First Mullin Media Bash

When you make the switch from peripheral to pundit, slide into the more structured role media, you tend to stuff the pom poms in storage, and swap an obdurate for an objective eye for sports.

So when I bash Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks, when I say the MLB playoff needle has nudged toward the Mets, when I point out that the Jets have an abject tendency for implosion, it doesn’t mean I have declared a Fatwa on the franchise.

It means my job is to wipe the rosy hue from my windshield, the pull the scented Yankee baseball from my rearview mirror, peel off the A-Rod Snuggie, and remove the Melo welcome mat. It’s time to get real.

Thus when I wrote, almost a year ago, that St. John’s was woefully misguided by hiring Chris Mullin to be their head basketball coach, I was branded, yet again, a hater and all manner of nice person.

All the way back on April 2, I asserted that the hiring of Mullin was way more PR than prudence, a misguided stroll down the down the old days. And Memory Lane rarely intersects with Broadway, much less the Canyon of Heroes.

But St. John’s hired the best player in school history under the guise of progress, when, in fact, it was a cinematic move that never transcends the movies. There was no “Hoosiers” moment here, and there won’t be one with Mullin anytime soon. And if you need proof, it’s right in your face — on TV, online, on the record, and in their record.

The Red Storm just lost to Creighton — hardly the 1968 UCLA Bruins — by 41. A game during which Mullin was ejected, like a shot swatted by Walter Berry. Over their last 20 games, the Red Storm have won one. I repeat, they are 1-19 over the last two months. One of them included a loss to a school named Incarnate Word. Is that a college or vocational school? Or a Penny Dreadful?


All athletic powers book cream-puffs on their schedule, but Incarnate Word plays titans like Houston Baptist, Abilene Christian, Schreiner, Dallas Christian, and, seriously, Our Lady of the Lake University. Raise you’re hand if you heard of that basketball colossus.

Mullin was a great basketball player. Not only the best player in St. John’s history, not only a no-brainer All-American, but also an Olympian and NBA star who molded his modest talent into a Hall of Fame NBA career as a player.

As a player.

Not as a coach, which is why his hiring was so baffling. When he was hired, Mullin was flanked by smiling suits, brass, and boosters. But no well-heeled alum can change the abject history of Hall of Famers who bomb as coaches.

Magic Johnson. Jerry West. Bill Russell (post-Celtics). Elgin Baylor. Bart Starr. Mike Singletary. Ted Williams. Frank Robinson. All of them flailed and failed on the sideline and in the dugout.

Lenny Wilkens is just about the only bona fide baller to lead a team to a title, and that was back in 1979.

If St. John’s just had to go the famous former player route, it did have one reasonable option. In fact, he was Mullin’s teammate during the Big East reign over America. Mark Jackson played point guard and won 50 games in an NBA season while pacing the sideline. But Mullin was better, evidently.

St. John’s is fighting two impulses. The political correctness that forced the school to change the team’s nickname. (They weren’t always the Red Storm.) And the troubling notion that you can go home again.

May as well throw the dirt over the botched Cosby-Era reunion. Lou Carnesecca can still wear the wretched, Huxtable sweaters, but Mullin can’t recapture the magic. St. John’s is a miserable 8-22 overall, but an abomination in the Big East, at 1-16. Let him finish the season, but not his contract.

Millennials can’t dwell in the better days, because they occurred 30 years ago. In 1985, the Big East was the beacon of college basketball. And MSG was the main nerve of the sport. The Big East Tournament was a de facto NCAA playoff. Teams jousted for top seeds in March Madness. And in the enchanted year of ’85, they had their mail forwarded to the Final Four, with Georgetown (the defending NCAA champs) losing to Villanova in the championship game.

But to get there, the Hoyas had to beat Mullin and St. John’s. Indeed, if not for the Hoyas, the kids from Queens may have cut down the nets. More than a few players and pundits thought then-Redmen would have whipped the Wildcats, who shot a surreal 70 percent from the field against Georgetown, a team loaded on the perimeter with monolith Patrick Ewing guarding the rim.

Mullin was the co-Big East Player of the Year (shared with Ewing) and won the Wooden Award for national player of the year, and was on the verge of a sprawling, successful NBA career, one that would lead him to Springfield and Naismith. He came this close to winning a title at his alma mater 30 years ago, but he’s finding it’s hard to make your alma mater matter more than once.

