The road not taken

Josh Howard is intriguing if nothing else.

He's been called a lot. ACC Player of the Year. A diamond in the rough. A promising rookie. Dirk's "Pippen." The Ultimate X-Factor. Lazy. And unpatriotic.

What he hasn't been called, at least by Mavericks front office officials, is trade bait. For every year the Mavericks fail to reach their ultimate goal, management is quick to say that Howard is part of the team's long term plans. There's been talks, of course, from people like me and people much more important and more listened to than me. But never have the Mavs bought the bait, and sent J-Ho on his way.

Seems like things change. According to Marc Stein, the Mavericks front office look to finally be saying enough is enough.

The agony of defeat

No other way to say it, but if you bleed burnt orange, that sucked. I don't know how to classify myself. I'm from a family with no Texas ties whatsoever. My family is very much east coast centric. Me and my two other brothers are the only true Texans in our entire family. So somehow I became a Longhorn faithful. I don't know how it happened. Probably through school and at an early age, but it happened.

So its why watching tonight was like a gut punch. Alabama deserved to win, make no bones about it, but the circumstances are going to make anyone who thinks orange is a good looking t-shirt color keep thinking "what if...."

Arguing with myself: Cowboys and Eagles

New feature time!

Along with my New Year's Resolutions of getting at least 100 twitter followers (which you can help with right here), lose 15 pounds (which you cannot help right here), I plan on posting at least 5 posts a week here at TROP. More posts means more structure and formatting, so part of your regular schedule here at TROP, there will be a weekly feature: Arguing with myself, where I post both optimistic and pessimistic views on a raging news grabbing topic.

First up? Oh yes, its the tasty Saturday night re-rematch with the Eggos...err Eagles.

The Origin

The origin of the title of my blog is embedded bellow so you can stop asking why I named it this.

Roy Williams is bad at football

Enough said.

"On First Looking into Dirk's Bounce"

"Much have I traveled in the arenas of gold
And many goodly squads and kingdoms seen;
Round many western conferences teams have been
Which bards in fealty to Dirk’s bounce
Oft of one high expanse had I been told
That deep-browed German ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe as pure serene
Till I heard Twitter speak out loud and bold
Then felt like I some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
When like stout Duncan when with robotic eyes
He star’d at the Maverick – and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent, upon a tight rope in a Dirkus Circus."

-J.E. sKeats of The Basketball Jones

Rambling, thoughts and brain farts

Its been awhile. Probably too long. See I actually have a job that involves sports writing (shocking I know. You probably thought I was banking with this blog) and that's taken some time. I also have class, which really sucks to write out because it sounds really unprofessional. How many readers would click out of Bill Simmons page on espn.com if he posted about having class slum down his writing? Probably a lot.

Since its 12:30 a.m. according to my Mac (but the pretentious bastards probably could have reset their clocks to Steve Jobbs master timer in his castle) I'll make this the worst blog post as I spout random thoughts.