Tag Archives: mullin

saint john's

No Irish Need Apply

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Opportunity: a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment. — Ambrose Bierce

I’m usually not one to use words like embarrassing and disaster when it comes to sports, even St John’s basketball: the sinking of the Titanic was a disaster; getting a hard-on when the doctor checks your prostate is embarrassing. But what’s been going on at St John’s over the past ten days has been an embarrassment and a disaster and has turned the program into more of a national laughingstock than it’s been for the past 30 years. Consider:

First, St John’s pushed the best player in program history out the door after a 20-win season that culminated in an NCAA tournament bid. Probably this should not have been surprising, since every SJ coach since Brian Mahoney has been fired after making the tournament; only Norm outsmarted them: he never won anything. Next SJ made a generous offer to the university’s choice as Mullin’s successor, Danny Hurley’s brother.  Danny Hurley’s brother rejected their 15 million dollars with a jaunty “Forks Up!” Undaunted SJ then made an 18 million dollar offer to their second choice, a Midwestern mediocrity called Porter Moser, who similarly laughed at them. Let that sink in: a career .500 coach turned down nearly 20 million dollars to coach in Queens.  At this point in the search prospective candidates started preemptively turning down the job: Ryan Odom said flat out ‘please don’t offer me the job.’ Former St John’s player Tim Cluess said ‘If you’re thinking of offering me the job, don’t.’ Currently the only person who hasn’t said no thanks is Tom Pecora, who’s at this moment sitting by the phone, staring at it, willing it to ring.

That last bit was a bit of an exaggeration. In point of fact it seems that SJ is on the verge of offering Rick Pitino Billy Donovan Jim Calhoun Bobby Knight Frank Martin James Jones the gig. And not James Earl Jones – Dook, I am not your father – James not Earl Jones. Jones has a lot going for him: in the 20 years he’s been at Yale he’s won slightly more than a game for every game he’s lost, he’s had a losing record one third of the time, and he’s never recruited a scholarship athlete. And of course the elephant in the room (Patrice O’Neill RIP) he’s black, which will allow the university to put a nice spin on the hire: look at our commitment to diversity. It’s just a shame he’s not as butch as Jessie Smollett, think of all the boxes that would have checked off, a minority LBGTQWERTY who’s been lynched personally by Donald Trump.  Speaking of hard-ons.

Seriously, if they were going to hire a James Jones, I’d have preferred they hired this one.

If nothing else he’d have the good sense to put the program and those of us who are still drinking the Kool-Aid out of our collective miseries and failing that the program could move to Guyana the A-10 (I have another Peoples Temple joke but the punch line is too long. Ba dum. Thanks, I’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip your waitress.)

Seriously, I’ve been a St John’s fan, more than 40 years now. And I’m beginning to suspect that the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing. The other explanation is worse: that the administration thinks you’re stupid and doesn’t give a shit about you, that you’re a rube who’ll continue to support the product no matter how awful it is. I guess we’ll see how dumb you are.

saint john's

If You Rebuild It, They Will Dumb

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You idiots have loaded up a hair-trigger double-barreled shit machine gun and the barrel’s pointed right at your own heads. – Jim Lahey

I’d say you can’t go home again but that’d be hacky. How hacky? So hacky that it was the theme of a column written by Mike Vaccaro, which note to Mike: as hard as you try to be a bad writer you will never be the worst writer at the NY Post while Steve Serby still has a functioning liver.

Not surprisingly – him being a dunce – Vaccaro misunderstands the meaning of Wolfe’s epigram. It doesn’t mean merely that you can’t return from whence you came. That would be stupid, because lots of people leave a place and return to it with no great loss or effect. What the saying means is that from whence you came becomes different because you left it and becomes differenter still when you return: you can’t go home again because when you leave home there is no home qua home left. And that is not the moral of the Mullin saga and even if it were that’d be the wrong moral anyway.

So yes anyway Chris Mullin has resigned as head coach of St John’s after four short years, after being given a vote of no confidence by AD Mike Cragg. The story is that Cragg refused to extend Mullin’s contract, making him essentially a lame duck and that Mullin refused to be a lame duck. So Mullin will take his four million dollars and go home, and good for him: the lawyer in me – and as I learned recently via 23 and me the Ashkenazi – says he earned every penny.

The news of Mullin’s departure led to great glee among the worst fan base in the world, or at least the vociferous part of which posts on line: at redmen dot com – a steaming fetid cesspool where a dozen bitter zealous imbeciles – like this moron, an Uber driver who lives in his mother’s basement, which would be cliché if not true

– repeat the same shopworn twaddle half a dozen times a day without a scintilla of wit or insight – and johnnie jungle – a sort of redmen dot com for the short bus riders – and on Twitter at #sjubb – which while also a fetid swamp of stupid at least displays a modicum of a sense of humor. The glee is not surprising: besides being the worst fan base in all of sports St John’s fans comprise in the main St John’s graduates, meaning that they were poorly educated and not too bright to begin with. Which in turn means that their take is apt to be wrong and spectacularly so. What was surprising to me was the animus displayed against arguably the greatest player in the program’s history who led St John’s to one of its few triumphs in the modern era. But as Hitler said to Stalin on the eve of Operation Barbarossa: what have you done for me lately.

At this point I’m so cynical that I no longer trust my own skepticism but frankly I was a bit taken aback. Not by the recent graduates certainly. Besides having no connection to Mullin the player millennials comprise the stupidest generation to walk the planet since cro-magnon struggled to two feet and have been since birth swaddled in confident estimation of their own self-regard. You’d think that they of all people would have awarded Mullin a participation trophy just for trying to coach. But no: their charity extending only to themselves they do not understand why they cannot win now; after all they deserve it. But I was surprised a bit by the reaction of the red and white club crew: all of them former division one athletes and CYO coaches and basketball savants and multi-millionaire donors with sources inside the program who pal around with NBA scouts and Big East VIPs whose shifting avatars and veiled allusions comprise vague hints about vague rumors, lest they burn their important sources; they are not at all twice divorced desperate for attention low self-esteem drama queens who own several cats: they are important people with important opinions deserving of respect. These people I thought might give the great Chris Mullin the benefit of the doubt. But no. They had their knives out too. Dull as their knives are.

So Chris Mullin is gone. Frankly that makes me sad; I had high hopes. That said he marks the fourth of the last five St John’s coaches to be fired after winning 20 game and making the NCAA tournament. Fran was fired after going 22-10; Jarvis was 21-13 the year before he was let go; stupid Steve Lavin was 21-12; and Mullin 21-13: the combined record of those four coaches is carry the one 85-48. The only coach not to be fired at St John’s since the last century was good old Norm Roberts, who had the good sense never to make the post season; no doubt the same fate would have awaited him had he. Even at UCLA do they wait until their coach doesn’t make the tournament to fire him but here at St John’s we act preemptively, because if the 30 years since Lou retired has taught us anything it’s that changing coaches every five years is a recipe for success. And so we face another another five years of torment by the basketball gods. Which maybe we probably deserve.

