Why the Cheatriots Couldn't Win

Here are some great stats I saw about this past weekend's superbowl, many of which are in this article about the effect of luck on the game, and which I really think highlight well my lasting impressions of this game, these teams, and the 2011-2012 NFL season.

For starters, some stats to give an idea of just how amazing the Giants' feat this year is. For example, did you know that Eli Manning and the Giants finished 3-0 on the road in this postseason, while all other teams in the NFL finished 0-9 on the road? So in a year where nobody seemed to be able to rise up and win a game against a better team in the playoffs, the Giants stepped up and beat the Falcons at home, followed by the 15-1 Packers at Lambeau, and then the 13-3 49ers in San Fran, and then they followed it up by winning the Superbowl in Indianapolis against the 13-3 Cheatriots.

Moving to their performance in the Superbowl itself, in their Super Bowl 42 meeting, the Giants held New England to 14 points, which was 23 fewer points than its regular-season average in that season of incredible offensive outbursts for the Cheats. In their second Super Bowl meeting this past Sunday night, the Giants held New England to 17 points, again 15 fewer points than its regular-season average. The Giants defense simply stepped up big time against the Cheatriots, both times they have met in recent memory in the superbowl. At more than two touchdowns below the Cheatriots' season averages, it is really worth mentioning.

And regarding Eli Manning, I did not realize this but Eli Manning is now 7-0 as a starter on the road in the playoffs, with 12 touchdown passes versus two interceptions. That right there might be one of the sickest stats you will ever see about the NFL postseason. Forget Mark Sanchez and his four road playoff wins, Eli Manning at 7-0 on the road in the playoffs, with 12 tds and just 2 picks? Mark Sanchez doesn't even dream of being that good in the clutch. What a stud Eli turned himself into this year. Much as I hate to admit it.

Some interesting stats comparing this year's Giants run to that of last year's Green Bay Packers, and the general mediocrity of the teams in this year's championship, during the regular season:

The Packers and Giants, the last two Super Bowl champions, were a combined 19-13 during the regular season followed by a combined 8-0 in the postseason over the past two years. If you recall, the Packers were all but done after an embarrassing loss at home to the Lions in Week 14 back in 2011, and then they backed into the playoffs anyways and the rest was history. And this season, the Giants' Week 15 debacle loss at home to the hapless Redskins in a game that wasn't even as close as the 23-10 score would indicate seemed to all but ensure that they would miss the playoffs as well, but then wins at the Jets and against the Cowgirls in the last two weeks of the season catapulted them in anyways, and once again, the rest has since become the stuff of NFL legend.

Also, the Giants and Cheatriots finished the 2011-2012 season with a combined record of just 6-6 against teams that had winning seasons, and that includes all the playoff games. The Giants beat only New England this year during the regular season among its 9 wins, 8 of which were against teams who ended the year 8-8 or worse. Meanwhile, the Cheats did not win a single game against an over-.500 regular season team despite winning 13 games overall this year. Think about that -- the Cheatriots played only two games against winning teams in 2011 -- the Steelers and the Giants in Weeks 8 and 9 this year -- and they lost them both, by an average of 6 points. Neither of these teams faced particularly strong schedules this year, nor did either team perform particularly well against the few good teams they did face, but just like last year's Packers, they got hot at the right time and rode their big players to victory.

There are also some good stats that I think give some solid insight into how the Cheatriots managed to lose this game:

Tom Brady completed 25 of his first 31 pass attempts in Superbowl XLVI, but then ended the game completing only 2 of his final 10 attempts as he desperately tried to lead his team on a late-game comeback. Eli Manning, however, completed 25 of his first 34 pass attempts much like Tom Brady did, but then he finished the game completing five of his final six attempts, including the amazing pass to Mario Manningham (see below) that will go down as the biggest and most amazing play of this year's superbowl.

Which really illustrates the larger point here, to those of you who are big football fans and have watched a lot of these big games over the past decade or so: Tom Brady is simply not as good as he used to be. This should not surprise anyone, as he is now in his 12th year playing in a league where the vast majority of players don't ever survive half that long. By NFL standards, Brady is getting up there in age, and the simple fact is that, when his team was recording signs and stealing plays and winning superbowls back in the early 2000s, Tom Brady was at the time one of the absolutely most accurate, best decision-making quarterbacks in the league. Nowadays, Brady's accuracy is just not up there with the Rodgers's and the Brees's, and it really showed in this year's superbowl.

