Called For Traveling

Just got back from Lakeland, where Mark Wise and I called all six state girls' high school basketball championship games. Check sunsportstv.com for the air dates for each of those games, as well as the boys' title games, which Mark and I will do next weekend. That's twelve high school title games in one week, in case you're scoring at home. Oh, and we'll be driving to Tampa next Sunday to call the NCAA Division II Sunshine State Conference title games, men and women, live on Sun Sports, for a grand total of 14 basketball games in nine days. In related news, my throat has just filed a lawsuit against my employers, and I have no idea what day this is.

So what did I miss?

Not much, actually. I was doing the pregame hosting duties for the Magic-Nets game on Sun Sports last Wednesday in New Jersey when the Steve Francis deal was announced (and yes, my schedule is approaching the inhuman level of Paul Kennedy, at least this month). Odd scenario there, as Steve-O was informed of the deal during the afternoon, just in time to catch a ride across the Hudson River for his introductory press conference at Madison Square Garden. Rather than play Six Degrees of the Tracy McGrady trade, as the Orlando Sentinel laid out with such innovation on Thursday, let me offer a couple of observations in the wake of Francis's departure from the Magic.

One, you're going to love Carlos Arroyo, but not as much as his teammates will. Having seen Arroyo get his first extended minutes for the Magic, it's obvious that his years in Utah under Jerry Sloan clearly taught him the nuances of the pick and roll, a staple of every offense in the league.

Flash back to the expansion days in Orlando, when the most effective weapon in the Magic's so-called arsenal was the pick and fade with Scott Skiles and Jeff Turner. Remember how often Turner found himself shooting a 15-footer with nobody in the same zip code? That happened because Skiles knew when to speed up, when to slow down, and when to make the pass.

Come back to now. Imagine that same set of instincts in a point guard whose primary target is Dwight Howard. That's why Arroyo was part of the Detroit trade. His career high 18 points in a much-needed win over Seattle on Friday night were fun to watch, but his skills as a quarterback will endear him to teammates and friends.

Sidebar: Arroyo is an idol in Puerto Rico, more so than most of us realize. Joey Colon, the Magic's Spanish radio announcer, told me in New Jersey that among the Latino fan base, Arroyo "is our John Stockton." Heady stuff. Personally, he could be John Crotty for all I care, as long as he gets the freaking ball to Howard.

Look, Kelvin Cato was a cancer, and Francis was ineffective, but getting them out of the Magic locker room was only part of the motivation for the trades. Those two contracts alone are worth $23 million dollars this season, a number which is now removed from the Magic's list of concerns. With the Penny Hardaway contract coming off the cap after this season, and Grant Hill's deal expiring after '06-'07, the Magic are in position to have more cap room than any team in the league.

But are the Magic doomed until then? Here, I disagree with my friends Mike Bianchi and Brian Schmitz at the Sentinel, who seem to think yes. I've got a funny feeling that this may be addition by subtraction. In Jersey on Wednesday, there was a palpable sense of relief among the Magic players, as shorthanded as they may have been. There was freedom, and spirit, and a sense of fun. These sort of upticks happen all the time in the NBA after a blockbuster trade, and it may only be a blip, but there's something to be said for a group of players who are enjoying themselves and each other. Plus, the Eastern Conference still sucks.

In the wake of these trades (and even earlier), I've fielded many an e-mail blasting Magic ownership, Brian Hill, Otis Smith, Stuff the Magic Dragon, and anyone else attached to this team, but I'm reserving judgement for now. Orlando has never had all its pieces healthy and on the floor at the same time this season. If Darko Milicic plays 30 minutes a game next to Howard, with Turkoglu, Nelson, Hill, Arroyo, Trevor Ariza, and everyone else out of suits and in uniform for more than a week at a time, and they STILL cannot win, you have my permission to fire away. Until then, the knee-jerk reaction to seeing all three players gone from the McGrady deal is just that.

