Breaking up may be hard to do, but shutting up about it is even harder.
Just ask Nuggets head coach Michael Malone and Bones Hyland, who can’t stop taking (slightly) veiled shots at one another two weeks after Denver sent the young guard off to La La Land.
Michael Malone — D+
There’s no better time-honored tradition in the NBA than subtly — or not so subtly — calling out a discarded player in the wake of the trade deadline.
The City of Angels provided the most startling example earlier this month, when ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin went full National Enquirer, quoting an anonymous source who said the Lakers “removed a vampire from the locker room” by trading Russell Westbrook away to the Utah Jazz.
Yikes.
While things never got nearly that tawdry in the wake of the Nuggets sending Hyland to the Clippers on Feb. 9, there’s been plenty of shade thrown both directions.
The last bit came after the Nuggets’ win in Cleveland on Thursday night, when, complimenting new acquisition Reggie Jackson, Malone got in one more low-key dig on his former guard.
“Coming off the bench, Reggie Jackson is a team-first guy. It’s all about the team,” Malone told reporters postgame. “And those are the kind of guys we want around here.”
Listen, we get it, Coach.
Hyland let his ego get in the way of a team with bigger aspirations than individual accolades. Then, a week after his inevitable trade out of town, he put Malone on blast at All-Star weekend, accusing his staff of failing to properly communicate where he stood with the Nuggets.
Not a great look, to say the least. But neither is dragging this thing out longer than a couple of days.
It’s time to move on — for all parties.
To quote the sage hotel chef from the massively underrated comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “It’s like the Sopranos: It’s over, find a new show.”
Pac-12 — F
Speaking of things coming to an end, may we present the Conference of Champions, which continues to succeed in finding new ways to get things wrong.
The latest bit of conference malpractice came this past week when the CU women’s basketball team was forced to host its biggest game of the season on a Thursday afternoon as part of an ill-conceived basketball doubleheader at the Events Center.
Yes, CU-Stanford at 3 p.m. on a Thursday — with classes in session across campus.
Somehow, a group tasked with promoting intercollegiate athletics didn’t see how this might be an issue for Buffs fans wishing to see the 21st-ranked Buffs take on the third-ranked Cardinal.
That the two teams produced a double-overtime thriller was not surprising. That it played out before a crowd incommensurate with the stakes was totally avoidable.
And yet that’s not even the only reason the Grading the Week staff feels compelled to ding Bill Walton’s preferred athletic conference.
In yet another sign things are going off the rails, a report from The Action Networks’s Brett McMurphy surfaced Friday morning linking the Pac-12 to something called ION TV as potential television partners.
We can only guess it’s because the CW was already taken by LIV Golf.
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