LeBron, a Sub-2-Hour Marathon & Red Sox Woes | 99Chalk

Welcome to my sports thoughts. I am going to be writing recaps of the past week about sports and pop culture. Think of this as a conversation with your buddy on sports and life. A lot happened this past week. Let’s get into it.

LeBron James and a Terrible, No-Good Rockets Team

This past week has been one of the most embarrassing times to be a Rockets fan, and there have been a lot of those. For example, missing an NBA record 27 consecutive three-pointers in the 2018 Western Conference Finals is not close to the moment we have experienced as fans this past week against LeBron and Friends. LeBron turned back the clock this week and was vintage game-management LeBron, putting a team without their two best players on his back and leading them to a victory against a Rockets team that few analysts gave the Lakers a chance against. Game three was a microcosm of Houston's season. They were playing great defense and were up 6 with 30 seconds left — all they had to do was take the foul the Lakers were giving — but the lights got too bright. They threw the ball away after a dumb foul on Marcus Smart, and LeBron hit a game-tying shot with 14 seconds left. Ime's addiction to playing a grungy, hard-nosed defense is not how you win in the modern NBA. Look at OKC — they have the best defense in the NBA and one of the best offenses. You need to have an alpha scorer; that is how you're going to win in the modern NBA. The excuses about Fred Van Vleet being hurt and Steven Adams are baffling, considering both of them are average, maybe above average, at best. This team needs to retool this summer or they will forever be facing mediocrity. The Rockets did win Sunday night, but no team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit, and I cannot imagine this Rockets team doing that. This is a week to celebrate LeBron and his ability to not age. The NBA will be worse with LeBron gone.

Sub Two Hour Marathon

On Sunday morning, two racers in the London Marathon ran the first official sub-two-hour marathon — Sebastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha. In 2019, during the Ineos 1:59 Challenge, Eliud Kipchoge ran the first sub-two-hour marathon, but it "did not count" as he had wind-breaking pacers and the course was specifically engineered for the challenge. Sebastian and Yomif were the first two people to officially break the record, and this is one of the most impressive feats in human history. We continue to push and break human limits, but it will be interesting to see if this record will ever be broken. I have seen a lot out there about how physically our bodies cannot go past the two-hour mark. We said that before, and the records kept getting broken. Humans will continue to evolve, technology will continue to get better, and this record WILL get broken — it is only a matter of time.

Alex Cora and the Red Sox

Every team enters the MLB season with hope, thinking this could be their year. The Red Sox were one of those teams. They had made moves to improve during the offseason, but some things were afoot. Ownership refused to spend the money to re-sign Alex Bregman under the guise that he was an older player who would not age well. This was understandable and fans could accept it, but then as the offseason went along, they did not put the money they saved toward any other offensive free agents. They did revamp their rotation and brought in Caleb Durbin. These moves primed the team to rely on their young talent and great rotation to get them over the hump and compete for the AL East. As the season started, it was clear that enough had not been done during the offseason to improve this team. Too many times, owners use the guise of analytics and the "Tampa Bay Rays" model to hide the fact that they are cheap and do not want to spend money. As profits continue to increase even when their teams are losing, owners have little incentive to spend. There is no reason for them to spend unless they care about winning, which — surprise — not many owners do, and this is exactly what John Henry has done with the Red Sox. We saw this starting with the Mookie Betts trade, where the Red Sox traded one of the best players of the decade for pretty much nothing, all because they did not want to pay him what he deserved. Henry has continued to do this, and the team has continued to lose its luster as one of the premier organizations in baseball, all because Henry refuses to spend. The refusal to spend is a plague on baseball, may lead to a work stoppage in 2027, and it also led to the scapegoating of Alex Cora and five other Red Sox coaches. Fans deserve owners who care about winning, and that means not being afraid to spend. Spending does not always equal winning, but it does show commitment from ownership, and that is what fans deserve. Alex Cora is a good coach, and the reason the Red Sox struggle is because of John Henry's fear of spending and Craig Breslow. Cheap owners will create a lost season of baseball, and fans should not accept this.

Other highlights from this week

1. The NFL Draft: This was a pretty uneventful draft. Leading up to it, I did not hear much buzz, and maybe that is because I am a Seahawks fan — once you win a championship, the smaller wins like the draft matter a little less. One cool thing that did happen was the Eagles drafting Uar Bernard from Nigeria. Bernard is the first player from the NFL's African International Player Pathway program to be drafted, and it is a sign of the NFL's growing push to become more international.
2. NBA Playoffs: This has been a fun start to the playoffs, but the more these series go on, the more it seems like the team that wins the championship will be either OKC or the Spurs — two teams on a collision course for the Western Conference Finals, each with a bonafide superstar. The league is in good hands.
3. The Mets: What a rough start to the season. We talked about how awful the Red Sox have been, but I do not think anyone can have a worse start than the Mets. What makes it worse is that they have been spending money. Steve Cohen has been throwing money at the team's problems, hoping veterans would have bounce-back years and that the young guys would contribute, but that just did not happen. The Mets may have to take a step back and really think through their roster construction and how they can build a sustainable winner.

Well, that is it for this week’s recap. Let me know if you liked it. See ya next week.