New York Sports..........the Good, the Bad, the Knicks

Okay, let's start with the good...........

Reports from ESPN are that the Yanks are willing to add Phil Hughes to the deal for Johan Santana. Right now, the deal would be Hughes, Melky Cabrera, and another second tier prospect. It wouldn't shock me if the Yanks added a second, second tier prospect in just to get the deal done.

This is a good trade for the Yanks for a variety of reasons. First, Joba "The Hut" Chamberlain proved last year that he is the creamy filling in the oreo, not Hughes. I think Hughes can still be a very, very good pitcher with number 1 quality stuff, but I think Chamberlain has the chance to be special. He can be the next BIG TIME pitcher, the type of guy whose name trancends the sport, and he was such a HUGE plus for the Yanks last year, such a cult icon right off the bat, you can't trade him. He is the next big, Yankee homegrown player.

Hughes will be good, but, legitimately, how much better could he ever be than Santana? Chances are he will never be AS good. Santana is 28. He is a lefty. He has a career 1.17 ERA in Yankee Stadium. He has playoff experience and has good numbers in those situations. He's a strikeout pitcher. He's durable. He pitches with his legs, not his arm. He has a plus fastball but the best changeup in the game, meaning that, in 7 years, when the zip on the fastball has come off, he will be able to transition nicely into Pedro Martinez land where he just knows how to pitch. He is the best pitcher in the game today and there is little chance the future "best pitcher in the game" will become available. And, to top it all off, it appears the Red Sox are the second team in this race and the Yanks CANNOT let him go to the Red Sox. It would give them too much of an advantage in the pitching department.

What about Melky?

I have been a HUGE Melky fan; moreso than a lot of people. I love the kid and the energy he brings to the game, and I honestly believe he can be a very productive offensive player (not great but productive). However, Melky isn't good enough to hold a deal for the best pitcher in baseball. You have to be willing to let him go. The Yanks can sign an Aaron Rowand or even an Andruw Jones, or they can bring up Bret Gardner and let him play next year. There has been talk of moving Damon back to CF, which is move I would be against, but the point is there are options if you lose Melky. You can replace him. This isn't like losing Cano where his offense at the position would be almost impossible to replace. Melky just isn't that caliber of talent.

Plus, while the Yanks don't have a tremendous amount of top tier position player prospects, their BIG young guys all seem to be center fielders. Jose Tabata may move to left or right, but right now the teenage phenom is a center fielder. Austin Jackson is looking everyday like a Tori Hunter type of player, and is rocketing up the minor leagues. He is a center fielder. And Gardner is someone people ironically compare to a Aaron Rowand. He's a center fielder. They can replace Melky in house. It doesn't mean losing him won't hurt, but when you weigh the team with him or with Santana, it is by far more formidable with Santana.

If the Yanks can make this deal and convince Pettite to return, they are set. It would give them a rotation of Santana, Pettite, Wang, Chamberlain, Mussina with Ian Kennedy waiting in the wings as the sixth starter. It would be the best rotation in baseball and, I have to believe that, unless the Red Sox are ready to relinquish both Ellsbury AND Buckholtz (they haven't even considered either one right now) the Yanks will make this deal happen.

Now, let's talk about the bad...............

I have never been a big Eli Manning fan. I just never saw the talent a drunk, tripping Ernie Acorsi evidently saw. Everything about him screams "ahhhh". There's nothing special about him. But, I always thought that, given time, Eli would become a good QB. Maybe not a great one, but at least a good one. He might have a bad day, but most days would be good, and some days would be great. I thought that would be his eventual landing place.

It has been almost three full years; almost four years total now. Can anyone truthfully say that Eli has made ANY true strides towards getting better? Look at it this way; less than a year into his NFL career, what were the major, MAJOR criticisms of Eli? He threw too many interceptions: This year, he has thrown 16 TDs and thrown 15 INTS. He isn't consistent enough. This year, he has a passer rating of 75, up only slightly over his career average of 73.6. He overthrows WAY too many open receivers. He has a completion percentage of 58 this year, which is slightly up from his career average of 55. He tends to start off great and then fall off dramatically in the second half of the season. Starting with a "lucky" win over the horrid Miami Dolphins, Eli has gone two and two with three TD's and six INTS. He doesn't seem to inspire his team and his body language is almost always negative. During his last 4 INT game, Eli looked like a small child just scolded by his little league coach. There was no passion or fire, simply a downtroden young man who seems to only be playing football because it is expected of him.

