Yet Another Reason To Watch The NHL Playoffs

By Tim Baughman

I was reading the news last night and I saw this article posted on FARK.com.


For those of you who either don't watch sports or don't care about the NBA (I fall into that second category), the Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers have developed a bit of a postseason rivalry over the past few seasons. That feud was fueled on this year by a rash of hard fouls against Cleveland's LeBron James, leading the Cavs and LeBron to question the Wizards' tactics. Wizards' center Brendan Haywood responded to this by calling James a crybaby. For Game 6 of the series (in Washington DC), Papa John's Pizza sponsored shirts with James' #23 on the back along with the name "crybaby".

Now, despite living in Ohio, I'm not a huge fan of Ohio teams (with the exception of the Columbus Blue Jackets), but I'm also not a fan of poor sportsmanship. Washington shouldn't have been fouling James as ferociously as they were throughout the series. If you watched Haywood at all through the series, you would have thought he played for the Capitals as opposed to the Wizards. But, at the same time, LeBron needs to grow up a bit. Go back and watch the early Pistons-Bulls series and see how bad Michael Jordan got lit up by Isiah Thomas and company. Those fouls make the shots taken at LeBron look like a fifth grade cat fight. I personally found Papa John's stunt hilarious. That's right Cleveland fans...hilarious. I'm always up for a good marketing promotion (such as this promotion welcoming Mike Vick to Kansas City), and I think Papa John's making these shirts was genius. Now, I understand that Papa John's has apologized to Cleveland fans and the Cavs for their actions, but maybe this whole ordeal will help Cleveland fans realize that their team, in particular LeBron, really does need to get tougher.

Then again...maybe not