Not that Mullin was particularly a good coach. He wasn’t. I’m not talking about the optics that the morons talk about: where he sat and when he tied his shoes and how much water he drank when. Those things are McGuffins that mesmerize the rubes. I mean that his system was not designed to optimize the talents of his players, who weren’t good enough to play ball the way he thought it should be played. On the other hand the talent he brought in was about as impressive as any that had been brought in since hapless Brian Mahoney and but for a couple of key defections – Lovett last year and Owens this – and a couple of shit the bed performances by Heron and Clarke in this year’s tournament, things might have been different. But then if pigs had wings they’d be my uncle.

***

When Mike Cragg was introduced as St John’s new Athletic Director he talked a great deal about the importance of family, both his existing family and his new one. I thought – mistakenly it turns out – that he was talking about his new St John’s family, you know, the family that sprung from the loins of Buck Freeman and spawned Joe Lapchick who in turn begat Louie and Mully and Walter and Malik and so on. Turn outs – if the rumor is true that the mediocrity that is Bobby Hurley is going to be the next St John’s coach and if not him Chris Collins or the appalling John Scheyer – Cragg was talking about his dook family. Because evidently Cragg is trying to recreate dook in Jamaica. If I were a teen age girl I’d type here LOL and festoon it with emojis. I think what Cragg doesn’t understand  – which is understandable considering the cocoon he’s lived in for the last 30 years – is that dookies are not successful merely because they’re dukies. And in fact most dukies (other than Mike Brey) are spectacular failures: Shewrkinski’s coaching tree comprises mediocrities like Collins, Tommy Amaker, the disgraced Quin Snyder, floor slapping dope Steve Wojowitski

and  serial cheater Jeff Capel; and his players comprise a conga line of failures so spectacular that it defies description: Chris Duhon, Josh McRoberts, Chris Carrawell, various and sundry Plumlees, Jason “look out for that tree” Williams, Shane Battier’s furrowed head, Trajan Langdon, Jahlil Okafor, Austin Rivers, Cherokee Parks, Shav Randolph, Brian Zoubek; more dook graduates have had life threatening drunken driving accidents than have had successful NBA careers. The most successful duke player in modern NBA history was made of tissue paper and after him comes who? Probably this guy, former poet laureate James JJ Reddick.

who penned these immortal lines, once the subject of an unctuous ESPN special

No bandage can cover my scars
It’s hard living a life behind invisible bars
Searching for the face of God
I’m only inspired by the poems of Nas

Facing the forecast of fears
that none of my peers
have ever been faced with
I wanna reach the top floor
but I’m stuck in the basement
With not enough juice 
to burst through the chains
that have shackled my brain

 

As Oscar Wilde said of The Olde Curiosity Shop: “One must have a heart of stone to read of the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears of laughter.”

What Cragg doesn’t understand is that dook succeeds for one reason: that Mike Schrewshenki sold his soul to the devil is a diabolical genius who every year takes a group of slow unathletic pasty faced ballerinas and molds them to his indomitable will and who with the aid of a corrupt college basketball hierarchy peopled by repulsive sycophants and lickspittles like Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas – and the coven of dook alumni who comprise college basketball’s lead analysts: Quinn Snyder, Mike Gminksi, Bucky Waters, the drunkard Bob Wentzel, Jim Spanarkle, Alaa Abdulwhaterver – are presented as the paragon of white privilege virtue and sportsmanship. I suspect that Cragg is in for a rude awakening when he discovers what goes on outside the protective bubble wrap that ESPN affords his former employer. Because Bobby Hurley, well he doesn’t stink, but he’s nothing to write home about: he’s given credit for rehabilitating U Buffalo, but that distinction falls to Reggie Witherspoon, who inherited a five win team on NCAA probation, won 20 games four times in his ten year tenure after that and bequeathed Hurley a team laden with upperclassmen; and at ASU in four years after inheriting a respectable program from Herb Sendek has done nothing of distinction. Prediction: if he comes to Jamaica Hurley will fail in Jamaica, as every coach post Louie has failed in Jamaica, because Jamaica is where coaching careers come to die. And Cragg will follow him out, rodent tail between legs.

Finally a word about Rick Pitino, about whom the great unwashed have been tweeting and posting lo these last several days. Bring in Rick Pitino they say, returneth the prodigal son to returneth St John’s to its former glory, such as it was, what a story of redemption they say for a great Catholic institution. Frankly I don’t see it happening. If the stories are true St John’s wouldn’t let Mullin hire poor Mike Rice and all he did was assault some players and call them sissies. Whereas Pitino fornicated publicly and thereafter ran a brothel: that’s like seven mortal sins and various cardinal and for which he has not repented: he recently demanded as a prerequisite for gracing St John’s with His presence apologies from various government agencies who had dared challenge his ethics and morality; how dare they! Not even as corrupt an organization as the Catholic Church can put up with that sort of hypocrisy.  Obviously it will be a great disappointment to Rick Pitino should he not be offered the job, but on the bright side if Rick Pitino can get through 9/11 he can get through anything. I just don’t see it happening. But on the other hand, it’s the only positive outcome. Do you fire the great Chris Mullin to hire Kevin Tim Cluess? Steve Pikiell? Geno Ford? If that’s the case they should have given Steve Lavin a lifetime contract. And Steve Lavin is a horrible coach and even a worse person. If you don’t believe me ask Rysheed Jordan. Not right now, he’s presently being sodomized in the prison shower. But  later, through the glass.

providence, saint john's

This Space Available

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St John’s lost to Ed Cooley’s diseased head Saturday afternoon 86-75 and thus endeth the St John’s regular season. In toto it was about what I expected – and unless you’re irrational it should be about what you expected as well, from a team nine months removed from an abysmal eight-win season and comprising nine underclassmen and five first year players and a coaching staff still searching for its sea legs. If you expected more than that then you’re more optimistic than am I, but then most people are more optimistic than I am: as an infant I distinctly remember thinking that my mother’s breasts were half empty. Just kidding, she didn’t breast feed me, that bitch. Oh dear, this turned ugly quickly. Probably I should start again but I’m not going to and fuck her anyway. So yes, the season: 13 wins is a bit fewer than I thought – I figured 15 or so – but as I noted two weeks ago if you flipped a couple of the atrocious losses – Delaware and Penn State primarily – this would be about a .500 team and a low NIT seed;  if you flipped five or so games that the November team lost that the February team might not this would be a bubble team. Consider: if you look back at the OOC conference schedule three of the losses look none too bad in retrospect:

Road loss to 23-7 Minnesota, a projected 6 seed
Road loss to 19-11 Michigan State, a projected 8 seed
Road loss to 23-7 VCU , a projected 9 seed

And two of the losses are understandable, if you eschew the ‘we should beat them because we are St John’s’ mentality

Road loss to 19-10 ODU
Road loss to 21-12 LIU

That’s five not too bad losses. In addition to those, seven losses were to ranked BE ranked teams: Villanova, Xavier and Creighton twice, and Butler once. Which makes carry the one 12 understandable losses of 18. Of the remainder of the league games today’s home loss to Providence – a bubble team on a winning streak – was arguably the worst. And on the other side of the coin are some good wins: at Syracuse, a projected 10 seed; home versus #13 Butler; at Providence; home versus Marquette, a projected 11 seed; and home versus Seton Hall, a projected 10 seed.