For starters, let's take a look at the play everyone (including Brady's wife) is talking about, Wes Welker's huge drop late in the 4th quarter which would have sustained a key Cheatriots drive and gone a long way towards ensuring a New England victory in the superbowl:



If you take a look at the play above and you're capable of some objectivity that so many people lack when it comes to their favorite sports team, this really isn't about Welker missing the catch, even a little bit. It's a bad throw. Period. Not only is this ball about four feet straight over Welker's head, when it had no need to be given that Welker is completely wide, wide open, but it'a also at his back shoulder, making this a very,very difficult catch. Now, don't get me wrong -- Wes Welker is the most productive receiver in the NFL for the past several years, and he does quite often find a way to make this catch. And I can certainly feel for Tom Brady when I see his top receiver get both hands on a thrown ball in a situation where he was not otherwise touched by any defenders. But at the end of the day, the inescapable conclusion from watching this play is that Tom Brady made a bad throw. The precision accuracy that used to be such a hallmark of Brady's success back in the early days of his Cheatriots career, is now gone, at least in any consistent aspect. In this case, Brady had his #1 target wide open on an absolutely crucial, nearly superbowl-winning play, but Brady's throw ended up in an extremely difficult spot to catch it, even for Wes Welker. Gisele, Tom and anyone else can say what they want, but this one is probably 85% on Brady, and 15% on Welker in my view.

Similarly, let's look at the next biggest play in the game, from the Cheatriots' perspective -- the Chase Blackburn interception:



Once again, here is Tom Brady given all the time in the world behind the line, but when none of his wideouts are open, Brady opts to go with his ever-trusty tight end Rob Gronkowski and heaves one up there, at a time when Gronk had clearly beaten his defender and was a good five yards open downfield and counting. Unfortunately, just look at that pass. Brady throws it a little off his back foot, a little tentatively, and the result is just what one might expect -- this ball is at least ten feet short. And really, it's even shorter than that, because Gronk had his guy beat when the ball left Brady's hands, so Brady should have led Gronk even deeper with his throw, but this toss ends up about 10 feet short of where Gronk was when Brady threw the ball. There's just not even close to enough juice on this throw, and this is the one and only reason why Chase Blackburn was able to make what was admittedly a nice catch on his part. But if this ball is thrown well, there's no chance for Blackburn to even make a play, and given Gronkowski's performance this year, it seems a pretty safe bet he takes this one into the end zone for a huge score that almost certainly changes the outcome of this game. Instead, however, Brady launches a duck well short of its intended target, and this gives Blackburn -- who was already behind the play right from when Brady threw the ball -- the opportunity to be in better position that Gronkowski to make the huge interception and take away one of the Cheatriots' last good opportunities to score in this game. The simple fact is, Tom Brady did not used to miss this badly on his longballs in superbowls past, but now his accuracy is just not what it used to be, and it shows in his results.

Before anyone says I'm just nitpicking here, let's take a look at the Giants' biggest play of the superbowl, which was this amazing catch by Mario Manningham down the left sideline late in the 4th quarter with his team needing a score in the final minutes to take the lead from the Cheatriots:



I mean, just look at that play. Where Tom Brady stepped down in his team's biggest throws of the day, making questionable decisions and missing his spots as detailed above, Eli Manning shows us what Brady used to do in the superbowl back in the day -- he absolutely nails it. Nails it! As amazing of a job catching that ball as Manningham did -- hauling it in, feet both in bounds, retaining possession while being hit and tackled out of bounds -- I just can't get away from the fact that Eli Manning's throw is even better. Play that vid over again and just look at where that ball landed. And this was with Eli also off his back foot and under pressure to boot, but just look at what Eli did there. He lofted this one and landed it in a spot where absolutely, unequivocally, the only player who could make any play on the ball whatsoever is his guy. Those defenders -- though Manningham seemed like he was draped with coverage when this play happened in real time -- but those defenders literally had no shot to even touch this ball. Manning put this throw perfectly where only Manningham could make a play, and yet just close enough to him to enable him to actually be able to make that play.

