I wrote recently on an obscure website after last night’s disastrous victory over DePaul that
Mike “Coach Third Choice” Anderson has saved his job. This makes me very happy, because I root for St John’s to lose every game and St John’s will struggle to achieve mediocrity for as long as he’s coach.
A fan responded:
Why is this reason for celebration? We have to now go through another shit year next year with no tangible hope to be competitive and make the tournament in the near future. The goal this season was always to get Anderson fired as he continues to hold back the program. As far as I am concerned, the season was a failure because we did not achieve that goal.
Dear fan
Your assessment of Mike Anderson’s once and future tenure at St John’s is spot on: kudos. That said, the reason that Mike Cragg’s unwarranted extension of Mike “Perpetual Seventh Place” Anderson is a reason for celebration is because I hate St John’s basketball and despise St John’s basketball fans. I was for most of my lifetime a die-hard St John’s fan and in fact had a highly successful blog that examined in minute detail the team’s fortunes. Perhaps you heard of it: it comprised the best sports writing to come out of New York City since Red Smith. Unfortunately the respect and affection I felt for the program – and for the pantheon of greats who wore a St John’s uniform of whom I doubt you’ve ever heard: George Johnson, Glen Williams, David Russell, Reggie Carter, Boo Harvey, Walter Berry, Malik Sealy, Paul Berwanger and their ilk – has been beaten out of me. Because rooting for St John’s is like betting on the Indians in a John Wayne movie: there’s no money in it.
It was very early in the Anderson years that things changed for me – and admittedly my feelings had a lot to do with the ignominious firing of the great Chris Mullin by shovel faced moron Mike Cragg and the subsequent embarrassing coaching search, where first Cragg was played for an imbecile by the lesser Hurley brother Bobby and then played for a fool by a midwestern mediocrity called Porter Moser and then played for a complete fool by alleged basketball coach Jeff Capel, who advised Cragg that washed up never-was “Iron Mike” Anderson – and what kind of moron gives himself a nickname like that – would be a “home run,” Anderson being a home run in the same way that a ground out to short is a triple. Because Mike Anderson stinks and that’s me being uncharacteristically charitable. Because Anderson is a hack and a buffoon. Coach Third Choice is currently (approximately, because I can’t be arsed to go back and update this statistic, which I looked up last week) 26–40 (.40) in the BE coaching against hacks like floor slapping dope Steve Wojowhatshisname, and Pat “Choke” Ewing and Lavall Jordan and has never made the post season. Whereas the universally reviled Norm Roberts was 32–70 (.31) in the BE coaching against Rick Pitino, and Jims Calhoun and Boeheim, and Bob “do you know who I am” Huggins; the same Norm Roberts who made two post seasons in six years and recruited the best St John’s team in recent memory. Which seems about a wash to me.
<interlude>
One of the things the desperate no-hopers at the internet cesspool formerly known as redman dot com often have recourse to when discussing Iron Mike’s evident to everyone but his ball-washers flaws is his character: he is, they say, “classy.” Leave aside that those mutts wouldn’t recognize class if a class of classicists held a master class on The Theory of the Leisure Class in their colons. (And note that as I usually caution, if someone from RDC mentions “class” in your presence you should check to make sure you still have both your kidneys.) Pardon me, but what exactly is classy about Mike Anderson? Is it the way he blames everyone else for his failures? Is it the way he dog-houses kids and buries them on the bench? Is it his extensive collection of sweat clothes? His soul patch? I mean, I could spend pages describing Mike Anderson and the word “classy” wouldn’t occur to me. But then, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary.
</interlude>
So now I root against St John’s. My most fervent wish is that St John’s loses every game where the team flight does not crash into a mountain. And the distress of people like you – people who root for St John’s to win – makes it all the more betterer: your disappointment is to me sweet a elixir. From the whinging of paunchy geriatric one foot in the grave red and white club members riding the subway home in their stupid St John’s gear to the tears of disappointment shed by the grandchildren they have chosen to subject to decades of disappointment like those I’ve endured as a St John’s fan, all of it is to me delicious: I am drunk on your tears.
And so another season in the books, it being early March before Selection Sunday, on which Sunday St John’s fans will anxiously await the announcement of the NIT bracket, because another SJU season is well over. Welcome to the autopsy.