I’m no pollyanna but to me this represents real progress and especially considering the starting point. Next year of course is where the rubber meets the road: assuming no defections St John’s will have one of the top back courts in the country, finally some upperclassmen (even if they’re not very good), some well needed reinforcements in the form of Clark and Simon and hopefully a big body grad transfer and a staff that has had enough time to figure out the competition and the process. I am a Chris Mullin fan but absent extraordinary circumstances if they win 13 game next year I’ll be leading the chorus calling for his head: because St John’s has taken two steps forward. If they take a step back they might as well dismantle the basketball program and I’ll start a blog about curling, eh? But I don’t think they will. I think next year they take another step forward because as I’ve maintained all along, Chris Mullin has never failed at basketball before and he didn’t come to St John’s to start failing now …  To the extent that today’s game deserves discussion – and it doesn’t – St John’s shot 37 percent from the floor and 17 percent from three and were minus 11 rebounding and turned the ball over 14 times. I suspect that they know that today’s game didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things or at least that’s what I told myself. The defense was appalling – I keep refreshing ESPN’s page so I could post a capture of the shot chart because Providence’s offense comprised an unending line of uncontested lay ups, but because ESPN sucks balls you’ll have to take my word for it: Providence’s offense comprised an unending line of uncontested lay ups. Usually I don’t have a lot of patience for fans who think that the outcome of the game would have been different had St John’s only employed the triangle and two or the box and one or the pentagram and none but today I don’t see where any harm might have come from switching to a zone to have seen whether it might thwarted the conga line of lay-ups that the man to man rewarded PU with but whatever. The only thing St John’s didn’t suck at was free throw shooting and the officials were so appalling that even that is tainted by association: both teams were in the bonus halfway into the first half; John Gaffney and company called 52 fouls in 40 minutes that resulted in 67 free throws. Note to stupid John Gaffney: if I wanted to spend my afternoon listening to people blow things I’d hang around in the Port Authority bus terminal men’s room. Fuck you and your fucking whistle.

PLAYERS: Left to my own devices I’d have given the game ball to Bashir Ahmed: he had 17 points and seven rebounds and three blocks and for most of the game looked like the only player on the court who gave a fuck about what was happening. But Shamorie Ponds scored 29 points and passed the great tattooed negro D’Angelo Harrison to become the top freshman scorer in St John’s history so I gave it to him instead. We are you and I fortunate that Ponds is not two inches taller and 20 pounds heavier because if he was he’d be a lottery pick … Lovett had 12 points but most of them were when the game was over . Did not start the second half for some reason and did not look happy about it to the extent that I’m expert at facial expressions and body language. Embarrassed a PU player by bouncing the ball off his ass on an inbounds play for a basket … Ellison scored no points in 23 minutes which seems impossible unless you are familiar with his body of work. Those of you who had the under relative to his throwing yet another stupid lazy pass that was intercepted leading to a lay in for the bad guys, pay the man on the way out … Federico “Crunch time” Missini hit a three in the second half to cut PU’s lead to 17 or something but was otherwise oh fer the game … Yakwe once again was less horrible than he has been most of the rest of the year … Alibagofsandwiches played minutes that were not as offensive than his usual minutes, which makes three games a row … Darien Williams fouled out in nine minutes, barely defeating Tariq Owens, who fouled out in ten.

NOTES: Besides being the worst point guard in recent St John’s history, Tarik Turner talks too much. Please to be shutting the fuck up Tarik. But to Tarik’s credit he was no where near as appalling as booth mate Alex Faust, whose self written biography describes himself as “the voice of Northeastern University men’s basketball,” which is not what I want written on my tombstone, which is going to read ARE WE THERE YET in all caps. Because you’re all well educated you’ll know that the original Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly riches, which I assume Alex Faust might have because he’s on TVG despite being dumb as a fucking rock.

Butler, saint john's

Arrivederci By Subtraction

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As much fun as was Saint John’s win over Syracuse last week beating Butler 76-73 at Carnesecca Arena Thursday night was better: it was a league game at home in front of an energized crowd against a ranked opponent in a tilt game that could have gone either way. Outside of March college basketball does not get any better than this. I frankly had so much fun that I don’t even feel like writing about it, I just want to watch it again and probably will during happy hour, which at my house on Friday starts about 11 AM est … The game itself went back and forth – I almost said it was a nip and tuck affair which if I ever start writing like that someone please shoot me. For most of it Butler was up by a couple of baskets and they were actually ahead by ten with 10 minutes left. But each time it looked like things were slipping away somebody made a play – mostly it was Shamorie Ponds but credit also to Coach Mullin, who called three good time outs to stop the bleeding which his team responded, which is pretty good for someone who’s a horrible coach who doesn’t know anything about basketball …. The box score is pretty ordinary: Saint John’s shot 54 percent from the floor, Butler 46; Saint John’s took only 16 threes (that’s right only) and made just four but Butler was an atrocious 6 for 25; rebounds were even at 31; Saint John’s turned the ball over 16 times but had only three in the last ten minutes, as opposed to Butler, who had 6 of their thirteen when it counted with the game on the line in the same span in the second half of the second half. As I often do after a SJU win I popped into the losers fan forum and read the game thread. This morning over in the Dawg Kennel or whatever stupid name they call themselves they’re – besides calling Saint John’s “thugs” and “street ballers,” I mean just drop the N bomb already – they were whining about the free throw discrepancy – which was seven. That’s right, they’re this morning bitching about how they got screwed by seven lousy free throws and how that might affect their chances of getting a number 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. You can’t make this shit up. From what I saw last night if Butler is the 13th ranked team in the country well then I’m a monkey’s uncle I don’t know as much about basketball as I pretend

PLAYERS: Shamorie Ponds had a Big East coming out party 26 points, seven rebounds, two steals, 2 blocks and was 6 of 6 from the free throw line. I read somewhere that there were 12 NBA scouts at the game, hopefully it was not to watch him …. Bashir Ahmed had 19 points, 5 rebounds and three steals. He’s 13 of 23 with ten rebounds over his last two. Where’s that dope who said he’s a bust who needs to be benched, I’d like to rub his face in that … Lovett did not start again, not sure why. 10 points including 6 of 6 from the free line … Malik Ellison did start and did not play well:  Contributed 5 turnovers and airballed his only three … Yawke seems over whatever funk he was in early in the season. He finished impressively on a couple of pick and rolls, which is about all you can ask … Darien Williams played 22 minutes, the most he has all year. Displayed a nice little jump hook, which let’s face it immediately makes him our best big man … Owens had no points and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes … The two euro-dorks played 16 minutes between them and managed 2 points and one rebound. Alibegovitz committed a career best no personal fouls, which I suppose is good but really the frequency and violence of his fouls is the only thing he brings to the table, so why stop now …. The team is now two and oh without Wally Pippini Federico Missini. Nuff said. If and when he comes back he should sit on the bench until April at which time they should put him on the first gondola back to Palermo or maybe the girl’s team needs a designated three point threat who’s not very good at shooting. His banishment won’t make the Sons of Italy happy, but I’m not here to make you happy, I’m here to rub your noses in your mistakes and disappointments. In this case it’s the mistakes and disappointments of anyone who thinks Missini is a basketball player.

