The wheels have officially come off. We were horribly wrong about Tiger, who came in 69th place, not first like we had confidently predicted. He ended up with his worst-ever 72-hole finish at a major. In a desperate ploy to keep ourselves from having to write our column, we ate late night at Novack and then walked directly to Collis to eat more late night. All of a sudden it was 1:30 a.m., and we, the lovable losers of The Dartmouth, sat sad, scared and alone, silenced by the gravity of our plight, with no one to lean on besides each other. To each, the other his world entire. It took every ounce of our energy to keep our eyes more than half open. Only one thing on God’s green Earth keeps us going: a burning desire to please our interim sports editor Joe Kind ’16, who blogs under the handle “Foco Joe” at our old stomping grounds, Dartbeat.
In light of that last paragraph, Hank and Fish come to you this week with a bit of surprising news. Editor-in-Chief Lindsay Ellis has descended from her mountaintop, completely oblivious to the rage and hatred our weekly column incites, to anoint us as sports editors for the remainder of the summer entirely against our will. Much to the dismay of the people, we will also continue to write Riding the Pine. Our clickbait strategy has paid off far better than we ever could have imagined. In fact, our undeniable wit and charm have catapulted us straight to hell. In an attempt to convince Lindsay “Robo Joe” Ellis of the error of her ways, we’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and write about offseason basketball, again. This week, Riding The Pine turns its spotlight to the disastrous offseason of the Houston Rockets.
The Rockets could not have been more ready to make it rain in the offseason. They possessed enough cap space to afford a maximum salary and a roster filled to the brim with talented players. Houston fans eagerly awaited the addition of yet another superstar to their roster as LeBron, Melo, and Bosh all at least briefly engaged in talks with the Rockets. After the dust settled, the Rockets had lost Jeremy Lin, Omer Asik and their third-best player Chandler Parsons, failing to attract any free agents more impactful than Trevor Ariza, an aging mid-level talent at best.
The Rockets’ stathead general manager, Daryl Morey, who once hosted a ping-pong tournament for sportswriters (our invites probably got lost somewhere in the Wi-Fi) just so he could beat them all, finally got his comeuppance. The Rockets suffered a disappointing end to their 2014 campaign, crushed by a spirited Blazers upset in the first round (predicted by a young Hank on Dartbeat).
While Houston certainly suffered a downgrade in talent, we are far more concerned with the irreparable harm they have done to Lin’s career by sending him to die in the deserts of Los Angeles. Lin’s brief prosperity in New York, Linsanity, was probably the best period of Hank and Fish’s lives. Now, he’s going to LA, a pit of sin and debauchery that the columnists at Riding the Pine abhor. He will be under the mentorship of noted psychopath Kobe Bryant, who will make Lin a better player. But at what cost?
To be honest, the failure of the Rockets offseason cannot be attributed solely to ping-pong boy Morey. The dude is smart as hell. Any team that boasted such talent with a more likable cast of superstars would have had no problem luring Melo or at least Bosh.
Riding the Pine hates Dwight Howard and James Harden, and the rest of the NBA does too. Howard, an ultra-athletic freak, played for the Orlando Magic, forced a trade to LA when the going got tough, immediately decided he didn’t like it there and signed with Houston at his first opportunity, earning himself a reputation as a spineless mercenary out for no one but himself. Harden, on the other hand, is more a victim of circumstance. He got dealt from Oklahoma City to Houston in 2012 as a cost-cutting measure, but Houston’s system has only exacerbated his lackadaisical defensive approach, scaring away potential teammates. His beard is also a joke.
In an era where stars want to play with their friends, Houston has the only two friendless stars in the NBA.
Time update: 3:15 a.m. At around 2:30 a.m. after watching countless fail compilation Vine videos on YouTube, we haplessly resorted to the old blogger’s trick of simply putting “pen to paper.” At around 3 a.m. we were horrified to realize we had written 700 words of absolute garbage about MMA champion Ronda Rousey, about whom we know not one single thing. By the end of the night, we were simply searching for any possible way to use the term “Linsanity.” This is the best we could do.
