FilteringCraig

I know the series isn’t over yet, but I am going to take this opportunity to talk about Mike Brown. Brown has drawn a lot of criticism on these pages for what I perceive to be bad coaching. This series with the Celtics is even more proof that Mike Brown needs to go as he was outcoached by another coach with a horrible reputation, Doc Rivers, in game 5. Mike Brown has done all he can with this Cavaliers team and it is time to find someone else to take them to the next level.

Mike Brown does some things well. He has turned the Cavaliers into one hell of a defensive team. He turned Zydrunas Ilgauskas into a serviceable defensive player, when he has never shined defensively for any other coach. Brown has helped develop LeBron James into a guy who plays solid help defense. His defensive schemes have forced many teams out of their offensive rhythm and forced them to play the Cavs’ tempo on many many occasions.

Unfortunately for Mike Brown, being a one-dimensional coach is not good enough in this day and age in the NBA. Mike D’Antoni could only get Phoenix to play offense and he was fired. Avery Johnson couldn’t seem to get his troops in Dallas to play with consistent effort on the defensive end and he got fired. And these were coaches for decent caliber playoff teams who were relatively successful, and yet their management chose to cut the cord.

I hope that the Cavaliers’ management will do the same with Mike Brown this off-season. I know he has a good record, but it just isn’t good enough. This Cavs team has one of the top two or three players in the league in LeBron James and while some of the rest of the personnel leaves something to be desired, they need a coach who makes them better on both sides of the ball. Mike Brown coaches defense very well, but he can’t scheme offense and his player rotations are mind-boggling.

I won’t run through the laundry list of complaints again, but the highlights include:

• Guys get in bad favor inexplicably and never see the floor again (Devin Brown, Damon Jones)
• End of quarter plays have LeBron dribble 30 feet from the basket with no movement of the other players on the court
• LeBron runs the pick and roll with non-offensive threats like Ben Wallace that guarantee he will be double-teamed (shoutout to Dan Labbe)

These are just a couple of things, but trust me there are more.

So, even if the Cavs miraculously pull off a series victory over Boston by winning tonight in Cleveland and again on Sunday in Boston, I can’t possibly support the continuation of Mike Brown as the Cavs’ head coach.  I have been saying it since last season.  I have said it since day one this season.  I am saying it now.  This guy should be done.  Cleveland can’t waste any more of LeBron’s guaranteed years here in Cleveland.  They have next season and the one after that to win a championship before LeBron becomes a free agent.  That is an opportunity of a lifetime and I don’t trust Mike Brown to make it happen.

Explosions in the Sky will never hit the mainstream. They play instrumental guitar rock. That’s right. No vocals. Still, their music has this ability to be passionate and emotional. Their music was one of the brighter spots of the Friday Night Lights movie starring Billy Bob Thornton. They have a bunch of albums out. And now, they have done Austin City Limits on PBS. I found the video online and if you have 20 minutes to throw it on in the background, you should.

I don’t think I have ever been amped up for a direct-to-video movie until now. This show was a whole lot of fun. It pre-dated “Reaper” which I love now, but it is the same basic concept, except with a girl. And she is the impossibly cute Ellen Muth, which doesn’t hurt at all.

The reason that I feel like writing about this at all is that as the media cycle has come around on this Cavs vs. Wizards first-round matchup, and the prevailing opinion that Darius Songaila should not have been suspended for game 6 has now become an unarguable fact in the media. I heard Steve Czaban talk about it this morning on Fox Sports Radio. I heard commentators talk about it during the Cavs’ game 6. I heard commentators talk about it during the Celtics vs. Hawks game 6. It seems that everyone talking about this suspension is now referring to it as a great travesty - an injustice of epic proportions - the proof that the NBA is at worst fixed, and at best in favor of protecting their meal-ticket LeBron James to whatever lengths to ensure that he succeeds.

I have heard quite enough of this.

Yes, the NBA has a vested interest to protect LeBron James. As a fan of the Cleveland Cavs, I would argue that they didn’t do a good job at all. All series long the Wizards talked about hitting LeBron when he drove through the lane. And the proof was there that the Wizards were no longer looking to play basketball. Instead they decided to commit fouls and try to physically intimidate one of the game’s best players by hitting him rather than playing tough defense and double-teaming him.

