This Week in Balls - March 13, 2012

Not everyone has the time or the inclination to follow sports full-time, or even real-time. Thankfully, we’ve combed the latest, greatest, and worst stories from the world of sports this past week—college basketball tourney week, more football fallout—so you can hobnob with the weird regular people at the office, your doorman, or your minions, if you have minions.

NFL:
The Redskins traded three first-round picks and a second-round pick to the Rams for the No. 2 overall pick in May’s draft, a move that basically announced they wanted a dude named Robert Griffin III. Griffin, the reigning Heisman winner (he beat out someone named “Honey Badger”), is considered by scouts to be one of those fabled beasts, a “franchise quarterback,” something the Redskins haven’t had since Megadeth released their first album. In a procedural quirk, the deal cannot be made official until the start of the next league year, which begins at 4 PM EST on Tuesday. It’s fun to imagine front office executives getting existential at 3 PM and tearfully calling up some spurned practice squad player—“I never wanted to cut you, Carson”—though the likelihood of that happening is as slim as the trade not going through.

MLB:
Yu Darvish, the redheaded Japanese righthanded the Rangers spent $110 million on, threw his first stateside pitches on Wednesday, striking out three and allowing two doubles in two innings of work. Darvish, who speaks through an interpreter, wasn’t impressed by the MLB, noting that a ball Will Venable whacked 420 feet was not “hit squarely,” the kind of criticism that makes waves in the sleepy news environment of early-session Spring baseball. Darvish’s agent clarified things, which appeared to just be lost in translation. It’s worth mentioning Darvish, who is young and has a hell of an arsenal, has a chance to be among the best pitchers in the majors. If he ever has his right hand cut off, he also throws 86 MPH left-handed, which betters four pitchers’ average fastball velocity from 2011.

Baseball news is all silly this week: Rays ace David Price hurt his neck toweling down his head; he likely won’t miss any more time, but he’ll join the long list of bizarre baseball injuries.

NHL:
With just four weeks left in the regular season—and about 30 weeks until the Stanley Cup Finals—competition has begun to get real meaty, especially in the West, where five teams are separated by three points and fighting for two playoff spots. Canadians will no doubt know that the annual GM meetings are this week—in Boca Raton, which is perfect—and the agenda involves concussions, call-up limits, and bringing back the red line—for non-hockey fans, these are real things, we swear—and other issues related to the collective bargaining agreement, which runs out after this season. One weird onion is next season’s salary cap, which will likely be higher than this year’s, but only through the summer. It’s a temporary number that will probably drop once the new CBA is ratified and the 2012-13 season starts. Also on the agenda: An exploratory committee on whether Phoenix does indeed have a hockey team.

NBA:
Young stud and hairy Spaniard Ricky Rubio of the Timberwolves will be undergoing ACL surgery, putting him out for the year, which effectively kills the Timberwolves’ playoff chances, as well as the NBA’s premier long-hair matchup in April, when Minnesota plays the Pacers and the ponytailed Lou Amundson.

As our own Ray LeMoine pointed out, Jeremy Lin, and the Knicks, have been sucking. While this isn’t an entirely new development—folks, like Nation editor Greg Mitchell (!) said the team would take a hit when ballhog/tugboat Carmelo Anthony returned—it does bring to light some of the youthfulness, let’s say, of statistical basketball analysis. If the regular basketball press was anointing him as a generational talent, statheads were saying he was at least a good NBA player. His play has regressed—that was bound to happen—and it’s hard to tell whether those Knicks losses say more about Lin, the teams the Knicks played, Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire or the lunar cycle. Maybe the NBA should follow baseball’s lead and not go nuts when a young player has an unbelievable debut week.

College Hoops:
Vanderbilt won the SEC on Sunday, which means noted terrible person Skip Bayless was happy, but Selection Sunday, the March Madness tourney ranking/unfurling, was less surprising. Kentucky, UNC, Syracuse, and Michigan State, the best teams, are number one seeds, though, as always, there’ll be lots of opportunities for upsets. Predicting winners is more of an art than a science, and maybe more art than luck. Picking upsets, the best part of the tourney, is overrated, but only a prick sticks to high seeds. Duke grad and all-around special basketball player Shane Battier is a proponent of the Fibonacci system, which he invented, though he himself predicts “buku (sic) upsets” and only two top seeds reaching the Final Four. For more on the Fibonacci sequence for scoring brackets, click here. Or don’t.

@Samreiss_

Previously – March 7, 2012