With this month’s passing of Harold Camping, the televangelist who went a Francesa-like oh-for-four on end-of-the-world touts — thank God he wasn’t one-for-four! — TV’s longest-running wise man is now Homer Simpson.
And it was Simpson who last week said: “If there’s one thing I don’t like being taught, it’s a lesson.”
To that end, Jimmy Dolan’s Knicks, with an annual payroll of over $100 million, remain a team that could do no worse if all decisions were predicated on a coin flip, any mother’s intuition or the feelings of an apprentice psychic.
That group migraine from which the Knicks — and don’t forget the Rangers — have suffered since Dolan entered, 20 years ago, would cease if only he didn’t demand the condition be treated with a hammer.
The Hammer Cure is not working!
Consider that the Knicks — the New York, Madison Square Garden Knicks, for crying out loud — are, at 4-12 in their own building, the NBA’s most polite and expensive home team.
They’re so polite that they slow up on their few fast breaks to allow the other team to catch up. Really. Three-on-twos, two-on-ones slow to conclude with a jumper rather than a layup.
The last time the Knicks ran with both regularity and success was when some on-the-cheap, fill-out-the-roster afterthought, Jeremy Lin, led a bunch of Pine Brothers to the most winning, exciting and good-for-the-good-senses stretch since Dolan invented the Facility Fee.
But Lin soon made back-from-injury Knick stars — the big-ticket, big-stats guys — uneasy. So off Lin went. Not so much Lin, but his other-idea kind of game.
And before that, David Lee, the hardest working of Knicks who had worked himself into an All-Star, also was deemed unworthy of remaining — not with super-duper star Amar’e Stoudemire available! And so Lee’s kind of game — relentless, both ends pursuit of rebounds — was gone.
But here comes Carmelo Anthony! Look how many points he scores! Team game? Just sign “franchise players.” The rest takes care of itself. It’s easy.
And so here we are, again, again: The geographically and financially advantaged Knicks playing the same losing game for the same losing owner who rules with the same losing instincts and formulas, over and over and over.
Sure, we’re having fun at Dolan’s expense. At his cable, ticket and beer prices, cheap shots are all we can afford.
Paint-ing the wrong picture
Nurse! Hurry! According to Fox, yesterday, Giants’ backup Curtis Painter is the most accomplished passer in NFL history.
“Those are his numbers, so far,” said Dick Stockton, referencing a graphic showing Painter to have thrown six passes, completing eight. Yep, eight of six.
Earlier, as Stockton excitedly described an unfolding on-field fight, Fox never moved. For the next 20 seconds it stuck with so-what? shots of Tom Coughlin and the Giants’ sideline.
So it’s 17-6, Giants, 6:30 left in the season, and DE Chris Baker — of the soon-to-be 3-13 Skins — tackles a RB for a loss then does an idiotic all-about-me dance. And the geniuses in Fox’s truck bless his rank immodesty by replaying his I-love-me bit — in slow motion!
Last week Dodgers’ star rookie Yasiel Puig was arrested on a reckless driving charge for a second time this year, this one for 110 mph in a 70 zone.
Last week University of South Carolina star DE Jadeveon Clowney was nailed for speeding — 85 in a 55. Two weeks prior he was ticketed for 110 in a 70.
Clowney’s coach, Steve Spurrier, joked about it — how Clowney soon can buy driving lessons with the NFL money coming his way. Ho, ho, ho.
Figures. Spurrier’s infamous for recruiting, indulging and exploiting the young and arrested, first at Florida, now at South Carolina. The schools don’t mind; they’ve paid him tens of millions to lead their student-athletes.
On Saturday, another big-time college football coach, Baylor’s Art Briles, appeared on ESPN. Briles broke down while speaking about his parents and an aunt — all killed in a car crash.
Healy allows Hulkamania to run wild in ‘Halls’
For grinning simple-headedness, don’t miss Fran Healy’s new “Halls of Fame” interview with Hulk Hogan on MSG. From the start, you knew where this was headed when Healy said Hogan “has pinned down the formula for success.”
That formula, as Healy assiduously avoided, was predicated on anabolic steroids. In fact, Hogan and his boss, Vince McMahon, were mailed steroids from WWF (now WWE) doctor George Zahorian, who was sentenced to three years in a federal prison for his distribution of drugs to McMahon and his wrestlers.
In merry pursuit of Hogan’s life story, Healy’s every question came gift-wrapped and sealed with a kiss. Thus a question such as: “How many guys who you wrestled didn’t live to 45? Forty? Fifty? More?
When Healy asked Hogan why he opened a Hulk Hogan Store — toys, souvenirs, memorabilia, clothing — and Hogan answered, “For the kids,” smiling Fran smiled some more.
If ESPN’s instructions to Notre Dame-Rutgers analyst Jesse Palmer were, “Talk yourself hoarse, speak short-story-long faux-hip, contradictory football gibberish — ‘defense has to get off the field,’ ‘escapability,’ ‘run downhill,’ ” nonsense — and deliver a speech after every play in order to make the telecast insufferable,” then Palmer nailed it!
The only one who doesn’t recognize Mike Francesa’s transparent, egomaniacal absurdities — how he’s as quick to pat himself on the back for a winning football pick as he is to ignore all his colossal losers — is Francesa. Apparently he’s so self-saturated, he thinks we don’t know.
The NHL Network has been airing the International Ice Hockey Junior Championships — many under-20 U.S. college players and NHL draft picks — from Malmo, Sweden. Team USA, 3-0, tomorrow plays Canada, 11:30 a.m.
Why would ESPN’s Chris Fowler, during Notre Dame-Rutgers on Saturday, say someone “caught” the ball when he can sound cool and tell us that he “collected” it?
The Yankees finally lost a game on YES’s “Yankee Classics.” It happened Christmas night. It was the Mariano Rivera Farewell game. The Yanks, on YES’s Classics, are now 1,538-1.
Interesting, the way “SportsCenter” has relocated the NHL to Siberia since ESPN lost NHL rights. That’s how the “World Leader In Sports” does it — if there’s nothing in it for ESPN, it’s hardly a sport. That’s why ESPN’s new pretty baby is UFC.
Not that CBS was going to tell us, yesterday, but Dolphins’ center Mike Pouncey missed practice, this month, to testify before a grand jury in the Aaron Hernandez murder case.
Hey, PSLs! Get your PSLs!