Paul Pierce is NBA basketball player. His nickname is “The Truth.”
The other night, with his Washington Wizards down by three, Pierce made a miraculous last second, off-balance shot to tie the game and send it into overtime.
Except it didn’t.
Pierce released the shot one-tenth of a second too late. Had this game taken place a little over a decade ago when there was no instant replay in the NBA, the shot would have counted, the game would have continued and the Wizards might have won the series.
Instead, their season is over.
Either way, “The Truth” is one of the more appropriate nicknames in sports. After all, the truth is what we all seek, both as sports fans and as human beings. It’s why the penalties for cheating in sport have always been so severe. Just ask Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Pete Rose and Joe Jackson.
Tom Brady, Super-Bowl winning quarterback for the New England Patriots, was recently penalized for his role in DeflateGate, the accusation that he had a role in intentionally deflating footballs before the AFC Championship game to give his team an edge. Brady has since appealed that suspension.
That now means an NFL authority will review the information in the case to determine whether the suspension was just or heavy-handed.
Commissioner Roger Goodell will be the man that oversees that hearing. I’m guessing Brady is currently second-guessing his decision to appeal.
Oh to be a fly on the wall during that meeting. I joked on Twitter the other evening that if the NFL charged $39.99 for a pay-per-view event that would bring us inside that meeting, how many of us would pay it… if we were guaranteed the truth?
Most of us could probably give a crap whether Brady and Co. deflated a batch of footballs one pound per square inch. Heck, we deal with our athletes drinking, driving, gambling, speeding, drug-abusing, womanizing, shooting, fighting and just not trying, so who the hell cares if the NFL’s pretty boy took a pin to a football for an extra second or two. It seems to be on the relatively low end of the scumbag spectrum.
Or maybe it’s not so much the truth we want in this case as it is to see two men that make twenty million dollars a year each waste their time talking about something that in the grand scheme of things matters very little, like those ‘constructive’ work meeting s we all take place in that we know lead to absolutely nothing. Then we could bitch about how we wasted forty bucks just like we did with the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight, except that cost a helluva lot more than forty bucks.
Either way, the DeflateGate saga goes on. Brady will meet with Goodell and nothing will happen. Goodell will secretly tell Brady to behave and that will be that. They will then each answer media questions in their own slick way that will leave us wondering what the hell happened in that meeting and exactly how much cover-up goes on behind closed doors.
And in a few days, we’ll go on with our lives, waiting for the next buzzer beater and scandal to keep us entertained, always searching for the truth and only occasionally finding it.
There’s no second guessing the CBA ( collective bargaining agreement) provides him with the right to appeal . The Wells’ Report itself, is filled with supposition and innuendos as to who might have done something wrong, but there is no clear evidence to single out a player or players as being the guilty culprit.
This situation is one of the NFL’s own making with their ongoing incompetency , and the very fact the protocols they have in place are so fu#king asinine and outdated. Game official don’t check the balls until the game itself has began and they don’t do so , during the interval between either halves of a game . Yet, I hear no one mentioning that , other belly aching about the Patriots cheating. At all levels of professional sports there is cheating and those who get caught should be punished to the full extent of the rules provided . But as we all know Goodell’s bark is worse than his bite . I mean a $1 million fine to the Patriots is like pi#sing in a bucket to see if a ripple is made.
The Patriots’ franchise grosses more from a single regular season game and that is meant to be some sort of meaningful penalty ? Only some apathetic #sshole would believe that to be true , much less their losing upcoming draft picks . This is what makes the whole situation so f$#king comedic, while we have idiotic analysis of this all .
Christine Brennan of USA Today should stick with reporting on women’s sports , than providing her readers with lame @ss editorials as to how bad the Patriots have been . Where was her dumb @ss concerning the misdeeds of MLB players, much less the antics of Greg Hardy , Ray McDonald , Ray Rice , Adrian Peterson , Donte’ Stallworth and the likes of either Rich De Vos , Mark Jackson , Lance Armstrong , and Donald Sterling ? Such damn hypocrisy , rather than actually seeking to really delve deep into the fact , this has been an ongoing issue not just within the NFL but across the landscape of collegiate and professional sports .
There’s no rules in a knife fight!
Now which one is Goodell and which one is Brady?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqhm36sjVE
That call was Paul Pierce’s punishment for all those years if being a Celtic.
The truth is I watched the movie Pitch Perfect with my family (it’s actually pretty funny) then checked out the Clippers laying a total egg against the Rockets. I’m going with the Warriors and Cavs at this point but I think Houston and Atlanta can make some noise.
Al…
As a Patriots fan, how do you feel? Are you disgusted, embarrassed or could you give a damn?
And I’m wondering. If the NFL had to do it all over again, and they had the chance to sweep this entire story under the rug, guaranteed that no one would ever find out, do you think they would?
Good one, Dwin.
I’m ashamed to admit this but I don’t think I’ve seen that flick in its entirety.
I do believe I’m due for a viewing.
Don’t be bitter, Dub, just ’cause you have another year or two of Kobe drama.
I’m gonna take the favorites in those two series, Moose.
And then it’ll be LeBron versus the Splash Brothers in the Finals.
Will it be another Finals loss for the great Bron Bron?
great article as usual chumpy
not sure people, er, sports fans want to know the truth
not because they can’t handle it [apologies to mr nicholson], but because they don’t want to face it
sports is where many of us go to escape the real world
because many of us played the sports we watch, we can somehow become vicariously involved
you wont hear a cubs fan say “boy the cubs looked great last night”
but they will say “boy we kicked those bums asses last night!”
giants fans didn’t want to know barry bonds cheated
yankee fans didn’t want to know about clemens
dodger fans about manny
and so on, and so on
no, this is where we come to get away from that bullshit
unfortunately, over the past couple decades it’s become a case of art [sports] imitating life
people whined and cried when the yankees of the late 1990’s/early 2000’s literally bought several world series titles
but that was okay
because they did it fair and square by utilizing their immense resources to acquire the best teams money could buy
so take away reggie bush’s heisman, lance armstrong’s tour de france titles and whatever you want
but you can never strip us of our memories
rambling a bit but i’m tired…
Chris
Why should I be embarrassed by the Patriots ?
I mean , are the Saints’ fans embarrassed by the Bounty-Gate Scandal ? Are the Niners’ fans embarrassed by the actions of Aldon Smith and Ray McDonald ? Are NFL fans embarrassed by the fact , Roger Goodell remains a ###king #sshole ? The NFL Network still had Darren Sharper on their payroll even when it came to light about the first two rape allegations , with the former Saints’ player suggesting he was innocent of all allegations . Now he’s copped to a plea deal for four sexual assaults .
Ask me a question that really matters because it’s not as if the NFL has any real integrity to it at all . Like I have repeatedly told you , if the league is going to make an example of a franchise then they ought to throw the book at them and not just treat them as if they’re scolding a child . The NFL , like the Justice System ____ remains too frigging soft .
I guess I both agree and disagree, Irish, particularly when it comes to steroids in baseball.
At this point, we all just assume the sport was dirty. I’m not to sure it matters at this point who used and who didn’t. But the point is baseball has done absolutely nothing to give us any sort of closure. And you get the impression they never will.
So do we just go on guessing and pretending it never happened with guys like Bonds, Clemens and the like out of the Hall? And what of the users already in the Hall, allegedly.
Baseball got themselves into this mess. They need to get themselves out.