The point is that, after nearly four years in the league and three years directly under center for every game, one has to ask themself whether Eli will ever become a bonafide QB in this league. Considering how aweful QBs are in this league today, Eli will never be expendable. There just aren't enough quality quarterbacks to justify moving Eli. But not being bad enough to be let go is very different than being good enough to help lead a team to a championship.

Here's what it comes down to; teams with mediocre QBs can win if they have exceptional players or talent at other positions. If the team has an incredible defense, they only need a QB who can manage a game and an offense. If a team has an amazing running back, they can win with a QB that just needs to keep a defense honest. But if a team doesn't have those elements, they need a QB that can LEAD the team to victory. That doesn't mean only a team with an elite QB can win. That would pretty much mean that only the Pats and the Colts could win each year. But you better have a QB the caliber of Big Ben or Drew Brees or Carson Palmer or Donovan McNabb in order to win, or an excptional athlete with an intagible quality like Vince Young to win. Eli is just another run-of-the-mill QB, another guy who, when thrown up against the Tony Romo's and Brett Favre's of the world, looks small and out of his league. The Giants aren't good enough to overcome that. They need more from Eli than simply "managing" a game. They need more than just an "average" quarterback. They need someone who can win a few games all by himself, when the other parts of the team aren't working. Eli hasn't shown he can do that, and in year four of his career you have to wonder whether he ever, ever will. I mean, exactly WHEN does he stop being a young, learning QB? Year seven? Year ten? is that about the time we can expect him to make the "leap"? How about this; if it hasn't happened yet, the chances are it won't ever happen. Four years is plenty of time to address what a player is. Eli Manning is average at best, with his terrible days outweighing his exceptional days.

One thing's for sure, anyone who wants to praise Ernie Acorsi for ANYTHING will have to explain how a man who prided himself on knowing QB talent EVER wrote that Eli could be better than his brother. That ship has definitely sailed a long time ago.

And now.............for the ugly.

You have bad teams, then you have joke teams. You have bad coaches, then you have joke coaches. You have perrenial losers then you have perrenial embarrassments. The New York Knicks are always the latter.

I have to admit that I found myself fascinated by the most recent Knicks 45 point loss to the Celtics. It just seemed to be a watershed moment. It seemed to be a moment in sports, and Knicks history that you would be able to point back to one day. In 2003 the Yanks were no-hit by a Houston Astros team who threw what seemed to be 50 pitchers at the Bronx Bombers to achieve the feat. It seemed even more embarrassing because it was a combination of pitchers rather than just one dominant performance. It was the watershed moment of the season, where the team turned it around and started playing inspired baseball afterwards.

But, after that Knicks game, there was no feeling that the team would, or could bounce back. They won the next night against a lowly Milwaukee Bucks team, but there was no true feeling that the team would turn around and play inspired basketball on a consistent basis. Instead, it felt like you were watching the bottom of what has been a bottomed out team for a while. Not only did the Knicks give up, they looked like they WANTED to give up from the onset. They looked disinterested. And their coach, Isiah Thomas, looked like a man just content to sit on the bench and watch his team implode, as if he were disconnected from all the shame of the moment. It seems as if Thomas believes he has no culpability in what is happening at the Garden these days.

The sad part of the whole thing is that there is almost no light at the end of the tunnel for Knicks fans. Thomas was not fired after the Celtics game, and every win seems to be some sort of repreive for the worst basketball administrator in the history of the game. Lose in embarrassing fashion to the Celtics on national television where your team is openly mocked? Don't worry, as long as your team wins its next game, you're in the clear. Have a few wins on the season? That's all that counts.

The truth is it does not appear that Thomas is going anywhere, and James Dolan doesn't appear close to selling the team, meaning he isn't going anywhere, and Stephon Marbury and his bloated contract and terrible attitude doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the collection of "I couldn't root for this team if I tried" players don't seem to be going anywhere. And the team seems destined to always have enough wins to keep them out of the top spot in the draft but never enough wins to have the team competing for anything other than jokes on radio.