Monday Morning Coffee

August 16, 2021

Life comes at you fast. One day you’ve got an $84 million offer coming at you, and you’re living in LA for the next five years. You think you can do better, and the next thing you know, you’re stuck living in Boston for “a measley” $5.9 million. That’s exactly what happened to Dennis Schroder, who completely screwed himself. I almost feel bad for the guy, because he’s still a pretty good player who just had a bad end to the season. This was also really bad asset management on the part of Rob Pelinka, who has otherwise done a great job. However, it just goes to show you how well the Lakers have been run to be able to overcome mistakes like that. Most other NBA franchises would be crippled by these types of mistakes. Schroder almost went jobless, while Luol Deng can sit on a beach and drink Pina Coladas for the next year while collecting $5 million from the Lakers. That’s how big of a mistake Schroder made, but also how big of a mistake the Lakers could have made by giving him that much.

As for the Clippers, they made a trade yesterday, acquiring Eric Bledsoe from the Grizzlies for Pat Bev, Rajon Rondo, and Daniel Oturu. It’s like both teams decided to take all the dudes on their team that can’t shoot and can’t stay healthy, and throw them in a trade. Pat Bev is an expensive, aging, useless, trash talker at this point in his career. Rondo has moments when he’s engaged, but is frequently injured. Bledsoe shoots like Philip Seymore-Hoffman in the movie “Along Came Polly”, but he at least gives the Clips another ball handler that will be in the lineup more often than what they gave up. It’s not much of an upgrade, but ultimately saves the Clippers $30 million in luxury taxes this year.

NBA: New Orleans Pelicans at Phoenix Suns

To baseball, where the Dodgers beat up on the NL East for the last week. They swept the Mets in the Big Apple over the weekend, and took two out of the three from the Phillies earlier in the week. That’s pretty good for a team who’s health is falling apart faster than the government in Afghanistan. The Dodgers are now down to just three regular starting pitchers: Max Scherzer, Walker Buehler, and David Price. I’m still not really sure what’s up with Price, and why Dave Roberts continues to use him like some long reliever out of the pen, instead of a real starter. Dude is making $16 million a year, and capable of giving you six innings if you stretch him out. There’s a story there, I’m just not sure what. It’s also really good to see Cody Bellinger remember how to hit a baseball again. Bellinger has had a rough season, but for over a week now, he’s started to resemble the MVP that he was two seasons ago. The bad news for the Dodgers though is that they are basically out of time to catch the Giants. There’s a only a few games left against them, and four games is just too much to make up for a team that is consistently beating up on trash teams. Brace yourself for a stressful one-game playoff Dodger fans!

Meanwhile, the Angels took more licks against the Astros over the weekend, losing two out of three games. With Anthony Rendon done for the season, and Mike Trout looking like he’s going to have the same fate, the Halos are bringing up a lot of their kids. That includes Joe Adell, Brandon Marsh, and Ried Detmers. They’ve all had their ups and downs so far, which is to be expected for rookies. However, the one thing you have to be nervous about is if some of these guys got called up too early, which can shatter a players confidence forever if you don’t have the right development system. It also doesn’t really help that the Angels minor leaguers are sleeping in Toyota Corollas every night, according to The Athletic. I’d be nervous too about any prospect named Brandon that is highly touted and coming through the Angels system. In any case, the Angels desperately need to develop cheap talent because pretty soon Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Shohei Ohtani are going to be taking up 2/3rds of the payroll.

To the NFL, where the Rams and Chargers did battle at SOFI Stadium on Saturday night in the first football game with fans in the new stadium. I’m not going to sit here and break down the game that featured a bunch of dudes that are going to be Uber and Door Dash Drivers in a couple of weeks, so the results don’t matter. However, what does matter is the fact we keep seeing idiot fans in the stands at games get in fights. What is it about the post COVID stadium experience that makes it conducive to more fights breaking out? I would have thought $20 Micheladas and $50 parking would price out most of these sewer rats from the event experience. Nice job stadium security.

Speaking of football, we are just a few weeks away from the start of College Football. What a waste of time this season is going to be. All this hype just to watch Alabama and Clemson hold the Republican National Convention at the end of the season, and then play for the Championship. On the bright side for USC fans, they brought back alcohol sales to the Coliseum. This is fantastic news because all of you Trojan fans are going to need plenty of alcohol to get through another season with Clay Helton as your head coach. Knowing USC, they will be just good enough for Helton to keep his job with really good talent, but not nearly as good as they should be. Helton’s best hope is for Kedon Slovis to turn into Sam Darnold, but I think he’s got a better chance of winning the Powerball.

Meanwhile, UCLA gets going against Hawaii in about two weeks at the Rose Bowl. Bruin fans are also wondering how many more losses it’s going to take to get Chip Kelly fired. I’m sure Kelly is going to tell us how much better Dorian Thompson-Robinson is going to be this year, and how much he’s developed. My question is how much better Kelly is going to be, because most of us think it’s going to be even worse. This guy just looks like he couldn’t care less about coaching a College Football team every week. I’m frightened at the thought of what LSU is going to do to the Bruins when they come to town in a couple of weeks. The Tigers could be arrested for assault and batter when it’s over.

Finally, The Bachelorette concluded last week on ABC. As we all suspected, Katie Thurston ended up with Blake Moynes. I hope you’re ready to pack a coat Katie, because Canada is awfully cold in the winter. You know for someone who just found the “the love of her life”, Katie sure seemed angry during the season finale. If Katie and Blake break up in a few weeks, Katie is going to turn into her evil and angry sister, Lindsey, who tore Blake apart. Clearly the most overused word on the show is “gaslight”, which I’m convinced nobody really knows how to use. I really enjoyed seeing Katie accept Blake’s proposal after all her other options just dipped. Katie basically became The Dark Night: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” She just got a half-baked proposal from Blake, which is going to earn her monthly trips to Africa, and a citizenship in Canada. That’s apparently what being The Bachelorette gets you these days. If Greg were sitting any further from Katie during the studio portion, he would have fallen off the couch. When Katie professed her love to Blake, it would have been epic if Blake had responded by saying “I just love looking at you.” You watched a whole season of that when Blake could have just slid in the DM’s and handled business. I’m looking forward to Michelle’s season because it’s much needed after this debacle.

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