The object is to win. Not win scoring titles, not win votes for an All-Star Game, but win games. If the Magic win, all is forgiven and forgotten. They didn't win with Francis, Mobley, and Cato. They didn't win with McGrady - in fact, they lost 61 games in one season, as I recall. If this combination wins, everything was worth it.

See you in Lakeland.

Get Lefty

I know, I know, I just churned out 800 words on the Magic-Pistons trade. But I can't let this pass.

Most NBA observers still think the Knicks and/or the Nuggets are the prime contenders to land Stevie Franchise, but just in case any of my friends in the Magic front office happen to stumble across this blog, here's my plea: get Lamar Odom.

And here's a guarantee: I'll back you. I'll answer the nasty e-mails from Sports Talk Live viewers, the ones that will point out Odom's rep as a head case. I'll educate the masses on issues of salary cap and team chemistry. I'll even field questions from Gator fans as to why the Magic wouldn't take David Lee.

Just get Odom.

When I started reading the published reports that suggested a Francis-for-Odom deal in the works, I jumped out of my chair. Faithful readers of this column - and faithful South Florida viewers of Sun Sports - may remember that back in the spring of 2004, I was sent to Miami to follow the Heat as a sideline reporter during the NBA Playoffs. That team was Miami's version of Heart and Hustle, led by Odom, Caron Butler, the still-viable Eddie Jones, an undrafted rookie from Florida named Udonis Haslem, and a lottery pick rookie named Dwyane Wade, who was the best player on the floor. That team, eminently fun to watch and an utter joy to cover in the locker room, beat the Hornets in the first round and took the loaded Pacers deep in the second.

The Heat were in a quasi-rebuilding mode after losing Alonzo Mourning to his kidney ailment for the entire 2002-03 season. In the summer of '03, they cut ties with Mourning (for the time being, it turned out), signed Odom and Rafer Alston as free agents, drafted Wade, brought in Haslem, and settled in for what appeared to be a long season. Days before the regular season began, Pat Riley stepped down as head coach (again, for the time being), handing the reins to Stan Van Gundy, who must have wondered what he did wrong. Miami proceeded to lose seven in a row to start the season, went 5-15 in their first twenty games, and began planning their 2004 lottery strategy.

Then, something wonderful happened. The Team Of Destiny Gods smiled on the Triple-A.

18 wins in their last 19 home games. A 17-4 record over the final 21 regular season contests, by far the best mark in the league. The Heat became the first team in league history to be 11 games under .500 as late as March and finish the season with a winning record. And the key guy, the one that made it all work, was Odom.

Playing out of position as a power forward, Odom revived his career. He averaged 17 points and a career-high 9.7 rebounds, leading the team in that category. He missed two games all season. More importantly, he bought everything that Van Gundy was selling, and spread the gospel among his young teammates. He carried that team.

When I got down there to do sidelines for Sun Sports in the playoffs, I was nervous about approaching him. I had read the same stories for several years while he was with the Clippers - took too many bad shots, head case, coach-killer. I clearly remembered his troubled past at Rhode Island. I was prepared for the worst.

Boy, was I wrong.

Odom was the Pied Piper of the Miami locker room. His coaches adored him, so much so that they were almost afraid to talk about it, for fear of jinxing it, or letting some secret spill out. His teammates, especially rookies Wade and Haslem, shadowed him like puppies, and Odom never led them astray. Point-forward, garbageman rebounder, three-point shooter, he did everything except sell hot dogs. Yeah, he took some dumb shots, but he also brought a Grant Hill-style sense of calm to the floor. Wade was Miami's best player, but the Heat belonged to Lamar Odom.

Pat Riley knew he had a hot commodity on his hands, and when Riles saw a chance to bring Shaq to South Beach, Odom was part of the deal. Publicly, Odom said the right things about moving back to LA, this time to play with Kobe, but I know that a lot of people in that Miami front office were just a little sad to see that team broken up. Odom had reinvented himself, but we'll never know how it might have played out. I really, really liked that Heat team in 2004.

