Interesting developments in the Ricky Rubio story. Apparently he had come to terms on a deal that would have sent him to Minnesota this year, but after the deal was struck he backed out of it and decided he would rather spend two more years developing in the comparative safety of his home country of Spain. I can understand that on some levels, and I can forgive a young kid of a lot, but I can’t help but question his competitive drive just a bit if he backs off of an opportunity to play in unquestionably the best league in the world – especially when he would have been going to a young team with lots of talent that would have been built around him.
The definition of karma – Andre Smith holds out for most of training camp like a big baby and then breaks his foot on his second day of practicing, keeping him out of action for at least a few weeks. I’m not necessarily proud of it, but I find that absolutely hilarious.
Strange story out of New York about Osi Umenyiora walking out on the team on Monday. He apparently got into some sort of dispute with his offensive coordinator and left the building for the day. He was back on Tuesday and was embarrassed and apologetic. I’m not reading anything in particular into this story, I just find it interesting.
Speaking of strange, I’ve been meaning to mention the whole Kansas City situation. How bizarre – new head coach Todd Haley fired offensive coordinator ChanGailey less than two weeks before the start of the regular season and has taken over play calling himself. Apparently it was just a case that the sandbox wasn’t big enough for both of their egos and Haley couldn’t give up enough control to keep Gailey happy. Gailey was surprisingly accepting of it in an interview. I already was far from optimistic about the Chiefs this year, but this certainly doesn’t help my opinion. Haley isn’t a coordinator anymore (or at least he wasn’t), and this move shows that he hasn’t exactly made that transition smoothly. It’s hard enough for a new head coach to do a good job of that, never mind when that guy is trying to do two jobs at the same time. I’m a little surprised that Scott Pioli didn’t step in and do something about this situation before things went this far. Or maybe things were so bad with Gailey that the change just had to be made. That’s hard to believe given the experience of Gailey, but stranger things have happened.