This is what winning superbowl quarterbacks do, and this is exactly what Tom Brady used to do back in the day when his Cheatriots were winning superbowls themselves. But not anymore. Now, impeccable, almost impossibly perfect throws like this are what Eli Manning does to Tom Brady's team. While Brady, on the other hand, basically, well, Brady's himself. You thought Tebowing was big, but Bradying might be I think the Next Big Thing.

I'll leave this post with a couple of final thoughts about the superbowl, and the Cheatriots's cheating past.

Before Spygate, Bill Belicheat's Cheatriots were 12-2 overall in the playoffs, and 3-0 in superbowls. But since the team was caught cheating in the middle of the 2007 NFL season, the Cheatriots are now 4-4 overall in the postseason, and 0-2 in the superbowl. If you choose not to see a connection there, then that's your prerogative. But then it's my prerogative to laugh at you, which I will most definitely do.

Also, I saw pointed out in that article interestingly that the Giants are 4-0 in the superbowl when Bill Belicheat is on the sidelines. That of course is 2-0 with Bellicheat as an assistant under Bill Parcells, and now 2-0 against Bellicheat's Cheatriots team. Maybe they can hire him as a strategic consultant or something if they ever make it back to the big game again, since it seems unlikely to this writer that the Cheatiots will make a return trip to the superbowl anytime soon.

Chip Off the Old Block

Donovan McNabb's statistics for the five years preceding his trade from the Eagles to the Redskins in 2010:

2009 14 games 60.3% completions 3,553 yards 22 tds 10 INTs 92.9 qb rating

2008 16 games 60.4% completions 3,916 yards 23 tds 11 INTs 86.4 qb rating

2007 14 games 61.5% completions 3,324 yards 19 tds 7 INTs 89.9 qb rating

2006 10 games 57.0% completions 2,647 yards 18 tds 6 INTs 95.5 qb rating

2005   9 games 59.1% completions 2,507 yards 16 tds   9 INTs 85.0 qb rating


Carson Palmer's statistics for the five years preceding his trade from the Bengals to the Raiders in 2011:

2010 16 games 61.8% completions 3,970 yards 26 tds 20 INTs 82.4 qb rating

2009 16 games 60.5% completions 3,094 yards 21 tds 13 INTs 83.6 qb rating

2008 4  games 58.1% completions   731 yards  3 tds  4 INTs 69.0 qb rating

2007 16 games 64.9% completions 4,131 yards 26 tds 20 INTs 86.7 qb rating

2006 16 games 62.3% completions 4,035 yards 28 tds 13 INTs 93.9 qb rating



McNabb's average numbers over the five years immediately preceding his trade:

12.6 games 59.6% completions 3189 yards 19.6 tds 8.6 INTs 89.9 qb rating

Palmer's average numbers over the five years immediately preceding his trade:

13.6 games 61.5% completions 3192 yards 20.8 tds 14 INTs 83.1 qb rating


Adjusting for Carson Palmer's devastating leg injury three years ago, here are McNabb's average numbers over the two years immediately preceding his trade:

15 games 61.4% completions 3735 yards 22.5 tds 11 INTs 89.7 qb rating

Palmer's average numbers over the two years immediately preceding his trade:

16 games 61.2% completions 3532 yards 23.5 tds 16.5 INTs 83.0 qb rating


Donovan McNabb was traded to the Washington Redskins in between the 2009 and 2010 football seasons for a 5th round draft pick.

Carson Palmer just got traded to the Oakland Raiders for a first round draft pick, and a second round draft pick, that itself becomes another first round draft pick if the Raiders appear in the AFC Championship game in either of the next two seasons.

Mark Davis, somewhere your father Al is smiling in his grave that you have decided to so proudly continue his tradition of pure, unadulterated idiocy. Only, your father was old and senile for years...what's your excuse?

The Sad Side

Here is a post I wrote around 8am morning after stumbling back to my room in a drunken stupor on the third night of my trip to Las Vegas last month. I had forgotten all about writing this post and really about this story until I was reading through my saved posts the other day, and when I saw it, it all came rushing back to me. This experience really weirded me out when it happened last month, and I remember being confused if I was just really drunk or if this guy was actually saying some effed up shizznot to me. Unfortunately, at this point I am pretty sure it was the latter.

