On Monday night the Cleveland Cavaliers came back from 23 points down and picked up a 104-101 win over the New York Knicks. While making comeback from down 23 is impressive that’s not really the story of this game.
Now this all starts off with a tweet LeBron James sent out about how the Knicks should’ve drafted Dennis Smith Jr. with the 8th pick. Now according to everyone this was suppose to be a shot at Phil Jackson not Frank Ntilikina who the Knicks took with that 8th pick. You have to guess that the shot at Jackson comes from last season when Jackson used the word “posse” and James felt that the word was being used as a racial slur. Like everyone else I’ve seen James do interviews on television hundreds of times and he seems like a relatively intelligent person. Being that he’d have to know that Jackson no longer works for the Knicks and that his tweet would be interpreted as a shot at Ntilikina.
Now you knew sooner or later these two would meet up on the court. After James dunked he refused to move out of the way to allow Ntilikina to take the basketball out of bounds to inbound it. Ntilikina pushed James multiple times to get him out of the way. Now James is 6’8 and about 260 pounds while Ntilikina is listed at 6’5 and 190 pounds; so it was easy for James to play the bully against a much smaller opponent. As it became clear that James was trying to intimidate Ntilikina his teammate Enes Kanter came over and got in James face. Now Kanter is 6’11 and 250 pounds; so he’s a little more of an even match up for James. Kanter and James where both accessed technical fouls as their face to face confrontation ended.
What I found odd about this situation is there where people in the media who praised James for what he did. Now if you’re a Cavaliers fan or a media member who covers them for a local Cleveland paper I understand that they’re going to side with James no matter what he does. What baffled me was the national media that seemed to think what James did was okay. So what I’m guessing here is we’re against bullying unless it’s done by one of the top players in the NBA. What made less sense was if James’ original tweet was intended as a shot at Phil Jackson why didn’t he allow Ntilikina to take the ball out of bounds? It was an embarrassing action by one of the best players in the NBA and instead of trying to be a funny guy and respond to the comments Kanter made after the game he should’ve of been more concerned about the example he just set on the court.
Instead of talking about NBA players acting like morons let’s talk about what should be the top story in the league, the Boston Celtics.
Kyrie Irving returned last night for the Celtics wearing a mask to cover his facial fracture and led Boston in scoring with 25 points as the Celtics won their 13th game in a row 109-102 over the Brooklyn Nets.
Irving only missed one game officially, but he played just two minutes in the game where he suffered the facial fracture; so let’s call it two games. He messed around with the mask frequently, but it didn’t appear to affect his play too much.
Irving actually posted his career high at that time on December 15th of 2012 with 41 points against the New York Knicks. Irving was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers the last time he had to wear a mask.
The Celtics lost their first two games to start this season before going on this 13 game winning streak. It’s actually the most wins in a row by a team that lost it’s first two games of the season. I wonder who keeps track of those stats. The Celtics will put their winning streak on the line Thursday night as they host the 11-3 Golden State Warriors.
As we head into Week 11 of the NFL season it’s time for some teams to start looking ahead to the 2018 season. The question for those teams is, will they have a new coach next season? Which coaches could be out of work at the end of this season?
Could we see big changes in the AFC North? Would the Baltimore Ravens more on from John Harbaugh if they finished under .500? You have to think that it’s time for the Cincinnati Bengals to make a change at head coach. Marvin Lewis has been with the Bengals since 2003 and has a career record of 121-111-3, but is 0-7 in the playoffs. The Bengals sit at 3-6 currently and they would probably need to win the remainder of their games to make the playoffs. Oddly the Cleveland Browns are 0-9 this season, but Hue Jackson seems to be the coach they want and it would almost be a surprise to see him let go, but you never know when you have a losing team. Even though he’s had to coach without his starting quarterback you have to think that this might be Chuck Pagano’s final season with the Indianapolis Colts. Pagano is in his 6th season as Indianapolis’s head coach, but the team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014 and with a 3-6 record it doesn’t look like they’ll make it this season. With the New York Giants sitting at 1-8 you have to figure this will be the end for Ben McAdoo. McAdoo led the Giants to an 11-5 record and a wild card spot last season, but this seasons team looks nothing like that team and you have to wonder if he’ll be given another season to see if he can get the team back on track. Will the Chicago Bears decide to move on from John Fox after this season? Fox is in his 4th season with the Bears, but hasn’t had much success in Chicago. The Bears are currently 3-5 this season and under Fox are 12-27. It appears that the Bears feel they have their franchise quarterback in Mitchell Trubisky, but is Fox the coach that they want to try and develop him. Chicago is Fox’s 3rd stop as a head coach and it also just happens to be the only team he’s had a losing record with. 2017 is Fox’s 16th season, but has he done enough with the Bears to warrant coaching a 17th for the Bears.
Feel free to let me know in the comments if there’s a coach that I didn’t mention that you think might be losing his job at the end of this NFL season.
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