Hit by a Pitch

I’m not going to hate on Carmelo Anthony or blame him for the craptacular play of the Nuggets last night. Carmelo is a good player with the potential to be great — but he’s not going to be great until he grows up.

Something bad was going on during last night’s game — Carmelo was smiling that big smile after getting called for fouls. Did you see that? I’ve noticed him doing this, last season and the season before, when something doesn’t go his way. He gets called for a foul or there’s no whistle when he gets hammered on the way to the hoop, and out comes the shit-eating grin. It means he’s not giving 100%. His head isn’t in the game and instead of an elite athlete, he’s acting more like a surly teenager.

If you see that smile, it means trouble. It means he’s going to be careless. He’ll only give a half-effort when driving to the basket for a layup (which means he’ll miss the shot and might not get the foul call). In the worst case, after that smile comes out Carmelo will do something ridiculously stupid and immature, like jab the throat of an opposing player and get thrown out of the game.

I’m not saying he shouldn’t smile or have fun playing basketball. But if you’ve seen the smile I’m talking about, you probably understand that it shows frustration instead of happiness. It’s the look of “why me” and “here we go again.” It’s not the look of someone who’s going help his team get past the first round of the playoffs this year.

I don’t know if Carmelo Anthony has to be the team’s leader. Iverson and Camby can do that. Carmelo does have to take each game seriously and play hard instead of slipping into smiling give-up mode, and this will require maturity that he seems to be lacking. I don’t know how he’ll develop that maturity, but I hope it happens soon.

Remember that time I had too much beer while doing my fantasy football live draft and selected Garrett Wolfe? It turns out that drafting a tiny little rookie running back from Northern Illinois University might not have been as crazy as it seemed the next day. Cedric Benson is out for the rest of the season with a leg injury. That means more playing time for the speedy Wolfe, who will back up Adrian N. Peterson. Of course I dropped Wolfe a while ago, but I hope to get him back just as soon as he clears waivers in my league. If you need a running back, go get him now. I’m serious (I’m also not very good, but you can trust me that Garrett Wolfe is something special).

In other HBP favorites news, I went to my first ever Colorado 14ers game Saturday night to see Jamaal Tatum play for the Idaho Stampede. Unfortunately, Jamaal Tatum was not there playing for the Idaho Stampede on Saturday. Where was he? Was he smoking weed and eating scalloped potatoes? Was he saying, “No, you da ho?” while on the phone with his pals in Carbondale? Was he painting his lawn blue? (Clearly I’m as good at Idaho jokes as I am at fantasy football, sorry.) No, Jamaal Tatum was sitting out this road trip with a high ankle sprain and I am very bummed because I wanted to be that one crazy person who was all “JAMAAAAAAL TATUM!!!!” at the game, kind of like the woman sitting behind us a few Nuggets games ago who screamed “IVERSON!!!!” at the top of her lungs every time anybody did anything, even if Iverson had nothing to do with it (which was so very awesome).

I will write more soon, I promise. We have to talk about the Jon Garland trade and why it made me so very sad.

Here’s some bad news for Rockies fans — it looks like it’s all but certain that Yorvit Torrealba will be going to the Mets. The team will really miss his game-calling skills and how awesome he is with all the young pitchers.

We’ll miss you, YORVEEEEEEEET.

Update: Never mind! Yorvit Torrealba and the Rockies agreed to a two-year deal with an option for a third year. Sweet!

Although I don’t usually write about them, I still make football picks every week. This week, the picks are incredibly boring — everybody is picking the following teams, with one exception:

Panthers > Falcons
Packers > Vikings
Chiefs > Broncos
Bills > Dolphins
Saints > Rams
Steelers > Browns
Titans > Jaguars
Redskins > Eagles
Ravens > Bengals
Lions > Cardinals
Giants > Cowboys
Bears > Raiders
Colts > Chargers
Seahawks > 49ers

Yes, I’m picking the Giants over the Cowboys. I’m not sure that’s really going to happen, but I’d die of boredom if I didn’t do something crazy. Anyway, as we saw yesterday, it’s a good week for upsets (if you didn’t know that Illinois is a dangerous team, you’ve been missing something).

In fantasy news, my team is the Steve Smith of fantasy football — hot at first, now a steaming pile of failure. The best thing I can say about my team is that I have two of the best TEs in the league (Antonio Gates and Dallas Clark) and hope to trade Clark for a decent WR.

This is the first week that Steve Smith will be hanging out on my bench. I’m not sure about this move — as much as he’s sucked lately, I blame it on David Carr more than Smith. With Carr out, Smith will do better, even if there’s a 12-year-old playing QB for the Panthers.

The good news for me is that Lane Kiffin announced that the Raiders plan to kick to Devin Hester today. I’m going all in on this one and playing the Bears defense and Hester at WR. That’s probably not wise, but I haven’t gotten anywhere being conservative this season.

Here’s my roster for the week:

QB: Carson Palmer
RB: Willie Parker, LenDale White
RB/WR: Brandon Jacobs
WR: Devin Hester, Shaun McDonald (picked up off waivers)
TE: Antonio Gates
D/ST: Bears
K: Robbie Gould

Bench/Bye: Steve Smith, Randy Moss, Eagles D/ST, Dallas Clark, Brian Leonard, Kevin Faulk, Reggie Brown

I’m still going to lose (as of right now to someone playing an RB who’s off this week) but oh well. I tried.

Edited to add: I will never speak of football picks or fantasy football again. I am terrible.

It looks like something weird is going on with the site today — most of the posts are missing and everything leads to a page of Julius Hodge entries. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.