What is the NBA supposed to do when a team like the Wizards is so blatant and unapologetic about their tactics? They don’t have a right to beat up one of the game’s best players and tell the world that they plan on doing it without some reaction from the NBA executive office. It isn’t in the league’s best interest to let any of this stuff happen. Ever since the Ron Artest fight in the stands, the NBA has been quite proactive about keeping fights under control and the Wizards basically said that they were going to push the limits of this series by hitting LeBron James when he came into the lane.

And this is where the Darius Songaila situation unfolds. The reason that the NBA suspended Darius Songaila was because in their view he threw a punch at another player after the whistle. This is the NBA’s definition of fighting. And just look at the replay. Songaila’s hand comes up and hits LeBron James in the face after the play. They were tangled a bit, but his hand flies up and hits LeBron.

Now, whether it was intentional or not is up for debate by you, me and everyone else. Stu Jackson from the NBA has the final verdict and he determined that it was intentional by Songaila. I don’t know if it was truly intentional or not. It could go either way from my viewpoint looking at the video in a completely unbiased manner. The thing is that nobody should view it in an unbiased manner. This series was defined by the trash talking of the Washington Wizards. It was backed up by 5 games worth of hard hits and hard fouls to LeBron James including a push while he was in the air, two shots to the head, and finally Songaila’s “punch.”

So, please, someone tell me why the Washington Wizards and Darius Songaila should have been given the benefit of the doubt by Stu Jackson and the NBA? In a world where it is in the NBA’s best interest to keep fights out of their games and protect all players from harm, why shouldn’t they send a message after five straight games of premeditated rough play and fouling?

If anything the Wizards were lucky that Brendan Haywood wasn’t suspended for his push of LeBron early on in the series. To a lesser extent they should have felt lucky that they didn’t lose DeShawn Stevenson after his hard foul to LeBron’s head in another game. How many times do the Washington Wizards think they deserve the benefit of the doubt when they talked all series long, basically calling their shots against LeBron before they even occurred?

According to Stu Jackson and the NBA they didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt any longer. I don’t understand how anyone else could disagree either.

Granted there were worse fouls in the series. There were worse fouls in other series. None of that matters. With the consistent evidence provided by the Washington Wizards to the NBA of how they were going to play this series they finally put the NBA to a decision with something that looked like a punch after the whistle. And that hints of fighting. The NBA can roll with the punches (pun intended) on hard plays if they feel like it, but they will not roll with it when it looks anything like a fight.

The short story is this. The Cavs played the Wizards in the opening round of the playoffs. The Wizards despite pussying out on the name “Bullets” felt that it would be a good idea to beat the crap out of LeBron James and then call him a crybaby when he said he wasn’t going to bend from all their shots that they were throwing his way.

Papa John’s in Washington thought it would be a fine idea to print some Crybaby t-shirts with the number 23 on them for the sixth game of the opening round where LeBron scored a triple double and sent the Wizards to the golf course for the season. Didn’t you all look silly with those t-shirts on as you left early due to the pounding that LeBron gave you in your home arena?

The problem with Papa John’s opportunistic promotion was that Cleveland is a decent market for Papa John’s. Clevelanders eat a lot of pizza, apparently. I counted on the website and there are at least 10 locations that come up when I search my zip code. That means that there are ten within striking distance of Cleveland and LeBron fans. How does that guerrilla marketing plan look now?

Boycotts were mentioned. Cleveland fans were riled up. You will remember that this is the same sports town that sent John “Big Dawg” Thompson (right) to testify before congress after Art Modell and the NFL stole our professional football team.

Well, Papa John’s was scared so they have apologized and are going to offer large one-topping pizzas to Cleveland residents on Thursday for a small price of 23 cents in honor of LeBron James’ number 23. The big joke will be when they only offer the food to “Cleveland” residents. You see, the way we draw the lines for our cities and towns around here means that almost nobody actually lives in “Cleveland.” Out of the 10 stores listed on the website as being near my home, only 3 are actually in the city of Cleveland. Are the near suburban residents out of luck? We will see.

