Call Tom Izzo Mr. March all you want. Doug Gottlieb is Mr. April. There is no one else we talk about this month.
1. Did Doug Gottlieb sign his point guard just because he’s named LeBron?
Green Bay landed a juco point guard yesterday named LeBron Thomas, and that can’t be a coincidence, right?
For context: The point guard was a juco All-American.
For further context: LeBron James does not like Doug Gottlieb because Doug Gottlieb called him a “bad basketball parent” because the Lakers played along when LeBron James pretended Bronny James was worthy of a full NBA contract. This winter, LeBron publicly made fun of Gottlieb for Green Bay’s 2–24 start to the season.
LeBron’s chirp at Gottlieb was fair, mostly because he said “Earned 2 Not Given,” referencing how Gottlieb didn’t earn his spot at Green Bay the same way Bronny didn’t earn his spot on the Lakers. Is LeBron a hypocrite for calling Gottlieb a hypocrite? I think so. What’s the 2 doing in there? I don’t know. I mostly want to establish that just like Gottlieb was right about LeBron, LeBron was right about Gottlieb, and they’ve both been dicks to each other and no one needs to feel bad for anyone involved. (“Bad basketball parent” was unnecessary and so is chirping a Horizon League coach after living the 2010 and 2011 LeBron James lived.)
Back to LeBron Thomas.
I’m sure Green Bay can make use of Thomas. I’m sure this isn’t entirely Gottlieb trolling LeBron James. But part of it is Gottlieb trolling LeBron James, right?
My bigger question is whether Thomas knows Gottlieb and LeBron James have beef. Does LeBron Thomas resent his name? Does he want to become the historic LeBron? Does he think Gottlieb’s the coach to get him there? Or on the other side, does LeBron Thomas have no idea Gottlieb even hosts a radio show? Every possibility here is good. I hope Gottlieb contributed his own money to Thomas’s NIL salary.
2. Yet again, Honor Huff and Chattanooga are what’s right about college sports.
The city of Chattanooga celebrated the national champion Mocs last week with a duckboat parade and a rally downtown. Departing transfer Honor Huff was there and spoke, telling fans he’d still be a “Moc for life.”
Gene Henley has covered Huff a lot longer and a lot more closely than we have. We’re an NIT blog. Henley covers the Mocs beat. We’d encourage you to read his piece about Huff, and if you can’t, at least this quote:
“I really don’t want to leave if I’m being completely honest with you. I told every coach that I don’t want to leave, so I needed them to embody (what it was like at UTC) in some way.”
To echo a little of what Henley’s said, Huff’s bittersweet emotions were visible after the NIT Championship. Everyone around the celebration knew the circumstances, that a school would likely offer Huff hundreds of thousands more dollars than he could make at UTC. Huff winced at the “One More Year” chant while he cut down the nets. You could see him standing to the side at times, too, quietly watching what would soon be his old team. His eyes were big, and he didn’t always smile.
Chattanooga’s stance on Huff leaving seems to be, Yeah, this sucks, but we love the guy and we get it and good for him. The shock of these things is gone now that we’re a few years into the free transfer era. Huff himself came to Chattanooga as a transfer, following Dan Earl from VMI. We all get it, and Chattanooga’s no exception. But what I like most about how all of this is playing out (besides that Huff will play under personal favorite Ross Hodge, an NIT champion himself as an assistant and an NIT semifinalist as a head coach) is that there’s still some warmth to it.
A lot of the transfer portal discourse tries to push either callousness or huge, illegal restrictions on player rights. It doesn’t have to be that way. Programs can be happy for their guy. Fans can be really happy for their guy. This isn’t to say it needs to be lovey-dovey. Fans shouldn’t be hoping their favorite player jumps into the portal, and it’s dumb to ignore the “bitter” part of bittersweet. It isn’t to say that a lot of players shouldn’t transfer less. Players are getting conned and sometimes conning themselves. But Huff wasn’t conned, and he didn’t con anybody, and it’s great that it’s bittersweet for him and for UTC. That’s real life and real sports and still everything we love about both.
3. Yeah yeah yeah the Leafs.
After devoting a little time yesterday to explaining how funny it would be if the Sens beat the Leafs, the Sens went out and let the Leafs skate across their bare flesh. A 6–2 thumping which in the end devolved into the Sens taking as many cheap shots as possible since taking a ton of real shots didn’t work out for them. Even Ridly Greig scoring—a callback by the narrators to the time Ridly Greig slapshotted in an empty-netter and Morgan Rielly wet his diaper—wasn’t enough to ignite the Battle of Ontario into a serious hockey game. Linus Ullmark got his lunch handed to him. It wasn’t Brady Tkachuk’s best game. Bad night for our beloved Ottawa Senators.
Again, we the Texan contingent of Ottawa Senators fans (I think I speak for all one of us) aren’t trying to claim that the Sens are better than the Leafs. What we’re saying is that if the Sens beat the Leafs, it’ll be even funnier than 1) all the other times the Sens beat the Leafs and 2) all the other times the Leafs blow it in the playoffs. Unfortunately, it seems the Leafs have reset expectations so far that everyone just assumes they’ll blow it now. They have nothing left to lose. The Sens are in more trouble than I thought.
**
