Cavaliers cutting waste at the deadline-Part One

It was pretty clear that whatever the Cleveland Cavaliers were trying to build for the 2017-18 season wasn't working, and with Kevin Love injured, things didn't appear to be getting better soon, despite an overtime win on Wednesday over Minnesota.

That made deadline day in the NBA even more important than usual and Cleveland under Koby Altman or whoever you believe is running the show (the names vary according to which NBA columnists you read) felt compelled to swing into action and when the smoke cleared in Cleveland-three trades were finished, six players were on the road out of Cleveland with four new Cavaliers headed into Northeast Ohio over the course of a frantic deadline day that saw even more dealings than anyone could have expected.
I'm going to write about one major deal now and hopefully the other major deal later tonight.

The flashiest deal was the Cavaliers punting the Isaiah Thomas trial by shipping the malcontented point guard along with veteran big man Channing Frye and the Cavaliers' first-round pick in this year's draft (Not the Nets pick obtained in the Kyrie Irving trade) to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The return was a popular one as point guard Jordan Clarkson and forward Larry Nance Jr. are coming to Cleveland.
Clarkson was averaging 14 points a game in 23 minutes as he was the first player off the Lakers' bench and brings the type of scoring that you'd expect from the modern point guard, with a playmaking ability that should be welcomed after watching Thomas and his struggles over his Cleveland tenure.
Nance returns home after growing up in the area as the son of Cavalier legend Larry Nance Sr, with averages of eight points and just under seven rebounds a game.

Like his father, Nance can play above the rim and will insert his share of highlights into game recaps, but most importantly, he can guard 4's and some 5's and will be able to give bulkier frontcourt opponents fits with his athleticism on both ends of the floor.

Both players are 25 and both are signed through next season, with Clarkson signed for two seasons, so this is not a temporary fix for the Cavaliers as they not only get younger and quicker for the present, they hedge a bet in case of a revamp if LeBron James walks away..

As far as the departed Cavaliers go-
Isaiah Thomas doesn't seem to be completely healed from his hip injury and although I cannot give him enough credit for trying to play through the pain, he clearly didn't fit into the Cavaliers system (or the locker room culture reportedly) and when you are a player that has to have the ball in his hands and being the top option in a team's offensive setup, your skills are going to be a difficult mesh with that of LeBron James.
I will miss Channing Frye, who was a plus in the locker room and when he occasionally got into one of those outside shooting rhythms, it was a pretty sight to see, but Frye was only playing a dozen minutes a game and his game on the defensive end isn't going to bring what Larry Nance will.
The first rounder was part of the price of doing business, and hopefully, these changes will enable that pick to be near the bottom of round one.

I plan on being back in a few hours with some thoughts on the other two trades by Cleveland and just how they could affect the stretch run.

Losing Interest

No, I'm not losing interest in the blog.
In many ways, I'm enjoying writing more when I do make time to write, but I have noticed some things over the last few months that I wanted to note.

Things that I used to watch constantly, I find myself occasionally watching now.
Since the Adam Henrique trade, Rachel hasn't watched a Devils game and I think I've watched one.
I would have never have realized this before, but maybe it wasn't the game I was enjoying, it was the time with my daughter with something that we had in common.
Currently, that's not there and there's a little bit of a hole.
Nothing against hockey (or the Center Ice dollars seemingly down the drain), but I didn't realize how much I was enjoying having someone to watch the game and share a team with.
Perhaps to the point of losing interest, since she has.
I'm sure if the Devils make the playoffs, things will pick up and I hate to be one of "those fans", but I'm hoping that these are temporary circumstances.

Wish I could say the same about basketball, where my college interest has been slipping for years, although I've been somewhat excited about Ohio State basketball's revival under Chris Holtmann and I still watch a fair amount of Xavier games.
And the Cavaliers- What a disaster as it seems like every day there is another example of dysfunction, lazy play, front office issues and drama that makes me not just wonder about life without LeBron James (as soon as next year, perhaps), but even life with him for a team that looks like they are on the verge of mailing it in for the season with the trade deadline approaching.
Watching any games of this team is frustrating beyond belief- Look, I'm used to watching bad teams in all sports, so it isn't the bad play, it's the talent on the team combined with a lack of effort and a mesh of highly talented players that seem to have been accumulated by someone without the mildest interest in building any type of team with chemistry at all.

