The Ides of March

First things first, my original NCAA tournament Final Four teams are as follows:

UNC, Michigan State, Kentucky and the now departed Florida State. With the benefit of knowing prior to posting that FSU is out, I believe the winner of OSU v Cincy will advance to the Final Four. The matchup between Jared Sullinger and Yancy Gates (L) will probably decide that game.

The Champions League and the English Premier League battles are heating up. The matchups for the Champions League include AC Milan, leaders of the Italian Serie A, versus Barcelona, the defending champions of Europe. In all there are two teams from Spain, one from Germany, France and England, as well as a Cypriot team and the legendary Benfica of Portugal, a shadow of the team that set UCL standards over a generation ago.

What does it say though about the state of English football that they have only have one team-Chelsea, who have been playing middling football all season-in all European competitions?

I think its an aberration not a sign of a decline as some others have stated. The English game is still flush with money and talent, they just had a bad year. I still have Madrid winning the Champions League title this year, as well as La Liga. Chelsea, after ditching their first year coach Andres Villas-Boa, seemed to have more urgency in their recent games, and even Fernando Torres (R) is scoring again. They may yet prove a formidable foe in Europe this season.

Speaking of the English Premier League, thoughts and well wishes go out to Fabrice Muamba of Bolton. He collapsed from an apparent heart attack during an FA Cup game against Tottenham and had to be revived on the field. Let’s hope this 23 year old pulls through this.

NBA season is in full gear, and while my Knicks struggled early under Mike Antoni (no ‘D’!)I stand by my preseason thinking that this team-the deepest in the East-can compete with the other two top tier teams, Miami and Chicago.

Every radio and television announcer prefaced commentary about D’Antoni with ‘He’s a really nice guy, but…”

He was a nice guy who was incredibly stubborn in thinking his no defense, run and gun philosophy could win in the NBA, even though it never has. He fought against any changes to his style and failed to mesh the talent he never had his first two seasons over the last season and a half.

To most the kiss of death for him was when he would not change his style for Knicks star player, Carmelo Anthony.  To me the kiss of death was his interview last season where he defended his shoot in 7 seconds or less style and said coming within a game of going to the Finals is proof that it can be successful.

Nice guy or not, this team has tremendous talent which you need to win in the NBA, and with a coach that requires team defense, they are playing better already. I see them doing well in the playoffs.

On a more serious note, 17 year old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while walking home from a convenience store on the evening of February 26^th. His murderer has still not been arrested or charged with a crime.

Criminals are criminals and deserve to be dealt with appropriately by the law, but a 17 year old with no history of any violence or criminal activity who was doing nothing besides walking home should not be shot, harassed, intimidated or killed by some trigger happy wanna be cop. And I say this whether the victim is black, white, Asian, Hispanic or any other ethnic group. 

There is only one criminal in this tragedy. That criminal is his murderer, some dirtbag named George Zimmerman. He should be arrested, charged, convicted and sent to jail where he belongs. 

 The petition from MoveOn.org is here. Please sign and pass on.