Wrong Man, Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

Trading emblematic athletes is always a minor tragedy of sorts for the particular franchise and fan base losing them, but it's also a whiplash-inducing event for fans at large.  The sight of a great player who has long been synonymous with a team suddenly wearing different colors never sits right in the mind's eye.  Some visuals just rattle your insides with cognitive dissonance.  Joe Montana as a Kansas City Chief.  Steve Nash as a Los Angeles Laker.  And now, Ichiro Suzuki as a Yankee.

(Don't you feel just a little bit sick after reading that last sentence?) 


The departure is not surprising in and of itself.  Aside from Ichiro's rookie season when Seattle won a monumental 116 games, the Mariners have been perpetual occupants of the American League's sub-basement for pretty much his entire career.  Like Nash, who also left his longtime franchise at age 38 for greener pastures, it's entirely understandable that he opted to be dealt to a contender before twilight too fully dulls his transcendent (and already in considerable decline) skills.  For the M's, their superstar's diminishing value made it logical to trade now, giving their younger outfielders increased playing time and getting what they can in return.  Tactically, the trade made sense for both teams.  (Though there is more than a little incredulity regarding the fact that the Yanks somehow got back cash concerns as part of the deal.  What, they needed the money?  Really?  Someone should have told Brain Cashman to cram that particular stipulation up his ass.) 

I won't rehash all the angles of what acquiring Ichiro means for New York; read this piece on Grantland by Jonah Keri if you're interested in the details.  What I want to talk about is how monstrously unfair this all feels.  To Seattle, to the rest of the AL East, and to Yankee haters (read: right-thinking individuals) everywhere. Of course, this is a far cry from actual unfairness, which only exists in sports when a) someone cheats, b) there's a blown officiating call so egregious that it will be recalled with perfect clarity and anger decades hence or c) you live in Cleveland.  But this has the unmistakable feel of unfairness; the sickening and wretched sensation of karmic impropriety.  To paraphrase Chris Rock: "that s*** just ain't right!"

First, Seattle fans have really seen and suffered enough.  There was the unconscionable hijacking of their beloved Sonics, the metaphysical descendents of whom just played their first of what will likely be many thrilling NBA Finals.  They have the most likeable and exciting young core in the game, a once-in-a-generation talent in Kevin Durant, and a well-run organization who are apparently also luckier than is really OK.  (See: Perry Jones III, drafting of.)  Then there are the Seahawks.  Despite a respectable seven playoff appearances since 1999, and a great run of NFC West titles from '04-'07 Seattle has never been thought of as a great or even a semi-formidable team.  And of course their lone Super Bowl appearance, against the Steelers in 2005, saw them get phenomenally hosed by some of the worst officiating in NFL history.  Aside from Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch, who incidentally was recently arrested on a DUI charge and may be suspended for the beginning of the 2012 season, they haven't had a legitimately electrifying player since, well, ever.  (No disrespect meant to Matt Hasselbeck, who was a very good quarterback, but he didn't exactly make you gasp in awe with his play.)  Oh yes, and the Mariners are the only MLB franchise other than the Nationals to have never played in, much less won, a World Series.  For Seattle fans, watching their last great player leave town to don the pinstripes must be a nasty a kick in the teeth.  Surely no one begrudges him trying to find a contender after giving his soul and his considerable gifts to Seattle for so long, but running straight into the arms of the Evil Empire ... it's just so grimy.  Oh well, at least they have the Sounders.

And if you're another team in the AL East, you have to feel like North Texas playing Alabama last year.  You've already been blown out and utterly thrashed, and now they're just shamelessly running up the score.  Granted, Ichiro is not the devastating force he was four years ago, but he still improves a team that already has baseball's best record and a seven game division lead.  It's just piling on at this point.  You almost have to throw something.  Like the Gatorade jug in the dugout.  Or the towel.

For the Yankee haters out there, that feeling of abject disgust rising in your gut is comprised of the two components: firstly and obviously there's anger because of everything I just mentioned above and the fact that there has been no exemplar of "the rich get richer" in sports (and maybe life) quite so blatant and glaring as the Yankees.  And secondly, because most baseball fans genuinely like and admire Ichiro.  Yankees should not be genuinely liked and admired, they should be reviled.  Hell, I have the utmost respect for Derek Jeter's remarkable career and abilities, but his thinly veiled egomania and never-ending slew of bullsh*t cliches and platitudes make me positively ill every time they flash his smug, robotic "I'm just happy to be playing ball and gosh I hope I'm making my parents proud" smile across the TV screen.  Having a likeable guy, full of legitimate quirks and personality, makes it much more difficult to just kick back and hate the Yankees in peace.  Ichiro's mere presence on the roster has upset my and every other non-Yanks fan's baseball ethos.  New York's unassailable and inherent evil is ever so slightly diluted.  How dare they deny us the right to hate to the utmost by trading for a gem of a guy like Ichiro?!?!?  It's annoying, damnit!