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Last night at some point when I went to check in the rest of the chips I had outstanding and get back cash, there was a hugely long line at the cashier's cage and of course it seemed like the dude in front of every single cashier line was getting a marker, redeeming some coupon, getting travelers checks cashed, etc., so none of the lines were really moving at all. I was pretty hammered and when I heard the guy behind me literally swear out loud, "GodDAMNit what the hell takes these fuckers so LONG?", I just had to turn around to ask him if he had a plane to catch or something.

When I turned around though, I saw this short old man, wearing a very obvious toupee and just generally looking very dishevelled, lowly, and just generally sad. Instead of the quippy line I had been all prepared to deliver, I just kinda shook my head at him like yeah, these lines suck what can you do. He then takes this immediately as an intro and starts talking to me about what assholes the MGM is for all the games they are running. I kinda laughed, since of course nobody is making him or anyone else play any of these games, and since people do things like smoke, play the lottery, etc. all the time that are basically really dumb decisions over the long-term but which people choose based on short-term gains, so really what's the difference anyways in the end. But he continued on, and this is where things started to get a little weird.

"These assholes", the old man commented to me, "they run these games that take your money, that ruin people's lives."

"No shit," I responded, "But then why do we keep playing?" My question was delivered lightly, jokingly, matching the tone I had read in the guy's first comment to me. But then he turns back to me, lowers his head like he's telling me a secret, and whispers to me very quietly, "I'm not kidding. I've been coming here for 18 years, and I've lost around $50,000, my house, my wife and my kids all because of the gambling."

"Hmmm. Fifty thousand?" I asked, hopefully. I mean, not that losing 50 grand at gambling -- or at anything, for that matter -- is cool or should be acceptable, but at the same time, 50 grand lost over 18 years of play, I mean that's only under 3 thousand a year, which is hardly enough to ruin someone's life, family, etc., and certainly should not necessarily be enough to cause someone to lose their home.

"No," he replied, "I said four hundred fifty thousand dollars."

"Wow. That's terrible" was all I could think to say. I was dumbfounded. Here was a guy, talking to a complete stranger in the literal middle of the night at a casino, and explaining just minutes after meeting me in line at the cashier that gambling has ruined his life. Literally. But then it got even worse.

He continued, "Now I have a marker, I owe MGM 8 or 10 grand now. After going through all that $450,000, after losing everything I had, now I had to borrow money from the casino, because of course I need to keep playing." That last part about needing to keep playing was uttered in a very matter-of-fact tone, as if it would make all the sense in the world to me why he wants to keep gambling after losing everything that mattered to him in the world. To me, it was one of the saddest things I could have ever learned about a perfect stranger.

"Anyways," he went on, "I have no way I'll ever pay MGM back the 10 grand I owe them now. I just got cleaned out again tonight, I don't have the money to satisfy my marker right now, so I'm going to clear outta here and head back home. If they let me borrow some more money, I'll keep chasing it for as long as I can, but as soon as they come for me, I know I'll never be able to pay back this money to the casino."

"So they why let yourself do it?" I asked, genuinely interested in the answer as, even though I love to play some poker and have spent hundreds of hours in casinos in my day playing any and every game they have to offer, I simply could not conceivably imagine of being in his situation and making these same decisions when faced with the choice.

"I got nothing else left," he told me solemnly. "This is all I have."

As I stood there, realizing maybe for the first time in the conversation just how dead serious this guy was, he went on with the most chilling part of the whole story, and the reason that I went right upstairs and made sure to write all this down, because it really spooked me.

"So when the MGM won't let me borrow any more money and eventually come for me to pay them back, I know exactly what I'm gonna do. I have a huge lake out back behind my house a ways, and I have the exact spot picked out where I'm gonna drive my truck right in, and end it all. I'll never let those bastards get one dime outta me after what they've done to my life. When the casino credit is gone, I'm gonna end my life and that will be that."

