March 3, 2025

Cooler heads have prevailed. The Rams agreed on a restructured contract with Matthew Stafford late last week, after it appeared as though he was headed to the Raiders for a moment. Sometimes the wife just needs to calm down and stop making noise on podcasts, and that’s exactly what happened here. Stafford wanted to be paid, but he was willing to take a little less to stay with the Rams. While we don’t know the terms yet, that’s exactly what happened. It’s simple. With Stafford the Rams are Super Bowl contenders. Without him they are not. Both sides are well aware of that, and as dumb as we think the Raiders and Giants are, they were never going to give up their 1st round pick in this year’s draft for him. They also locked up Left Tackle, Alaric Jackson, to an extension. The real question though is what’s going to happen to Cooper Kupp. If Deebo Samuel is worth a 5th round pick and somebody will pay his entire salary, you’ve gotta think Kupp is worth at least a 4th and someone will take his whole salary too. If that were to happen, what they do at wide receiver will be something to watch, since they really need a deep threat.

I don’t know if people realize this, but the Lakers are 16 games over .500! They won their 6th straight last night, are #2 in the West and they’ve been the best defensive team in the NBA for the last six weeks! That’s pretty good considering they acquired “Hookah Dončić“ who is one of the worst defenders in the NBA according to the media. OK, he’s not a great defender, but I have to say he’s actually played pretty good defense since he’s arrived here, and has the potential to be a much better defender than I thought. The Lakers just ran down the Nuggets for the number two seed and Luca isn’t even himself yet. Wait until he starts making shots consistently, and then this team will be really dangerous! What’s been really impressive though is the bench. People seem to forget that the Lakers are actually really good at developing young players. They found a couple of good ones in the G league with Trey Jemison and Jordan Goodwin who look like effective rotation players for the team right now. Also lost in all this is how amazing LeBron James looks in year 22 and 40 years old. LeBron is putting up numbers that are equivalent to his MVP season in Miami about 12 years ago! It’s still a little early to be calling the Lakers part of the inner circle of NBA championship contenders this season. However, every day they’re making me think they are part of that conversation more and more.

I think it’s fair to say after last night that the Clippers are going to finish somewhere between the #6 seed and the #10 seed in the West. Everyone ahead of them is basically out of reach. The Clips wanted to win that game so badly last night, they played Kawhi Leonard and James Harden nearly 40 minutes. That hasn’t happened in over a year and a half. The good news for the Clips though is that Kawhi had his best game of the season, and perhaps is improving conditioning wise. The question as always is how his knee will hold up after playing as many minutes as he did. Having Norman Powell back on a full time basis will help too, after he left last night’s game with hamstring injury.

I can’t believe some of you are already freaking out about how the Dodgers look in spring training. Who cares about their record when half the teams regulars aren’t playing much? In just a little bit of action we’ve seen from Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez, they’ve looked really good! I even think someone like Dalton rushing looks promising as well. The only minor concern is how the pitching looks, but it’s spring training! There’s enough talent all over this roster to pick each other up when one guy isn’t performing well.

As for the angels, Mark Gubzica is out here trying to tell us that he’s never seen talent like this in the pitching staff in years. Mark Gubzica is also probably trying to sell ice to the Eskimos while he’s at it. You can’t fool us, Gubby! The Halo’s signed some middle of the road free agents, overpaid them, and are going to be expecting a lot out of them to keep them afloat this year. They are going to be hoping for more progress from a lot of of their young players like Christian Moore, Zack Neto, and others, but the likelihood of that happening is about as great as me winning the Powerball.

I think UCLA’s fate for NCAA March madness seeding was sealed over the weekend with their loss to Purdue. The only way they can get to a number four seed is by winning the Big Ten tournament and that seems pretty unlikely at this point. On the bright side, Mick Cronin teams have had a tendency to raise their game come tournament time and their defense is something that will travel well no matter who they play and where they play. On any given day, they could definitely beat anybody in the country, anywhere. I’m just not so confident they can win an entire tournament with all of those elite teams in it. They need to find more offense for that.

Nothing is more aggravating than seeing the LA Kings play hockey these days, and how poorly they are run. This is still a playoff team, but a completely unserious one with how they are operating. They are now benching promising young defenseman Brandt Clarke. They are trying to tell us he’s not great defensively, but the numbers say otherwise, since they’ve been outscored 10-1 in those 3 games without him. So much for him being “just an offensive defenseman”. The player development in this organization is awful and will continue to be. I’ve even heard Quinton Byfield’s name in trade rumors in the past week. You can talk all you want about the Kings trying to chase  Mikko Rantanen, Brad Marchand, or some other big name forward, but one player won’t make this team contenders. They need another goalie, they need more scoring, and they need another checking line winger. Gutting your team for some expensive scorer who is a pending unrestricted free agent won’t solve that. It’s about developing depth with their young players, who most around the league would say are promising. Their goaltending isn’t all that elite, their power play stinks, and their top 9 forwards are wildly inconsistent. Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille were great NHL Players, but as executives, they just don’t get it.

Finally, the 97th edition of the Oscars went down last night in Hollywood. I realize that Hollywood has always been very liberal historically, but people are wondering why it’s so hard to make content these days and get anything to stick. It’s because when you get political, no matter what your position is, you’re going to alienate half the audience. People aren’t going to watch your movies so they can watch some social agenda the producers are determined to get across. People want to laugh, they want suspense, they want drama. That’s exactly what’s happened to the movie and television industry, and last night was a reminder of all that. 3 hours practically dedicated to politics. It was headlined by Karla Sofia Gascon, who tanked her film’s Oscar Trajectory, with her Islamophobic tweet in late January. Conan O’Brien tried to crack jokes about it to break the ice, but the whole evening was still awkward. Also, did we really need to hear Robert DiNiro say “fuck Trump” on live TV? I did love the fact Adam Sandler clearly didn’t care about the dress code, and basically showed up looking like a homeless guy in Santa Monica.