dropkickshanahans

Funny thing about that: sometime during Jordan's time with the Wizards, Pat Riley of the Miami Heat retired Jordan's number in their rafters, even though Jordan never played for them. Now no Miami Heat player can wear #23. And to expand on the whole league-wide retired # thing, not to long ago LeBron James wanted to get a petition to retire Jordan's number league-wide, but Jordan wanted to shoot it down, saying something along the lines of he doesn't like the idea of his number being retired league wide because there were other great players a part of the league (as well as their being great players in the future), and it wouldn't be fair to them.

Can't really say we're the clear cut favorite, since the top 4-5 is up for grabs IMO, but the media will always bandwagon on the hot commodity.

Krause was a stubborn *******. It's funny how someone like him can drive out coaches like Phil Jackson and Tex Winter (leading to Jordan's retirement) even after winning 6 titles, letting everyone else walk to start rebuilding, f*** up the process by trading their young assets for busts (Eddy Curry anyone?) and then completely bail on the organization and leave them in a mess.

Chicago and San Jose were the teams to beat last year with their acquisitions (San Jose's always the favorite. Every. Year.), as were Philly and Pittsburgh (Then along came New Jersey at the trade deadline). I'd say Vancouver's definitely much better, but Luongo has to start performing better in the playoffs if they want to consider them the team to beat.

Well when you play in the East, you can afford to do things like these.

The way NBA teams are ran by GM's in these times is an absolute joke. Just look at the Knicks and their terrible contracts and past fiascos. Or even last year when we (Pistons) overpaid for 2 bench players, making starter money. And now I'm hearing players like Joe Johnson offered max contracts. I just want to pull my hair out.

Holy s*** hahaha

I agree. At least it didn't turn into an ugly situation like Brett Favre vs. Green Bay (Of course the media didn't help either in that regard). Ya' I hear ya. I don't know all the details about it, maybe they did offer minimum or not, I don't know. All I can really say is that they had their mind set that their future was gonna be without him. At least we can be glad that Kenny and Co. run things in a "family" like way, which is something that I'll always admire even if I disagree with some decisions (ex. keeping Maltby). You don't see too many orgs do this.

Point is, there's a time that comes when a business/organization needs to let go and move on with their future plans for the better. Not every organization can be like the Wings where we show a little too much loyalty for long-timers, especially since we're a cup contender and Dallas isn't.

It all comes down to loyalty for the long-timers. I guess it's good that Holland acts like this but at the same time I wish he just handled business like Dallas did with Modano.

Not as busy as the NBA will be, that's for sure.

We'll see. A pitcher's arm can only handle so many injuries, especially at the speed he pitches, and it just seems like it's at the point where they're coming more easier for him. If he can come back next year and still consistently pitch 99-100 then I will be very amazed, but I'm hoping something's done for him to avoid being prone to these injuries again, whether that's change his mechanics a little bit or just stop pitching him every day like Leyland likes to do.

What's a good NHL player comparison to compare Pulkkinen to?

I blame Guitar Hero. All joking aside, this sucks. I hate to be a negative nancy, but when everyone can hear a "pop" and then you see him scream in pain with his arm just shaking uncontrollably, I just don't see him coming back from this injury like he could with the other ones.

He's like Bud Selig, he cares too much about the human element-tradition of the game to want to make any changes for the better. It took a blown perfect game against the Tigers for Selig to start "discussing" instant replay, as it took an absolutely blown call on a clear goal for Blatter to want to "discuss" the same thing. Only bad thing about the discussion that I recently heard today is that they're only going to discuss putting a chip in the ball or whatever, but no changes that have to deal with offsides. The problem I have with this is how many times have we seen a blown no-goal call like this? I don't recall any. How many times have we seen blown offside calls? A lot. So their discussions later this summer isn't going to do anything to help the game that much at all.

Kinda makes me excited to think that 2-5 years from now we'll be seeing these guys on the lines trying to make a name for themselves like we saw earlier in the decade with Datsyuk and Zetterberg when Yzerman, Shanahan, Fedorov, Hull, etc. were still here. I still remember back then in their training camp (or preseason game, can't remember), when the young Zetterberg wowed the veterans with his play and netted 2 goals. With all the talk he got, you couldn't help but think him and Datsyuk were the future, and look at them now. That's how I feel about some of these prospects. Kids like Tatar and Jarnkrok just have a real good attitude and I know it's premature to go about it like that but you just can't help but think that when they're called up and get their shot, that they'll soon be wowing the veterans.

Same with me. The Lions lost so much this decade, but I never questioned why I was still a fan. In fact I never really even thought about it, I just kept supporting them. Only thing I questioned was why Millen was still the GM. Now he's gone and things are changing, and now the Lions are up and coming. Once you're born into being a Detroit fan (or any local teams for that matter depending on where you grew up), they just stick with you. Only thing that would stop me from being a Wings fan is if they moved out of state.

But this time it's for realz!

No, we're too old.

I read that earlier this year the old Silverdome was bought by a Toronto family, and they want to use it for a Detroit MLS expansion team. Of course some renovating would be done and I'd absolutely love for Detroit to get an MLS team. Vancouver and and Portland will be brought into the league this season, and Montreal is next in line to get a team, so getting Detroit would put the league at 20 teams. How does Motor City FC sound?

I don't know about that. Anything could happen with a 2-2 game with England having new life and changing their tactics (they pretty much threw their whole team up front in desperation lol), but I digress and agree that Germany was still the better team. They were younger and played with more heart imo. I agree that soccer needs video replay, but only used sparingly. I think what would make things much easier is to increase the refs used per match. A couple more linesman and an extra field ref wouldn't hurt. Also, each manager gets 1 challenge per half, and the challenge can only be used for replay situations like offsides, handballs, controversial goals (like what we saw during the England/Germany match). See how easy that was FIFA? The game is hardly slowed down, if at all, with extra eyes to get the calls right, and if they do get a call wrong and there's the coach's only challenge to look at the replay to decide, the maximum amount of time that would take is 5 minutes or less, and either stop the clock for the replays or just add it as extra time at the end. Simple.

brb, gotta make some kids and train them for soccer before 2014...