Anyway, best to Mr. Suzuki with his new team, condolences to Seattle for yet another sucker-punch sporting occurrence, and here's hoping things don't get any worse for the rest of us.  I trust no one is stupid enough to believe it, but we can hope.

Oh, and as always, damn the Yankees.

Dig This Groove: Don't Trade Smoove!

Even within the context of a compressed and grueling 2011-2012 NBA season, the Atlanta Hawks have been especially susceptible to the injury bug. Al Horford is gone until the playoffs, Joe Johnson has missed significant time, and seemingly half our role players have been posting various ailment-related DNPs in the box scores of late. The sole bright spark in the midst of this chaos, the turbine that continues to power playoff hopes even as things are crumbling, has been Josh Smith.

Smoove has become a one-man arsenal of aggressive versatility recently, averaging 23.6 PPG, 11.2 RPG, 1.5 Blocks, and roughly 3 dimes and 1 steal over the last five games, and playing his usual ferocious defense. He is submitting these sublime performances for three reasons: first, there ain't anyone else healthy on the Hawks who can produce right now, so he's filling the gaps as best he can. Second, Smith is unquestionably playing with an Everest-sized chip on his shoulder after getting snubbed from the All-Star Game, and it's fueling his spree of sheer ballitude (shut up, it's a sorta-word) like a NOS feed pushing a modded-out street racer. And third: he could do this all the time if he so chose.

Unfortunately, this is also the Josh Smith who takes so many ill-advised long jumpers, which he can't hit but insists on jacking up anyway. This is the same guy who might as well be phoning it in from Thailand some nights he's so checked out. And now, it's the same guy who wants out of Atlanta.

A few days ago, Smith let it be known that he would very much like a trade before the March 15 deadline. This is both thoroughly unsurprising and perfectly understandable. The Hawks are mired in the perpetual make-the-playoffs-and-get-crushed-by-a-superior-team doldrums. They play a sluggish isolation style that minimizes the effectiveness and beauty of Smoove's game, which is flying up, down, and around the court and demolishing anyone in his path. Oh yes, and Josh Smith is the only player I've ever seen get booed by his home crowd every time he takes a shot more than five feet from the rim. I can see where the man might want a change of scenery.

Over at the bastion of internet awesomeness known as Hardwood Paroxysm, Noam Schiller wrote about the possibility of a Josh Smith trade, and that post included the following:

"Of course, [a trade] fits with us just fine. We hate Josh Smith in Atlanta, and we fully understand if he hates it as well."

Dear Noam, I am a huge fan of your work, but please, please shut up. Atlanta absolutely cannot trade Smoove. I might be the only one, but I most definitely do not hate him. I love Josh Smith; I treasure him, in fact. Because think about it: Josh Smith is almost all we have.

We're not getting out of this maddening, middling mediocrity until the financial albatross that is Joe Johnson's contract comes off the books. (And maybe not even then because the ASG ownership is a walking debacle and a waking nightmare.) Not only is Joe the most overpaid "star" in the game, he's also by far the least entertaining. I have never vehemently disliked watching a good Hawks player before, or any Hawks player, really, but I really, really, hate watching Joe Johnson play basketball. He is the most thoroughly "blah" twenty-a-night guy of all time. Then there's good ol' Al Horford, who when healthy is so very good at his job, but it's all dirty work and grind, the kind of thing you deeply appreciate but can't really admire. I love the man, but he'll never be the recipient of breathless superlatives. Jeff Teague's emergence has been ... uh ... nifty. Yup, nifty is about the right level of adjective for that. Nothing less, nothing more. Zaza Pachulia has one of the most enjoyable names to pronounce in the history of the game, but he's precisely adequate as a basketball player. T-Mac is fun when he gets cooking, but he's so old that it's a rare occasion at best.

Ivan Johnson is, well, freaking awesome. Give him more minutes, Larry. Please.

And then there's Smoove, who is the only player on our roster capable of owning the term "awe-inspiring." Yes, he's monumentally frustrating at times. Yes, those 19-footers make me alternately cringe and scream at the television. But I've reached a place of acceptance with Josh, because when he rams one home on the break or flies out of nowhere for a monster block, he's the only guy in the league who approaches (and occasionally surpasses) LeBron territory in terms of sheer "HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!?!" athleticism. He is, quite simply, a totally unique entity to behold on a basketball court. We can't lose him.

So please, please, ye gods of hoops, don't let the Hawks trade Josh Smith. Bland and uninspiring as they are, he is the only consistently fun thing about watching my team, and I will put up with every last terrible decision and slacker night in exchange for those moments when he shifts into that gear that only he possesses and makes the impossible look effortless. From my point of view, that's more than a fair trade.