Excuse me for a minute on this, but I’m getting a kick out of the concept of Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter getting fired and him being left without an interpreter. Just walking around the clubhouse and the dugout, not knowing what everyone is saying. The worst part is that he couldn’t tell anyone he doesn’t understand them! What a mess.
Of course, it doesn’t work this way, and of course the thing is terribly sad. Ippei Mizuhara was always reported on as being as much a friend and companion to Ohtani in a high-pressure, isolating situation as he was an interpreter. The hope is that this is a situation where one friend is doing something sacrificial for the other, and not one where Mizuhara did something terrible to Ohtani, but when you’re getting to the best case being “someone put his neck on the line for his good friend who has a gambling problem,” you’re running out of good cases. This is a bad situation.
There are three paths forward for us, as a baseball-watching community. We have little say over which one we will take.
The first is that we never get the full story and we always feel a bit uncomfortable about Ohtani. Mizuhara goes to jail or vanishes from the limelight and we all just remember this with a little grossness and a little sadness, never fully able to love Ohtani without deluding ourselves.
The second is that Ohtani is exonerated. Maybe the original story—that Ohtani covered Mizuhara’s gambling losses out of care for Mizuhara—is proven true, or maybe Mizuhara really did steal from Ohtani and that becomes very evident. We can go back to loving Ohtani if we loved him before. We can enjoy his many talents and one day watch a great documentary about what happened.
The third is the funniest. It’s that Ohtani goes bad boy with this.
We’re in an age where Major League Baseball needs Ohtani bad enough and gambling is accepted enough that unless Ohtani was throwing games, he could be suspended for a year (maybe this year, while he recovers from Tommy John, maybe whenever he next needs Tommy John) and then return as a heel. Start smoking cigarettes on the field and driving motorcycles and always wearing aviators, even while pitching. Change his number. Buy a bunch of snakes. Do steroids during his whole suspension and get them out of his system but come back even more jacked. Turn into some mix of Pete Rose, Kobe Bryant, Jose Canseco, and Kelly Leak.
I’m ready for bad boy Shohei Ohtani.
Are you?
(Joe Kelly still the Dodger GOAT, by the way. Holding that team together right now.)
The Deal With Josh Schertz
First, shoutout Jeff Borzello for the ESPN coaching carousel tracker, which is helpful. I made fun of Mr. Borzello earlier this year for doing the “How did Memphis get this bad?” thing when he participated in ranking a mediocre Memphis in the top 15, but he does good work and I am appreciative! (I don’t know why I feel the need to spell this out. Jeff Borzello probably only vaguely knows I exist and definitely doesn’t know that I hot dog memed him.)
Second, it sounds more and more every day like Saint Louis and Josh Schertz are doing the Texas Tech and Grant McCasland thing. By which I mean: We are hearing absolutely nothing new. No “Talks have broken down.” No “SLU is exploring different candidates.” Talks were reportedly had, there is only silence now, the implication is that Schertz said yes but that he wants to finish coaching his team, and that all parties are respecting that wish. Makes for a little awkwardness during on-court celebration if they win the NIT, but I’m unaware of any large share of North Texas fans who begrudge Coach Mac for anything.
The Deal With SMU
So obviously SMU did something wacky by firing Rob Lanier. Rob Lanier is a good basketball coach, he had his culture in place with this program, and improvement was happening. SMU was on its way to entering the ACC as a fringe bubble team. Not a bad place at all for a program of its stature with time and space to grow.
But as it settles in, it becomes obvious what’s happening.
SMU is going to pay someone a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot of money.
SMU has enough willing money (different from having enough money, plenty of places have enough money) that they’re joining the ACC pro bono. They’re making money for other teams through their presence in the league for the first few years. They can put together one of the most lucrative compensation packages in the country. The school has no shame (not always a bad thing), so Will Wade is reportedly on the table. I’m not sure if the school has or does not have a conscience (bad thing if true), and if they don’t I’m curious if Chris Beard could be on the table. It’s a great job if you look at it through a very specific lens and believe that you are personally capable of building a basketball fanbase. It’s also probably a great job if you like money, or if your family wants to live in a big city and you want to hang out with your friends who work for the Mavericks.
We Killed the G-League Ignite
We did it. The G-League Ignite is dead. The NBA news-dumped it today.
I like this partly because so many haters like to speculate about the NIT’s mortality, something which puts me on existential tilt and makes me want more dastardly basketball entities to die. I also like it because the whole idea seemed really dumb?
The concept of the G-League Ignite program (I don’t even know what to call it, do we just call it the G-League Ignite?) was that high schoolers could go pro right away without fully going pro. The problem with this, of course, is that the reason high schoolers can’t just enter the NBA Draft is one of the NBA’s creation. They’re the ones who made the one-and-done rule.
To be fair, most G-League Ignite players weren’t good enough to have entered the NBA Draft out of high school. The case became that this was a way for good prospects to develop as they would in college but while receiving a paycheck, which at the time of the program’s creation they could only receive in an unsanctioned manner if they played the college game. The problem with this, of course, is that if you aren’t good enough to play in the NBA, you’re probably not good enough to play in the G-League either. The G-League is higher-level basketball than what you get from a smattering of top-100 freshmen. The Ignite stunk, to the degree where the developmental value of the exercise, as I understand it, was questionable. Also, I don’t think anyone wanted to watch? Again this is just my understanding, but I don’t believe the G-League is a cash cow for the NBA.
It was a bad idea, and it’s ok to call it that. Shams Charania might need to carry water for the NBA on this, but we don’t. There were other ways for these kids to make money. Remember Will Wade?
The Rest
Don’t think I have anything here. Might have a Bevo’s Fake Nuts tomorrow, depending how this second half goes and how the vibes are tonight at HQ. Barring Saint Peter’s later, it’s either going to be a Texas collapse or a reunion with Rick Barnes on Saturday, and that is a news cycle in which we want to participate.
