Hit List: Plenty of idiocy to go around

by Kevin Hench

Updated: March 8, 2008, 7:08 AM EST 87 comments

Hit List

Better watch out. The last place anyone wants to land is on The Henchman's Hit List. Follow along to see why.

1. Eddy Curry

While most (all?) of Knick Nation has spent the season wishing Isiah Thomas would just disappear, Eddy Curry has. The guy has vanished. Invisible. His presence imperceptible. The 6-foot-11, 300-pound center has managed to play 24 straight games without reaching double digits in rebounds. In his last 12 games, he has pulled down a meager 2.9 rebounds per game. By comparison, 6-foot-1, 171-pound Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo has reached double figures in rebounds twice in his last 13 games and is averaging 5.3 boards per game over that stretch. Curry's dwindling numbers are in part a product of his diminishing minutes — which has to do with his not being able to get a frickin' rebound — but it has more to do with diminishing desire. And when you barely cared to begin with, that's not an area where you could afford to cut back. For the season, Curry is now averaging 4.6 rebounds a game. The guy, like so many of his teammates hand-picked by Thomas, has a heart problem that has nothing to do with his medical condition.

2. Roger Clemens

Little kids don't understand the concept of implausibility, so they'll stand in the kitchen with cookie crumbs on their face and the broken lid of the cookie jar at their feet and tell their mom how the wind blew the jar over and they got cookie shrapnel on their face when they dove to catch the lid. Roger Clemens's testimony before Congress sounded like a little kid lying, straining the bounds of plausibility to the point that — predictably — Rep. Henry Waxman's committee has now asked the Justice Department to investigate Clemens for lying to Congress. Waxman cited seven contradictions in Clemens' testimony. All the things any thinking person found preposterous in Clemens' performance were also met with skepticism by Waxman — like the fact that of the over 1,000 vitamin B-12 shots that Blue Jays doctor Ron Taylor administered, only Clemens suffered an abscess on his butt as a result. Hmmm, bad luck. And there's the perfectly corroborating testimony of Brian McNamee and Andy Pettitte. Imagine there were two witnesses to the kid with the cookie jar — his sister and the maid. And they told the mom the same story. The kid might call his sister a liar and the maid a misrememberer, but he'd still get sent to his room.

3. Bobby Knight

Oh, joy. The guy who could delight himself with juvenile and profane poetry about the press corps has joined the media. For a guy who occasionally shoots his hunting partners or assaults his beloved sons, I guess this latest spasm of schizophrenia, joining his most despised institution, should come as no surprise. Despite his avowed hatred of the press — or maybe because of it — ESPN has hired Bobby Knight as a studio analyst for the NCAA tournament. Here's hoping His Almighty Blowhardness doesn't take screen time away from the insightful — and, yes, affable — Tom Brennan and Doug Gottlieb.

4. Wally Szczerbiak

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the NBA, the one-dimensional player is hanging on merely by the tensile strength of whatever that one dimension happens to be. Well, since coming to Cleveland as a designated D-stretcher, Wally Szczerbiak has been shooting like a one-eyed man. Wally is 12-for-41 (29.3 percent) in his first three games for the Cavs. He is 6-for-25 on two-pointers, suggesting the guy should never shoot if he's not safely behind the arc. He's also turned the ball over seven times in those first three games for Cleveland, including two kick-out passes to nobody after picking up his dribble. There's a reason he's played for four teams in the last three seasons.

5. Bryan Murray, Senators GM

With friends like Bryan Murray, who needs enemies? When Murray announced he was promoting John Paddock to replace him behind the bench after the Senators' run to the Stanley Cup Finals last year, he said, "John is known and respected by our players and that was a big reason in his being named head coach. I never considered John as an assistant coach. I considered him a partner." So what did Paddock do in his first season as Ottawa coach to merit getting it in the neck from his partner with just 18 games left in the regular season? Worst record in the league? Out of the playoff picture? No. When Paddock was canned this week, the Sens were the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They were 14 games above .500 and led the league in goals scored. So Murray is not riding to the rescue of some woebegone reclamation project. He is swooping in at the 11th hour to take credit for whatever postseason success the Senators might have. How nice of him to let someone else carry the burden of the long, grim slog from October through February.

6. Ming's Left Foot

The stress fracture felt 'round the world. Not since Daniel Day-Lewis won his first Oscar has a man's left foot caused such rending emotion. Hearts are breaking from Houston — where the Rockets had won 12 straight — to Beijing, where Yao's countrymen are desperately looking forward to cheering their national hero in this summer's Olympics. Though he may be under intense pressure to try to return for the Games, will the Rockets let him risk the 2008-2009 season after watching this year go down the tubes? And as he gets older, will running baseline to baseline on his 7-foot-6, 310-pound frame get any less stressful?

7. Alabama football

As the Cincinnati Bengals clean up their act, Nick Saban's Crimson Tide looks poised to step into the void and give us our go-to football-players-as-criminals punch line. In the 14 months since Saban was hired, eight different Alabama players have been arrested, five for disorderly conduct. Saban has suggested that he may have to consider placing some restrictions on his team, which could include banning trips to the Strip, the off-campus district where most of the incidents have occurred. Well, don't rush into anything, coach.

8. Sam Zell

Ah, here it is, at the corner of Sheffield and Waveland Avenues, the beautiful brick and ivy of Samsung Field. Why someone with all the money in the world would want to become the most despised man in Chicago is beyond me, but that's just what Cubs owner Sam Zell seems detemined to do by selling the naming rights to Wrigley. (As we all know, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the guy who sells the naming rights to Wrigley Field to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.) The bald Zell is giving Cubs fans one more reason to chant "Fukudome!" this summer.

9. Scott Spiezio

In five years, Scott Spiezio's career went from the highest high to the ... well, highest high. I was in the crowd the night Scott Spiezio rescued the Angels with his three-run home run off Felix Rodriguez in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series. Now it looks like Spiezio who needs rescuing after being released by the Cardinals following a string of substance-abuse related incidents.

10. Reggie Bush

Boy, ol' Reg just can't wait to set the record straight, can he? After having a previous deposition aborted when a member of his lawyer's entourage allegedly arrived with a gun, Bush missed Monday's scheduled deposition as his lawyers moved to have his testimony sealed from the public. San Diego promoter Lloyd Lake is suing Bush in an attempt to recover $291,000 he claims he spent on Bush and his family with the understanding the Heisman Trophy winner would enter a business partnership with him. Still, Lake got off easy if you could consider how much the over-hyped Bush has defrauded the Saints with his career 3.7 yards per carry average.

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