I'm not losing interest in autographs, but I am delaying putting away last years cards and they are still sitting around.
I'm even considering over next off-season to begin the process of selling/giving some of my accumulated stuff away.
Nothing that I have to keep and I'm keeping the things that I want to keep, but move the stuff I can live without to a more appreciative home and roll that money into other things that I want to collect more.

You know what else I'm losing interest in?
Politics.
I'm just so beaten down by the resident in the White House that even the political game is getting old to me.
I like the horserace part of politics the most, but the policy aspect is important as well and with the total mess in Washington, I'm beginning to become sick of the entire thing.

It's not all bad news though.
I'm reading more as you might see from the" Shawn is reading" module to your right and it's not all sports either.
I like reading on many different topics, although I've never been much of a fiction reader and I've been using the downtime of the winter to catch on reading a bit.

I'm playing a lot of Action Football as I wrote in the Jackie Wallace piece, doing the things that I really love with baseball prospects and the NFL draft and I've even been following Ohio State football recruiting closer.
It's not that I'm checking out high school videos like I do for the NFL draft, but I do enjoy reading the various Buckeye sites that take recruiting far (FAR) more in-depth and seriously than I do.
I've also been watching more tv shows on DVD with both the family and at work.
It's always nice to watch shows that you know that you'll like!!!

I've also been watching some other shows on "regular" television and maybe one day, I'll mention a few of those..

Hope that catches you up a bit and I might be back soon with something else that I have been working on.

Post-Super Bowl PPM

I just realized that I did not do a PPM for the Super Bowl.
In and all honesty, I would have picked New England by 10-14, so for posterity-Here is the final PPM record for 2017-
137-71.

The PPM is a lighthearted part of following football and I've always enjoyed it without taking a ton of time to try to do well!

Hope you enjoyed following this year's PPM and this year's unofficial host-Amy Acker.
I'm considering a mild change to the PPM for next season so we will see how that goes...

Jackie Wallace

Photo Credit: AP Photo

I was working on a piece yesterday before the Super Bowl (Hang in there, Lefty, It's still coming) and saw something on Twitter that caught my eye.

My friends (especially the Facebookers) have known of my recent discovery of the PC game Action Football (The detail is tremendous, no press and thumb game is this) and as usual, I concentrate on the years of my youth (70's and 80's) and the most fun for me is that they even have the defunct WFL and USFL.
I'm not a creative person when it comes to music and art and this is about my only outlet in some ways, but the one thing that I've always enjoyed in different things is formatting and finding the right fit for a certain position.
Cherie says that is my one creative "art" thing that I do and I think she's right.
In many ways, I enjoy the hunt for the right picture for a player in a game like Strat O Matic baseball (I refuse to try Action baseball, I just don't want to look at SOM any differently) just as much as playing the game itself and Action football has proven no different.

When you have as many players though on teams in football and you go back to the seventies with wanting to play before ten years go by, you take shortcuts.
I didn't know much about the game, other than Facebook ad's and I bought the cheapest version (the game is the same, the price goes up according to how many seasons comes with it) which had some "great teams" and it was a free weekend, where if you bought the game, the 1975 season was free.
It didn't take long for me to order the three USFL season's and the WFL year, but I started putting pictures into 1975.
The shortcut was this- pictures for main players or "commons" in card parlance that for some reason or another I wanted to do their picture.
I had to do it this way as 1 full Action team takes the same time as 3 SOM baseball teams, so if I wanted to play, I could work on the rest as I went.

I have written here a lot about my love for NFL Films and in the 70's, I was a casual Vikings fan ( I might have never left had they not went to the Metrodome), so I discovered as I went through the NFC rosters there were teams that had many more "Commons' than others, All the NFC East teams, the Vikings, the Rams had many more than anyone else.