As have been most St John’s years since around 1990 this one was a failure; frustrated fans will question the absence of the word “abject” preceding failure in that sentence; and the histrionics among you will call it humiliating rather than abject. But longtime fans know that as humiliations go this one was lesser than countless others SJU has endured through the decades.
SJU entered the season on the come (wait for it), returning the presumptive BE player of the year Julian Champagnie, freshman of the year turned sophomore Posh Alexander, and reigning Coach of the Year Iron Mike Anderson. Preseason it seemed like this just might be the year that wait till next year bums came true, finally justifying the annual October delusions of the ignorant fans who inhabit the internet sewer known as redmandotcom (RDC). Instead, SJU left the season having been cummed on. (And there’s the pay-off: entered on the come, left cummed on. Your welcum.) I’d have said butkaked but besides ruining the joke that would have befuddled the geriatrics at RDC: Paultzman would change his forum avatar to some oriental whore being showered in sperm and Paul would add a Japanese banner to the site and bloviating gasbag LawManFan (LMF) would write a tight 7000 words on why Mikes Anderson and Cragg are just the right guys to lead the program through vesuvian fountains of jizm and then stupid would pile upon stupider and even stupider until the thread was locked by some drama-queen moderator for being off-topic relative to posts about the nuanced virtues of various Suffolk County fine dining restaurants that put Miracle Whip on lobster. And we wouldn’t want that.
<Interlude the first>
You have to hand it to the redmandot dumbers. They’re currently in the midst of a three-month 1700 post thread trying to determine whether Mike Anderson – 22-33 in conference, no post season appearances after three years – is “the guy.” Note to those dopes: he’s not. Here for example is the aforementioned gaseous blowhard LawManFan’s take from a couple of months ago:
I am completely satisfied that the program is in the best hands it has been in for over 20 years with A.D. Cragg and Coach Anderson… It seems to me that this staff has a clear idea of how they want to build the program and how each season fits into that plan [and] Anderson seems to have a clear vision of what sort of players he wants to add to the program, how to develop them, and what sacrifices he needs to make to [bring] in players with fewer stars next to their name and [turn] them into studs in Year 2 or 3.
Did you get that? Mike Anderson has a “clear vision” of the “sacrifices” he needs to make to “bring in players with fewer stars,” which strategy encompasses a seventh-place year three finish as an integral part of a plan carefully crafted to people St John’s with burgeoning 2-star studs who will return SJU to its rightful place in the college basketball landscape.
The stupid, it burns.
Even when slapped in the face by reality – the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist as the kids say – poor LMF still doesn’t get it. Here’s him now:
The story of the season is that the team just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… Team wound up with a whole lot of close losses because it just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… Hopefully next season will offer a more well-rounded roster that will get over the hump
TLDR: this team “just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump.”
But why belabor this. Me, I’m gonna go get the papers, get the papers.
</interlude the first>
Speaking of Miracle Whip, this year SJU feasted on preseason cupcakes (albeit some of the gnosh comprising bitten nails), beat two teams it wasn’t expected to – Seton Hall fresh off losing its best player and a Xavier team in the midst of its usual end of season collapse – and otherwise sucked, losing several it should have won in comical fashion, including a humiliating loss to Pitt, which Pitt is the same Pitt coached by the same Jeff Capel who assured shovel-faced hack AD Mike Cragg that hiring the then recently-fired Mike Anderson was a “homerun,” the obvious question being a homerun for which, Pitt or Saint John’s. All of which culminating in a last second loss in the BE tournament to Villanova, in a game in which St John’s blew a 17-point second-half lead on their world’s most famous arena, purportedly their home court.
TLDR: this year SJU beat no one of consequence and lost to everyone of consequence.
I’d like to say that I can’t imagine the disappointment that St John’s fans feel after this season, but I can, having until recently been one. I can absolutely understand your disappointment. Which makes my delight in your suffering even more so, empathy being a whole other matter.
