Welcome to another edition of This Week In Hot Takes! Here are some of the hottest takes from sports media figures for the week of Feb. 24 – March 2.
5. Skip Bayless thinks Kevin Durant’s injury hurts LeBron James’ reputation: In this Facebook video, after you get through Skip showing off his dog for the camera and then proclaiming that Durant’s injury isn’t that bad and might not even keep him out three weeks (he’ll actually be out at least four weeks), he does admit Durant has been better than he expected, then goes through all sorts of discussion about other teams, but then briefly starts discussing LeBron around 16:30 (the better part comes later, though):
After going on about how Steph Curry wasn’t able to cover LeBron in the 2015 Finals, leading to Andre Iguodala winning Finals MVP after he defended LeBron well, and taking potshots at LeBron’s play in those games, Bayless goes through discussion of other contenders again. The gold part comes at 24:20, where he says his first reaction to Durant’s injury was “Gee, did the King luck out again here? Did LeBron get yet another break?” and continues on from there.
This is quite the take, first because we don’t even know that the Warriors couldn’t make or win the Finals without Durant. They made them the last two years without him, winning in 2015, and while this team’s perhaps not as deep thanks to the moves they needed to make to clear space for Durant, they’re still incredibly talented. But beyond that, we don’t know that Durant won’t be healthy and dominant again by the time the playoffs start. And we don’t know that the Cavs will assuredly make the Finals, or that they’ll face the Warriors there.
Concluding that an injury to a player on a team from another conference will somehow diminish a hypothetical title for James months before any of that happens feels absurd. Of course, Bayless always seems to be looking for reasons to diminish James, but this one in particular feels like a stretch.
Rating: **
4. Colin Cowherd thinks getting Andrew Bogut means Cleveland “will win the championship”: Yes, the 32-year-old center cut by the Mavericks is the key determination here:
To repeat as NBA Champions, the Cavs need to sign Andrew Bogut pic.twitter.com/fBUkiTPw4T
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) February 28, 2017
Sure, adding Bogut (which the Cavs actually did) may help, but concluding that they’ve already won a title because they did so is a very bold take. We’ll see if it turns into one as cold as some of Cowherd’s other bold predictions.
Rating: ***
3. Mike Francesa says a woman can’t be a head coach in major men’s professional sports: This take came when a caller asked Francesa if he thought a woman would be a head coach of a men’s team during his lifetime, and Francesa not only said no, but went on to argue for several minutes that women shouldn’t be coaching men at all:
https://twitter.com/SportsFunhouse/status/837125927913959424
“It’s a gender situation. They’re not players! They don’t have any way to be in the league!” The caller points out that people argued the same on broadcasting, and Francesa goes “It’s not the same thing!” And then when the caller talks about his daughter, Francesa goes “What would qualify her to be a coach on the professional level of a men’s team?” This is a pretty oblivious take, ignoring the success of female coaches like Becky Hammond and Nancy Lieberman, disregarding that women can have playing experience too, and also overlooking that many coaches didn’t play the game they coach at a professional level (Gregg Popovich and Bill Belichick, to name just a couple). And the level to which Francesa takes this, insulting the caller for even bringing it up, is quite something.
Rating: ***
2. Pete Dougherty says Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges came from him being “likely descended from slaves”: This column from Dougherty, in The Green Bay Press-Gazette, has one of the more bizarre leaps of logic you’ll ever see.
As for Peterson, society is changing fast, and obviously for the better, on many things, including disciplining children. I’m 55 and have friends about a generation older who say corporal punishment in school was routine. That’s not that long ago.
Let’s also not forget that Peterson likely is descended from slaves who suffered savage disciplinary beatings generation after generation after generation. It excuses nothing but also can’t be ignored. This is learned behavior.
The first two sentences of that second paragraph were eventually taken down by the paper, with a note of apology, but not before it was rightly ridiculed. The paper’s editor’s note described those sentences as “poorly-reasoned and insensitive.” That’s putting it mildly. For one thing, Dougherty doesn’t seem to have done particular genealogical research on Peterson to see if he does actually have ancestors who were slaves, and even if he did, the causal link there feels absurd.
Rating: *****
1. Stephen A. Smith thinks Phil Jackson is deliberately tanking the Knicks to get fired: Saying someone’s deliberately failing at their job is quite the accusation, but it’s one Stephen A. is quite happy to throw out here:
“I firmly believe Phil Jackson is trying to get fired as the president of basketball operations for the New York Knicks. Phil Jackson wants to be fired, because that way he doesn’t have to work, but he still gets to collect his money. That’s what he wants to do. He doesn’t want to quit because he doesn’t want to give up the additional $24 million left on his deal over the next two years after this year is up. …I do know this, Phil wants his money, because it’s the only reason he took this job in the first place. He never wanted the job with the New York Knicks, he never wanted to work, he took it because he just could not turn down the money. And every move that he has made practically since he has been presiding over the New York Knicks proves just that.”
Look, there are plenty of ways to criticize Jackson and what he’s done in New York, and it’s clear that a lot of his moves haven’t worked out. But suggesting he’s deliberately making poor moves to get fired feels like a long unsupported leap off a short pier.
Rating: *****
Notable absences: Clay Travis, The New York Post, Shannon Sharpe. Stephen A. pulls into the lead over Travis this week.
Honorable mentions: Bayless hasn’t given up on Tim Tebow’s baseball career, Cowherd thinks the Warriors aren’t dangerous without Durant (did he not watch the last two seasons?), and Smith had a hilariously over-the-top response to Max Kellerman’s suggestion Adrian Peterson was “a souped-up Frank Gore”), while Phil Mushnick largely defended Dan Le Batard from critics who called him racist, but then said Le Batard might be racist against white people.
The latest
Stephen A. Smith – 48
Clay Travis – 46
Skip Bayless – 42
Phil Mushnick – 27
Shannon Sharpe – 20
JT The Brick – 15
Colin Cowherd – 12
Don Cherry – 11
Charles Barkley – 9
Bart Hubbuch – 8
Doug Gottlieb – 8
Ray Lewis – 7
Terry Bradshaw – 6
Greg A. Bedard – 6
Pete Dougherty – 5
Dan Le Batard – 5
Marcus Hayes – 5
Rob Parker – 5
Kyle Turley – 5
Mike Ditka – 5
Erril Laborde – 5
Lowell Cohn – 5
Rosie DiManno – 5
Doug Gottlieb – 5
C.J. Nitkowski – 5
Frank Isola – 5
FanSided – 4
Cris Carter – 4
Kirk Herbstreit – 4
Tony Kornheiser – 4
Mike Felger – 4
USA Today op-eds – 4
Nathan Ruiz – 4
Mike Francesa – 3
Jeff Mans – 3
Danny Kanell – 3
Luke Kerr-Dineen – 3
Chris Broussard – 3
Joe Browne – 3
Dan Dakich – 3
Michael DeCourcy – 3
Mike Harrington – 3
Bob Ryan – 3
Greg Mitchell – 3
Andy Furman – 2
Donovan McNabb – 2
Seth Davis – 2
Jon Heyman – 2
Jason La Canfora – 2
Dan Wolken – 2
Booger McFarland – 2
Joe Schad – 2
Cork Gaines – 2
Tune in next week for more This Week In Hot Takes. As always, you can send submissions to me via e-mail or on Twitter.
