I am inclined to be skeptical, because Balzer takes his conspiracy theory even further. He intimates that the NFL instructed all the teams picking after Sam’s selection to avoid taking DE Ethan Westbrooks, who, in Balzer’s telling, the Rams would have chosen if they weren’t compelled to take Sam.

In Golden State, the big question is whether to pursue a historic 73-win season or rest up for another finals run.

As a Jets fan, I really should not be allowed to complain about this, since the Bears traded us Brandon Marshall (1,500 yards and 14 tds) for similarly low compensation last year, also basically because they disliked him personally. But, man, you’d think they might have learned something from that?

“So, if no one keeps it in check, which there is no one keeping it in check, first of all, no one wants to bite the hand that fed them or the hand that feeds them today. The only liaison we had was Joe Torre. It’s like Washington DC. Everybody starts out with good intentions. You can’t beat them, join ‘em.”

I have said out loud in public while mostly sober that I’d at least be interested to see what he could do with the Marshall/Decker WR tandem and these RBs. Related: I am trapped in a purgatory of my own design.

To be a Jets fan is to agonize along with your franchise as they choose among the several bad options available to them. Pay “starter money” to a 33-year-old journeyman coming off his best season? Sign a one-time wunderkind in RGIII who by all outward appearances was psychologically dismantled by the NFL’s worst…

s’all good, no worries!

He can have both! My point is that fans and old-school columnists (and seemingly some teams) take the wrong lesson from this.

It’s remarkable and insane that we even need a Professional Athletes Openly Having Fun Revolution, but sign me right the fuck up.

Every other team in the league can learn a lesson from this.

For Brady, it’s an immediate raise. He was set to earn $19 million over the next two seasons, but with his new signing bonus, he’ll now get $30 million over that same period.

Kurt Rambis, a week from today: “Well, look, I know starting Zinger at the point isn’t the obvious choice, but we think there’s a real inefficiency in the league when it comes to 7-foot-3 guards, and...”

(Just kidding, that would still be too fun, the Knicks don’t like fun. It will be something completely boring that…

I was about to posit that this was all an elaborate, passive aggressive strategy to piss Carmelo off so he agrees to waive his no-trade clause in the offseason and the Knicks can swap him for assets, wisely embracing a build-around-Porzingis strategy.

Nah, he doesn’t seem to have appealed much to you at all, actually.

Jeb Bush is nice, interpersonally; this is the very least that can be expected of an adult human being, and certainly of one who spent his formative years in a bullshit patrician politeness school like Phillips Academy Andover.

Having learned his lesson, Rambis changed his password from “triangle1" to the vastly more secure “Triangle1!”

Secret-keeping proponents counter that confessing only serves to lessen your guilt by putting the weight on your partner’s shoulders—it’s selfish in a different kind of way.

Most of the old Grantland writers don’t really care for Simmons or the editors because they left the writers out to dry at the mercy of the WWL without giving them any notice.

Beat me to this. My favorite scene in this show’s entire run.