Back in the saddle

This week's top 10:

10. Mo better Blazers. All that needs to be said about the coaching legacy of Maurice Cheeks in Portland is that he will be most remembered for coming to the aid of a 13-year-old girl who forgot the words to the national anthem before a playoff game two years ago.

Cheeks was, to my way of thinking, a nice guy and a sharp dresser. But he wasn't much of a coach, at least during games when on more than one occasion he would call out a play, turn to the assembled media at press row and say "Now watch them not run it."

Sure enough, the Blazers would stumble around for 20 seconds then hoist up a dreadful shot. Cheeks' ability to predict his team ignoring his commands from the bench either make him a psychic or a poor coach, and unless he turns up on an infomercial in the next week with Dionne Warwick, his current place in the unemployment line points toward the latter.

9. A perfect fit. Randy Moss joining the Oakland Raiders is just the latest example of the Silver and Black further degenerating into self parody.

Moss brings what seems to be the two most important elements Al Davis covets to the Raiders - a checkered past and the ability to play a "vertical" passing game, a combination that has worked so well for him in the past 20 years.

Oakland's rise to the Super Bowl a couple of years ago (and the AFC championship game a year ago) has to be one of the more surprising developments in the NFL in the free agency era.

8. Another red herring. Two companies floated an offer to buy all 30 NHL teams this week. Hardline owners - the ones mostly responsible for the inflexibility that led to the death of the season twice - have already expressed contempt for the offer.

Just another entry in a seemingly endless stream of false hopes and misdirection for what is now the worst sports league to ever exist.

7. Anyone with a pulse. In the same week baseball's veteran's committee exhibited a perhaps too tough entrance standard and failed to elect anyone to the Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame apparently signaled an open door admission policy, giving TV sideline talking head Jim Gray a star.

Somewhere Ahmad Rashad is aflame with jealousy.

6. Much ado about nothing. I suppose I should feel a little bad about finding Maurice Clarett's poor performance at the NFL combine so funny, but I don't. If I recall, didn't a lot of "draft experts" have serious doubts about Clarett's NFL potential when he was trying to get in the draft?

What if he doesn't get drafted? Would that be ironic or poetic justice?

5. Didn't the season just

end? Anybody else find the start of spring practice for the Griz tomorrow a little unnerving? They were still playing a week before Christmas! Then there was the run up to signing day, and now it's time to think about next season. It just never ends.

4. Coming next week: A report on the cynicism in sports journalism. A university study says that more than half of the players in the NFL are obese. Leave it to the jock-hating academia to ruin the self esteem of a 350-pound run stopper by calling him a fatso.

3. The inevitable resolution. Once Kobe Bryant's accuser backed out of the criminal case and filed a civil suit, it was only a matter of time before the two sides reached some sort of settlement.

The only two people who know whether what happened in that hotel room was consensual are Kobe and the woman. But I'd be willing to bet that Kobe has had more than one rendezvous, and it will only be a matter of time before one of his companions decides to try and get a piece of the pie and makes an accusation, legitimate or not.

2. Fast and loose with the truth. ESPN's game show "Dream Job" is back for a third go, this time using former NBA players as contestants competing for an analyst gig.

So I'm really supposed to believe with a straight face that ex-NBA players, who traveled the country in private team charters, had their pick from dozens of groupies at every stop and made a king's ransom for playing a game a couple of times a week for six months a year really consider a job in Bristol, Conn., their "dream job?"

I'm pretty sure they've already retired from their dream job, and having to work alongside the likes of Chris Berman is a serious step down.

1. Fish, barrel, shotgun. Tonya Harding (my girl) will engage in a professional wrestling exhibition with a Florida transvestite this week. Really.

You may now, at your leisure, make your own jokes.

Andrew Hinkelman is a sports writer for The Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at

hink@dailyinterlake.com