I wrote recently on an obscure website after last night’s disastrous victory over DePaul that
Mike “Coach Third Choice” Anderson has saved his job. This makes me very happy, because I root for St John’s to lose every game and St John’s will struggle to achieve mediocrity for as long as he’s coach.
A fan responded:
Why is this reason for celebration? We have to now go through another shit year next year with no tangible hope to be competitive and make the tournament in the near future. The goal this season was always to get Anderson fired as he continues to hold back the program. As far as I am concerned, the season was a failure because we did not achieve that goal.
Dear fan
Your assessment of Mike Anderson’s once and future tenure at St John’s is spot on: kudos. That said, the reason that Mike Cragg’s unwarranted extension of Mike “Perpetual Seventh Place” Anderson is a reason for celebration is because I hate St John’s basketball and despise St John’s basketball fans. I was for most of my lifetime a die-hard St John’s fan and in fact had a highly successful blog that examined in minute detail the team’s fortunes. Perhaps you heard of it: it comprised the best sports writing to come out of New York City since Red Smith. Unfortunately the respect and affection I felt for the program – and for the pantheon of greats who wore a St John’s uniform of whom I doubt you’ve ever heard: George Johnson, Glen Williams, David Russell, Reggie Carter, Boo Harvey, Walter Berry, Malik Sealy, Paul Berwanger and their ilk – has been beaten out of me. Because rooting for St John’s is like betting on the Indians in a John Wayne movie: there’s no money in it.
It was very early in the Anderson years that things changed for me – and admittedly my feelings had a lot to do with the ignominious firing of the great Chris Mullin by shovel faced moron Mike Cragg and the subsequent embarrassing coaching search, where first Cragg was played for an imbecile by the lesser Hurley brother Bobby and then played for a fool by a midwestern mediocrity called Porter Moser and then played for a complete fool by alleged basketball coach Jeff Capel, who advised Cragg that washed up never-was “Iron Mike” Anderson – and what kind of moron gives himself a nickname like that – would be a “home run,” Anderson being a home run in the same way that a ground out to short is a triple. Because Mike Anderson stinks and that’s me being uncharacteristically charitable. Because Anderson is a hack and a buffoon. Coach Third Choice is currently (approximately, because I can’t be arsed to go back and update this statistic, which I looked up last week) 26–40 (.40) in the BE coaching against hacks like floor slapping dope Steve Wojowhatshisname, and Pat “Choke” Ewing and Lavall Jordan and has never made the post season. Whereas the universally reviled Norm Roberts was 32–70 (.31) in the BE coaching against Rick Pitino, and Jims Calhoun and Boeheim, and Bob “do you know who I am” Huggins; the same Norm Roberts who made two post seasons in six years and recruited the best St John’s team in recent memory. Which seems about a wash to me.
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One of the things the desperate no-hopers at the internet cesspool formerly known as redman dot com often have recourse to when discussing Iron Mike’s evident to everyone but his ball-washers flaws is his character: he is, they say, “classy.” Leave aside that those mutts wouldn’t recognize class if a class of classicists held a master class on The Theory of the Leisure Class in their colons. (And note that as I usually caution, if someone from RDC mentions “class” in your presence you should check to make sure you still have both your kidneys.) Pardon me, but what exactly is classy about Mike Anderson? Is it the way he blames everyone else for his failures? Is it the way he dog-houses kids and buries them on the bench? Is it his extensive collection of sweat clothes? His soul patch? I mean, I could spend pages describing Mike Anderson and the word “classy” wouldn’t occur to me. But then, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary.
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So now I root against St John’s. My most fervent wish is that St John’s loses every game where the team flight does not crash into a mountain. And the distress of people like you – people who root for St John’s to win – makes it all the more betterer: your disappointment is to me sweet a elixir. From the whinging of paunchy geriatric one foot in the grave red and white club members riding the subway home in their stupid St John’s gear to the tears of disappointment shed by the grandchildren they have chosen to subject to decades of disappointment like those I’ve endured as a St John’s fan, all of it is to me delicious: I am drunk on your tears.
That’s why it’s reason for celebration.
Best wishes, your pal,
fun