NOTES: Last night’s game marked the season’s first appearance of Tarik Turner. Usually he’s awful but if he was last night the game was so good I didn’t notice. He even went so far as to make a good point when he compared Ponds to 6’1”, 170 pound Nick Van Exel, a lefty guard who led Cincinnati to the Final Four and went on to become an NBA all-star. Turner’s partner Brian Custer kept repeating that Saint John’s had not defeated a team as highly ranked as Butler since Chris Mullin was playing in 1983, which I kept thinking to myself that can’t possibly be right until I figured out that he meant at the Lou, which makes sense because why would you play highly ranked teams in a gym that seats 5000 people. Brian Custer by the way is a prostate cancer survivor, which you wouldn’t know because he didn’t mention it once during the entire broadcast … Speaking of Lavin I watched a couple of minutes of that bulbous headed moron during the halftime festivities and was rewarded when he praised some point guard’s “decision making or judgment.” Decision making or judgment, what a maroon …. Other than that I got nothing. I have in past recaps done Butler University, legendary Coach Hinkle, Hoosiers (both the name and the movie), Jeeves Lurch and other Butlers, Indiana the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and even a bit of a gambol about my favorite mass murderer Carl Panzram (“I wish the entire human race had one neck and I had my hands around it!”). If you’re starved for fun go back and read that stuff, I did yesterday and it still holds up. PS Panzram’s papers recently were digitized and are now on line if anyone’s interested, it’s really marvelous stuff:

http://scua2.sdsu.edu/findingaids/index.php?p=digitallibrary/digitalcontent&id=912

 

Fordham, saint john's

Play It Again Ram

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It’s a measure of how bad things have been in Jamaica that Thursday’s 90-62 win over the hapless Fordham Rams was seen as payback. Because the case can be made that Fordham is the worst program in the modern history of college basketball and perhaps ever. They have a record of futility that is virtually unmatched – and this is in the A 10 mind you – and have been coached by a conga line of losers that runs the gamut from appalling mediocrity Tom Pecora to giant nothing-burger  Derek Whittenburg, whose most impressive basketball feat was an airball he shot in during the Reagan administration. All of which being said it was pretty pleasurable watching Mullin rub their faces in last year’s game and I taped it and later I’m going to watch it again … SJU jumped out to a 10 point first half lead and looked to be on their way to an early blow out when a combination of events – a loss of focus and the arrival on the court of the bench – let Fordham back in it, so that a made basket after Federico Mussini dribbled the ball off his foot got FU within three. Saint John’s though went on an 8-0 run to end the half and a 15-5 run to start the second (halftime adjustments baby!) and that was all she wrote … Regarding that run, one thing that this team has demonstrated early is that they can take a punch. They bounced back from a loss to Delaware State that could have been demoralizing with their best performance of the year versus Tulane. They lost an 8 point lead versus CSUN and went on to win easily without their point guard on the floor. And last night instead of rolling over when FU cut the lead to three they responded with a run of their own. It’s refreshing to see a team this young have so much poise. Because that’s something that usually takes years to learn … Even considering they were playing Fordham, SJ’s offensive output was prodigious: they shot 60 percent from the floor, 50 percent from three, were plus 20 rebounds, had 10 blocks and 24 assists on 32 made baskets. Once again the defense was atrocious – two giant Eastern European dorks hit 9 three pointers between them – but all in all there is not a lot for even a curmudgeon like me to complain about … Regarding the remarkable three point shooting, is it too soon to credit Mullin and Richmond for that? They are two of the greatest shots in the history of the game after all. Every time some dope dribbles the ball off his foot or misses a free throw a Greek chorus starts chanting that Mullin needs the aid of some washed up loser wizened sage like Tim Welch or Pete Gillen. So do we start crediting Mullin now when every little thing goes right? He’s got four guys shooting over 40 percent from three and Mussini’s over fifty. Is that the result of being coached up and being put in a position to succeed or are we still in the “anyone who thinks Mullin knows what he’s doing is kidding himself” stage. Are any of the little things they’re starting to do right the coach’s fault? Is their resilience a reflection of his own self confidence? I guess the question I’m asking is: is it possible that Chris Mullin knows something about basketball? Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but personally I’m starting to get the warm fuzzies, or at least as fuzzy as I get anyway – I’m starting to see what they’re supposed to be doing, even if they’re not doing it yet: the spacing and ball movement, the pick and roll and back door, the emphasis on the three. They’re still a few pieces short of the puzzle, but all of a sudden they’re starting to look like a basketball team and I think I’m starting to buy in. I guess we’ll know in a couple of months

PLAYERS: Shamorie “WTF” Ponds had a night so _______ that I’m not going to diminish it by picking an adjective to describe it. It was pretty _______ though: 26 points on 9-13 from the floor, 7 of 11 from three (one off the school record set by the legendary Avery Patterson), nine assists, seven rebounds and four steals. The most ______ thing about his game is not his ________ skill set, which is _________ – it’s how calm he is, and how poised, and how the game comes to him. Demeanor-wise he’s already a senior. I can’t imagine what he’s going to be in a couple of years … Mussini had another nice game, but not nice enough for me to eschew adjectives: 20 points in 20 minutes, including a remarkable full court dash and lay in to end the first half. He even drew a charge. Five turnovers is way too many, but I’ll let that slide. For now …. Missus Fun announced last night that Tariq Owens was her favorite player. After cross-examining her to make sure this was not a case of depraved jungle fever I acquiesced. I’m wondering whether Owens moribund start and resurgence of late is the result of his shaking off the cobwebs, having not played for several years, as opposed to incompetence, which was my original theory …. Ahmed had a quiet 12 and 6. Only two turnovers though and an assist, his 13th of the year. Contrary to popular slander, Ahmed is fourth on the team in assists, averaging 1.3 per game. As opposed to say Federico Mussini, who averages less than one …  Kassoum Yawke – who also averages more assists per game than Mussini – fouled out in 12 minutes. To be fair a couple of those were blocks that could have been charges and a couple were chippies. He did though finish with authority on a pick and roll early which was good to see …. Dennis Rodman Amar Alibegovith had eight rebounds in 18 minutes, doubling his total for the year. If this is a sign that he’s realizing that his only value to the team is down low – much like Sean Evans realized in Lavin’s Year Zero – that would be a welcome change. It might even be worth putting up with him clanking threes and bouncing the ball off his feet and decapitating opposing players, which things comprise his skill set now …. Malik Ellison started. In the first two minutes he threw a lazy cross court pass that was nearly intercepted, blew a layup and let a pass go off his fingertips out of bounds, after which he was immediately pulled. Good for Mullin. Other Ellison highlights included receiving a pass in the corner with his foot out of bounds and throwing the ball away on a break. He really is one of the dumber players I can remember … Speaking of highlights, Obergruppenfuhrer Freudenberg made the number three slot on ESPN’s top 10 plays by virtue of a block late in the second half. It was a fine block , but Yawke and Owens make three similar ones a game. Maybe because he’s white, who knows. Also he made the first three of his career. Congratulations Ricky …. Darien Williams also made ESPN: his sideline antics were featured during a piece on the game – a piece in which Shamorie Ponds was barely mentioned. Perhaps if Williams spent as much time working on his game as he does choreographing his end zone dance he wouldn’t suck at basketball and so could get a few minutes actually on the court, as did walk-on Elijah Holifield, who hit a garbage time three at the buzzer …. Sima did not start and barely played and seems to be out of favor for the time being.

