Stu’s Notes: Which NBA Teams Are Deserving of Respect?

A couple weeks ago, I listed out which NBA postseason teams I liked, but as I did it, I realized the more relevant question was who I do and don’t respect. This came to mind when the Suns got eliminated last night. I don’t respect the Suns at all. The first thing that comes to mind upon hearing “Phoenix Suns” is a feeling of disrespect. This hasn’t always been the case, and I don’t necessarily dislike this iteration of the Suns (Kevin Durant has to have one of the widest gulfs in sports between how much he’s liked and how much he’s respected), but the Suns are easy to disrespect. They deserve disrespect.

The remaining 15, from most respectable to least:

• 1. Denver: Nikola Jokić is everything we who care about respect ask basketball players to be. Except for American. He makes us feel worse about ourselves, but only through measuring our people against him. That’s respect worthiness right there.
• 2. Miami: Heat Culture, Jimmy Butler, etc.
• 3. New York: Wild, I know, but Tom Thibodeau? Jalen Brunson? I understand the Thibs critiques, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. If anything, they make me respect him more. He refuses to stop competing even when the NBA incentivizes that sort of behavior. Which is all the time.
• 4. Oklahoma City: I mean, I don’t have any complaints.
• 5. Boston: I thought I didn’t respect these guys, and I still don’t know that I do. Really, I think what’s going on is that I disrespect the Celtics less than I disrespect these next ten teams. Buckle up.
• 6. Cleveland: This one’s pretty simple. My opinion of them is entirely dictated by how they played in their last game. The fact they’re so high, again, speaks ill of what’s to come.
• 7. Indiana: Again, there’s just not a lot here. Do I love the state of Indiana? Of course. Do I love racecars and things named after them? Obviously. But these guys are tabula rasa, and I don’t get why they didn’t win by 50 when the Bucks were without every star they’ve ever had.
• 8. Dallas: I still don’t really understand why I don’t respect Luka Dončić, but I don’t. I think I’d respect him more if he said he was going on the Zion diet and that the haters could kiss the end result. Also, the most telling Kyrie Irving quote, of all the Kyrie Irving quotes, is the one where he thought the Nets just shouldn’t have a coach. I don’t care what shape a point guard thinks the world is. Kyrie Irving’s an idiot for other reasons. Great player, though. You always have to acknowledge how good a player he is. He is a great player.
• 9. Philadelphia: It pains me to put the Sixers here, because Philadelphians are the best, but the Sixers are losers. They just are. It’s a shame.
• 10. Minnesota: #NotAllMinnesotaFans, but: As I said a couple weeks ago, I saw Minnesota sports fans try to start the wave during the seventh inning of a Jake Odorizzi no-hit bid. Also, as we often highlight around here, the Vikings are named the Vikings but play indoors. We could go on, but that’s the gist. Professional sports in the Twin Cities should get SMU’d and restarted with a new North Stars. Think of what a good expansion town Minneapolis would be.
• 11. Milwaukee: So there’s this guy named Doc Rivers, and he loses a lot of important basketball games. So many that it’s suspicious. We ask: What’s up, Doc? He responds: I am losing an important basketball game. Anyway, Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose whole shtick is supposed to be that he isn’t a diva, set in motion a big string of events that led to Doc Rivers becoming the Bucks’ coach.
• 12. Orlando: I don’t think the city of Orlando should exist. Disney World should be able to be there on its own. Why do we need a three-hundred-thousand-person tumor growing out of its side? Liberate those people.
• 13. LA Lakers: This is fun because I respect LeBron as a person and I respect LeBron as a player. What’s fun about that? He’s given us LeBron haters another category in which to disrespect him: The guy is a terrible general manager. The worst. It is so much easier to hate on LeBron when you can point towards his track record as a GM. He made it really hard when he was only a person and a player.
• 14. New Orleans: The Galveston comments from Charles Barkley rang true on a few fronts. They built their franchise around a guy whose biggest challenge in his career is not eating too many beignets. I identify with the struggle, but that isn’t a part of myself that I respect!
• 15. LA Clippers: Speaking of that exact problem…There’s this guy named James Harden.

Which NHL Teams Should Exist (Updated)

Around the same time that we started talking about respect and NBA teams, we discussed which hockey teams should exist. We’re going to try to turn those categories into rankings too. We’ll see how it goes. The Capitals are gone, because they’re gone, but to reiterate our stance on hockey in Washington, D.C.: It’s fine. D.C. kids who play hockey are either Canadian expats, Junior Canada* expats, or doing it to differentiate themselves on college applications, like kids who fence. Still, D.C. is a big enough and important enough city that it should have a pro hockey team. Like Los Angeles, which we’ll get to below.