After getting my MacBook Pro a couple months ago, the band started laying down audio tracks in my basement. I have been spending a lot of time figuring out what kinds of mistakes I have made in our initial round of recording so that we can get a polished product together. As a result, I haven’t really written anything lately on this website. I know that is bad, but there it is.

It has been a lot of fun, but at the same time, it is unnerving. I am pushing forward because, quite frankly, I have never been afraid to try something and fail, but I am really nervous that I am wasting my time and that we should just go into the studio to get an expert to put the sounds together.

And this should be interesting. Let me just tell you the things that I have been thinking about.

We all listen to music, but how loud should the drums be?  Drums are an integral part of any recording, but they are a bit more of the focus in certain bands like Tool, Dave Matthews Band and others.  The drums aren’t the focus of our band.  After I answer the volume question, should I pan different sections of the drums to different sides?

How loud should the guitars be?  Should I put Todd’s guitar on the one side and mine on the other?  Should they work together on the same side?  If I pan one guitar to the side, and the other guitar to the other side, where do I put the bass guitar?

Should I leave the lead vocals centered?  How much delay and/or reverb should I put on the vox?  How about backing vox?  how high should they go, and how many effects should I put on those?

These are the questions that I have been asking myself, and what I am running into is that their are so many different ways to do things that I need to just come to a conclusion sooner rather than later, because I can’t afford the time it would take to experiment with every variable.

Maybe I will post some samples to let you hear what I am hearing.

At least that is the only conclusion that I can come up with after a few pieces of evidence have come to light.

I read this article from ArsTechnica today about a proposed “Amazon tax” that seems to only affect Amazon.com and other Internet businesses that sell items to New Yorkers over the web. The law states that Amazon must collect sales tax for all orders sold to New Yorkers even though the online retailer has no physical presence in the state.

Right now, I am rooting for Amazon to win their forthcoming legal action against the state because of my own interactions lately. My family’s business is attempting to get licensed in the state so that we can take care of a few token properties and situations that affect some of our Ohio-based customers. We are not going to open an office in New York state, but we would like to sell a couple of insurance policies that cover the state of New York. So we started the process of getting a license in New York.

Well, after 5 (count’em 5) iterations of mailing our application along with a check and having that paperwork get returned, I am officially pissed off at the state of New York. You see, every time they send it back, they send the same form letter not really explaining what was wrong with the current application. Also, they will stop reviewing your application when they find the first mistake. So, in a complicated form I can fix one mistake, send it back and then have it returned based on another mistake that wasn’t called out the last time I updated the form.

On top of that, the Ohio department uses a Certificate of Good Standing as their standard form to give people incorporated in the state of Ohio. Then New York state claims that a certified copy of that Certificate of Good Standing is UNACCEPTABLE for their application.

No matter what, I have officially deemed the State of New York relatively hostile to new business. I would think that the state would prefer to make it easier, not harder, to do business in their state. I realize that what we are looking to do in the state isn’t exactly high profile and high reward for the state of New York, but that shouldn’t matter.

But I guess this is indicative of the state of customer service in this nation today. People use call centers in India as the example of bad customer service today, but I am here to tell you it doesn’t stop there. The government, state, local, and federal, have lost any sense of customer service too. From the post office, to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, to the IRS, there is absolutely NO focus on customer service by the people who are employed using tax dollars. That shouldn’t be the case, and I wish someone would change the culture starting at the top.

The owners of all NBA teams voted last week whether or not they approved of the Sonics’ proposed move to Oklahoma City.  The vote was a landslide 28-2 in favor of allowing the move.  The only two dissenting voices were the Portland Trailblazers, owned by Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.  That means that for whatever reason, Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers voted to approve the proposed move.

Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions about what Gilbert’s reasoning was in voting this way.  He might be friends with some people in the new ownership group.  He might be looking to make sure he maintains all the autonomy that he can as an owner of a huge sports franchise like the Cavaliers.  If he doesn’t support one ownership group’s rights then they might not support his rights at some point in the future should he decide to do something.  Those are all points of conjecture because I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that Gilbert is not in tune with the desires of Cleveland fans on this issue.  Gilbert is based in Detroit, and he has done a very good job of ingratiating himself to this community.  He purchased the Cavs and put lots of money into the team, the arena, and the city in general.  He put a satellite office of his Quicken Loans business in the city and hired employees to work there.  These contributions to Cleveland cannot be understated.