Now I know I was pretty sloppy, but I swear to you this guy was 100% serious. I could see it in his eyes. I'm not at all sure if he'll actually have the balls to do it when the time comes, but I am sure of two things: (1) the casino will stop giving him credit very soon, since has no means to ever pay them back, and (2) the guy definitely intended to kill himself to get out of his troubles once that happened, as he stood there in line at the casino cage at 3am on a random weekday late-night. He meant it, I assure you. He very calmly right into the eyes of a total stranger and matter-of-factly told me his plan to kill himself, one which he had actually put some real thought into and had been visualizing for some time.

As I mentioned I more or less blocked this whole conversation out of my head until being reminded of it when I read this half-written post the other day, so I thought I would get it out there while the memory is still fresh returning to my mind. It just boggles the mind that an activity like gambling that can bring as much joy as it does to as many people as enjoy it safely, can also be capable of leading to such fantastic and unbelievable ruination and despair in the hands of the wrong people or the wrong set of circumstances. Just how serious this guy was when push comes to shove, I suppose I'll never know. But I'll tell you one thing -- ever since I left Vegas, I've been afraid to look up news stories if anyone in the area recently drowned by driving their car into a lake, and I won't be performing that search anytime soon either.

64 But I Need More

Wow I am on a miserable run lately on the online poker front. My live poker game is as good as it's ever been -- I've mentioned before here that I remember not all that long ago the first time I ever played one of those daily holdem tournaments in a casino, I was so nervous, I got bounced early on a race I didn't need to take on at the time, and I distinctly remember thinking at that time how I would be lucky to ever even make the top 20% of any live casino tournament in my life. Fast forward five years or so, and I've won some solid coin in live events in Vegas, and more than that, I've won three different daily casino tournaments while just goofing around so far this year. But online, the past week or so has been absolutely brutal.

It's happened to me before. More times than I can count, really. In fact, truth be told, this downswing isn't even close to as bad as the worst it's ever been. But for the past few weeks, I just can't win anything I play. I've barely touched the mtt's over the past couple of months -- not sure why, although I do seem to recall having a similar period after returning from Las Vegas last summer, so maybe I burn out a little playing so much poker over four days that I literally see pocket pairs and flop-turn-river whenever I blink my eyes, I don't know. But I've been mostly playing turbo sitngos lately, and damn the variance on those things is just sick. Especially when you play a lot of turbo heads-up.

Oh, and a lot of super turbos.

I can't help it sometimes. I realized a long time ago that online turbo tournaments are a style that I can play realllly well, and to this day it is clear whenever I play turbo events that at least half the people at the table -- be it sitngo or mtt -- honestly do not understand the kind of adjustment that needs to be made in order to have long-term success at this pace. Sitting around and waiting for a big pocket pair might work in this one instance if you get lucky, and sure it might make you some money for a week or two while you run good and get just the right situations just when you need them, but over time it's a far losing strategy in turbo tournaments, and quite simply you should not be playing turbo if that is the plan going in. Anyways, these guys might get lucky against me in a given event or three of course, but in general I am at a major skill advantage whenever I'm playing in a turbo tournament structure online.

Narrow that down to heads-up turbo sitngos, and the skill advantage is even more obvious. Now granted, in heads-up play, it is also concurrently harder to take advantage of that skill differential because the play can be so automatic throughout, but at the same time it is just painfully easy to see the deficiencies in the games of most heads-up players at the stakes I tend to play. It's just them and me, and no one else to focus on or to complicate the analysis and make it harder to make moves, etc. And amazingly, if you take it a step further and play the super turbo heads-up sitngos, it is sad how much almost every single person dumb enough to be playing in these rake machines is truly totally out of it when it comes to strategy for these things.

If you play turbo heads-up sitngos at anything above micro stakes, I'm sure you've noticed the autobots who automatically min-raise every single time they act first before the flop. From start to finish, without deviation, every single time. And never a real raise, always just a min-raise. It's such an exploitable strategy, and once I've noted them, I'll usually just kick it back up 4x their raise on a reraise with air right there, they will invariably fold, and then I will instantly show them my trash. These auto-minraisers are such clowns, I will steal their minraise 7, sometimes 8 or more times in one turbo sitngo that lasts 7 minutes. It's unbelievable the free chips that are available over the long run from these people who think they've figured out the way to beat the games. It's so awesome, really. But the best part of all is, even in the super turbo heads-up sitngos, there are idiots who still are out there min-raising every single pre-flop when they act first. Minimum raising, when starting with ten big blinds and with 3-minute blind rounds. How can you not love that?

