Foil in the Oven: More from Jim's Epic Chipotle Visit

The handsoap on the bathroom sink has appeared to be completely empty for about a week now. Every time I finish going to the bathroom, I think "oh shit, I should have brought in a new thing of soap." And yet, every time it pumps out soap as if it were completely full. It's really amazing.

oldie but a goodie:


As you probably already know, Weeksy and I had a great meal at the Cleveland Circle Chipotle last Thursday. I'm a big believer that "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" is just as relevant to the relationship between burrito establishments and people as it is to the relationships that people have with each other. Because I believe this, I was happy to meet Jim and prevent him from making any rookie mistakes that might forever taint his image of this fine burrito chain. It's not that I think the burrito wouldn't have been good if he had gone with a different set of ingredients. But, someone who goes in with no prior knowledge is most likely not going to maximize their enjoyment. The corn is the best example of this. Thanks to Ted (who chaperoned me on my first trip), I have never had a burrito at Chipotle without corn. It probably wouldn't be bad. But, it would be lacking a certain element that I notice and enjoy every time I eat there.

Anyways, we've had a lot of burrito talk this week. I won't discuss any more about the food that we ate. You can scroll down for that. Instead, I want to rehash some of the sports conversations that we had during the meal.

Now, for those of you who don't know, Weeks is Jim from Green Bandwagon , which is a much more well established site than the roomofzen. He is a great person to talk basketball, and really all sports in general, with. Our meeting (I call it a staff meeting whenever I get together with the other people on the site) came the day after James Posey signed with New Orleans, which naturally drew most of our conversation to basketball. We sort of brushed over it, agreed that it sucked, agreed that we'd both like Tony Allen and Eddie House back, and moved on.

Some issues upon which we touched (note, some day we hope to have a podcast. For now, this will have to suffice):

Sick footage of a young Dimebag Darrell (see Ted's post two below mine). From Dimevision volume 1:



1) Michael Beasley: You're probably tired of hearing me rant and rave on my soap box about how Michael Beasley was the best player in this year's draft. Well, I'm not going to stop. Weeksy and I expanded on this for quite a while, and agreed that the Derrick Rose seemed to be a product of media hype more than anything else.

Here were the main points of our discussion:

A) The notion that the Bulls should take Rose because "this is a point guard league" is based on very flawed logic. Every expert who said that followed it with "take a look at what guys like Chris Paul and Deron Williams are doing in this league." Well, Chris Paul and Deron Williams are two of the best players in the NBA. Sure, if Rose turns out to be as good as them then it will all work out. But, even then, why is this a point guard league? I feel like one person said it, and then it just caught on until everybody was saying it. One of the biggest knocks on the Celtics heading into the season was that point guard was a weak spot for them. They won the NBA championship. The team they were playing against had a point guard that is old as can be.

Look at what Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and Dwayne Wade have done. Why isn't this a 2 guard league? The point is that you need to have a well rounded team in order to be successful. The Bulls have a very full back court, and have Kirk Hinrich locked up for quite a long time. It seems to us like Beasley would have made sense.

B) Everyone has knocked Beasley's defense, but again the media have allowed the legend of his defensive shortcomings to spiral a little bit out of control. We both watched him play quite a few times last year, and he never stood out to either of us as a guy that can't defend. In fact, we both think that he seems like he will do just fine playing team defense in the NBA. The best example of a college player who I knew would struggle playing defense in the NBA was Charlie Villanueva. He was very lazy about rotating, and seemed to always be on a different page than his teammates.

Now, Villanueva was a UCONN guy so I watched him play a lot more than I watched Beasley. But, I have seen nothing to indicate to me that Beasley will be a liability on the defensive end. He might not be an all-NBA defender, but he certainly has the ability to play team defense. And, when you add his offensive abilities to that, you end up way ahead of where you started.

C) Jim has the summer off, and has been able to take in more summer basketball than I have. He assures me that seeing what Beasley has done so far in the summer league only makes it more clear that he is going to be an impact player right away.

D) Do we even need to talk about the character thing more? Practical jokes in the locker room....every team has somebody who does them to some degree. As long as fire arms and lubricant are not involved, I don't think it's a problem. Of course, there is the switching schools thing. But, I just want to point one thing out. If any of us had changed high schools, potential employers might have legitimate reasons to wonder why. But, when you are an athlete like Beasley, coaches from other high schools probably call you ALL THE TIME to try and recruit you. And, unlike many of us, he actually had legitimate reasons to consider changing high schools. He was probably always on the lookout for the best place to get exposure.