There’s a storm brewing at St. John’s. And it’s hardly a Red Storm.

I lifted this from Redmen.com.  Original is from CBS blogger.....


When you make the switch from peripheral to pundit, slide into the more structured role media, you tend to stuff the pom poms in storage, and swap an obdurate for an objective eye for sports.

So when I bash Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks, when I say the MLB playoff needle has nudged toward the Mets, when I point out that the Jets have an abject tendency for implosion, it doesn’t mean I have declared a Fatwa on the franchise.

It means my job is to wipe the rosy hue from my windshield, the pull the scented Yankee baseball from my rearview mirror, peel off the A-Rod Snuggie, and remove the Melo welcome mat. It’s time to get real.

Thus when I wrote, almost a year ago, that St. John’s was woefully misguided by hiring Chris Mullin to be their head basketball coach, I was branded, yet again, a hater and all manner of nice person.

All the way back on April 2, I asserted that the hiring of Mullin was way more PR than prudence, a misguided stroll down the down the old days. And Memory Lane rarely intersects with Broadway, much less the Canyon of Heroes.

But St. John’s hired the best player in school history under the guise of progress, when, in fact, it was a cinematic move that never transcends the movies. There was no “Hoosiers” moment here, and there won’t be one with Mullin anytime soon. And if you need proof, it’s right in your face — on TV, online, on the record, and in their record.

The Red Storm just lost to Creighton — hardly the 1968 UCLA Bruins — by 41. A game during which Mullin was ejected, like a shot swatted by Walter Berry. Over their last 20 games, the Red Storm have won one. I repeat, they are 1-19 over the last two months. One of them included a loss to a school named Incarnate Word. Is that a college or vocational school? Or a Penny Dreadful?


All athletic powers book cream-puffs on their schedule, but Incarnate Word plays titans like Houston Baptist, Abilene Christian, Schreiner, Dallas Christian, and, seriously, Our Lady of the Lake University. Raise you’re hand if you heard of that basketball colossus.

Mullin was a great basketball player. Not only the best player in St. John’s history, not only a no-brainer All-American, but also an Olympian and NBA star who molded his modest talent into a Hall of Fame NBA career as a player.

As a player.

Not as a coach, which is why his hiring was so baffling. When he was hired, Mullin was flanked by smiling suits, brass, and boosters. But no well-heeled alum can change the abject history of Hall of Famers who bomb as coaches.

Magic Johnson. Jerry West. Bill Russell (post-Celtics). Elgin Baylor. Bart Starr. Mike Singletary. Ted Williams. Frank Robinson. All of them flailed and failed on the sideline and in the dugout.

Lenny Wilkens is just about the only bona fide baller to lead a team to a title, and that was back in 1979.

If St. John’s just had to go the famous former player route, it did have one reasonable option. In fact, he was Mullin’s teammate during the Big East reign over America. Mark Jackson played point guard and won 50 games in an NBA season while pacing the sideline. But Mullin was better, evidently.

St. John’s is fighting two impulses. The political correctness that forced the school to change the team’s nickname. (They weren’t always the Red Storm.) And the troubling notion that you can go home again.

May as well throw the dirt over the botched Cosby-Era reunion. Lou Carnesecca can still wear the wretched, Huxtable sweaters, but Mullin can’t recapture the magic. St. John’s is a miserable 8-22 overall, but an abomination in the Big East, at 1-16. Let him finish the season, but not his contract.

Millennials can’t dwell in the better days, because they occurred 30 years ago. In 1985, the Big East was the beacon of college basketball. And MSG was the main nerve of the sport. The Big East Tournament was a de facto NCAA playoff. Teams jousted for top seeds in March Madness. And in the enchanted year of ’85, they had their mail forwarded to the Final Four, with Georgetown (the defending NCAA champs) losing to Villanova in the championship game.

But to get there, the Hoyas had to beat Mullin and St. John’s. Indeed, if not for the Hoyas, the kids from Queens may have cut down the nets. More than a few players and pundits thought then-Redmen would have whipped the Wildcats, who shot a surreal 70 percent from the field against Georgetown, a team loaded on the perimeter with monolith Patrick Ewing guarding the rim.

Mullin was the co-Big East Player of the Year (shared with Ewing) and won the Wooden Award for national player of the year, and was on the verge of a sprawling, successful NBA career, one that would lead him to Springfield and Naismith. He came this close to winning a title at his alma mater 30 years ago, but he’s finding it’s hard to make your alma mater matter more than once.