Get him, Orlando. You're not seeing what he can bring to a team right now, not with Kobe jacking up 35 shots a game. You hear that he's seething at Kobe's selfishness, that he doesn't want to play Pippen to Bryant's MJ? Good. He wants to win.

Worried about how he'll fit in? Lamar, this is Dwight Howard. He's a 20-year-old freak of nature who can jump out of the gym, and he'll handle the rebounding. We're building the franchise around him. Can you play small forward again? Great.

Lamar, this is Jameer Nelson, and over here is DeShawn Stevenson, and that over there is Hedo Turkoglu. They've all got game, but they're desperate for someone to act as a ringleader, someone to crack jokes and tweak the media and give Brian Hill a hard time at just the right moment. They want a Pied Piper who gives a damn about winning. Think you can handle that? Like you did with Wade, Haslem, and Butler? Terrific.

Look, unless the proposed Knicks deal contains the words "Channing Frye," I don't want to hear about it. Denver's Earl Watson and Nene? Orlando's Whit Watson says Nono.

Get Odom. I'll back you.

Letting The Cato Out Of The Bag

By the time I got to the TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando this past Wednesday night, the trade winds were blowing at forty knots.

I was filling in for Paul Kennedy as the pregame and sideline host on Sun Sports that night. ESPN.com had been reporting all day that Detroit's Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo were heading for central Florida in exchange for Kelvin Cato and a draft pick. Speculation was rampant that Steve Francis would be next. Every newspaper and TV guy in Orlando was sniffing the air in the corridors of the O-rena. They smelled real news, something that doesn't happen too often around this basketball team.

About 45 minutes before the Magic would play the Heat - just fifteen minutes before I was to go live with the pregame - the team broadcasters were informed that the Pistons deal was imminent, but not finalized. As such, we could continue to address the rumor on the air, but we couldn't report it as done.

That was all well and good until halftime, when Cato bolted out of the Magic locker room, high-tops in hand, steaming towards the parking lot. In his wake were a dozen TV and print reporters, nipping at Cato's heels in an effort to get one decent quote. Unfortunately for them, Cato offered nothing more than typical "it's a business" boilerplate, the 20-inch rims on his Bentley serving as a highly polished reminder of why he could care less.

As Kelvin sped off into the night, the Cato was out of the bag.

Despite Cato's very public departure, The Magic still wanted to hold the news until after the game, when co-GM Otis Smith could address the media in a press conference. Right. Cato left the building, for the love of Christmas. Every media guy at the game was furiously working his cell phone, telling his editor or producer that the trade was afoot. Every sports outlet in the nation was reporting the deal. As the exclusive cable television partner of the Orlando Magic, Sun Sports could no longer play dumb.

So, after a quick chat with Joel Glass of Magic PR, I came on the air late in the third quarter and dutifully reported what I had seen and heard. David and Matt discussed the costs and benefits of the proposed deal, and the game went on.

Cable networks (like Sun Sports) that pay rights fees to pro sports franchises walk a thin line every night. As business partners, neither side wishes to sour the relationship, so mutual respect and cooperation are paramount. On the other hand, if we at Sun Sports are going to tout ourselves as "the home of" the Magic, Heat, and/or Lightning - a title that we pay for, via those rights fees - our credibility depends on giving the viewer exclusive access and insight.

In this example, we wanted to respect the wishes of the Magic and coach Brian Hill by keeping mum on the trade. However, once the news was out, we should have been the first to report it. Personally, I think we handled Wednesday's juggling act pretty well.

Now, about the trade: I like it. Cato, plagued by injury and attitude, brought nothing to the table this year in Orlando, and the salary cap room created by his departure could prove valuable. There's a pretty good chance that he'll never play for the Pistons anyway.

Carlos Arroyo has been a favorite of the Magic for a long time now, dating back to his understudy years with Jerry Sloan in Utah. He's not much for guarding anybody, but he's a pass-first true point guard, which makes him unique on the Magic roster. The Florida International University connection is a nice bonus, albeit a small one. It's worth noting that the Magic sold 150 single-game tickets on Thursday morning, after the deal was officially announced. In my view, that's not so much a reflection of the fan base's infatuation with Arroyo or Milicic as it is an expression of gratitude to the franchise for doing something - anything - to shake it up and improve the product.