*Junior Canada is Michigan, Minnesota, New England, the eastern North Dakota towns outside of NDSU, and Buffalo.

• 15. Dallas: The North Stars should not have left Minnesota, and they should have at least had the decency to rename themselves something other than Stars. Dallas is not only banging Minnesota’s husband. Dallas is also livestreaming it on Instagram. Look at what it’s doing to that state. I often wonder if those Twins fans wouldn’t have started the wave if the North Stars were still around.
• 14. Carolina: Raleigh’s doing hockey well. If these guys were an expansion team named something like the Raleigh Redbirds, we’d like them. But “Carolina” is unnecessarily vague, and anyway, the real point here is that it’s bullshit the Whalers got moved.
• 13. Colorado: This one hurts. Because the Colorado Avalanche should absolutely exist. That’s a 21^st century hockey team right there. You know where the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team was selected? Colorado. The problem is that the Nordiques should not have had to die for Colorado hockey to have life.
• 12. Tampa Bay: Yeah this is messed up. We need to stop legitimizing these Floridian cities. Florida should have two cities (Miami and Tallahassee), Disney World, one more city that’s like Miami but smaller and more explicitly Cuban, and then a bunch of cool beach towns of different flavors. All of that, with agriculture in the middle. I think Florida would be better if we broke up the Tampa Bay metro into a bunch of municipalities the size of Sarasota and we then treated them all like we treat Sarasota. Spring Training only. We don’t need the Lightning.
• 11. Florida: This is better. It’s close to Los Angeles territory. But why aren’t they associated more with Miami? Why would you, getting to choose between association with Miami and association with Florida, choose the latter? Florida isn’t bad. Miami is great. Close to Los Angeles and Washington on the list of cities that need to have all the Big Four sports.
• 10. Nashville: We’re getting close. If the Predators had just named themselves something normal or cool, we’d be on board. The catfish thing rocks. Like Raleigh, Nashville is a fine place for hockey, and it’s doing it well. Unlike Raleigh, the Predators aren’t carpetbaggers. But Predators is lame, and you cannot be lame if you’re going to be a hockey team in the South.
• 9. Vegas: This is where it starts to shift. Vegas? Not deserving of professional hockey. Las Vegas? Deserving. Just be the Las Vegas Knights. You can be just as corny. The corniness isn’t the problem. The name is the problem.
• 8. Los Angeles: This is where it flips from undeserving to deserving. You can’t be a serious professional sports league in America if you don’t either 1) have a team in LA or 2) have a legitimate claim to being too big for LA, like the NFL did before it messed itself all up.
• 7. Vancouver Canucks: Vancouver is Canadian, but a specific type of Canadian. Which is to say: I think the Canucks should exist but they should score 100 goals per game and allow 100 goals per game and dress like the Oregon Ducks.
• 6. New York Islanders: Yeah, this is cool. I think the Islanders make sense. Long Island deserves one team that’s definitively its own. Hockey is the right sport for it.
• 5. New York Rangers: We have our quarrels with James Dolan around here, but there should be hockey at MSG.
• 4. Boston: The Bruins get the nod over the Rangers because Massachusetts is part of Junior Canada. There should be hockey in Junior Canada.
• 3. Toronto: Comical disaster or not, the Leafs need to exist.
• 2. Winnipeg: Remember when the first Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix? 9/11 happened like five years later. Coincidence??
• 1. Edmonton: This is something humanity continues to get right.

Is Arizona the Most Tortured Sports State?

Going back to Arizona for a minute:

• The Cardinals have never won a Super Bowl.
• The Diamondbacks have won one World Series but it was 23 years ago.
• The Suns have never won a title.
• The Coyotes were terrible before they got sent to Utah. So bad, in fact, that even in a very anti-relocation media and fan ecosystem, the move is getting a pass.
• The best season in Arizona or Arizona State football over the last twenty years ended in the Alamo Bowl.
• Arizona men’s basketball is supposed to be the best program in the state, but they peaked in the 90’s.

I love Arizonans. They’re like Californians, but without the arrogance. I want them to get wins. Not the Cardinals, because of the need for justice for the Pottsville Maroons, and not this iteration of the Suns, because of the fact I don’t respect them at all, but…well, I guess I want the Diamondbacks to get great.

