed Davydenko in 1st round
(20) Tomas Berdych def. Paul Henri-Mathieu
'Cuz now everybody's heard about the bird. Bird bird bird, the bird is the word
Benjamin Becker def. (26) Jurgen Melzer
The boy who ended Agassi's career has to be better than this, right?
(6) Andy Roddick-Decker def. Grigor Dimitrov
Apparently this Grigor kid is "better than Federer at 18". Uh-oh, Andy.

(3) Andy Murray def. Ernests Gulbis
Along with Roddick-Dimitrov, these could be two wildly entertaining 2nd-round battles
Daniel Gimeno-Traver def. (30) Viktor Troicki
The man with three names knocks out washed-up American Taylor Dent in opener
(19) Stanislas Wawrinka def. Martin Vassallo Arguello
Swiss Prince (to Fed's King) is steadily making this tiny country a two-man band
(14) Marat Safin def. Christophe Rochus
How in the world is Marat back in the top 15? Stealing his sister's points?
(10) Fernando Gonzalez def. Oscar Hernandez
Since he did that much damage on dirt, imagine what Gonzo can do on sod
Mikhail Youzhny def. Fabrice Santoro
Along with former French champ Ferrero and 33rd seed Kiefer, an interesting quartet lies here
(31) Victor Hanescu def. Nicolas Lapentti
There are three "Nicolas"-named players within five draw spots. Thought I'd point that out
(8) Gilles Simon def. Andrei Pavel
The highest-ranked dude you don't know. Mainly because he's never done anything substantial

(17) James Blake def. Marc Gicquel
Can the American Revolution (half-Yank, half-Brit) capitalize on his reshuffled, weaker draw?
Evgeny Korolev def. Paul Capdeville
I'd love to pick Vincent Spadea here, but his rap is better than his tennis
(24) Tommy Haas def. Michael Llodra
Isn't this guy like 43 years old now? How does he keep winning?
(11) Marin Cilic def. Sam Querrey
This might be young Sam's time to shine. But same goes for the lanky Croat
(15) Tommy Robredo def. Edouard Roger-Vasselin
Soft draw for the Spaniard, with two qualifiers likely in the offing
Dudi Sela def. (18) Rainer Schuettler
Shahar Peer already had her breakout '07 Open. Is it time for the Israeli man?
(28) Mardy Fish def. Janko Tipsarevic
Hey, Mardy, welcome back to the rankings. 'Bout time for Andy's old buddy
(4) Novak Djokovic def. Simon Greul
Loud-mouthed Serb hasn't done a whole lot since 2008 Aussie win. Comeback alert?

(7) Fernando Verdasco def. Kristof Vliegen
Now the top Spaniard in the field, we'll see if Verdasco's game translates to grass
Grega Zemlja def. Guillermo Canas
Because I don't trust No. 32 Albert Montanes and I like Grega Zemlja's name
Frank Dancevic def. (22) Ivo Karlovic
Karlovic is the only man alive who can nail 60 aces and still lose
(9) Jo-Wilfried Tsonga def. Simone Bolelli
Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. He's a bad man, he's Muhammed Ali!
Gilles Muller def. Andreas Beck
13th seed Robin Soderling will suffer a MAJOR letdown after dream run in Paris
(21) Feliciano Lopez def. Nicolas Almagro
There are 14 players in the draw from Espana, including this pair. Good gravy
(27) Philipp Kohlschreiber def. Maximo Gonzalez
Great name for Gonzalez. And baby-faced Kohlschreiber has game, but this is his ceiling...
(2) Roger Federer def. Agustin Calleri
...because there's a certain Swiss gentleman whom nobody in this field has defeated at Wimbledon

In the quarters, I have Roddick downing Del Potro, Murray besting F. Gonzalez, Cilic crashing the party over Djokovic, and Federer, well, you know, destroying Frank Dancevic.

Federer vs. one of the Andys in the final...doesn't matter which one. Roger will ease to his 6th Wimbledon and 15th Slam losing no more than a set.

-AJ