Still, I think that he has a few things to learn about Cleveland sports fans.  Most of us feel defined by the loss of the Cleveland Browns.  We feel defined by the outrage, the petitions signed, the testimonials before government, the moral victory of keeping our team name, the horrendous start to expansion and everything else that went along with Art Modell moving our team out of the city.  And these same Cleveland sports fans who feel defined by this occurrence in the NFL are the ones who are paying the ticket prices and watching the commercials and buying the food and jerseys at Quicken Loans arena to support Gilbert’s Cavaliers team.

For him to fall in line with the rest of the other 27 owners who voted to allow another city’s team to be ripped out from under them as he represents Cleveland is a travesty.

Again, I don’t know his reasoning.  I just can’t imagine the excuse that he could come up with that I would find acceptable.  I find it embarrassing to think that someone who wants so much to be accepted by the city of Cleveland and who needs the city of Cleveland to remain successful would so misjudge the way he should have voted on this issue.  I know he wasn’t elected by us, but in a sense we elect him year to year based on the team, the arena, and yes, even our sentiment for him personally as the owner of our team.

With that in mind, I would love an explanation and I would love for Cleveland fans to express how unhappy we are to be included in the group that was willing to have Seattle’s team ripped from their city.  As we in Cleveland know, it is always the fans that pay the most when a team moves, and we know only too well how high a price it is.

I tried to make a soup from scratch this weekend and it turned out really well. I kind of made it up as I went along after looking at my mom’s hamburger soup recipe. Anyway, here is taco soup which is like a tortilla soup with ground beef (or in my case ground turkey.)

1 Pound Ground Beef (or Ground Turkey)
1 Packet of Taco Seasoning (I like Ortega, but I have tried others and they are all pretty good.)
1 Large Green Bell Pepper (Diced)
1/2 Onion (Diced)
2 Small Tomatoes Diced
1 Cup Frozen Yellow Corn
1 Cup Uncooked Brown Rice (1 cup of uncooked rice was 4 servings)
5 Cups Water (4 Cups of water if you cook the rice ahead of time)
1 Large Can of Tomato Sauce
1 Can of Black Beans
1 Can of Cream of Celery Soup
1 Tbsp Black Pepper (or to taste)
1 Tbsp Garlic Powder (or to taste)
1 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes (or to taste)

In a pot, combine the tomato sauce, cream of celery soup, the water and the uncooked rice. Use medium heat, or you can use a large crock pot like I use on the high setting. Stir frequently so the rice doesn’t clump at the bottom.

In a large frying pan, brown the ground beef or turkey, and drain. Put ground beef back in the pan and add the onions, peppers, and corn. Cook at high temperature as you add in the taco seasoning and spices to your tastes. If the mixture is really dry, add in little bit of water so you can cook it for about 5 minutes without it burning.

After you cook the mixture in the frying pan to your satisfaction, mix it into the big pot and cook on medium to low for a couple of hours or until the mixture reaches the consistency of a thick soup. It shouldn’t be as thick as chili, and it shouldn’t be as runny as vegetable soup. Right in the middle is where you want to be.

I served it with some broken up tortilla chips on top, but I would have loved to have it with some grated cheese and possibly even some sour cream on top. That makes the recipe significantly less healthy, though.

Anyway, the soup turned out great for me. Jen liked it too. I probably should have taken a picture, but oh well. We will see how good the leftovers look.

Jen and I are on vacation. I am sure I don’t need to keep reminding you all of that, but it feels so good to say it to myself. So, I will keep saying it.

Anyway, after a brisk workout consisting of running a 5K and lifting weights in the posh exercise center (yes, I am bragging about exercising on vacation,) Jen and I sat down for some breakfast and I saw a super-ridiculously tall woman dining with her husband and baby at the next table over. As she got up to go to the breakfast buffet, it occurred to me that she looked like someone.

Then, it also occurred to me that there is a women’s tennis tourney happening in close proximity to our hotel here in Florida. As it turns out, we were eating next to Lindsey Davenport and her husband. They have a very very cute baby too. No dirt. We didn’t bother them or anything dumb like that. Just kind of fun to have a celebrity sighting.