Then there's Darko. The Mystery Man. Just twenty years old, he's best known for being That Guy in the 2003 Draft, the one that gave us LeBron, Carmelo, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade in the lottery. Never mind that the Pistons passed on the latter three on that list to get a player who never saw the floor during the Pistons' two successive trips to the NBA Finals.

Can he play? By all accounts, yes - in practice. What concerns me most are the stories from Detroit of Milicic's lax attitude during those rare moments when he was on the floor in a game. The Pistons didn't need him in winning an NBA Championship and reaching the Finals the following year, but they wanted him to prove that he deserved a shot. The popular story goes that he never did that, not under Larry Brown - who never plays rookies anyway - and not under Flip Saunders, who pretty much rolls out a basketball and swallows his whistle.

There's an old sportscaster cliche' that suggests that athletes often flourish with a "change of scenery" - a notion that has been reinforced in the last few days by Saunders, by Smith, by Hill, and even by Milicic's agent. They are all singing the same chorus, swearing that there's nothing wrong with this kid that 30 minutes a game can't cure, and Orlando is a chance for him to thrive.

I hope so. But then again, it's not like the Magic had to give up very much to find out - and Lord knows they had nothing to lose.

Now we wait for the other shoe to drop. Stay tuned.

Live From Italy

One night in November of 1994, I met a girl in the tunnel behind the visitor's bench at the Orlando Arena. I was a newly hired television producer and radio sideline reporter for the Magic; she was an intern in the marketing department, assigned to game night operations. She walked up and asked me what I was doing with that earpiece attached to my collar. Three and a half years later, in January of 1998, we got married.

Two kids, two jobs, three houses, and one minivan later, my wife is one savvy television viewer, and not by choice. Sitting next to me on the couch can be an educational experience, but it can also be maddening.

In the movie "Goodfellas," director Martin Scorcese orchestrated an elaborate scene in which Henry Hill brings his girlfriend, Karen, into a nightclub via the back door, with the camera following them up flights of stairs, through the kitchen, across a dining room, and into their front-row seats, just in time to see Henny Youngman start his act. The first time my wife and I watched that movie together, I pointed out that the entire scene was one shot, via a Steadicam - meaning, if one actor screwed up even the tiniest assignment, missed a cue or flubbed a line, the entire scene would have to be scrubbed, and they'd have to completely start over, from outside the building. There were no camera cuts, so there was no place to pick it up. "West Wing" does the same thing, frequently. You cannot imagine how passionately she wants to deck me when I bring up crap like this. Hey, it's my career field.

However, she has learned a thing or two.

Saturday night, with children finally wrestled into bed, my wife and I sat down to watch an evening of Winter Olympic coverage from Turin, or perhaps Torino. The event happened to be the figure skating pairs short program. The announcing crew included two-time Olympic gold medalist Dick Buttons, a man known for his Simon Cowell-level criticism of competitors. After a few minutes of listening to Buttons rip the skaters for the slightest mistakes, I started to do some math in my head.

Torino is six hours ahead of the U.S. east coast, so obviously, the prime time Olympic coverage on NBC is tape-delayed. Assuming that the pairs figure skating was a prime-time event at the Torino Games, it probably ended no later than 11pm local time, or 5pm here in central Florida - and that's the worst case scenario. For all I know, they skated in the afternoon. With NBC's coverage starting at 8pm, that left at least three hours (and probably longer) for the television crew in Italy to put the finishing touches on the pre-packaged coverage that Americans would enjoy on Saturday night.

Hmm. Buttons really seems to be nailing these skaters on their faults. It's almost as if he knew the outcome while he was speaking the words. Wait a minute...