Instead of your fanboi distress consider my anti-fan elation: having grown finally to hate SJU I actively root for them to lose every game where the team flight hasn’t plowed into a mountain, which conflagration would leave me erect. This year SJU squeaked by various preseason patsies – scheduled to preserve Iron Mike’s sole accomplishment, his precious he’s never had a losing season streak, which shut up, nobody cares – lost to every out of conference major team it played (Kansas, Indiana and Pitt) and stunk in conference (thank god for Georgetown amirite? shout out to Butler), losing winnable games in every absurd which way imaginable. For us haters – and we are st john’s legion – this season couldn’t have been sweeter. Add to that fructuous mix Mike Schrewshrenski’s exit from Cameron over the weekend past and this might be the most enjoyable CBB season I’ve experienced since Marcus Hatten last passed a drug test. Because this year – much as I predicted – Saint John’s was an abomination, nightly ill-prepared and awful. They can’t shoot – from the floor, from the free throw line or from three – they don’t rebound, and their half-court games both defensive and offensive are laughable. And all of this landing firmly on the womanly shoulders of Mike “Home Run” Anderson, whose complete lack of strategic and situational awareness belies a peculiar misunderstanding of the rudiments of basketball, a sport he purports to coach.
TLDR: Mike Anderson stinks – he’s a hack strategist with a fugazi system designed to not get the best out of his mediocre recruits – and St John’s will stink for as long as he’s coach.
Speaking of awful recruiting, imagine you’re a coddled five-star teenage athlete with dreams of playing in the NBA and Mike Anderson and his nephew or whoever that guy who sits next to him on the bench is come to your house to try to convince you and your handlers that the road to Springfield starts with playing in a no-trick pony system that emphasizes a full-court helter-skelter defense that no one above middle-school AAU plays, which is one that doesn’t flatter your talent, or your skills, or your ambition. Look what I did for Julian Champagnie MA could say: I took him from a near-certain second round NBA pick with a guaranteed contract and coached him up into the Croatian lottery. Question: who’s going to sign up for that? Answer: Montez Mathis. Everyone else is going to Seton Hall.
Because Mike Anderson’s system isn’t designed to benefit his players, it’s designed to flatter Mike Anderson: when St John’s wins a game it’s because of Mike’s skillful implementation of 40-minutes of hell and when SJ loses it’s because his players didn’t want it enough or get after it enough and ended up leaving something out on the floor. Either that or it was the refs fault or the sun was shining in Iron Mike’s eyes. The other day he said after an eight point loss that “the free throw [was] the big difference” in a game with a six free throw differential where his players missed six free throws. I’d say you couldn’t make this guy up but it turns out you wouldn’t have to.
<interlude the second>
One of the things the no-hopers at RDC often have recourse to when discussing Iron Mike’s evident to everyone but his ball-washers flaws is his character: he is, they say, “classy.” Leave aside that those mutts wouldn’t recognize class if a class of classicists held a master class on The Theory of the Leisure Class in their colons. (And note that as I usually caution, if someone from RDC mentions “class” in your presence you should check to make sure you still have both your kidneys.) Pardon me, but what exactly is classy about Mike Anderson? Is it the way he blames everyone else for his failures? Is it the way he dog-houses kids and buries them on the bench? Is it his extensive collection of sweat clothes? I mean, I could spend pages describing Mike Anderson and the word “classy” wouldn’t occur to me. But then, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary.
</interlude the second>
I read on Twitter some fan talking about St John’s being a sleeping giant needing only Rick Pitino to awaken it, this being a sentiment often heard among delusional St John’s followers. Me, if I’m Rick Pitino – and who’s to say I’m not – the crowning achievement of my career would be telling St John’s to go fuck itself when it comes hat in hand begging me to resurrect its moribund program. I mean sure, Pitino seems like a guy who’s not adverse to sloppy seconds or even thirds, but even he must have some sort of minimal standards.) Newsflash to those dopes: St John’s is not a sleeping giant. St John’s is a fat bald old man in a red and white sweater lying in a hospital bed with a DNR tag hanging from his toe. And @MikeCraggSJU is Dr. Kevorkian.