There’s a storm brewing at St. John’s. And it’s hardly a Red Storm.

I lifted this from Redmen.com.  Original is from CBS blogger.....


When you make the switch from peripheral to pundit, slide into the more structured role media, you tend to stuff the pom poms in storage, and swap an obdurate for an objective eye for sports.

So when I bash Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks, when I say the MLB playoff needle has nudged toward the Mets, when I point out that the Jets have an abject tendency for implosion, it doesn’t mean I have declared a Fatwa on the franchise.

It means my job is to wipe the rosy hue from my windshield, the pull the scented Yankee baseball from my rearview mirror, peel off the A-Rod Snuggie, and remove the Melo welcome mat. It’s time to get real.

Thus when I wrote, almost a year ago, that St. John’s was woefully misguided by hiring Chris Mullin to be their head basketball coach, I was branded, yet again, a hater and all manner of nice person.

All the way back on April 2, I asserted that the hiring of Mullin was way more PR than prudence, a misguided stroll down the down the old days. And Memory Lane rarely intersects with Broadway, much less the Canyon of Heroes.

But St. John’s hired the best player in school history under the guise of progress, when, in fact, it was a cinematic move that never transcends the movies. There was no “Hoosiers” moment here, and there won’t be one with Mullin anytime soon. And if you need proof, it’s right in your face — on TV, online, on the record, and in their record.

The Red Storm just lost to Creighton — hardly the 1968 UCLA Bruins — by 41. A game during which Mullin was ejected, like a shot swatted by Walter Berry. Over their last 20 games, the Red Storm have won one. I repeat, they are 1-19 over the last two months. One of them included a loss to a school named Incarnate Word. Is that a college or vocational school? Or a Penny Dreadful?


All athletic powers book cream-puffs on their schedule, but Incarnate Word plays titans like Houston Baptist, Abilene Christian, Schreiner, Dallas Christian, and, seriously, Our Lady of the Lake University. Raise you’re hand if you heard of that basketball colossus.

Mullin was a great basketball player. Not only the best player in St. John’s history, not only a no-brainer All-American, but also an Olympian and NBA star who molded his modest talent into a Hall of Fame NBA career as a player.

As a player.

Not as a coach, which is why his hiring was so baffling. When he was hired, Mullin was flanked by smiling suits, brass, and boosters. But no well-heeled alum can change the abject history of Hall of Famers who bomb as coaches.

Magic Johnson. Jerry West. Bill Russell (post-Celtics). Elgin Baylor. Bart Starr. Mike Singletary. Ted Williams. Frank Robinson. All of them flailed and failed on the sideline and in the dugout.

Lenny Wilkens is just about the only bona fide baller to lead a team to a title, and that was back in 1979.

If St. John’s just had to go the famous former player route, it did have one reasonable option. In fact, he was Mullin’s teammate during the Big East reign over America. Mark Jackson played point guard and won 50 games in an NBA season while pacing the sideline. But Mullin was better, evidently.

St. John’s is fighting two impulses. The political correctness that forced the school to change the team’s nickname. (They weren’t always the Red Storm.) And the troubling notion that you can go home again.

May as well throw the dirt over the botched Cosby-Era reunion. Lou Carnesecca can still wear the wretched, Huxtable sweaters, but Mullin can’t recapture the magic. St. John’s is a miserable 8-22 overall, but an abomination in the Big East, at 1-16. Let him finish the season, but not his contract.

Millennials can’t dwell in the better days, because they occurred 30 years ago. In 1985, the Big East was the beacon of college basketball. And MSG was the main nerve of the sport. The Big East Tournament was a de facto NCAA playoff. Teams jousted for top seeds in March Madness. And in the enchanted year of ’85, they had their mail forwarded to the Final Four, with Georgetown (the defending NCAA champs) losing to Villanova in the championship game.

But to get there, the Hoyas had to beat Mullin and St. John’s. Indeed, if not for the Hoyas, the kids from Queens may have cut down the nets. More than a few players and pundits thought then-Redmen would have whipped the Wildcats, who shot a surreal 70 percent from the field against Georgetown, a team loaded on the perimeter with monolith Patrick Ewing guarding the rim.

