Hello, my name is Colin. Welcome to the 35th issue of The Wood Report, an eclectic smorgasbord of sports “news” and humor.
We are diving into a another Grab Bag issue. We are really into the meat of the sports calendar, and there’s just so much I want to talk about. Let’s delay no longer.
This Week’s Main Story
Another no context picture that I have saved on my computer.
Gold Medal (Runner Up) – The Fan That Puked in Sacramento
On November 20th, the Sacramento Kings played a relatively normal game of basketball. They lost 123-105 to the Utah Jazz because they are a terrible team. But something notable still came of this game. In the 4th quarter, a fan in one of the most premium seats in the arena puked on the floor. Everyone on court seemed a bit shocked and unsure of how to handle the situation.
The puking fan is our gold medal runner up for being so perfectly symbolic of the Kings franchise as a whole. I’m sure every fan wants to puke watching this team fail game after game, season after season. The incident also served as a exclamation point on the tenure of head coach Luke Walton. Following the embarrassing loss, the Kings fired the 3rd year coach. Walton ended his time as the Sacramento coach with a 68-93 record. Since the Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985, this is the 2nd best coaching the franchise has experienced.
We are all the puking fan looking at this list.
Gold Medal – The Tanking OKC Thunder
No one is tanking better than the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Process Sixers WISH they could have tanked like this. Sam Presti has refined this down to a science, shipping off every possible advantage the team could have in exchange for every pick of the next 6 drafts. His magnum opus came on December 2nd, when the Thunder travelled to Memphis to play the Grizzlies, a barely .500 team playing without their best player, Ja Morant. This was the result:
That is a 73 point margin of victory for Memphis, the largest in NBA history. They outscored the Thunder by 15+ points in every single quarter. For reference, the 1992 Team USA Dream Team (featuring some of the best players in NBA history) beat the “We’re just happy to be here” Angola team 116-48, merely a 68 point victory.
If +/- is your thing, 2 of the Thunder players had a plus/minus of less than -50. And while Manny Harris beat them out for the top spot, he had to play 41 minutes to sink that low. The Thunder are efficiently bad.
But the Thunder are taking it in stride. Back to work on Monday.
Is This How You Play?
Tampa Bay scored 2 goals in 5 seconds because of this insane bouncing shot off the face-off. Hockey makes no sense.
Adventures in onside kicking
Normal dribbling happening.
What’s the best play you can come up with on 4th & 7 needing a touchdown to win the game? Obviously it’s a delayed swing pass to a 300 pound lineman with no blockers in front of him, right?
Villain of the Week – Brendan Lemieux
Last Saturday, the LA Kings hosted the Ottawa Senators. In that game, two guys who are very familiar with each other once again got heated and threw down. The Senators’ Brady Tkachuk and the Kings’ Brendan Lemieux went toe-to-toe late in the 3rd period of a 1 goal game. Lemieux took things a bit far.
HE BIT TKACHUK! That is a wild decision in the midst of a hockey fight. It must run in the family as Brendan’s father Claude Lemieux was also involved in an infamous biting incident of his own. They became the first father/son duo to be suspended for biting in the NHL, which I guess is something.
The bite also led to us getting this fantastic quote from the Ottawa coach.
Is This How You Play?
Kirk, do you know where you are right now?
Goalie saves are cool in any sport.
Brad Marchand is so hated he gets people to fight him from the opposite bench.
When showing off goes wrong.
News by the Numbers
3 - Players selected by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft that are already back on their original teams. The expansion Kraken are not the next Golden Knights. Seattle completely bungled their expansion draft, with plenty of head-scratching picks all over the board and almost no trades to build a chest of assets. It gets even worse when you see players that they took in the draft have already made their way back to their original teams. That includes Vitek Vanecek (WSH), Gavin Bayreuther (CBJ), and Nathan Bastian (NJD). They got basically nothing out of these picks. But at least the social media team is having fun with it, posting this right before a game against Vanecek and the Capitals.
3 - Number of positions Falcons player Cordarrelle Patterson is listed under on the team’s official depth chart. Patterson has been infinitely versatile for the team since the beginning of the season, taking on numerous roles to expand the offensive playbook. But his most recent position could be a real game-changer. In addition to RB and Kick Returner, Patterson is also listed as a backup Safety on defense. When you have the 2nd worst defense in the league, I guess you can’t hold anything back.
9 - Number of votes Aaron Judge received in the New York mayoral election, which I get. I also love that they have to print every write-in name receiving votes, including all of the misspellings. My favorite of the 8 different Rudy Giuliani names listed is Rudy Guliano as if he’s using the least convincing fake name ever.
749 - Number of career goals for Alexander Ovechkin. I have talked about him chasing Gretzky’s goal record a few times before, but now you can keep up with it yourself using this handy Ovechkin Goal Tracker. He has 19 goals in 24 games this season, and he’s not slowing down having recorded his 28th career hat trick on November 26th.
Homer Bias Restricted Area
Matt LaFluer is not only 35-9 as a head coach, he was also voted the hottest coach according to this very scientific poll. (Bill Belichick ranking that high has to be because women respect the rings)
End Of Restricted Area
Thank you for reading this week. If you enjoyed the content, please like and subscribe.
Keep Sports Fun.
Colin
Twitter - @ColinRingwood12
The Buzzer Beater
Is he hiding from the goalie?