So yes, as I'm sure the snarkers out there are thinking, why am I on here writing about this instead of playing those super turbo min-raising idiots right now this very second? The answer of course is that I've been playing the super turbo heads up sngs for hours a day over the past several weeks, and yet I don't have anything good to show for it. Lately the variance has just been on the ugly side over and over and over again. Yes I'm getting in ahead with the same consistency as always, but when you're playing in super-turbo land, getting allin pre with A7s vs K9s is not just commonplace -- it's around the best you can really realistically hope for if you're the A7s guy. That's why the variance is so sick in these things. Cuz you're really coming out there and just trying to get it allin preflop with a 60-70% advantage and hope you get your worth out of that situation over the long run. But 59-41 or 63-37 is just not all that favored to be able to avoid getting beat with some actual regularity when you actually play it out, something I've always known but which is so easy to forget until you go through one of those rough patches that mathematically have to happen if you play this game enough times over a long enough period of time.

Over the long run, I've performed fairly well in the turbo and super turbo sitngos that I have played. But lately, 64 percenters and even a few 80 percenters have just not been holding up their end of the bargain. And it's been probably the most annoying few weeks of poker that I've experienced in a year or more.

Vegas, Day Two

Had an absolutely atrocious cash game session today, losing a little over $300 at 1-2 at the MGM but having a fun time sitting with Chad, CK and even Blinders for the last few hours. But my cards were so awful, words can barely describe it. Over about 8 hours of cash game play, I received no AA, no KK, one QQ (which lost to CK's K5s), one JJ (which lost to Chad's AQ), and one TT (which lost to KJo). One AK which I won with a reraise before the flop. And I literally did not hit a single flop on the night. I must have seen (or known they were out there) maybe 15 or 20 flopped sets at my table during that time, but I literally -- no exaggeration -- did not flop top pair even a single time over 8 hours of play, let alone a set. Actually, that's not entirely true -- earlier in the afternoon I flopped broadway with JTs on an AKQ board. I bet the flop and got called by a guy who obviously had top pair or two pairs. The turn was a Jack, I bet and got called again, and then the river brought a lovely Ten, putting broadway on the board and giving me the split for my efforts. And sadly, that right there was the literal highlight of my entire 8-hour session -- getting uberfucked and splitting a pot at the river. Fun times.

I don't recall ever having this tremendously bad luck after the flop in addition to perhaps the worst run of starting cards in my entire poker history. Getting so few playable hands over 8 hours, I ended up making some stoopid river calls of medium-sized bets because I simply couldn't bring myself to lay down the three good hands I was dealt all day long. It sucked so hard, right now I'm siting here thinking that I might not even feel like playing in the World Series tomorrow at noon. There's just nothing like 8 hours of horrible cards, horrible luck and horrible decisions to make you question who you even think you are fooling by dropping 15 hundy on a silly little luck-based card game.

Oh and by the way, putting my lesson from last night into practice on the three good hands I was dealt all day (if you can even call TT and JJ "good"), I raised it up to 20 each time after a couple of limpers -- this is ten times the big blind now, mind you -- and still got called by K5s to lose half a buyin with my Queens, and by AQ to lose half a buyin with my Jacks.

So let's review. A solid 8 hours of play, only one true premium hand in pocket Queens (if you can even call that "premium"), which I raised to 10x, got called by K5s and lost to turn and river Kings. Two "semi-premium" hands in JJ and TT, each of which I also lost after raising it up to 10x the big blind, getting called by KJo and AQo and getting outflopped or out-turned in each. I flopped broadway, bet all three streets and ended up playing broadway on the board for the split. Oh, and I also lost half a buyin against a shorty when I called allin with A2 on an A23 board and learned I was up against A3. And I did not flop top pair even one time the entire night long. Fun times, did I mention that already?

Poker can suck it.

Right now, it feels like my odds of actually playing in the WSOP on Saturday are about 30%. I guess we'll have to see if that changes with a few hours of sleep to help erase the memory of today's pokering from my data banks.