At this point, we went off about how most guys that get passed for character issues despite freakish ability end up fine. We talk about how Warren Sapp went twelfth and Randy Moss went 21st.

We then keep talking about how absurd it is that Randy Moss went 21st.

"Didn't they watch him play? What the fuck is wrong with them? He wasn't human in college!"

"But, remember, he's so good that it doesn't LOOK like he's running fast."

"Yeah, but don't they have combine numbers? Isn't it there job to know if he's so good that he doesn't look like he's running fast?"

"Dallas passed on him. When has Dallas ever been worried about character issues?"........On and on we went.

As a side note, isn't it strange that Warren Sapp went 12th, Randy Moss went 21st, and yet Lawrence Phillips went 6th. Of the three, I really think Phillips had the most legitimate character questions. And, I think we can all agree that he didn't exactly "pan out".

Anyways, by the end we were sure that Chicago had made a mistake. Weeksy finished it of by saying "by the time the season is about half-way over, I think everyone is going to be wondering how they talked themselves into Derrick Rose."


2) Remember when the Bulls Refused to Part with Luol Deng?


So, somewhere in here I mention that Villanueva left college too early, and we get into guys who either left college early or should have gone to college. I assert that Gerald Green should have gone to college. He is extremely talented, but far too undeveloped. Unlike Beasley, who can find ways to score while being double teamed, Green doesn't know how to score when someone has him squared up. He may have developed this in college. The transition from dunking over high schoolers to the NBA was not a smooth one for him.

Anyways, Jim says that he thinks Deng could have used another year. He then says "remember how the Bulls wouldn't trade him last off-season no matter what?" For some reason I thought that this was the funniest thing. The Bulls faded into obscurity so fast last season, that their whole storyline was completely forgotten. But, remember how firm they were on not giving up Deng. Paul Pierce was out there in the spring. Kobe was out there until the fall. There were real chances for them to make a move there. But, they literally would not part with Luol Deng under any circumstances. It seems funny now, partially because I had forgotten all about it. Probably a good move for them. Kobe wasn't very good this year.




3) WEEI sucks.

This conversation was very refreshing for me to have. And, I have made a lot of changes in my life since it happened. I now realize that I was driving around in a prison that I created for myself. There are no laws that say I have to listen to sports radio when I drive, especially if it sucks.

We agreed on the following points:

- Dennis and Callahan barely even talk sports. I don't like listening to them. Some assert that it's because they are conservative and I am liberal but it's not (although they are very dismissive of opposing points of view). It's not. I have no problem with people that have different views than me. I do, however, have problems with people that advertise a sports show and deliver me something totally different.

- We like Dale and Holley. In fact, they are the only legitimately good daytime show on WEEI. And, for this, they are mocked incessantly by Dennis and Callahan and also by the Big Show guys.

- The Big Show is absurd. Weeksy believes that the Big O could be good at his job if he cared more about it. I'm not necessarily sure if I agree, but I do agree that he is a million times easier to listen to than Steve DeOssie, Fred Smerlas, or Butch Stearns. I can't handle Tony Masserotti either. We both remembered the spring of 2007, the day after Paul Pierce had made statements that he didn't want to be part of the rebuilding process, when it was very clear that nobody besides Ordway had any idea about the state of the Celtics. Now, granted the people they had on were baseball and football people (I believe Smerlas was on because it was draft weekend) but IT IS THEIR JOB TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THIS STUFF!

And the Whiner line, the goddamn whiner line. It sucks. It's not funny. It's the same people saying the same shit every day. Jim thinks it could work as a weekly thing, maybe every Friday. I'm willing to concede this. Some of those jokes might be less not funny if I only heard them once a week.

- Mikey Adams is entertaining. That's about all I'll say.

Here, I mention that the Big Show guys mock Mike and the Mad Dog all of the time. It pisses me off because I know that WFAN is a much better station than WEEI. On top of that, Mike and the Mad Dog do a MUCH better job of talking sports in a knowledgeable way that reflects actual preparation. And, they talk about sports from all over the country. Weeksy agrees that Mike and the Mad Dog is far superior to the Big Show. I knew it already, but it feels good to hear someone who is a fan of all Boston teams say it.

Then, we wonder how in the world this could be the nation's top rated sports radio network. Sure, there are tons of Boston fans and they love their sports, but don't we have standards?

This is when I start to realize that music is a better option for me than Dennis and Callahan or the Big Show. I've been much happier since.