Photo Credit: Me

It struck me that was because I watched all the Redskin games and the Vikings and Rams were the 1970's powers of their divisions, so those players stuck with me.
One player that I remembered from those NFL Films yearbooks that received a picture was Jackie Wallace, who I best recalled blocking a punt on a film and from this picture from the Super Bowl above.
Wallace didn't have a Topps card as I searched so I settled for a Google search of him at Arizona and moved on to the next player.

Yesterday, As I took a break from working, I saw a retweet from Ted Jackson and an article entitled "The Search for Jackie Wallace".
I wondered if this was the same Jackie Wallace and as I read the article (it was), a roller coaster ride of film level proportions.
Jackie Wallace as high school and college football star, NFL player on three teams that played in Super Bowls (losing all three) to living under a bridge and more up and downs to come.
I hope you'll read the story, so I don't want to ruin it for you and I really hope I didn't talk too much about myself to avoid getting you this far.

I'll just say this, I was quite taken by the story and I'm sure some of it is not unique among former NFL players in particular (It does seem that former footballers are more vulnerable to this than other sports retirees, perhaps another issue to be looked at medically).
I often battle myself with thoughts on these issues.
How much help do people really want?
Are you always really one mistake away from losing everything from a rebuilding of your life?
No matter what you have done in your life in the past (good or bad) are we really that vulnerable?
All these things make me wonder and think about just how fragile the good life is.
I've never been an addict (at least to things that could ruin my life that is!), so I don't know how that would be, but it's scary to think how close we could be to losing all we cherish.

Read the article, think about Jackie Wallace and wonder how many more people are nowhere to be found tonight.

Boxing Challenge:Gassiev guns down Dorticos

Photo Credit: World Boxing Super Series

For the second Saturday in a row, the World Boxing Super Series came through with a thriller in the cruiserweight division and for the same second Saturday in a row, a major network came through with two lopsided duds instead of finding a few dollars to show the country the fight that was worth the time to watch..

Let us start with the positive as Murat Gassiev took away Yunier Dorticos' WBA cruiserweight title and added it to his IBF belt with a savage 12th round knockout in the second World Boxing Super Series semi-final and punched his ticket to the finals in Saudi Arabia in May.
Waiting for Gassiev will be the holder of the other two cruiserweight titles in WBC/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk, who will be entering that bout off his own action-packed win over Mairis Breidis in what looks to be one of the best bouts that boxing can offer, but in this fight Gassiev and Dorticos put together their own early contender for fight of the year (I know, it's early as I said last week!), but this one stands on its own from Usyk-Briedis as a different kind of top notch battle..
Usyk-Briedis had more sustained action at a slightly faster pace, but Gassiev-Dorticos showcased heavier punches with the majority of the shots having "Bad Intentions" as Mike Tyson used to say.
I'm not saying one was preferable to the other, both were very good, yet different.

For four rounds, Dorticos appeared to have been prepared surprisingly well to pull the upset as he switched plans, attacked Gassiev and forced Gassiev to back up where even though Gassiev scored his share of points, it was Dorticos controlling the pace and I gave the Cuban three of the first four rounds with almost all being arguable, it had the feel of one of those fights that could have three widely divergent scorecards.
However, when round five started, the fight changed for good- it was Gassiev forcing his way forward, it was Dorticos backing up and from then on, I would give Dorticos just one round.
Dorticos scored his share, similar to Gassiev early in the fight, but it was Gassiev with the "ring generalship" and I had Gassiev ahead 7-4 entering the final round.
Gassiev was slightly ahead (leading by just one point on two of the cards entering the final round, so Dorticos was not without a chance), but had seemingly hurt Dorticos in both the 10 and 11th and left me marveling at the quality of Dorticos' chin,so there were decent odds that he wasn't going to try to leave this to the scorecards despite the still dangerous power of Dorticos.
With a minute to go, Dorticos finally cracked as a Gassiev left hook dropped him to the floor.
The game Cuban rose but quickly found himself back there after a Gassiev flurry that was more powerful due to the faded condition of Dorticos than anything Gassiev landed and to be fair, you could have made an excellent argument to end the fight then and there.
Dorticos rose again and this time, he was hit and hard with a right hand that might have stopped a bull that sent him sailing to the floor, half in the ring/ half on the ring apron where the fight ended with just eight seconds to go.

