If you can't beat them , change the rules.
That's what the NBA has done heading into the start of the regular season, and when LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers open up against the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday, James's signature "crab dribble" will be legalized, formally.
Now it is formally kosher for players to take two steps after they gather the ball, instead of landing on both feet and being allow only one step to establish the pivot foot. NBA officials hadn't enforced the rule, as it was, for a generation. James's power and fluidity means he often lands on one foot, leaps with his second - and then takes another to establish his pivot. He's done it since high school, and an infraction has been called only irregularly.
Cuban defector
Aroldis Chapman, a 21-year-old left-hander, will meet with teams this week, but the Toronto Blue Jays will not be one of them.
"We don't have enough background and scouting looks to make a proper offer," Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos wrote in an e-mail message yesterday. "Going forward, these will be the types of things we will be more pro-active with. I think the way the Red Sox pursued Dice-K (Daisuke Matsuzaka) is a great model. They were doing homework on him for years.
"Very difficult to get into a bidding war on a player you don't have complete information on."
McGwire back in dugout
For those of us who have continued to vote for Mark McGwire on our Hall of Fame ballot, today's expected announcement that he will be the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach is welcomed. McGwire has worked with the Cardinals' Matt Holliday and Skip Schumacher on an informal basis during the off-season and his return is said to be a condition of Tony La Russa's return as manager.
This is a necessary first step in McGwire's repatriation and should signal a new maturity in discussion of the Steroid Era.
The Week Ahead in Hockey Stupidity
Darcy Tucker won't accompany the Colorado Avalanche on their four-game swing through Western Canada despite being released from hospital after sustaining a concussion on a hit from behind by the Carolina Hurricanes Tuomo Ruttu. Saturday, the Philadelphia Flyers Mike Richards put David Booth of the Florida Panthers in hospital with a head shot and will not be suspended by discipline czar Colin Campbell. And who knows what goodies the NHL Players' Association has planned?
It speaks volumes that the players asked Donald Fehr to excuse himself from the conference call in which they went from one cabal to another. The NHLPA is destined to become a lapdog of ownership, just like the NFL and NBA associations, as long as it listens to former players and lawyers instead of people who have actually negotiated a collective agreement. Enjoy that escrow tax, fellas.
Dwayne DeRosario
should be allowed to take part in Toronto FC's postmortem.
"When you look around this change room, you see quality," the Scarborough, Ont., Toronto native, said Saturday. "But that's only one part of it. You have to have that will to want to make a difference. Even with the (substitutes). When they came on, was there a change in the game? No. There has to be that desire to make some type of impact or change in the flow. But we just don't have that."
Whether or not manager of soccer Mo Johnston is the man to effect change is, to borrow a phrase, a "50-50 ball." I think he talks a good game, that's all.
Garbage Time
According to the Boston Globe, former Blue Jays general manger J.P. Ricciardi has a "standing offer" to join the Red Sox next season … Gillingham forward Simeon Jackson, a Canadian international born in Jamaica and raised in Mississauga, will be a target for Premiership teams during the January transfer window with Blackburn said to be readying a £3-million ($5.15-million Canadian) move for the League One starlet … 1.5-billion (U.S.) doesn't get you much. The New York Times says the Yankees have started to wonder about mysterious cracks on the ramps at the new Yankee Stadium after owners involved in formulating the concrete mix were indicted on charges they faked or failed to perform some required tests.