"You know what?" I said to my wife. "I'll bet you a hundred bucks that they didn't record their play-by-play live. I'll bet they taped the routines, brought the announcers into a production truck, and had them voice their commentary over the video. Hell, they had plenty of time - Torino is six hours ahead of us. That's how Buttons knows what the skaters are screwing up before we see the scores - he's already SEEN the scores."

My wife, who has been down this road with me way too many times, never even looked up from her crossword.

"You can hear the crowd noise in the background," she said. "If they were in a truck, wouldn't it sound different? Plus, that one female announcer keeps gasping when the guy tosses the girl across the ice. She sounds like she's seeing it for the first time. Couldn't they actually be rinkside, doing the play-by-play as it happens?"

Umm, yes. In the business, we call that "live to tape." And she was right. Never mind.

Dick Buttons really knows his figure skating, doesn't he? Maybe he can lend me 100 bucks.

And now, this public service announcement, from our friend Mark McLeod of Gator Country, the UF Scout.com site...

"The Joe Girvan Celebrity Scramble to benefit the Association for Retarded Citizens of Alachua County will be held February 25th at Plantation Oaks in Gainesville. Come out and have a great golf outing while helping benefit programs for the ARC. For more information call 352-334-4060 or go to JoeGirvan.com."

...on a side note, Plantation Oaks has hosted Brady Ackerman's charity golf event several times in the past, and it's a terrifically fun track. For those who share my love for the great game, I urge you to come out on the 25th and support a worthy cause.

Furthermore, once Brady's charity event comes around again this summer, I pledge to recapture my title as Second Best Charity Golfer, behind Judd Davis. After finishing second to Judd twice in the Celebrity Division of Brady's event at Plantation Oaks, I put up an atrocious number last summer when the event moved to the CC of Ocala. Now that I've seen the new course once before, I might even sneak up on the kicker this year.

Nah, probably not. But I'm looking forward to it anyway.

Pulling Rank

Did some research over the last week on the subject of the ranking of college football recruiting classes. This was in preparation for a future Sun Sports project, the details of which I'm not at liberty to discuss. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

Scout.com archives their final class rankings as far back as 2002, so that's where I started. High school athletes who signed that spring would have been seniors in the fall of 2005, or, if redshirted, juniors. Either way, we're well within the window of time that most college coaches suggest we need before passing judgment on a recruiting class.

Scout's top ten recruiting classes, as ranked in the spring of 2002:

1. Texas
2. Oklahoma
3. Ohio State
4. Miami
5. Tennessee
6. Florida State
7. UCLA
8. Texas A&M
9. Georgia
10. Virginia

Among the current stars who were members of that 2002 recruiting class: Vince Young at Texas, A.J. Hawk and Santonio Holmes at Ohio State, Gerald Riggs at Tennessee, Drew Olson at UCLA, Max Jean-Gilles and Leonard Pope at Georgia, and Ahmad Brooks, Wali Lundy, and D'Brickashaw Ferguson at UVA. 2002 was also the year that Maurice Clarett signed with the Buckeyes, by the way.

Miami got Brandon Meriweather, Eric Winston, Devin Hester, Greg Threat, Ryan Moore, Baraka Atkins, and Sinorice Moss in 2002. Florida's 2002 class, ranked 20th by Scout.com, included Channing Crowder (with just one solitary star by his name), DeShawn Wynn, Gavin Dickey, Reggie Lewis, Ray McDonald, and Ciatrick Fason, among others.

What correlation exists between a recruiting class ranking and eventual production? Well, the 2002 Texas class, led by Young, did indeed produce a national championship four years later, proving that the Scout guys weren't just making this stuff up. Furthermore, Georgia's 9th-ranked class, with Pope, Jean-Gilles, and the soon-to-be immortal Joe Tereshinski, claimed the SEC title in '05, their second in four years. And Florida State's '02 class, which featured Chauncey Stovall, Kamerion Wimbley, Lorenzo Booker, Leon Washington, Broderick Bunkley, A.J. Nicholson, and yes, Wyatt Sexton, claimed an ACC Championship Game victory in 2005.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Four teams ranked in the Scout.com top ten among 2002 recruiting classes - Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Virginia - combined to lose 21 games this season, and two of them finished with losing records.