For Cragg to fire Anderson at this point – and Anderson needs to go, his shitiosity is evident to anyone with four functioning sense of five – he’d have to admit to the sort of incompetence that renders him unfit for the first real job he’s had in his adult life. He’d have to resign in disgrace and that’s not happening: bunglers like Cragg don’t fall on their swords, if they did they’d never have gotten to where they’re at. Instead he’ll invest in diversity training and trans-inclusive initiatives and tweet about the girls fencing team and do anything else to distract from the fact that he’s failed at his only real job, which was to return to excellence to the flagship program of a failing commuter university in a crumbling suburb of dying city.
Exit question re Cragg: does anyone believe he was more disappointed by St John’s season-ending losses to Marquette and Villanova than he was by Coach K losing the final home game of his career, and to North Carolina no less. Which event do you think moved Mike Cragg more: seeing Screwskrekci weeping like a big girl’s blouse upon entering Cameron for the last time in front of an emotional crowd comprising his former players aka a herd of NBA draft busts or watching Julian Champagnie and Posh Alexander and Aaron Wheeler play their last games in St John’s uniforms. (And what stupid uniforms the new uniforms are – I don’t doubt that Cragg called Cherokee Parks for advice on the design.) Because I know which way I’m leaning. And it’s not south.
<interlude the third, comprising random LMF stories>
1. LMF once announced that he was going to be coaching a team of middle schoolers and among the five things he was going to make sure they learned was the 2-3 zone. I opined that if he was going to be teaching young people basketball – a subject about which he knows fuck-all – the first thing he should teach them was how to lose gracefully. That comment was deleted by a moderator, presumably because I was being a meanie acting without class. I suspect the moderator was LMF, but the site has about as many moderators as it has regular posters, so it’s hard to be sure. My current favorite is the guy who sits with his finger hovering over the button so he can lock the game thread just as the buzzer sounds. Because RDC is a fetid cesspool, sure, but at least it’s neat.
2. A couple of years ago during the off-season LMF created March Madness type bracket on RDC that pitted poster against poster in a contest relative to their rhetorical skills and basketball knowledge. Your humble narrator went out in the first round. (Which perhaps explains my bitterness.) Whereas LMF, being a modest sort, had himself losing a tough one in the semi-finals to the eventual champion. Poor LMF: he just couldn’t get over the hump, get over the hump.
</interlude the third, comprising random LMF stories>
Tradition dictates that at this point in the post-mortum we grade the players, but who cares, none of them were very good and I doubt that between graduation and attrition any of them will be here next year anyway. Still:
Julian Champagnie seems like a nice kid – some might say classy – but last night’s airball with the game on the line epitomizes his career. He reminds me of no one so much as Kyle Cuffe, albeit softer. He’s the poster boy for players who came back for one more year when taking the money that was on the table was a much better option. Good luck in Serbia. Soriano is softer than Champagnie. (I bet you wouldn’t say that to his face, internet tough guy. No, I wouldn’t, he’s enormous. Doesn’t make me wrong though.) I like Wusu, he’s a good kid, but he’s crazy, he’s a cowboy, he’s got too much to prove. You gotta watch out for kids like this. (Prediction: Wusu has a Dom Pointer-esque senior year.) Montez Mathis is charitably described as a liability. And other than Wheeler the bench of misfit toys is so bad that Anderson’s scared to put them in the game. Posh I love, how can you not, but he’s always hurt and he’s always going to be hurt because of his size and the way he plays. I wouldn’t be surprised if he enter the portal and you shouldn’t be either. Although maybe he comes back, maybe he likes being a 2-guard who comes off the bench, who knows.
TLDR: to the extent that St John’s has “studs” they’re leaving and next year the rebuild starts once again.
And so that’s that. Another failed basketball season and all that’s left to look forward to now is the Triple Crown, after which the great sports desert looms. As I always say at this juncture: here’s to the losers. See you in the funny papers.
Hello sports fans. I hope you’re enjoying this psyops operation designed by the Davos Bilderburg one world government crowd to see how much shit Americans will eat in exchange for a government check and a false sense of security. Which evidently in your case is quite a bit. Don’t wear a mask, wear a mask, hide under your beds, put on your tin foil hat, take off your tin foil hat, it’s quite a hoot. For the record Missus fun and I are fine and in fact my life hasn’t changed almost in the slightest: I’ve been social distancing since the early 90s. The only blip on the radar is that the missus has been home from work for four months and it turns out that I’m not a very good 24 hour a day husband. I’m more of like a two hours in the morning four hours in the evening kind of good husband. Still, I’ve managed not to strangle her and deposit her dismembered body parts off I-88 near the Auriesville shrine, so there’s that.