NOTES: Really I got nothing. We play Fordham every year and so I’ve plowed that field fallow up to and including an essay about Captain Kangaroo. Donny Marshall and Rick Ackerman are no great shakes but they’re not so awful that they’re worth ranting about and Jim Jackson and whoever the other guy is in the studio at half time, while a little too convivial for me (to be fair Calvin Coolidge was a little too convivial for me) have the virtue of not being Steve Lavin. So I got bupkis …. Apologies to those of you who wrote complaining that my last recap was not adorned by a piece of eye candy at the top. (See Rule 5.) I can understand your disappointment: this is one of the few places on the internet where you can go to see near naked women. Truth is I spent more time than I care to admit looking for a suitably risqué version of Eve Plumb, but couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t have ended up with Chris Hansen showing up at my front door. Plumb gave an Oscar worthy performance as a prostitute with a heart of gold in the underrated 1976 classic Dawn Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, but there aren’t many stills on line, which is weird because you can watch the whole thing on you tube … And finally, yesterday was Tom Waits birthday. Most of you philistines have never heard of him but he is, as the kids say, the balls:

 

 

saint john's, tulane

The Big Easy

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GAME: What a difference a week makes. On Monday evening after SJU’s embarrassing loss to Delaware State Chris Mullin was a lazy bum who lacked all understanding of basketball and fan forum discussions centered on how much Archie Miller’s buy out is and failing that whether Tom Pecora could be enticed to sit on the bench and offer Mullin the sort of wise counsel that allowed him to win nearly 9 games a year at Fordham. Saturday morning, after Saint John’s dismantled Tulane 95-75, Chris Mullin is a hard working basketball prodigy who deserves all the credit in the world for developing a game plan that put his players in a position to win and whose bench savvy ensured that they did. Of course and in FACT none of that is true. Chris Mullin is exactly the same person he was a week ago, when he said “If you’re looking for panic you’re looking in the wrong place.” (Exactly Chris, if you’re looking for panic read the fever dreams of the hysterical old women who post at Johnny Jungle and Redmen dot calm com.) And the players are exactly the same ones who humiliated themselves on Monday. They’re just a game older. Because this is what’s meant by the up and down in up and down season. Today we are a peacock – Monday we were a feather duster. This is life: there are good days and bad days and days in between. The secret to it all is to remain serene in the face of such vicissitudes. Or at least drunk …. I saw little point in rehashing the box score after the Delaware game and see just as little point this morning. Saint John’s hit 10 of their first 11 threes en route to a 30-15 lead in the best first half they’ve played in the Mullin era and probably going back beyond that. They shot 65 percent from three for the game, 55 percent from the field and 13 of 15 from the free throw line. They had 22 assists to 14 turnovers. They were plus 8 rebounding. On the offensive end Tulane wasn’t awful – they shot 44 percent from three themselves – but their defense was shall we say porous. But it was also one of those night where everyone on Saint John’s was somewhere between on and unconscious. More than the numbers what was striking was the energy with which they came out, on the road, after being humiliated three days ago, when they could have rolled over, and the ball movement, the likes of which we have not seen in a very long time. And in fact on the first possession of the game they were so intent on moving the ball that they didn’t even bother shooting – if the shot clock hadn’t expired they might still be passing it around this morning. Anyway if this is the system, count me in. If the guards stay healthy and they get a couple of players who can finish in the paint this is going to be something to see … First game of the season where Mullin wore a suit and a tie. Looked off the rack but still it was nice to see him taking basketball seriously for a change.

PLAYERS: Nearly all the smalls played well. Ahmed had 17 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and zero offensive fouls. He airballed a couple of threes but with a line like that you can live with it. Lovett 18 points and five assists. Ponds had 15 points – all threes, he’s shooting 40 percent for the year – and four assists. Mussini had his best game in quite a while or perhaps ever – 17 points, three rebounds, and only a handful of embarrassments on the defensive end. Even Ellison (seven points, four assists) wasn’t is usual atrocious self …. The bigs were another matter. Other than Baruq Owens, who acquitted himself reasonable well (eight points, six blocks), the bigs were more or less invisible. Sima has only two rebounds … Fredenburger – for whom the game is just too fast at present – had no points or assists in 13 minutes but 6 rebounds … Even Alibegowitch got into the act, making his first three of the year, after which he raised his hand in triumph, or maybe relief. Christian who? … Which brings us to Kassoum Yawke, who once again looked lost out there. Kid showed a world of potential last year and obviously it’s way too early to throw him under the bus but he seems to have lost whatever instincts he displayed last year that made him so much fun to watch. He was one for six from the floor – the five he missed were lay ups and chippies and the one he made was a circus shot he banked falling away from the basket that he shouldn’t have taken in the first place – and had three rebounds and one block. You know if he wanted to he could manage a dozen rebounds a game. Threat advisory scale: yellow.