Foil in the Oven: Sometimes We Like To Watch Videos

Before we move on, I need to speak about Michael Beasley once more. I really do believe he was the best player in the draft. Even as I saw the Bulls taking Derrick Rose, I felt like they were making the wrong move. Beasley is going to step in and make an impact right away. On top of that, as the analysts alluded to, the Bulls already have a lot of money invested in that back court. As you can see here (warning, you may throw up when you actually see Larry Hughes' contract charted out year by year), they have Kirk Hinrich, who is a pretty damn good point guard, locked up for the next four seasons. I'll really never understand why people soured on Beasley so much as the draft approached, but I was glad to see that the Heat had the sense to make the right call.

Speaking of salary cap situations, I had to look up the Knicks also just for fun. A lot of Knicks fans think that D'Antoni was brought in to suffer through this season and then to work with a team that management would build for him once they got some money off the books. Well, anybody that thinks Eddie Curry is opting out of this money is fucking crazy. As long as he doesn't eat himself to death like Pizza the Hut, he's going to be there for the next three seasons. Look at Zach Randolph's money too. God that hurts. Did I mention that the Jazz have the Knicks first round pick in 2010. No wonder those fans were so angry.

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I was really hoping that Darrell Arthur would fall to the Celtics at 30. I never expected it heading into the draft, but once we hit about pick number 24 I started to become optimistic. Obviously, we missed out. After that I was really hoping for Mario Chalmers or Chris Douglass-Roberts (hats off to the Nets for getting Douglass-Roberts at 40. Who would have thought?). The JR Giddens pick threw me off completely, but now I feel pretty good about it.

- Giddens is a senior, which means that he is more likely to have an impact right away. This is a big plus in my mind.

- Jay Bilas had great things to say about Giddens as a player, but mentioned that his drawbacks are that he has had some issues off the court and that he has been hard to control. I think sometimes we all need to remember (and this was the case with Beasley as well) that these guys are young. Think about your college days and the people you knew who are perfectly good and professional people now. What kinds of things may have come out about them heading into the draft?:

"well, we've heard that this guy and a friend crushed up a large bag of salt and vinegar chips and dumped them all over a Dead River pizza. No word as to what caused such hunger"...

"apparently an e-mail with very sketchy photos of this person putting on a glove were accidentally sent to the entire college administration".....

"apparently this guy would occasionally have too much to drink and would then run around the college dining hall waving an American flag"....

"We've got photos of this guy...humping.......a keg......in public....during the day.".....

"We hear that this guy actually boarded himself in a room with four other guys, leaving only small openings for pizza delivery, and the five of them drank an entire keg before forcefully breaking through the barricade that they had created. All this in just under twelve hours. Pat Riley is concerned."...

The point here is that I'm not surprised that many of these guys need to mature. Imagine being a 19 year old college student and having scouts probing into your personal life.

- They said that Giddens has been hard to control even as a teammate and player before. If he does step out of line, I have a feeling KG will handle it.

- Giddens played at Kansas and New Mexico and had great stats in college. Also, here is a video showing Giddens freakish athletic abilities (dunking in warmups at Kansas and New Mexico and also in dunk contests):


sick.



So, I feel pretty good about the Giddens pick. There seems to be a lot of upside there, and I think drafting guys that are relatively old makes sense given the Celtics current state. Overall, the Celtics scouting team has done a great job under Danny Ainge, and I trust them on this one.

What struck me even more, and really gave me the energy to write this post, was the announcement at about ten minutes to midnight that the Celtics had acquired Billy Walker from the Wizards for cash considerations. I had almost gone to bed, and I'm really glad that I stayed awake to get this news. Walker is a great fit for the Celtics. He has been described as an explosive athlete that will be able to provide a lot of energy off the bench in limited minutes, which is exactly what the Celtics need. When I heard Bilas talking about him after Washington took him I thought "god, that guy sounds perfect for the Celtics", and then it happened. If things work out right, this Celtics squad will have a lot of young talent and they will be very deep.

Here he is, Billy Walker:



again, sick.


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There have been a lot of rumors swirling around over the past week or so about Mike and the Mad Dog (Sports Radio WFAN, New York) splitting up. The pair have maintained that this is not true, and that their recent issues are natural in a partnership that lasts for roughly 20 years.

They aren't totally convincing. They have cited the fact that they are under contract as proof that they are not splitting up, but this indicates to me that a break up is somewhere in the future. This would be a crushing blow to sports radio. I always imagined these guys staying together until they retired, teammates for their whole career. Bill Simmons and Jack-O touched on it in the most recent BS Report and, along with doing great impersonations, made some great points. To hear Mike Francesa or Chris Mad Dog Russo doing radio with new partners would just be wrong.