A terrific fight and I'm really looking forward to May for the cruiserweight finals between Gassiev and Usyk from Saudi Arabia!

It's a good thing that the WBSS came through because as noted above, for the second week in a row, no American television outlet picked up the cruiserweight semi-final, but one of the big three did have time and money to put together a slop card of squash matches for your viewing "entertainment".
Last week, it was Golden Boy and HBO wasting my time after a great cruiserweight bout and this week, it was the turn of Top Rank and ESPN to set up what some call showcase bouts and what I prefer to call squash matches on national television.

Don't get me wrong, I can live with squash matches occasionally, if that's what it takes to keep a fighter active and if the fighters in question (this time they are Gilberto Ramirez and Jerwin Ancajas) want to fight four times a year, a squash match once a year isn't so bad.
What you don't want to see is when fighters fall into the PBC trap, when you fight once a year to 18 months and then every other fight is a squash match (Yeah, I'm talking to you,Keith Thurman), Top Rank actually has promoters that know the game, so it may not be the case this time, but it never hurts to keep an eye on all of them- calling it straight without bias.

In the main event from Corpus Christi Texas, Gilberto Ramirez defended his WBO super middleweight title with a sixth round stoppage of Ghana's Habib Ahmed, who came in as a somewhat late substitution, but without one notable name on his record and as an unknown quantity,
I had Ramirez winning every round before the stoppage, which seemed inevitable, once we saw what Ahmed had, which was not nearly enough to trouble the talented Ramirez.
Ahmed tried, but was out of his league against the physically larger and stronger Ramirez and when referee Lawrence Cole doing his typically awful job refereeing (Cole is the worst part of watching boxing from Texas and the story that could be written just on the Cole family in Texas boxing, I'm getting mad/ill thinking about it) and allowing Ahmed to get his head rolling around his shoulders like a bobblehead with a broken spring from Ramirez right hands, it took Ahmed's corner physically bullying their way past another member of the Texas boxing commission (no word on HIS relation to the Cole family) to toss in the towel before the seemingly disappointed Cole (I guess he was waiting to see Ahmed be hit and do the Ric Flair flip over the turnbuckle before calling this disaster off) finally ended the fight.
Ramirez does have some options for his 2018 campaign, he could rematch Jesse Hart, which would be OK after their great first fight, or he could see who wins the World Boxing Super Series (The WBA champ will come out of the tourney whether it is current champ George Groves or the bracket winner) at Super Middleweight (As exciting as the Cruisers have been, entering the semis, the 168 first rounders were relatively tame) or he could even think about moving to 175.
The other champs at 168 are with PBC (IBF Caleb Truax and WBC David Benavidez) and might not be able to be made although Ramirez-Benavidez might be my favorite fight to be made at the weight class if I could make just one.

In the other squash, er co-feature, IBF junior bantamweight champion Jerwin Ancajas continued his move up the 115-pound division with a 10th round knockout of Israel Gonzalez.
I had Ancajas winning every round and was never threatened in the slightest by Gonzalez
The worst part of this fight?
It wasn't Gonzalez, who like Ahmed against Ramirez tried to win, but was outclassed, it was the announcing table, who used the name Manny Pacquiao more than the name Jerwin Ancajas.
I know that they are both from the Phillippines, Pacquiao is the childhood hero of Ancajas and is involved with his management/promotional team, but man was it overdone.
I get that you are trying to make a connection, but let's keep in mind to make the name Jerwin Ancajas remembered as well and not the lazy take of "Friend of and fights like Manny".
Ancajas was still impressive in victory and I would like to see him tested against the elite of the division.

In Japan, Daigo Higa retained his WBC flyweight with a first-round KO of former world champ Moises Fuentes with one hit to the body (although not one hit straight to the heart, Rolling Stones fans).
I'm a rider of the Higa bandwagon and I'd love to see him against some of the contenders at 115 as well.


