Ouch!

A bad thing happened yesterday to the city of Detroit as well as fans of their basketball team. Chauncey Billups went down with a hamstring injury in the first quarter of their game Orlando. This could be the opening the Magic need to dig themselves out of the 2-0 hole the were put in to begin their second round series.

Point guard, as I'm sure you may know, is a very pivotal position in basketball and it is very hard to continually advance if you don't have a decent floor general leading the charge.

If Billups can't get back into the lineup and play at — the very least — 80%, Jameer Nelson might actually be the better point guard in this series. Of course, we've all heard stories of playoff heroics and guys playing through injuries. This whole situation may turn out to just be a single-game storyline.

The final four and more ramblings

Since I was lazy yesterday and not much has changed today, how about some ramblings about some recent going-ons? I thought you'd say that.

There are only four teams left playing for the Stanley Cup. While I'm sure that the NHL isn't too happy the West Coast and Canada not being represented in the final four, having Sid the Kid and the Pens in is great. Matching up Pittsburgh with their natural rival. the cross-state Flyers is going to be a great series. In the West, having Dallas still playing could draw the southern markets; Detroit has always been a hockey hotbed and an original six draw. It'll be interesting to say the least.

A-Rod apparently passed out in the hospital while his wife was giving birth to their first daughter. Am I supposed to care? If an average player — say Morgan Ensberg, who's filling in while A-Rod is injured — had passed out during child birth, would anybody care. Also, this incident happened in 2004. Get over it.

Kobe Bryant deserved the NBA MVP more than Chris Paul did. Whoever is calling this a "lifetime achievement MVP" is an idiot. Bryant was by far the best player on the best team in the best conference and was playing without another all-star — unlike Paul. Don't get me wrong CP3 had an amazing season and was a very worthy candidate, but was not more valuable than the Black Mamba.

Roger Clemens. I don't even know what to think any more about the Rocket.

So Ronaldo allegedly beat up some cross-dressing prostitutes after finding out they were, in fact, men. I've seen the pictures of the prostitutes. Either Ronaldo has severely awful taste in women or he's blind. They were obviously dudes. And it's nice to see he's finding time to get in the news while rehabbing his torn ACL.

Suns coach Mike D'Antoni won't be with Phoenix for long after getting team approval to shop his services around. The best possible fit would be Toronto where his former boss Bryan Colangelo is running the show. D'Antoni could turn Jose Calderon into a surefire all-star.

Nice game, Gavin Floyd! The previously written off starter pitched 8 1/3 innings of no-hit ball before one of the best batters in the game (Joe Mauer) managed to beat him. Floyd is showing more and more this season that the Phillies were wrong to send him packing and that the White Sox were smart to take him on. And just how do you allow a run on three walks and an error in a game? I don't think the were in a row either.

A big congratulations to Big Brown for winning the Kentucky Derby. But with the second-place finisher running on broken ankles, how weak was the rest of the pack? Also, for the record, I did pick Big Brown to win, even if I am just saying it days after the fact.

And, finally, how did LeBron miss that last layup? That seemed a bit ridiculous to me and if you didn't find Game 1 boring, you must have a far better tolerance for defensive tilts than me. Spur-Celtics could be even worse than Spurs-Pistons if San Antonio makes it.

Rooting against, not for

After watching Boston throttle the Hawks yesterday I was very disappointed. Not because Atlanta lost, I'm not a fan. It was because Boston won and advanced. It wasn't so much that I was rooting for the Hawks to win, I found myself cheering for the Celtics — and, to an extent, the entire city of Boston — to lose. It was why I was even watching.

Sure, it's kind of non-sensical cheering on a team with no real shot of winning it all, but seeing the scrappy Hawks tumble the goliath C's with their Big Three would have been a great story even if they would be swept next round by King James.

A Celtics-less playoffs would draw less ratings and I'm sure that everyone wants to see an instant-classic finals like Lakers-Celtics, so maybe it was a bit obvious that Boston would take game 7 at home in a league where referees are — fairly — criticized for questionable, league-friendly calls.

Also, Kevin Garnett's dirty play these playoffs has to stop. I have no clue why he hasn't been suspended. David Stern needs to pull his head out of his ass and actually watch what is happening. For the second time in series, KG throw an elbow at Zaza Pachulia. It is downright filthy and dispicable that an elite player would stoop so low. I honestly would've expected a bit from a guy who was an alleged MVP candidate. I'm glad he didn't win because MVPs are better than that.

Only in Canada

The Canadian Football League has stepped it up in terms of ridiculous rulings in a desperate attempt to keep up with their Canadian brethren — the NHL. But this could be a landmark in stupidity we're looking at. What happened prior the CFL draft is even worse than the NHL changing a rule MID-PLAYOFFS. It's that bad.

Now, following in the NFL's and NBA's footsteps of stripping teams of first round picks for cheating (See: SpyGate), when the league found out that the Montreal Alouettes had violated salary cap rules by going over, the looked to punish them. Here's where the problem and stupidity comes in.

Montreal had traded away their pick to Hamilton before the draft.

Now common sense would tell you that Hamilton is not the team that the league was trying to punish for breaking a rule, therefore they could keep the pick since they traded for it before it was stripped. No. Hamilton lost the pick.

I could go on an angry rambling about how dumb this league is but, the way I see it, why complain about a minor league football organization. It's not like any of the guys could compete in the NFL.