{"id":850,"date":"2013-05-07T10:06:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T14:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=850"},"modified":"2013-07-19T14:12:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T18:12:02","slug":"tuesday-teabag-may-7-2013-gary-washburn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=850","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Teabag, May 7, 2013 – Gary Washburn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"It<\/a>

It would’ve been a lot more historic if Gary wasn’t such a d-bag.<\/p><\/div>\n

This week, our prestigious Teabag award goes to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe.\u00a0 (are we wrong to think that the Tuesday Teabag is slowing gaining steam as a legitimate sports award?).\u00a0 Perhaps that was a dream The Machine had.\u00a0 Or was that when we broke up with Kate Upton because she was too needy?\u00a0 Anyway, let\u2019s get right to it.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t know who Gary Washburn is?\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry, he\u2019s on minute 13 of his 15 minutes of fame.\u00a0 Gary\u2019s a sports writer for the Boston Globe, who, on Monday, came out and acknowledged that he didn\u2019t vote for Lebron\u00a0James to win the MVP award.\u00a0 On its face no big deal, until you consider that, out of the 121 people that\u00a0voted for the NBA MVP, 120 of them voted for Lebron.\u00a0 Only our man Gary, who voted for Carmelo Anthony, thought that Lebron wasn\u2019t MVP worthy.<\/p>\n

Say what you want about Bron Bron\u2026he selfishly took his talents to south beach, shunned his hometown, irretrievably sentenced the Cavs\u00a0to a lifetime of horrible basketball (don\u2019t worry Cleveland fans, you have the Browns to lift your spirits up\u2026err, never mind), and destroyed NBA parity by starting the trend of \u201csuperteams\u201d that will kill\/are killing small market clubs.\u00a0 All those things may be true, but so is this:\u00a0 he is, by far, the most dominant player in the NBA.\u00a0 The gap between Lebron\u00a0and the next in line (Melo, Durant, Kobe) is huge, and that\u2019s not a knock against those guys\u2026it\u2019s just a testament as to how complete of a player Lebron is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rest of the sports world, at least the 120 that voted for MVP, knew this hands down.\u00a0 Lebron\u00a0would have (and should have) been the first player ever to unanimously win the MVP, except for Gary and his puzzling pick of Carmelo.\u00a0 On Monday, Washburn wrote an article defending his decision to pick Melo.\u00a0 This got our bullshit-dar buzzing, and, when The Machine\u2019s Research Department actually read Washburn\u2019s article, our bullshit-dar was off the charts.<\/p>\n

First, did any of the other 120 voters have to write an article justifying their MVP decision?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 Second, Washburn begins his article by noting that Lebron\u00a0\u201cunquestionably is the best player in the game\u201d and is \u201con a Michael Jordan scale.\u201d Huh?\u00a0 Not to state the obvious, but if someone is unquestionably the best player in the game, shouldn\u2019t that make them the MVP?\u00a0 Well, according to Washburn, there\u2019s a difference between the best player and the most valuable player, and Melo\u00a0\u201cmeant more to his team.\u201d\u00a0 That reasoning is severely flawed.\u00a0 The notion that the MVP award is something different than\u00a0the best player is just stupid.\u00a0 Of course the best player in the league is the most valuable.\u00a0 Equally stupid is the quality of the team.\u00a0 So because Lebron\u2019s on a better team should devalue his accomplishments?\u00a0 That would relegate the MVP award to the best player (sorry, most valuable player) on a mediocre team.\u00a0 Steph\u00a0Curry means more to Golden State than Lebron does to Miami (and more than Melo\u00a0means to the Knicks) so why not Curry for MVP?\u00a0 And what about Kobe?\u00a0 With Kobe, the Lakers\u00a0clawed their way back into the playoffs.\u00a0 Without Kobe, the Lakers got obliterated by San Antonio in the first round.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Third, Washburn goes out of his way to convince readers that there\u2019s no Lebron\u00a0conspiracy, stating eloquently that \u201cthis was no Lebron conspiracy\u201d, as if saying it will help you to believe it.\u00a0 And perhaps that\u2019s what gets the Machine\u2019s bullshit-day up the most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not so much that Washburn voted for someone else, but who he voted for, that feeds into the conspiracy.\u00a0 The Machine doesn\u2019t generally subscribe to conspiracy theories (except that (a) the government \u201cfluoridated\u201d our water for purposes of mind control, (b) the feds want to take all our guns to secretly further Obama\u2019s Muslim socialist agenda, and (c) Elvis and Tupac are alive and well, but are being held by the government until music is once again good) but this one\u2019s got some legs to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Think about it.\u00a0 What better cover for a Boston sports writer than to vote for someone from New York?\u00a0 As a general rule of life, Boston hates New York (feeling\u2019s mutual pricks), so if a Boston writer voted for a New York athlete, it must be legit, right?\u00a0 They must have objectively looked at every other option before being resigned to vote for a Knick.\u00a0 By voting for Carmelo, Washburn gave himself an absolute cover.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t be charged with being a homer, and he can deflect the Lebron conspiracy by saying he voted for his most hated rival.<\/p>\n

But the Machine is calling bullshit.\u00a0 Lebron\u00a0Conspiracy theorists unite!\u00a0 It all makes sense, just like the second gunman on the grassy knoll.\u00a0 Boston (yes, the entire City) was pissed that Miami \u201cstole\u201d Ray Allen from them this year (disregard the fact that Ray chose to come to Miami and took less money to play for the Heat).\u00a0 Still stinging from the loss of Ray, and watching their old Celtics get older, what better way to send the ultimate \u201cFU\u201d than by voting for anyone but Lebron, ensuring he\u2019d be denied basketball immortality by becoming the first unanimous MVP.\u00a0 And then top it all off with a self-serving cover your ass article that reeks of desperation.\u00a0 The argument for Melo\u00a0is so weak, and the myriad of compliments you bestow on Lebron indicate that you know that.<\/p>\n

Usually, reasonable minds can differ, especially with sports.\u00a0 But not this time\u2026and while your article may fool some (read: everyone in Boston) you can\u2019t fool The Machine.\u00a0 We know a bitter sports fan when we see one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enjoy your teabag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, our prestigious Teabag award goes to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe.\u00a0 (are we wrong to think that the Tuesday Teabag is slowing gaining steam as a legitimate sports award?).\u00a0 Perhaps that was a dream The Machine had.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tuesday-teabag"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Bp3y-dI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":903,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}