NOTES: Tulane is coached by Brooklyn native Mike Dunleavy, a longtime NBA player who won an NBA championship as coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and was later named NBA coach of the year while a Portland Trailblazer. Unfortunately that NBA experience has not translated to the college ranks where Dunleavy now sports a .14 winning percentage. If the comments this morning on the Ye Olde Green Wave Forum (I shit you not) are any indication, Dunleavy better get Pete Gillen on the phone stat, because the fans are none too pleased. For example poster GSx writes than Dunleavy was “completely outcoached” by Chris Mullin – evidently GSx does not read the SJU fan forums, he’d know that “anyone who thinks mullin knows what he is doing is lying to himself.” Poster Waverider wonders “ how much is talent and how much is coaching.” Pete Rache thinks Dunleavy “ completely ignored teaching defense,” while poster RJC laments that Dunleavy’s “experience is only in the pros.” Not one to mince words poster Wavemania declares that “Dunleavy is a loser” and hopes that Tim Welch Floyd is available, although he is willing to give the former NBA coach of the year “two years to turn it around.” NJ Wave wishes Tulane would press more, believes the problem is not lack of talent, and is losing patience with Dunleavy; Baywave believes “ coaches need to do better”; and Rororooter “would have hired a guy who had a proven college system, a system that could win with inferior talent.” (Pete Carill to the white courtesy telephone.) This is after Dunleavy has coached seven games. And the moral is: only the half-clever names have been changed. What I can’t understand is that none of them complained about the most heinous act of Dunleavy’s career: he spawned the repulsive Mike Dunleavy Jr, formerly of DooK university.

saint john's, VCU

God Ram It

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GAME: If I’d know there was a consolation bracket in the Battle4Atlantis and that Saint John’s 75-69 Thanksgiving night loss to Virginia Commonwealth was going to be televised I’d not have recapped the MSU loss and done a twofer. Oh well, just one more thing for you people to give thanks for …. SJU started strong, hitting their first eight shots en route to an 18-5 lead and were on their way to a blow-out win when disaster struck: Malik Ellison entered the game. A few short minutes later the lead was down to four and although SJU managed to maintain a two point lead at halftime the writing was on the wall. VCU took the lead early in the second half and extended it to eleven, but just when you thought the roof was going to fall in SJU made a couple of plays and tied it up. They ran out of gas down the stretch though and made a bunch of stupid plays and took a bunch of stupid shots and missed a bunch of free throws which is just the sort of thing young teams do before they’ve learned how to win close games. On the bright side before you learn to win close game you have to lose a few so at least we got this one out of the way …. Turns out there’s yet another game tonight, this one against Old Dominion, who lost yesterday to Louisville in OT. That does not bode well. Optimists will note that Delaware State and Fordham and a bunch of cupcakes loom on the horizon. Onward and upward.

PLAYERS: It’s striking that the worst game of Marcus Lovett’s short college career – he dribbled the ball off his foot at midcourt before halftime, blew a dunk on a breakaway and missed a couple of free throws late – was three rebounds short of a double double … Shamorie Ponds had 14 points in the first half and was invisible thereafter … Yawke woke up and finally displayed the sort of energy he routinely showed last year. You’d like to see him score a little more – and he would if he’d hit his free throws – but 5 points, 5 rebounds and 6 blocks is nothing to sneeze at …. Sima was productive as well – 12 points and 7 rebounds – but I’d never have guessed he had those numbers without looking at the box score … It’s safe to say after five games that Batshit Bashir Ahmed is not a big fan of the assist. He is going to have to learn that the points his teammates score are as important as the ones he does and when he does he’ll be a better basketball player. Until then we’ll need to accept his step back threes and bull rushes to the basket because there’s no one on the bench who can score 13 points in 20 minutes ….. Division Two player of the year Tariq Owens had zero points in 11 minutes, but the good news is he managed to not foul out …. Mussini only played 12 minutes. Maybe they could use his alleged offense but his defense is so appalling that it’s probably a wash …. Richard Strauss Frudenberg played eight minutes and contributed slightly more than Williams and Alibegic, who didn’t play … Which brings us to Malik Ellison. Last year I wrote often about Ellison’s plus minus, which was so striking to me that I postulated that he was some sort of or Jonah. I think I was probably wrong. I think he really just has a terrifically low IQ, and I’m not even talking basketball IQ, I mean he looks dead behind his eyes like a great white shark. (Maybe Pervis was never nervous because he was too dumb to be scared?) Saint John’s was up 13 when he entered the game. On the first play he inbounded the ball to Lovett and ran up the court oblivious to the fact that Lovett had returned the ball to him, which bounced out of bounds. And it was downhill from there. He was especially egregious down the stretch, making nonsensical spin moves in the lane and hoisting up threes. If he’s the first option off the bench – and he seems to be – this year is going to be longer than even I thought.

NOTES: Several of you have written noting that I made an error in yesterday’s important blog post, confusing MSU’s appearance in the Holiday Festival in 1968 with Michigan’s in 1965. Good catch and thanks for taking time away from your families on Thanksgiving to set me straight. In my defense it was pretty early in the morning and so I was still sober. Trust me that’s a mistake I won’t make again. Anyway the 68 Holiday Festival win was against an MSU team that finished the season under .500 under Pete Newell protégé John Bennington, so that victory wasn’t the greatest in anyone’s history …. Speaking of Pete Newell, two of Steve Lavin’s prize recruits suited up for VCU last night: Samir Doughty and Ahmed Handy combined for three points in 29 minutes, we really missed the boat there …. Today is the first day of the Christmas season, aka Black Friday, a frenzied paean to capitalism that’s traditionally celebrated by shoppers being trampled to death in the parking lot at Target while trying to get an amazing deal on a flat screen TV. Black Friday is so called because it is thought to be the day that retailers books go from red to the black. Fans of irony will enjoy the fact that box store parking lots turn instead from black to red. Lest you think this tradition just other American abomination Black Friday is celebrated across the world, including in countries like India and Romania where you wouldn’t even think they have parking lots, or in the case of Romania, an economy.

 

michigan state, saint john's

Spartan Up

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RECAP: Saint John’s lost to the 24th ranked team in the country Wednesday night in the first round of the Battle for Atlantis by nine points, 72-63, and this morning on various SJU fan forums the knives are out for Chris Mullin. Some of that is of course just trolling by trolls and some is just shit posting by shit posters and some of it is just dummies being dumb; the kind that is borne of the sort of impatience that little children exhibit on Christmas Eve waiting for Santy Claus to come is the easiest to understand but is no less inexcusable. Because anyone who went into this year thinking that Saint John’s – of 351 Division One teams the 349th least experienced, with five players who have never played college basketball before, and four sophomores who were last year 1 and 17 in conference play – was not going to spend much of the year getting its brains kicked in delusional; anyone who thought they were going to go on the road and upset Tom Izzo is nuts; and anyone who thinks there is anything to be gleaned from Wednesday’s game about Chris Mullin’s basketball acumen or the direction of the basketball program at Saint John’s is a fool … So yes, SJU lost by nine. Once again they went up early – it was 17 to 9 SJU at one point – and once again the bottom fell out, this time in the form of a 2-14 scoring drought to end the half. They kept things close in the second half until a similar drought, this one 0-10, finished them. Take away Marcus Lovett and the rest of the team shot 29 percent from the floor (14 for 47); they were outrebounded by 20, 53-33; they had eight assists to 16 for MSU. All of which is going to beat absolutely no one, and certainly not the number 24 team in the country coached by one of the best coaches of his generation and there’s nothing Chris Mullin could have done about it, not even implementing the various brilliant suggestions bandied about this morning by the many arm genyiouses who once were assistant coaches in a CYO league in Valley Stream: short of building a working time machine there were no “halftime adjustments” that would help. Pressing would not help, playing zone would not help, running the great Federico Mussini off more screens would not help, the box and one or triangle and two or pentagram and zero would not help. What would help would be if all the players were six months or a year older and smarter and more experienced and 20 pounds heavier. That’s what would help. Because this what happens to young inexperienced basketball teams: they lose games, lots of them, and sometimes badly. As Saint John’s fans I’d have thought you all expert in losing but evidently it needs to be beaten into some of you a little more righteously. Which is why I’m here.