In the boxing challenge, I regained the lead from Ramon Malpica at 14-12 after I scored seven points to Ramon's 4 this weekend.
I scored 2 points each from wins by Gassiev, Higa, Ancajas and one point from Ramirez.
Ramon scored 2 points from Higa's win with 1 each from wins by Ramirez and Ancajas.

Boxing Challenge

The boxing challenge features a four-fight weekend with another semi-final unification in the WBSS, two title defenses on ESPN and a talented fighter in Japan that you really need to see even if you have to find him on the net.

Ramon Malpica leads me in the challenge 8-7 entering this weekend.

The best fight of the weekend is in Sochi,Russia and unifies two more cruiserweight titles in the second semi-final of the World Boxing Super Series in the Cruiserweight division after Oleksandr Usyk unified his WBO title with the WBC belt last week with an exciting majority decision win over Mairis Breidis to move to the finals of the tournament.
IBF Champion Murat Gassiev defends against newly promoted WBA champ Yunier Dorticos to unify the other two titles and ensure that the finals of the tournament will determine who will walk away with all four world titles as well as the Muhammad Ali trophy and the bonus money.
This could be a short fight and it should be filled with big bombs flying from both sides with two champions with huge knockout power.
Gassiev should already have the WBA belt, but for some ridiculous reason, his challenge of WBA champ Denis Lebedev (It also filled the vacant IBF title) was allowed by the WBA to not be for their title, despite Gassiev being in their top five at the time,but the WBA promoted Dorticos from "Regular" champion to full champion with the inactive Lebedev demoted to "Champion in Recess".
The IBF only allows unifications with the full champions not the "regular, interim. extra crispy, kids meal version", so this move meant that the tournament was going to result in a true champion with the tournament winner mandated to fight Lebedev next by the WBA, which would be OK with me, but the tournament winner is likely to vacate and move to heavyweight anyway, which makes it irrelevant.
This would shock me if this was anything but a fight without action and likely an explosive ending.

ESPN and Top Rank features two world title bouts from Corpus Christi, Texas Saturday night.
Gilberto Ramirez defends his WBO super middleweight title against Ghana's undefeated and unknown Habib Ahmed in what amounts to a showcase bout as promoter Bob Arum has begun talk of Ramirez fighting the winner of the World Boxing Super Series super middleweight tournament sometime in the fall.
Ramirez is coming off his biggest win, an exciting decision over Jesse Hart on ESPN (Hart's ring return can be seen on ESPN News Saturday night before the main show), so a win for him is a must.

IBF junior bantamweight champion Jerwin Ancajas may not be part of the packed HBO picture at his weight class, but talent wise, Ancajas doesn't have to take a backseat to any of the better-known names in the division.
Ancajas wiped out Jamie Conlan (brother of touted prospect Mick) in his last defense and will be favored to do so against Israel Gonzalez.

On Sunday in Japan, WBC flyweight champ Daigo Higa defends his title against Moises Fuentes.
I wrote about Higa being the next big star that you've never heard of with 14 wins all by knockout and he faces off against Fuentes, who is a former world champion at the 105-pound class, which is known as either minimumweight or strawweight depending on the sanctioning body of your choice.
Fuentes will come to fight, but Higa might be the latest great small warrior that you may not see the best of until later in his career.
Look around on YouTube for this one.

WBA-IBF Cruiserweight Title Unification/World Boxing Super Series Semi-Final. 12 Rds
Yunier Dorticos vs Murat Gassiev
R.L: Dorticos KO 7
TRS: Gassiev KO 8

WBO Super Middleweight Title. 12 Rds
Gilberto Ramirez vs Habib Ahmed
Both: Ramirez Unanimous Decision

IBF Junior Bantamweight Title. 12 Rds
Jerwin Ancajas vs Israel Gonzalez
R.L: Ancajas Unanimous Decision
TRS: Ancajas KO 6

WBC Flyweight Title. 12 Rds
Daigo Higa vs Moises Fuentes
R.L: Higa KO 4
TRS: Higa KO 3

15 College Football Games that should be happening 1-5

It's been longer than I intended, but I did want to finish the series of 15 college football games that should be happening that currently are not before time moved too far along and I forgot to finish the series!!!
6-10 are here and 11-15 here.

