Brown vs. Bored of Education

Sometimes I really can't stand listening to sports pundits. Yesterday, Larry Brown was fired as the coach of the New York Knicks. Brown had been coaching the Detroit Pistons for a few years. They had won the NBA finals one year, and went to game 7 against San Antonio last year. Brown was basically fired from that job and decided to coach the Knicks.

The president of the Knicks is Isiah Thomas, former bad boy himself, from the Pistons. He's been an awful executive in the CBA, then for the Pacers, and now for the Knicks. Because of his track record, most people assume that Thomas was the problem and that owner, Jim Dolan, is too enamored of Thomas to ever get rid of him.

Commentators speculate like crazy about what Thomas must have been thinking, what Brown must have been thinking, what the interaction between Dolan and Thomas must have been. But come on. Any of those guys ever interview Thomas? Or Dolan? Or Larry Brown? Do they have inside sources? Or are they just making this crap up?

This is what some commentators get paid to do. They get paid to guess what things must have been like, even though they lack any inside information, and only rely on what they hear and read in the papers like everyone else. Rather than do any real research, they just make stuff up.

At least, Tony Kornheiser realized this, and decided that he'd sometimes talk about his wife or son or daughter or dog. Something he knew something about. He wouldn't sit and speculate wondering what a person might be like and doing so ad naseum.

Augh. And I let myself listen to it too. Sad.