An Aura of Losing

I heard something pretty telling about one of the very worst franchises in all of sports on Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio this morning, and I just had to go search the web for the actual quote. Here it is, from Los Angeles Clippers Assistant GM Neil Olshey, right up at the top of that link in discussion of his team having nabbed the NBA draft's coveted first pick in Wednesday night's draft lottery. To make it easy I am going to reproduce the first four lines of the story here:

The Los Angeles Clippers didn’t need time after the draft lottery to decide who to take with the No. 1 pick.

They settled on Blake Griffin long ago.

“I’d say we made the decision June 2008,” assistant general manager Neil Olshey said Wednesday at the team’s practice facility in Playa Vista. “When he decided to go back to Oklahoma, that if we got the No. 1 pick in ’09, he’d be the guy.”

The Clippers earned the right to select the All-American forward in the June 25 draft Tuesday when they won the lottery, moving up from the third-best chance.

Now just think about that quote up there for a minute. This is the assistant GM of the team here, not some yokel Lakers fan who loves hating as much as they do out there in southern Cali. And he's talking about June of last year, back before the Great Recession began and before the Lehman brothers debacle and before AIG tried to pay itself $600 million of bonuses for a job well done. June of 2008, so we're talking about right around the NBA finals last year. So there we were, with the Celtics and the Lakers bashing heads in a clash of former league titans, while you can bet there were plenty of coaches and assistants already hard at work on scouting new players, drawing up new plays and looking for keys to beating their opponents in preparation for the 2009 season. And what is the Clippers brass talking about while everyone else is focusing on winning in 2008 or how they plan to win in 2009?

Who they'll pick if they get the #1 selection in next year's draft.

It's unbelievable, really. I mean, I'm sure the guy wasn't literally thinking that he already expected his team to have the literal worst record in the NBA, get the best shot in the lottery and then win the first pick in the draft. To read it that way would be unfair, especially in light of the fact that the ping pong balls are set such that even the worst team in the league only has a 25% chance of winning #1, a fact of which the assistant GM of the Clippers is surely aware, so it would make no sense whatsoever to tank an entire season just for a one-in-four chance of landing a guy who may or may not prove to be a great player. Sadly I don't seem to suck out nearly as much as many of you clowns out there, but for me a 25-75 shot isn't worth throwing an entire season over.

So I don't think he's sitting there planning on having the NBA's worst record in 2009. But I'll tell you what the Clips' assistant GM is thinking when he makes that statement: that he does not view his team as having a realistic chance of being any good at all in 2009. And that, given that fully half the league makes the playoffs in the NBA every year and is thus excluded from that year's NBA draft, is absolutely pathetic in my book. The 2008 season isn't even over yet -- there's a whole summer, fall and part of winter still to come, there's the then-upcoming NBA draft lottery back in late June 2008. There's months and months where the GM could pull off a big deal or land a big free agent signing. And yet, already way back in June, the LA Clippers' GM's office is thinking ahead to what the team will do in the next year's NBA draft. Planning, already, knowing in fact, that they will not even be in the top half of the league next season. Knowing that no changes are possibly in the works to help the team to get better, to possibly fuel a run to 8th place in the West. 8th place. No GM change, no coaching change, no strong draft, no free agent moves, no players on their own team getting better, nothing.

Imagine this. Phil Jackson of the Lakers and Doc Rivers of the Celtics are sitting around having dinner one night shortly after their teams are eliminated in their respective Conference Finals series. Doc Rivers asks Phil what his plans are for the 2009 season. And Phil Jackson responds to him, "Well if I get the #1 pick in the draft, I'm picking Blake Griffin!"

Or take it to another sport. Bill Belichik of the Cheatriots is having a friendly conversation here in the offseason with his buddy the ManGenius out in Cleveland. Mangini asks Belichick if he's planning anything big for the upcoming NFL season. And Belichik responds with who he plans to pick if his team gets the #1 pick in the draft after the upcoming season is over? Would ManGina or any other real NFL coach outside of Detroit ever say such a thing?

