by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Stephen Up

I’m sorry, but Steph Curry is about to has become my male Taylor Swift. The Warriors aboded the Grizzlies by 50 last night and in doing so set a record for largest margin of victory after four games of an NBA season (combined, that is): 100 points.

Curry had 30 points, which drops his scoring average to 37.0 ppg.

Can we ask, How good a coach is Luke Walton, by the way? 4-0 in his first four NBA games with a margin-of-victory record.

Also, may we ask, Isn’t it about time that Curry earned a righteous nickname? That was the wonderful thing about the Seventies: almost everyone in sports had a nickname.

Finally, here’s Steph and Mrs. Steph lip-synching doing a Dubsmash of a song from Frozen. Adorable. Also, the kid even has acting skills.

2. Grimes & Misdemeanors (a.k.a., The Daily Harrumph)

Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly does his weekly press conference at noon today and he is going to be asked about the above. Hopefully, he’ll have a better answer than he did Sunday. 

There are a few points worth making: 1) It is never a good look to put your hands on a staffer and push him/grab him. Never. Understood. 2) Don’t compare this situation to your office, unless you have co-workers who wear helmets. Violent sports such as football and hockey come with a little more testosterone attached. 3) What if David Grimes, a former Notre Dame wide receiver, had been a recidivist offender in terms of chirping at the refs? What if he had been warned by coaches, even by the referee, not to do this again? At this moment the Irish had just received a 15-yard penalty for tripping (on center Nick Martin, who was penalized thrice in the game) and I doubt Kelly was going to be happy about being penalized 30 yards.

I’m sure Kelly knows that he needs to control his temper better. That’s a terrible look for him. And today he will come out, sharply dressed, and field questions with his usual calm and composure. Probably best for him to say, “No matter the circumstance, I need to handle myself better in a moment like that” and if people ask if he has apologized to Grimes, he can say, “We’ve discussed it.”

3. Layers of Wrong

I still cannot shake Miami-Duke, for a few reasons:

1. I’m hearing like 3% in terms of reaction of what a great play Miami made, penalties and mistakes aside. Sorry, but one week after losing 58-0 at home and firing your coach, that was pretty incredible. Duke was 6-1, after all.

2. Why are so many people asking how come the outcome of the game cannot be overturned (good luck retrieving your money from your bookie) as opposed to asking, How come a video replay official cannot see what so many of us saw? What is the reason for that systemic breakdown?

3. The outcomes of games, no matter how incompetently officiated (Don Denkinger, Bush Push, 5th Down, etc.) should never be posthumously overturned. Never. I don’t want to have to wake up the next morning as a fan to find out if my team still won after I watched them win last night.

4. Remember when video replay was going to “get it right?” Yes, and wasn’t Titanic unsinkable? Does anyone really believe that by allowing someone in a league office to overturn the outcome of a game you’re going to eliminate errors?

5. Meanwhile, what if it had been Miami-Clemson? And what if ACC officials, knowing their best shot to land a team in the CFB playoff was the Tigers, overturned the loss? Now you’ve got another team far outside the ACC whose CFB Playoff fate may be affected by a decision a few self-interested execs made in a board room. That’s not what sport should be about.

6. Not the main issue here, but Miami beat Duke with an interim coach and a backup QB. Also, and this is what amuses me to no end, let’s just say the only thing wrong with the final play was whether his knee was down. And so I ask you, Is Duke’s final TD any more legit, i.e., Did he cross the plane?, than Miami’s? (at 0:54)

And you say, “Well, sure it was, they confirmed it on review.” Oh, so that play is legit because video replay confirmed it but Miami’s is not even though they confirmed it on video replay? “Yeah, but I can see that his knee was down,” you reply. And see the essential paradox of that? It’s not about video replay being the final verdict. It’s about it confirming what you think.

4. Troll Job

Remember Amazon, the company whose newfangled style of retail threatened to put so many brick-and-mortar stores, particularly bookstores, out of business? Well, now Amazon is opening a physical book store, just like the type you used to visit before you could order books on-line from Amazon or read them via Kindle, in Seattle. That is some massive trolling, Jeff Bezos.

Waiting for Ford to come out with a 2016 “Horse and Buggy F-10.”

Maybe Amazon just wants to “re-Kindle” our love of visiting bookstores and hanging out.

5. Where In The World?

Monday’s Answer: Munich Residenz

Music 101 

Tomorrow

Remember, it’s “Show Tunes Week” at Medium Happy. It hasn’t happened in quite some time, but Broadway showstoppers used to occasionally climb onto the Billboard Top 40 charts (“Memories” from Cats, for example) and inundate your AM radio. When I was a lad in 1977, a cute tween named Andrea McCardle became a household name for singing this hit from Annie.

Remote Patrol

College Football Playoff

ESPN 7 p.m.

Gentlemen, start your anger. Where’s TCU? What does Oklahoma State have to do to garner some respect? And whither undefeated Toledo, who will host Northern Illinois on ESPN2 at 8 p.m.? Not to worry. The field will soon sort itself out as just this weekend LSU visits Bama, Florida State takes a trip to Clemson, and TCU travels to Oklahoma State. That’s six teams ranked in the Top 17 all meeting one another.