To respond to our Gopher State readers: Minnesota can’t be a tortured sports state because its biggest sporting event is the state hockey tournament, and plenty of teams from Minnesota win that every year. Also, as established, Minnesota deserves to lose. We need a reset up there.

Look at Their Undies While You Can

Major League Baseball is working to fix the uniforms, most notably by making the names bigger again. (I wondered this offseason if the small names would start feeling normal, but nope, not yet.) They’re putting the blame on Nike rather than Fanatics, too. Those are the big takeaways from coverage of the memo the league sent around this weekend. What was left unsaid?

If you want to see baseball players’ peckers, you’ve only got a few months left.

I wonder what this saga has done for cup sales.

Etc.

Chicago:

• This isn’t exactly about the Cubs, but watching the Cubs play the Red Sox last night, my biggest takeaway is that Tyler O’Neill is really Canadian. Way more Canadian than I realized. I wouldn’t have thought he was very Canadian at all, because he’s a bicep and I think of Canadian strongmen as hairier. But then he got talking about how it’s nice to be in Boston because he gets to breathe the “northern air,” and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anything more Canadian than that.
• The White Sox swept the Rays, which really screws up their shot at historical impotence. They have to lose 22 games in a row now to get back on their previous pace.

Joe Kelly, Burnley, and the Ottawa Senators:

• Joe Kelly had his best outing of the year on Saturday in terms of what it did for the Dodgers. Entered unexpectedly with a 4–1 lead, Tyler Glasnow cramping and a runner in scoring position. Shut down the threat with a pair of strikeouts and a Daniel Vogelbach popup to right. Big one for our guy. Just needed to get back to Canada and get himself right. (Joe Kelly is not Canadian. Half-Mexican, actually. A lot of people don’t realize that.)
• Speaking of Canada: No Ottawa Sens news, but the Belleville Sens got past Toronto in overtime yesterday to move on to the North Division Semifinals in their quest for a Calder Cup. They’ll host Cleveland tomorrow night and Friday in the first two games of the best-of-five. Series goes to Cleveland after that, and it will end in Cleveland. Not because Belleville will necessarily sweep these fuckers, but because the series is using a 2–3 format. Two games in Belleville, three in Cleveland. Don’t know if that’s about travel expenses or what. (If you guessed Blue Jackets for Cleveland’s NHL affiliate, you were correct.)
• For Burnley, it was going so well. They were narrowly outplaying Manchester United. They were generating chances and stopping the ones they allowed. Then, normally respectable (by current Burnley standards) Sander Berge made one terrible, terrible pass, and it looked like all was over. But! It turns out Man U is still a disaster in its own beautiful way, and eventually, Burnley managed to finagle its way into a penalty kick which Zeki Amdouni converted. Tie game. And that’s how it ended. Some great stuff from both goalies, aside from André Onana committing the foul that led to the PK. Based on two or three plays, Onana is a boss. Aro Muric, great game.
• Watching this Burnley team is like watching a dog sprint around on top of thin ice. It’s a rush, and you cannot help, and you expect it to become the saddest thing you’ve ever seen. But right now, the dog’s still playing. Godspeed, pup.

NASCAR, IndyCar:

• Scott McLaughlin won in Alabama with Will Power finishing second, giving Penske Motorsports the first two finishers in the first race after revelation of their cheating scandal. Josef Newgarden, our burgeoning villain? Sixteenth place. Interesting spot to finish if the cheating wasn’t helping you, Josef. Interesting spot to finish if you aren’t feeling guilty, Josef.
• I’m so used to rain hurting this NASCAR weekend that I forgot how fun Dover can be. Not that it was all that fun. Still a short track with the NextGen car. But there were hints of it. I like Bristol and Dover because they answer the question of how close mankind can get to a short track that’s also a superspeedway. Until we build a short track with comparable banking on a planet with a stronger gravitational pull, that is. That’s going to rock. (I have no idea whether more gravity would make it easier or harder to drive around a short track at top speed.)
• Oh, credit to Denny Hamlin for winning. Again, Dover wasn’t all that fun. But it could have been.

Austin FC:

• Big win for Austin FC this weekend. Took down the Galaxy. The LA Galaxy, that is! Important clarification. Boy. If Austin FC were capable of taking down the entire galaxy, I would have to take back a lot of things I’ve said about them, and about Major League Soccer in general.