I truly believe that Mike and the Mad Dog is the best spors radio show out there. One of the greatest things about being a Giants fan is that I was able to get the experience of listening to them pretty regularly. I'll be honest, I'd rather listen to them discuss the American League West than listen to anything on the Big Show or Dennis and Callahan. Really, unless it's Mikey Adams or Dale and Holley, I could take or leave WEEI. For now, let's all hope that these rumors of their split are truly rumors and nothing else.

Now, some Mike and the Mad Dog Videos (and I can assure you that if they do split up, this site will have a lot more of these for about a month):

1) I've posted this tons of times, but it never gets old. Here is Mad Dog going on his famous rant about Pacman Jones. Love it.


2) Here's Mad Dog Russo again with an even better rant after the San Francisco Giants were eliminated by the Marlins in '03, just like in '97(note, he is a huge SF Giants fan):


3) Here is a video of both of them (Mad Dog Russo on the left, Mike Francesa on the right) in classic form ripping Brian Cashman for apparently never shutting up during their interview with him (they have Cashman every week).


4) Finally, a guy calls and asks Francesa why he wasn't on Letterman with Russo. Seems like no big deal, but if there is a riff you have to wonder if it isn't related to this in some way. It seems like Russo is more popular (on Letterman several times). Just the fact that there are tons of Russo videos out there and far fewer of Francesa says it all. But, to hear them together for a whole show is to really be enlightened. Russo is crazy and Francesa is always overly calm. Somehow it works. It wouldn't if they were separate. Anyways, here's the clip:

Foil in the Oven: I Must Be Missing Something Here

I'm sure pat Riley knows what he's doing. I just wish that I knew what he was doing. I've heard a lot of speculation that he knows this Heat team has a chance to be good next year, and he wants to try and land a veteran, possibly Elton Brand. That would make sense. Maybe he's saying he doesn't want Michael Beasley because he wants somebody else (possibly the Clippers, as I've alluded to) to trade with him. That has to be it. Why else would he be passing on Michael Beasley? I just don't understand.

Now, I'm not an NBA scout, and I'm certainly not an expert on what makes a guy a sure thing in the NBA. But, am I crazy in thinking that Beasley is the surest thing in this draft? I wouldn't even pass on him for Derrick Rose. Sure, if I were the Chicago Bulls I MIGHT given his Chicago roots, but I don't think I would when the time came. Rose is a great player for sure, but I don't agree with a lot of the reasoning that I've heard. The arguments that I have heard in favor of Rose say that today's game revolves around great point guard play. People point to Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Well, we're certainly expecting a lot from Rose if we are expecting him to be as successful as Paul and Williams. These guys are two of the five best point guards in the league. What if Rose doesn't turn out to be of the same caliber?


Again, as I've said, I don't spend a whole lot of time analyzing these guys. I spend much more time analyzing NFL draft prospects. But, you don't need to analyze Michael Beasley, you just need to watch him. The guy is phenomenal. He had a better year in college than Kevin Durant did last season. He can score from anywhere. He has the inside game, the mid-range game, and he is an excellent outside shooter. This wasn't just him having a few strong performances, he looked like a man among boys for the entire season. The guy is going to be able to play at the next level.

I've heard the character knocks on Beasley. He coasts through games at times. He doesn't always work on the defensive end. He's not the most coachable player in the draft. First of all, that sounds like about 80 percent of the league. Secondly, I've heard many people say that the reason he appears to be coasting through games is that the game comes so easily to him. He is at an NBA talent level, so that should change. Plus, what better fit could there be than for him to play under the watchful eye of Riley, and to have a teammate like Dwayne Wade to set an example for him? Finally, I've heard that Riley might take OJ Mayo over Beasley if no trade comes along. There are just as many questions with Mayo in my mind. He seems like a bit of a head case.

I could end up being totally wrong about this, but I just don't see how. I've seen Beasley play and been blown away. I've seen the stats that resulted from this play and have been blown away. As I've said, he can score from anywhere. He does it consistently. He helped to take a bad college team in a bad situation (Huggins leaving) and turn them into a pretty good team (beating eventual national champion Kansas once this season). I was just as impressed with Beasley's game as I was with Kevin Durant's game last season. I think that he is the surest pick in this draft, I think that he will prove to be the best rookie next year, and I certainly believe that he should be the first pick this year. If the Bulls take Rose, as many believe they will, the Heat are getting a big-time NBA scorer in Beasley. I think they'd be crazy to pass on him.