Juice's Lecture Notes wrote:
"There's a right guy and a wrong guy, here." -Dan, talking about the Knicks situation with Oakley.
Their bias is palpable here. Dan incredulously asking why Dolan would ban Oakley from MSG, but Dan would be the first person screaming "It's a LIABILITY. ISSUE." if Dolan were a friend of his.
Also hilarious to hear Dan get on his high horse about how awful it is for Dolan to imply Oakley has a problem with alcohol. That's an all-timer.
dan's always going to end up on the side of ownership. somewhere along the way from "young reporter/producer kid who got the mcneil chair with terry" to 100% proper FOTS (Face Of The Station) dan realized that ownership is the better "side" to take in every argument because owners are more likely to in/directly sponsor the station, do #synergy related broadcasts with his station, and of course more likely to step up with a nice check for onestep children's oncology [or whatever charity dan is the faceman for] because owners are richer [and way less nomadic than players, as only NFL+NHL teams tend to jump ship and swap cities nowadays] --- and even if owners/teams are aligned with other stations/networks there's always a chance they COULD come over to CBS/dan someday [see: the Cubs] --- so yeah dan basically knows where his bread is or possibly could someday be buttered...
...not to mention that this oakley thing gives dan a chance to rail against "enforcer" type players, which you know is one of his longtime targets in the NHL, so go figure that he'd be extra-inherently-against [unskilled] "enforcers" in the NBA. this is part and parcel with his REALLY. SMART. PEOPLE. ethos where he wants to believe that he's surfing the waves of "progress" in sports where people use hardcore analytics to determine that, say, players who have the most available "tools" in any sport are unequivocally the best [cuz WAR says so, radical stuff i know] and rah rah rah blah blah blah,
dan wants to be a part of a renaissance where people like him are exalted as being part of the "new generation" of sportswriters who utilize REALLY. SMART. METRICS. to help evolve the game into its purest form, and seeing as people with "intangibles" like toughness, clutchness, or even grit-n-determination can't be easily quantified by stats like WAR, they're an affront to people like dan because they're hearkening "the old ways" where, example, someone like steph curry couldn't shoot all of his pretty jumpers in such a statistically cromulent way if he was getting handchecked/roughed-up by a big ol goon every time he took more than 2-3 steps beyond the 3pt line. and in this situation dan wants to champion steph curry and his pretty metrics as opposed to the "grinder" or "enforcer" who will go out of their way to physically put steph on his ass to fuck him up.... you could literally hear dan crying about how "idiot enforcers like oakley dont let the truly skilled people play basketball, and the NBA is worse for that!"
so basically, this oakley incident is a perfect storm where a big dumb unskilled goon [who hearkens a bygone era of a more coked-up NBA =] is going after one of dan's sacred "job/revenue creators" and therefore you know he's gonna go in hard on oakley. duh.
i know this is TLDR and caller bob don't like it [because elaborating on thoughts here is a no-no.... people might remember that they generally don't have any, not to mention seeing multiple paragraphs in a post = triggers people's PTSD from the age of newspapers =] but uhhh.... yeah. blow me. seriously just foe list me and ignore me [like IMU claims to do =]
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?