Anyway, here are my top five that need to be played every year...

1) Texas vs Texas A&M

The top game that needs to be played and still isn't on the schedule ruined the college Thanksgiving tradition between the Aggies and Longhorns over issues between the schools ranging from the Longhorn Network to Big 12 problems and eventually sent Texas A&M out of the Big 12 and into the SEC.
The bad blood is so thick between this two that the series that made so much money for the pair went by the wayside and doesn't seem to be returning anytime soon.
Neither seems very interested in renewing the rivalry, but neither's attempts to replace it on Thanksgiving weekend (A&M vs LSU on Thanksgiving Saturday and Texas alternating years with TCU and Texas Tech on Thanksgiving Day) have clicked as anything more than secondary rivalries.
This one really needs to return...

2) Kansas vs Missouri

The hard feelings in this one might be even worse than Texas-Texas A&M even though the situation was similar as Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC.
This longtime border war likely will be DOA until ironically the person that seems to have taken this the hardest leaves-Bill Self of Kansas-the BASKETBALL coach!
Neither of these teams are generally football powers, in fact, Kansas usually stinks and Missouri is a mid-level SEC team on an average to good year, so it's not like losing this game costs anyone national implications.
Still, this is a game that is huge to Missouri, a team without a natural rival in the SEC and costs Kansas one of the two teams that their fans considered rivals, so it is still a loss to the game...

3) Penn State vs Pitt

This is one that is currently being played in a four-year contract (2018 will be year three), but there is not a future agreement and it's unknown if there will be another contract signed in the immediate future.
Penn State has been the holdup in the past as far as playing this game as they wanted to have two home games for every one home game for Pitt (similar to their past dealings with Temple on the eastern side of Pennsylvania), while the Panthers preferred the home and home series, which Penn State agreed to for the current four-game series.
Pitt has much prestige than Temple and isn't going to settle for a contract like that, so if that is the only offer, they aren't likely to play again for a while after 2019.
It's too bad as the best two teams in Pennsylvania need to play every season...

4) Pitt vs West Virginia

However, if that game cannot be played and Pitt is able to play the Backyard Brawl again every year against West Virginia, that's more than a good enough replacement.
The two neighbors in many ways are even bigger rivals than Pitt and Penn State, share former conference rivalries going back through multiple leagues and frankly just plain hate each other.
I'm not sure if you asked Pitt fans which they'd rather play each year that West Virginia wouldn't come out the winner in a fan vote.
As for the Mountaineers, who seem to think they are above their in-state rival in Marshall and pull on the Herd what Penn State tries to with to Pitt, they likely consider Pitt their biggest rival considering they are stuck in a league that the nearest team is the Iowa State Cyclones, not exactly a heated or passionate pairing there to develop anything at all.
This series was most famous for the 2007 game that saw the second-ranked Mountaineers needing simply a win at home in Morgantown over the visiting Panthers, who had a losing record, to play in the national championship game- only to lose 13-9.
The series is scheduled to return for four games in 2022, so hopefully, there can be a way to keep the rivalry continuing after that.

5) Nebraska vs Oklahoma

This rivalry dates back to the old Big 8 when it seemed like every Thanksgiving Friday the Sooners and the Cornhuskers hooked up in a battle of the Big Reds for the Big 8 title, the trip to Miami for the automatic Orange Bowl bid and often a shot at a national title.
The Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry was cleanly played with respect, was developed out of two powers that played every year and knew in order to do anything on the national title scene, they would have to go through the other at the end of November.
When the Big 8 became the Big 12 and the two were placed in opposite divisions, the heat was placed off the stove a bit and when Nebraska left for the Big 10, the two schools haven't played since.
Considering that neither school has a natural non-conference rival, a long-term series between the two would be a great fit.
The schools will play home and home in 2021 and 2022 and then again in 2029 and 2030