Mullin was the co-Big East Player of the Year (shared with Ewing) and won the Wooden Award for national player of the year, and was on the verge of a sprawling, successful NBA career, one that would lead him to Springfield and Naismith. He came this close to winning a title at his alma mater 30 years ago, but he’s finding it’s hard to make your alma mater matter more than once.

There’s a storm brewing at St. John’s. And it’s hardly a Red Storm.

This article is ridiculous and not just because of the absurdity of calling for the firing of a first year head coach 20 games into his coaching career. Firing Mullin would be a public relations disaster for the school. SJ would become more of a laughingstock than its been for the past 15 years, if that's even possible. It would also demonstrate a remarkable lack of loyalty to and trust in the person who is more than any other responsible for the small modicum of success the program has seen over the past 50 years.

tl;dr This guy is a dope

Unfair piece at this point and this guy is just trying to get some attention...

If the results are the same at the end of year 3, he can write it again...

Quote from: pmg911 on March 01, 2016, 10:27:37 AM

Unfair piece at this point and this guy is just trying to get some attention...

If the results are the same at the end of year 3, he can write it again...

Results have to better next year or their should be no year 3. I want Mullin to succeed as much as any of you, by this team is awful. Saying different is just a lie. I believe Mullin can do the job but he has to assert himself. He is is the man. Not st. Jean. He has to be the one who knows our game plan. He has to be the one watching film of the other team. I want and expect st. Jean to help him but mullin knows enough basketball. He has to be the guy.
Players need to be held accountable . They should be afraid of taking bad shots. Less skilled players should take even less shots. Defense had to be a focal point. St. John's has always played defense even when we sucked.
Better athletes are coming. Yes they will be young but plenty talented.
We hired Chris Mullin, I am hoping we get to see him next year more prepared, more engaging, and more confident.
I believe if the staff and their responsibilities stay the same. We suck next year and this article becomes truth.

This team should be competitive next year but as long as they improve I'm happy. We need to stop demanding 20 win years right away. That kind of stuff just doesn't happen. In my mind, if we go .500 in Big East play and can be over .500 for the year, I'd be more than happy. It's not that I'm setting my sights low either. But building something dominant takes time. Be .500 in conference play, bring in the best or 2nd best recruiting class in conference and then by year 3 you should be vying for a spot in the top 20-25 range and be competitive for Big East title.

This team is one of the worst talent wise teams I've ever seen. But if you're going to tell me that you haven't enjoyed watching these kids fight and watching these kids develop, then you're not cutout for what I believe Mullin and Co have in store.

We can be more critical of Mullin next year but I don't think too critical. Mullin is trying to instill a culture and a true definition to the program. That's something we haven't had in a LONG time. If by year 3 we haven't gotten to above .500, then year 4 is going to be a definite hot seat.

The name of the game is Patience and Progress.

People keep saying that the team is awful, well yeah obviously. What coach could have made even a decent team with a couple months to recruit players who other schools have been recruiting for years. Add to that he was left 3 bench players who couldn't even  get burn on a team with no depth last year. I realize the team has been horrible but you can't judge the staff until after next year which will be their first year with any talent on the roster. If we are this bad again next year then that is a huge huge problem but right now this roster wouldn't win much in the sun belt conference and even Coach K couldnt make them a winner. Mullin will have Big East quality talent for the first time next year and I will judge him and the staff starting from the first game next season.

Quote from: johnniesfilmmaker on March 01, 2016, 01:20:46 PM

This team should be competitive next year but as long as they improve I'm happy. We need to stop demanding 20 win years right away. That kind of stuff just doesn't happen. In my mind, if we go .500 in Big East play and can be over .500 for the year, I'd be more than happy. It's not that I'm setting my sights low either. But building something dominant takes time. Be .500 in conference play, bring in the best or 2nd best recruiting class in conference and then by year 3 you should be vying for a spot in the top 20-25 range and be competitive for Big East title.

This team is one of the worst talent wise teams I've ever seen. But if you're going to tell me that you haven't enjoyed watching these kids fight and watching these kids develop, then you're not cutout for what I believe Mullin and Co have in store.

We can be more critical of Mullin next year but I don't think too critical. Mullin is trying to instill a culture and a true definition to the program. That's something we haven't had in a LONG time. If by year 3 we haven't gotten to above .500, then year 4 is going to be a definite hot seat.

The name of the game is Patience and Progress.

That's two names. Which is it?