Breaking down 12 sports storylines you should know entering the weekend

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When things get busy, things get overlooked, underemphasized or simply missed. Like:

The narrative that Mark Davis instigated the Amari Cooper trade is a nice attempt to take some heat off the man who actually runs the Oakland Raiders, but it isn't remotely credible -- unless, of course, Jerry Jones decided to call in a favor that Davis was in no position to decline. And yet, nobody thought this was a brilliant trade for the Dallas Cowboys at the time, so let’s just say what we suspect, that the deal was conceived and supervised by, yes, you guessed it, J. David Gruden. ...

Speaking of teams the Raiders helped make great, the Chicago Bears just saw their coach, Matt Nagy, named NFL Coach of the Year by The Associated Press, because of course what do the last three games of the season matter? ...

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser tells us about one anonymous general manager who believes former A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell is having trouble finding a job with a major league team because he took a knee for the national anthem, not because he is a replacement-level platoon catcher who has an aggravated assault with a deadly weapons charge hanging over his head. I’d say this was a dangerous area to tackle, except that I get this nagging feeling that said general manager was making this his cause rather than baseball’s. ...

Nothing could be better than the concept of the Los Angeles Chargers winning the Super Bowl and then having a victory parade attended almost exclusively by angry San Diego residents. ...

And on the subject of the Chargers and their Thursday night victory in Kansas City, has there ever been a game in which more points were generated by more players with the same surname? (Williams, 36 of 59 total points). ...

If Stephen Curry got a free guided trip to NASA headquarters for jokingly questioning the moon landing, why hasn’t he gone out and said he doesn’t believe that Europe exists? Or, at the very least, Monte Carlo? ...

Small sample sizes are the best: In the first four years of the Warriors’ championship era, they lost 21 home games by an average of 10.2 points. This year, they have lost three by an average of 23.7. Somewhere there is a doomsday analysis being constructed that incorporates this. ...

Entertainment is where you find it, and when the Warriors are getting hammered at home, there is no highlight better than a courtside-Joe Lacob-with-a-case-of-the-red-mist highlight. ...

Baseball’s winter meetings are an excellent way to get media members to gather in one place and wonder why nothing is happening. ...

The belated discovery of George Kittle by the NFL intelligentsia shows us two things: The 49ers are justifiably ignored after 16 wins in almost four full seasons, and if in the modern pinball football your team’s best offensive weapon is your tight end, you will continue to be ignored. ...

ESPN’s rating of the 115 pro sports stadiums for food safety put the Coliseum venues ahead of all the other Bay Area sportatoria. In other words, if you really and truly crave an $18 beer, go to Oakland first, and have them hold the rodent. ...

And finally, my conspiratorial mind is telling me that the uncertainty surrounding where the Raiders will play in 2019 secretly might be a way to gin up what has been mostly nonexistent outrage over their actual departure in 2020. My conspiratorial mind probably is lying to me, but I wish it were so.

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