 

PLAYERS: Marcus Lovett again led all scorers, which I think it’s safe to say you can pencil that in for the rest of the year. Twenty points, 7 assists, 7 rebounds. He’s beginning to remind me of another Marcus, see if you can guess who I’m thinking of … The rest of these bums don’t even deserve mention, but it’s a holiday, so: Owens, Yawke, and Sima were a combined 3 for 15 from the floor with 9 rebounds in 62 minutes. Probably there would have been more minutes but Tariq “Baruch Slayer” Owens fouled out again, this time in 11 minutes. For those of you scoring at home that’s 11 more minutes than Christian Jones played last night for UNLV and he’s sidelined with an injury. In two games Owens has managed 10 fouls in 25 minutes of floor time. Some fan forum wag suggested he should foul less often, which I concur …. The other two are 600 minutes into their college careers and I usually don’t throw players over the side until they reach 700, so they better pick it up …. Ponds had 12 points but was invisible most of the night.  …. Malik Ellison’s entry into the game is usually the beginning of the end but last night it was only the end of the middle – that’s all Mo’s coaching baby! My expectations for Ellison are so low that I take his 3 points, 3 rebound, 4 foul 20 minutes as a step in the right direction …. Ahmed hit a couple of threes early, then got a couple of fouls, then got a couple of more fouls and then fouled out with a technical. They’ll need him to do better than 4 for 13 from the floor with one assist if they hope to win some league games. He did have 7 rebounds though … Mussini made a couple of threes but also got called for a couple of offensive fouls and was an embarrassment on the defensive end unless you confuse stumbling around flailing your limbs with a fine defensive effort in which case he was excellent…. But not as much of an embarrassment as Darien Williams, who committed a foul less than a second after entering the game and got burned half a dozen times in three minutes by Miles Bridges – the second freshman to beat SJU single handedly – before Mullin mercifully euthanized him …. Alibegovich probably should have played more, that’s how bad the front court was … All I heard over the summer was what a sweet stroke Richard Heydrich Freundenburgh had and what a graceful athlete he was an so on. He does not look graceful to me and when he shoots he looks like he’s having a seizure.

NOTES: Last night’s game was (ironically) only available on a station called Access, which is the brainchild of Mark Cuban – which is what happens when a moron has too much money – and Ryan Seacrest – which is what happens when a moron has too little talent. This I accessed [sic] through a free trial subscription to Sling TV, an internet based TV service, similarly owned. Although in the not too distant future generations who enjoy cheap on demand entertainment will wonder why television consumers let themselves get fucked for so long by the monster that is time warner – just as today’s television consumers cannot understand the concept of getting up off the couch to change to Channel 11 in time for a Honeymooners marathon – Sling and AXS TV do not seem to be the answer. The Sling TV interface is slow and clunky and the channel offerings in the basic package pedestrian. Like the rest of you I’ll be cancelling on Friday …. The game was called by Kenny Rice, Seth Davis and someone called Tom Walsh. Of Kenny Rice who inflicts himself on much of TV’s horse racing coverage the best thing that can be said is that he’s not Kenny Mayne. Seth Davis is ubiquitous on college basketball halftime and pregame coverage but since I usually fast forward through that dreck I have mostly avoided him before last night. Turns out he’s sort of a self-important know it all douche bag, which made sense once I wiki-ed him and found out he’s a graduate of DoOk university, which makes him just another in a conga line of self-important know it all douche bags that includes cigar store Indians Quinn Snyder, Mike Gminski and Jim Spanarkle , drunkards Bob Wetzel and Bucky Waters, Alaa Abdulakbar, Jay “Look Out for that Tree!” Williams, the repulsive Jay Bilas and Shane Battier’s furrowed head. A little known fact about Seth is that he’s the son of Lanny Davis, long time consigliere of the Clinton crime syndicate…. This was the third meeting between SJU and MSU, and the first MSU victory. Saint John’s rallied from 16 down to beat Cazzie Russel’s 2nd ranked Michigan State team in the 1965 Holiday festival in what is arguably the greatest victory in school history and then beat them again in December 1980, with Michigan half a dozen games removed from a national championship …. Today is Thanksgiving, I mention that only so as to work in the picture of Marilyn Monroe. Gobble gobble.

bethune-cooke, red storm, saint john's

Make Alibegovic Great Again

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trump

HERE WE GO AGAIN: An old saw says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And so here are we Saint John’s fans once again in November thinking optimistic thoughts about the program and here am I once again to dissuade you from them. I frankly am not looking forward to my task this year. When I started writing these things it was out of a sense of frustration with the fate of the only sports team that I follow with any sort of passion and a loathing for its awful coach, the repulsive Steve Lavin. But now Lavin is gone lo these many years and with him the stench of failure and of his players only one remains and in the meantime the prodigal son has returned and the fatted calf is slain and the pieces are in place and things frankly are looking up – or as far up as things look in Jamaica anyway. And so what’s a boy to do? Sure I’m a cynic but not so far gone that I’m going to trash Chris Mullin and honestly even the skeptic in me believes that happy days will be here sooner rather than later. Where that leaves this experiment I am not sure and for the time being I’ll proceed in good faith but I suspect a time is coming when I’ll be happy enough to just watch the games and leave the commentary to the many genyiouses who so generously share their wisdom on various SJU forums … About what to expect this year I have not too much to say having only seen now 80 minutes of basketball, which is not enough for even the most astute observer to form an opinion. I will admit though that what little I’ve seen leaves me cautiously pessimistic: the newcomers look all of them like the real thing, the returnees look bigger and stronger, the staff looks energetic and engaged and the recruiting is better than it’s been forever. It’s probably too soon for any of that to translate to success on the court – college basketball being one of the few endeavors in life where age often trumps beauty – but it would be nice to see this year when all things shake out double the win total from last year (~16), a mid pack finish in the Big East, and an NIT bid, which is not an outlandish expectation considering that Chris Mullin is the coach and New York the television market. But as I say almost every year in November, wait till next year bums … About this game I have little to say as well: they ate the cupcake and although it was delicious there are no lessons in the empty calories. We’ll have a pretty good idea of how things are going to be by Thanksgiving, once Tom Izzo gets through with us … On my television last night Mullin’s hair was the same color as Frank Costanza’s. Hopefully that was an aberration and not a dye job

