Drama behind the scenes at Baseball Tonight
Sweet, sweet drama, oh how we love you so. There’s nothing like a little behind the scenes drama to liven up a slow summer sports day. Thanks to ESPN and Harold Reynolds, we have some: Reynolds, Baseball Tonight regular, in addition to other baseball related duties, has been fired by ESPN effective immediately. No one know’s why Reynolds got the boot, they just know it happened. The guy’s at Deadspin had a bunch of ESPN insiders email them alleging that Reynolds was shown the door due to sexual harassment complaints but then they updated with a different email saying that Reynolds blew up at producers at a Baseball Tonight production meeting. According to the updater, Reynolds was upset that they were going to be pushing the ARod sucks, Yankees might trade him, New York fans hate him, etc, etc. story.
Now if the first rumors are true, and Harold got canned because he was sexually harassing people, then we’ve got no problem with ESPN giving him a pink slip; he’d deserve it. But if the other story is true, and Harold was fired because he was mad at the hyping of this ARod story, then shame on ESPN. This ARod thing is completely made up by the media (see: ESPN) and its about time someone called them on it. We watched the Yankees-Rangers telecast the other night (either Monday or Sunday night) and the guy doing the play by play kept pushing the story and so did that idiot Steve Phillips. Eric Karros kept saying this was a non-story but they kept bringing it up. Dan Patrick on the radio yesterday basically devoted his whole show to this fake "issue". Its been sad. So if Harold got fired for calling bullshit on this ARod thing then good for him. If he was harassing women though, well then he sucks.
This is kind of a big blow to ESPN’s overall baseball operation. Reynolds did color commentary for the Little League World Series, the College World Series and of course his regular Baseball Tonight gig. He and John Kruk were a pretty good pair on Baseball Tonight and it will be interesting to see who ESPN turns to to replace Harold. Last night they just had Kruk and Karl Ravech. And of course they didn’t mention the elephant in the room; no one mentioned Harold’s departure.
At this point no one’s talking. ESPN won’t comment other then to say Reynolds won’t be on the air any more and as far as I know Harold hasn’t said anything either. At some point the truth is going to leak and you’ve got to think Reynolds will show up on one of those dumb Rita Cosby interviews or something to explain his side of the story. Stay tuned for more details, this one could get ugly (or even more ugly then it already is).
Only Isiah Thomas could have handled this worse
Billy King, general manager of the 76ers, is not very good at his job. He likes to hand out big contracts to not very good players and sometimes he likes to trade for players with big contracts who are past their prime (see:Webber, Chris). Despite having a player in Allen Iverson who is one of the NBA’s 10 best players, King has failed again and again to build a winning team. He’s changed coaches, he’s changed players; nothing’s worked. King, instead of looking in the mirror and saying "hey, maybe I’m the problem" decided that trading his superstar, Allen Iverson, was the answer (haha, get it? Answer? The Answer? Nevermind).
Its been the worst kept secret in basketball that Iverson was on the trading block, with the Celtics, the Nuggets and sometimes the Hawks mentioned as possible suiters. All sorts of trade rumors have been floating around, many of them silly. Now though Mr. King has said that Iverson will not be traded and he will in fact be coming back to Philly this season. Super job Billy. You shop your superstar, a legend in Philly and one of the most popular players in the league, all summer long hoping someone will take the guy off your hands for pennies on the dollar and then you decide, "nevermind, I’ll keep him". Hmmm, what are the odds Iverson’s not going to be very happy about that? If your going to try and trade Allen Iverson, you have to go all the way, you can’t half-ass it. You tried to shove the guy out the door Billy when it was you who should have been on the way out. King screwed this up completely and if he had any decency he’d just resign.
Odds and Ends
Marty Burns takes a look at the 15 remaining players on the US basketball roster and ponders who should be in the starting five.
[tags]Harold Reynolds, Allen Iverson, NBA, ESPN, , Sports, TV[/tags]