This week promises to be a lot of fun for sports fans, with NFL free agency starting up tomorrow, and the NBA trade deadline coming up Thursday.
For fans, there is the anticipation that a move or signing can be announced at any time. For the media, it means a lot of working the phones, and very little sleep, as many talks go deep into the night. Sleeping or doing other normal activities means you risk getting beat on the story. Some thrive in this environment, others don’t enjoy the added intrusion into their personal lives.
The Celtics lost a tough one to the Lakers yesterday afternoon, trailing big early, making a strong comeback, taking a lead into the final two minutes before letting it slip away in the end. Get all the coverage at CelticsLinks.com.
A big concern for the Celtics is the health of big man Chris Wilcox, who is having further tests done on his heart. Wilcox had started to become a strong contributor to the Celtics and his loss for the season would potentially be a big blow.
The end of a Celtics-Lakers era? – Paul Flannery wonders if this was the last meaningful game between the old rivals for some time.
Celtics missing something at end – Chris Forsberg has the Celtics still showing they can compete.
For Celtics fans on Twitter, a huge development this weekend was the news that Steve Bulpett @SteveBHoop has finally joined in. I look forward to updates from one of the best beat writers in any sport.
It was a rough weekend for the Bruins, who dropped a pair of matinée matchups.
It’s becoming clear B’s still paying Cup price – Joe Haggerty says that the Bruins are in the midst of another cup hangover.
For the Patriots, the start of free agency tomorrow will see some very interesting options available to them. They’ll likely target a receiver with some of their $16.2 million of cap room. You can keep up with all the Patriots news and moves at PatriotsLinks.com.
And guess who wrote this over the weekend:
“[Adrian] Gonzalez is one sour dude. Almost Nomar-esque. Nobody likes a know-it-all”
And so it begins.
Boston Sports Media Watch 
I was out and about on Sunday and was able to catch some of Pete Sheppard’s triumphant return complete with cheesy bumper music and self depreciating humor. More importantly listening to pete for about 90 minutes reminded me that someone who is trained to do this job, as he was, makes the show more listenable. The passion he brings to sports talk in general makes the show more interesting. And the stupidity he brings out in the callers still makes me want to scream.
We may never know why Pete was actually let go 2 years ago. To believe that it was only about money is naive. If it was about other things I hope those demons are behind Pete. 30 minutes into his show and I found myself thinking a Dale and Pete midday show would be 10 times better than mutt and Merloni or Gresh and Zo. Dale has been carrying Kirk Minnihan to listenable shows these past few Sunday mornings. Pete brings a passion. love of sports that is sorely missed with a lot of other hosts. You don’t hear passion for baseball or football or basketball or even hockey from D &C, T&R, the Big O, Mike Holley, or Mutt and Lou…. you hear it a little from Felger especially when he talks hockey but none from Mazz, you hear some from Gresh and Zo when they talk football but nothing else. Pete truly loves sports and talking about it. Its why he calls idiot callers names…because they aren’t passionate about the sports.
Pete has his flaws: arrogance, not always being prepared, his temper to name a few but WEEI has done a lot worse with some of their decisions than giving Pete a more high profile gig if he can handle it. Teaming him with a consummate pro like Dale should force him to stay on the straight and narrow. At this point what does WEEI have to lose?
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Here comes revisionist history regarding Sheppard. Most people here hated him…i guess that’s a sign of how horrible WEEI is now.
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I never ever said I liked the guy. What I said is he is better at talk radio than the majority of the people currently doing their job. More importantly I said he brings passion and a genuine like of sports to the job…which is something that is sorely lacking in most of the other shows.
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I heard some of Pete’s show Sunday as well and it was enjoyable, like hearing an old friend. Pete’s most appealing quality is his humanity. He’s not perfect and doesn’t pretend to be. He also has a good voice which at one time, before the pencil-necked geek every sportswriter can be a broadcaster era, was the prerequisite for radio work. He flumpfers around a little too much to work solo but he would be solid as part of a duo with a good straight man.
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Pete is “comfortable” but I can’t say that he is particularly good. He gets tongue-tied and rivals John Dennis for the longest questions asked on the radio. The difference is that I think Dennis writes them out first, so you can almost follow them through the waves of dependent clauses and aduible semi-colons. Pete is a human run-on sentence. Still, I’ll take him over quite a few of his cohorts or rivals. A while back I heard him on the Michael Graham show as an “expert” guest during the Patriots post-season run. He simply did not have the nimbleness to keep up with the other guests. Cringe-worthy.
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Wait, someone one-ups Mike Greenburgh for being long-winded, extremely redundant and having a loquacious tongue? Say it ain’t so. I know that you get the vanilla of vanilla with Mike and Mike but after 10 years and you still do the “ADHD, 2 weeks into this, still getting used to a teleprompter and guests, can’t ask succinct questions” stuff? Drives me NUTS sometimes. They don’t even give their guests more than 5 minutes and Greeny adds 20s onto each question.
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On a non-Pete Sheppard note, did anyone catch Felger’s show on Comcast last night? He published an email from a viewer calling him on his “cap is crap” mantra, as the viewer pointed out the wholesale roster cuts–for cap reasons–that teams like the Colts and Steelers (and others) have made this week. Felger’s response? Somehow all of these cap-related roster cuts “prove his point” that the cap is indeed crap. I got past maybe the first 10 seconds of his CYA response before changing the channel. The guy simply can never admit that he’s wrong about anything.
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Since the Super Bowl, I’ve found myself going from DVR’ing Felger show to flipping through it and now avoiding it altogether. The same tired arguments, the same boring guests (does anyone, anywhere care what Damon Amendalara has to say?) — I remember when he debuted his show with the tag line “remember when Sundays used to mean something?” The louder he gets, the more meaningless he becomes.
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Beyond Tom Curran, who I usually only enjoy when he’s hosting/analyzing football, isn’t Felger their “best” analyst at CSNNE? Would you really want an hour of GearBear droning on about whatever? Agree with Doc/George here but I always thought Felger had one of the best “hosting” abilities. The analyst part is another story.
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I heard a few minutes of Pete and thought he sounded a lot better than I remembered. But this is a show for which he had a much longer preparation period than he would during a daily gig. If he wasn’t good on Sunday he will never be good. I agree with some folks here that he has few interesting insights and often has trouble articulating.
Passion is nice – and refreshing – but if he can’t perform the basic requirements of the job he is not a viable option as a daily host.
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Good to hear Pete on the radio again — though he gets hung up at times, his enthusiasm is a breath of fresh air from the tired, snarky cynicism of Felger and most of the writer/broadcaster hybrids on EEI.
I agree he’s best in a group or with a co-host. I could easily hear him and Dale going at it and playing off each other. I’m sure Mutt & Lou are hearing footsteps these days…
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Pete calling out “Steve from Fall River” on his tired anti-Patriots mantra was priceless.
It’s easy to forget since the Bruins were never in contention back when Pete was on the Big Show, but he was easily the most knowledgable hockey guy at the station next to Dale Arnold. Pairing those two up together on a daily basis would give WEEI the strong hockey talk platform it has been lacking for years. Would listen to them over Felger and Mazz any day during Bruins season.
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Pete Sheppard couldn’t get hired anywhere—I think the reason is he is not intelligent at all. This “passion and enthusiasm” is the same tired cliche such as “Varitek calls a good game.” He went to broadcasting school, but doesn’t speak well—example is how many times he says “you know”. I understand listening to nitwits like Squeaky Mazz,Mutt,Mikey,D.A,etc, makes a few people jealous. A lot of people like sports but can’t articulate it and have no business in talk radio–Pete is one.
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