PLAYERS: Speaking of the real thing, Marcus Lovett did not start, despite being the best player on the court last night. Was it just one of those things or was Coach Lavin Mullin trying to teach his young point guard an important life lesson. I don’t know but if the latter get the orange jumpsuit ready … Federico Mussini had 20 points in 18 minutes, gladdening the hearts of racists everywhere. I’d remind those people that last year Mussini made 30 percent of his total threes (16 of 56) in November versus D2 competition, so I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. To be fair to FM he looks bigger and firmer and more athletic than he did last year, although I’ve seen fence posts that look more athletic than he did last year and he still this year can’t cover a pillar … Tariq Owens continues to impress although he’s going to have to manage more than four puny rebounds to make anyone forget Christian Jones, who had 13 last night versus real D1 competition … Shamorie Ponds led all players with 26 minutes and looked not much like a freshman doing so …. Bashmir Ahmed on the other hand played only 18 and looked to be pressing … At first thought I was disappointed that fun fave Kassoum Yawke only played 20 minutes and didn’t do much of anything with them but then I remembered just how young he is and what a luxury it is to be able to bring gifted players along slowly, rather than just throwing them to the dogs … Sima had 11 points in 15 minutes, confounding those who are already predicting his transfer … Like Mussini Malik Ellison looks bigger and stronger this year and seems poised to take a step forward … Richard Fredenburg will have to do better than zero points in 23 minutes if he expects me to learn how to spell his name …. Speaking of spelling, Alibegovic had a nice put back immediately upon entering the game and did a nice job of waving his towel thereafter. Anything they get from him beyond that will be a bonus … Darien Williams spent garbage time looking like someone whose had a bunch of surgeries and hasn’t played ball in a couple of years.

NOTES: Friday was Veteran’s Day, a public holiday intended to memorialize those who have served in their nations military, even, presumably, Germans. To those volk folk we offer a humble and heart felt thanks. Veteran’s Day falls on November 11 because the first world war – that’d be the war to end all wars for those scoring at home – ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1919, when the Huns surrendered to the Allies in a railway car in the North of France. (Ever the kidder Hitler had the French surrender in the very same railway car 30 years later.) In the United States the holiday was first promulgated by then President Woodrow Wilson, who besides being generally acknowledged as the first political “progressive” was the worst president of the 20th century and is on the short list for the worst president ever: an unrepentant racist, Wilson segregated the federal government, firing most black government employees – like most progressives he thought blacks “an ignorant and inferior race” – and consigned those who remained to colored bathrooms; in his memoirs he described the Ku Klux Klan as a “great” organization designed to “preserve the white race” and segregation as “a great benefit” to the negro; not content with that legacy he presided over the creation of the Federal Reserve system, instituted the first federal income tax, jailed his political enemies for treason and gleefully passed while as governor of New Jersey a bill requiring compulsory sterilization of felons, the mentally ill, and the differently abled. Add that all up and he makes Jimmy Carter look like Pericles … Speaking of politics, Theo R_______ (not his real name) writes:

Fun, could you share your thoughts on the recent election? As a millennial and a progressive I’m devastated and could use some solace.

Well sure Theo, I’d be delighted.

Louis Brandeis wrote that the right most cherished by civilized men is the right to be left alone. By that he meant that the essence of liberty is the right to opt out: from people, from relationships, from community, from ultimately from civilization. And so although I have firm opinions about the body politic – my belief that humanity is a dung heap and history the story of those who were ambitious enough to scale it has me positioned politically just to the right of Caligula – I’ve never voted. And this election was no different. Instead of participating I’ve endeavored to arrange my life so that it’s unaffected by the vagaries of government. I have no children and few attachments and enough money to tithe the state and afford my vices and since I’m interested in practically nothing other than my own comfort it doesn’t much matter which partisan hacks are ravening at the public teat at any given moment. All I want is to be left alone and for the most part I’ve achieved that.

Which is why I was pretty surprised late Tuesday evening when I realized how extremely unhappy I was going to be if Hillary Clinton were elected president. It wasn’t just the idea of living in a country governed by a cheap pant-suited grifter who’s spent her adult life feeding at the public trough in the name of public service. It wasn’t even that she’s married to a serial rapist and has a daughter that looks like Mister Ed. No. It was much more than that. Because by failing to elect Donald J. Trump president of the United States my fellow Americans would be squandering the opportunity to make so very many people so very fucking miserable and opportunities like that only come around a couple of times in a lifetime.

Mind you, I’m not talking about just the public mortification facing the likes of appalling no talent blowhards like Cher and Alec Baldwin, corpulent fuckhead Michael Moore, no talent whores Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, obese cum dumpsters Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, rug munchers Rosie O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, banana nosed bozo Barbra Streisand, ignorant fucking slut Madonna, and various smug and sanctimonious left wing stooges like Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sean Penn, Ed Asner, Jane Fonda, Woody Harrelson, Jessica Lange, Norman Lear, Martin Sheen, and Oliver Stone. And neither do I mean the disappointment felt by herds of coddled youth of the stupidest generation who flooded the internet with hilarious heart wrenching videos of their weeping disappointment before fleeing to safe spaces where they could share their feelings with grief counselors and assuage their disappointment with play doh and coloring books.

(Fans of irony will relish the fact that these ministrations to the feelings of the current generation of delicate snowflakes occurred on the eve of a holiday dedicated to remembering the bravery their great grandparents displayed storming the beaches of Normandy and will swoon with delight at the idea of millennial comparisons of the disappointment they experienced on 11-9 to real events that happened on 9-11.)

No: it was much bigger than all that.

See, it all came to me right about 2:00 AM, watching DemonRat toadies Wolf Blitzer and Van Jones frantically trying to parse their way to a Clinton win in the electoral college: I suddenly flashed on Hitler in his bunker pushing nonexistent Panzer divisions across a map of Eastern Europe. And it came to me that come morning whole continents would erupt in a glorious symphony of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth: dog faced PM Angela Merkel and her Germanic hordes; Canadian Prime Minster Zoolander and the myriad citizens of his third world hamster in a wheel socialist shit hole; entire nations of stinky cowardly frogs, murderous Huns and Cossacks, pathetic impotent Swedes and Sprouts, various rag and towel heads; and lest we forget those one billion inscrutable Orientals who’ve been buying up our country for the past 20 years, all of them singing in one voice: we are the world, we are the disconsolate, waa! Because there’s only one thing that’s sweeter than the feeling that comes from good things happening to me and that’s other people’s fucking misery. So take solace Theo: you might not feel so good but there are many many other people who feel worse, and that’s always cause for celebration. And if you worry about all the concentration camp fantasmagories that terrify you about the new president just remember that nothing that he could ever imagine doing will ever reach the depths plumbed by Woodrow Wilson and they’re still naming public buildings after that guy. So god bless America and god bless President Donald J. Trump. Schwing!