Two comments from this year's recruiting bonanza have stuck with me. Last week, as we devoted an entire hour of Sports Talk Live to recapping the recruiting classes of Florida's so-called (by me) "Big Five," Josh Newberg of USFNation.com commented that Jim Leavitt and his Bulls staff "go after players they want," regardless of how they're ranked. In other words, they're trying to fit a system, one that they believe in, and their confidence in that system overrides the number of stars next to a player's name.

On that same show, UCF head coach George O'Leary said more or less the same thing, claiming that he paid no attention whatsoever to how athletes or classes are ranked. You've heard that sentiment, in one form or another, from just about every coach in America, including Urban Meyer, Bobby Bowden, and Larry Coker.

Recruiting has become a year-round spectator sport, and that's fine. It gives football fans something to do and something to look forward to - two of my mom's Three Essentials For Life - but it's obviously an inexact science. No matter how many stars are attached to a player's name, we have no idea how he'll adjust to being away from home, how he'll buddy up with his new teammates, how he'll react to a new head coach - who may or may not be there by the time the kid's eligibility is up - or how he'll deliver on the field, where it matters. It's fun, but it's the equivalent of a pregame show. We all get to argue and brag, but once the game starts, everybody shuts up and watches.

Recruiting, as Brady Ackerman likes to remind me, is the lifeblood of college football, but fans shouldn't get too excited about a highly touted class, nor should they worry too much about a class considered "weak." At some point, all of those kids have to strap on the pads and actually play football - and that's all that really matters.

This spring, Scout calls Florida's class the best in the nation. At last check, Florida State is at number 12, Miami at 14, South Florida at number 56, and UCF is ranked 87th. Check again in the fall of 2010.

Quick Hits on XL

Three things that I will take from Super Bowl 40:

--Did Mike Holmgren not watch any scouting tape of the Steelers prior to this game? He looked utterly shocked at everything Pittsburgh did. When Antwaan Randle El took the reverse in the 4th quarter with 9:04 remaining, anyone who saw the Steelers' win over the Bengals in the opening round was shouting "pass! pass!"... never mind that Randle El was a quarterback in college at Indiana. Doesn't Holmgren have cable? Did anyone in the building not think "Hines Ward" at that moment?

There he was, wide freaking open. Inexcusable. Embarassing. Holmgren had the Mike Martz look about him all night long. He was flat outcoached.

--Perhaps the worst officiated game in the history of the Super Bowl. Big Ben's touchdown wasn't. Darrell Jackson's catch at the goal line at the end of the second quarter was. His right foot kicked the pylon, for Heaven's sake - why did we not see fourteen replays of that catch? Where is the outrage? Why did ABC drop the ball on that play? I'm still howling about it, hours after the game. An awful non-review. Did Paul Tagliabue call the ABC truck in mid-replay and tell them to shut it down? Did they not have a replay available? Were the tape operators all sleeping at that moment? Why is this not the lead story after the game? That was only one of several obvious boners contributed by the officiating crew, who appeared to be watching a different game from the rest of us.

--The Rolling Stones at halftime of the 2006 Super Bowl are the equivalent of the following: Johnny Unitas playing for the Chargers, Franco Harris playing for the Seahawks, Willie Mays playing for the Mets, Joe Montana playing for the Chiefs, and Dale Murphy playing for the Colorado Rockies. Hang it up, for God's sake. If you don't know your own lyrics without a TelePrompter, it's probably time to retire to that chateau in Bordeaux. And can the NFL break tradition and possibly hire a band that actually recorded a hit in the last thirty years? Wouldn't The Killers have been fabulous at the half? For that matter, it's Detroit -- give me twenty minutes of Eminem, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent, and I'd be one happy camper.

Other than that, great game. As I predicted on Foxsports.com, the Steelers won. See you on TV.