So my final sports rant of the night is really more of a disbelief situation. I read the story about a basketball team in California that won their game 161-2. Yes that’s not a misprint, it was 104-1 at the half. The coach of the basketball team that won was suspended two games, for apparently poor sportsmanship, because of this monsterous blowout. Now reading further into the details of this story, the head coach of the winning team tried to impose a running clock in the third period but the officials denied his request; only to grant the request for the entire fourth quarter.

The coach also pulled his starters after halftime and did not play his signature press defense after the first half. The result is that in the second half his reserves outscored the other team 57-1. Now his comments were that if he had to do over, he would play his starters after the first period, and then he said he would have just not played the game at all.

Let me be clear, I think that this is the biggest case of overaction and bullshit I’ve seen in a while. So you punish the head coach because he has a team that was prepared and clearly shot the lights out, and you also penalize this team by not letting them have their head coach for a couple games, because they’re too good. Why the fuck didn’t they suspend the opposing team’s coach for putting such an attrious team on the court? Maybe he should be looked at for not properly preparing his kids to play this game.

Then he calls the coach of the winning team unethical because he didn’t bench his kids in the first period. I thought the point of playing competitive sports was to stop the opposing team from scoring and to do your best to score?? If you can’t do either of those things is someone really suppose to have mercy on you for blowing your doors off?

is it poor sportsmanship to have your best performance of the year? NO. Is it poor sportsmanship to remove your starters after the first half, institute a running clock, and try to institute it sooner? NO. I’m now getting sick of this overaction that somehow it is the responsibility of the winning team to not embarrass the losing team by not beating the shit out of them.

I was always told that if you can’t stop the other team, you have no right to bitch if you get your ass beat. Maybe that means you need to focus better in practice. Maybe you need to play better, and sometimes on a given night, the opposing team just has it going on and they’re gonna kick  your ass. But never should you penalize a coach for doing his job and for his team masterfully doing their job.