Anyhoo, I thought to post my thoughts about LJ Figueroa’s decision to enter the transfer portal, and especially after reading the hysterical commentary by the herd of Karens over at Redman dot dumb, who are to nearly a woman engaging in slander and wild conspiracy theories, at least those who haven’t taken to the divan with smelling salts. I nearly created an account for the sole purpose of calling them all cunts but then I remembered I had this stupid blog and that I could call them cunts here, hence this post. Herewith is a sample of their measured classy (classy is their favorite word, especially when it comes to describing themselves) commentary.
+++
a scumbag move
a poor move by Figueroa and really shifty
terrible form by Figueroa.
LJ Figueroa just strung us along
Being classy (ed note: like CTC) doesnt get you anywhere in this world
good riddance to Figueroa
Good riddance
there’s very much something sleezy going on in this situation, LJ probably wants a little cash
Figgy is selfishly trying to enhance his prospects of a pro career while st johns is concerned with team play.
LJ hung us out to dry
LJ screwed the staff and SJU
he had enough time to figure out which tampering program was the best fit
LJ had the keys to the City
Listening to someone in Nebraska?
they’ll be much better off without him.
total screw job, plain and simple!!!
$$$’s have got to be in the picture
Cut ties, no waiver granted, good luck in Europe.
a disservice to both himself as well as the program
LJ handled this poorly
never liked his game would not consider him a premiere player, anyone is expendable.
a bad basketball player
It looks almost spiteful at this point.
addition by subtraction
addition by subtraction
addition by subtraction
addition by subtraction
+++
So sayeth the worst of the worst most ignorant fan base in all of sports.
Let me tell you what really happened.
Figueroa didn’t want to come back last year but had no shot at getting drafted and didn’t want to transfer and sit out so he came back to play for coach third choice. He had a disappointing year in a system that does not flatter his talents, on a team that by all metrics sucked. Knowing that he was in for more of the same, after the season ended he took enough credits so that he could graduate this spring and therefore transfer without sitting out. Because again, he had no shot at getting drafted. On May 19 2020, finals ended. A week later LJF got his grades, found out he passed all his courses and was a college graduate. Being a college graduate he can be a graduate transfer in basketball, which means he did not have to sit out a year. A day or two later on May 26 2020, he put his name in the transfer portal. Buh bye.
Now, that’s what happened. You can believe it or you can believe that LJF is a shifty back stabbing scumbag who’s looking to get paid ba$ed upon advice from Matt Abdelma$$ih. Which if you believe that no doubt you believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, which makes something of a prize rube.
“Well,” said kernel #1, the top most kernel in a pile of shit the next day after a hearty meal of corn on the cob, “you know who I don’t like, it’s that guy fun, who hasn’t shit in this toilet in two years.”
“Exactly,” said kernel #2, “I often go and smell the excrement in the toilet in which fun shits now since he stopped shitting in this toilet, which was so wretched that he couldn’t bear to shit in it any more. I disapprove of his shits there and am happy he doesn’t shit here any more.”
“Just so,” said kernel number three, “I’ve examined fun’s shit closely. I’ve rubbed it between my fingers and tasted it and even once used it for lube when I rubbed my tiny little half hard cock and it made a very dissatisfactory lube and moreover I disapprove of the texture and color of fun’s shit. Let me come right out and say it having studied fun’s shit closely: fun’s shit stinks. I’m glad that fun no longer shits in this toilet, this toilet smells so much better now.”
“Right ons jive turkey,” said kernels number four, “y’all’s knows that I’s be’s quites happy’s that fun’s shit don’ts be here’s no mo, becuz his shits not righteous fashitizzle. And Huggy bear’s agrees! Psyche!”
“Me too,” said kernel #5, “fun’s shits have so much ruined other terlets for me that I only shit here now.”
“Who are these fucking retards,” fun said when contacted by a fan, “I couldn’t pick one of these dopes out of a line up. And even if I could, why are they so fascinated with my shit? Which by the way, smells delightful.”
The center cannot hold. And neither can the point guard.