Winners -- teams and management teams with a true chance to win -- never think of losing in this way. Ever. To do so would be abhorrent, and counter to everything that makes them so successful every place they go. I solemnly guarantee you that there has never been a season in Bill Parcells' career where, four months before the season even begins, he is already planning on who his team will pick if they are the worst team in the league in the upcoming season. I guarantee it. Even when he went to the 1-15 Miami Dolphins just a couple of years ago. I guarantee you he never once had that thought, and you know I'm right. That's because Bill Parcells is a winner, and the people in charge of the hapless LA Clippers are abject losers.

Clippers, you have let losing become a habit. It's time for a change at the very top, plain and simple.

Losing Sucks

It really is amazing how quickly your performance in this game can change. I always kick myself to write as much as possible about what I'm feeling, about how I'm playing and how I'm approaching certain hands and certain situations when I'm on a winning streak. I goad myself to try to get as much of that feeling, and of that style of play, down on (virtual) paper when I'm running hot, because I think in some ways the goal of every poker player is to find a way to constantly be playing your absolute "A" game. Since my vacation weekend in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I went from running hot to being on a major cooler. The roll that I had built up over the previous few months has uncommonly been shrinking. And I am playing pissed off poker. I'm still having my shots in the big mtts -- last night I was top 10% in the donkfest known as the 28k for most of the first two hours -- but eventually I keep making donkey plays that I know are donkey but I'm just tired, frustrated or both, and I'm not lasting much beyond the early levels of the cash in anything.

When I say frustrated, I mean that I am experiencing what seems like far more than my share of dumbass beats and hugely unlucky cards in bad spots, and as usual when I'm losing, my dam draws are just not filling. Ever. Just Tuesday night about 50 minutes into the token frenzy, I open-raised with pocket 7s, got one caller from the big blind and saw a flop of 732 rainbow. I bet 600 into the 900-chip pot with my set (because I'm a man), and the guy raised me allin. Bingo. I call, and he flips up pocket Jacks for the standard overplay with overpair move. Turn is a rag, and the river is a 2-outer Jack to send me packing. Fun stuff any time you can get a 2-outer working against you. And I think I mentioned in the Labor Day 100k guaranteed tournament that on the very first hand I flopped a 15-outer, had my allin raise called by two pairs and whiffed on everything. It's plays like that that basically were not happening to me for two months and that now seem to be lurking around every single corner.

It's not a fun way to play poker, and for the life of me I wish I knew the way to turn things back around to how they were just a couple of weeks ago. In the past I have never been helped by taking a break, and switching to other poker games has worked eventually but I guess I'm just not quite to that point yet. I'm not going to ask everyone for their suggestions, again, because I've done that several other times in the life of the blog and frankly nobody's ever actually been able to help me shake the losing cardma. I guess I'm just going to slog through it and see if I can bust out with a big score or something to get me back to my winning ways.

One thing I will be changing for the time being, however, is that I don't plan to buy in to any larger mtts for a while. My roll can easily support playing things like the 50-50 and the $100 satellites into the Monday 1k tournament on full tilt, but I'm not going to play those for a while. I know that over time I have proven to be a very streaky player, and when I get on a bad jag it can often be several weeks in between wins of any real significance. One measure I intend to take in light of this streakiness is to try to limit my overall losses during the streak by limiting my tournament buyins. So that's the plan. If I ever log on early enough to play the 50-50 satellites then maybe I'll play in that biatch, but if not, no more $50 and up mtt buyins until I show myself that I am ready for prime time again with consistent, solid tournament play.

Playing my "A" game. That's what I'm always striving for.

And that's why I'm playing the Mookie tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt. Password as always is "vegas1". Come out and play the Mook tonight, and hope you start off at my starting table because folks, I am once again back to being the deadest money there is out there in poker tournaments. I can't even remember that guy who should have won two consecutive Mookies just a few weeks back. Now I'm just the donkey who gets caught resteaing 20 minutes in to a blonkament with 52o, or the guy who calls of my stack with KJ on a Jack-high flop. This is how I keep my perspective on donkey play as well as I do -- because half the time, I am the donkey, and for some strange and I'm sure masochistic reason, I willingly put that donkery on display and for donation week in and week out in the unwinnable tournament called The Mookie. See you tonight at 10.