Boston Sports

BOSTON (CBS4) ― While praising those who succeed in sports almost always provides a warm and fuzzy feeling, from time to time we simply must divert our glances to those who are just plain bad. Consider it the sports equivalent of looking both ways before crossing the street. If you don't, you could be blindsided by a notably horrendous performance. Recently, crossing that street has become particularly dicey as we have witnessed some utterly dreadful teams in various sports go on some rather remarkable runs of failure. I now salute those, um, efforts.

When profiling cold teams, it only seems appropriate to start with penguins. Pittsburgh's Penguins entered the NHL season with a sense of optimism and excitement generated largely by the debut of young phenom Sidney Crosby, considered a possible heir to the legend's crown worn by Wayne Gretzky and the Steel City's own Mario Lemieux in past years.

Crosby has not disappointed. The team has, to put it mildly. The Pens lost their first nine games of the year before getting "hot" with an 11-19 record in their next thirty games. From there, the gravy train didn't just crash; it spontaneously combusted. Pittsburgh lost an almost incomprehensible 17 of their next 18 games. In that time, they fired their coach, and Lemieux re-retired from playing. He'll now concentrate on selling the team, which he also owns. Might as well strike while the iron's hot.

Interestingly, "Penguins Hockey" is an anagram for "Hype Gone, Suck In." That pretty much says it all I think.

In most cases, kicking anyone when he's down brings with it a certain sense of guilt. Not so with New York Knicks General Manager Isiah Thomas. In his none-too-illustrious career, he has led a team to tremendous underachievement as the Indiana Pacers' coach and shepherded an entire league into bankruptcy as the CBA's commissioner, crushing the careers of many hardworking people in the process. All the while, he has maintained the same arrogant smile on his face with the public persona to match.

Two and a half years ago, Thomas took his act (What is the opposite of The Midas Touch?) to the Knicks front office with predictable results. Since taking yet another job that was way over his head, he has stuffed New York's roster with more overpaid, under-producing players that will paralyze the franchise for years to come. Meanwhile, this season, the Knicks own the worst record in the league thanks in large part to a current garden-variety 2-21 stretch.

Let's not forget that Thomas also brought in the similarly self-absorbed Larry Brown to coach his band of misfit toys for the low-low price of $10 million per season. Brown now seems intent on proving just how execrable the roster really is by coaching them – or, more to the point, not coaching them – into oblivion.

The cherry on this rancid sundae came last week when Thomas acquired guard Steve Francis, who now finds himself paired with Stephon Marbury in the Knicks backcourt. Both players think shot first, second and third and have won a combined total of nothing in their careers. They will both average well over $15 million per season the next four years. And perhaps funniest of all, a week before the Francis trade, Marbury and Francis were listed as numbers one and three, respectively, in a Sports Illustrated poll of 248 NBA players responding to the question of "Who is the most overrated player in the league?" No wonder Isiah commands so much respect.

In 1942, French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, "Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat." Had he penned those words today, one might have wondered if he spent time watching the 2005 Houston Texans play football.

As their season began to unravel like it had in each of their three previous seasons, to many, the Texans seemed to be in very little rush at all to win a game. After ten games, they sat at 1-9, officially eliminated from playoff consideration and smack dab in the middle of the race for the first pick in the 2006 draft. However, with five teams within one game of their "lead," they had plenty of work to do. It was time to get inventive. In the next three weeks, that's exactly what the Texans did.

In Week 12, Houston led St. Louis 24-3 at halftime and 27-17 with 30 seconds left in the game and finagled a way to lose it to a Rams team led by a third-string rookie quarterback seeing his first career NFL action. The next week, the Texans snatched defeat from the slippery hands of victory by letting one of the most futile offenses in the league, that of the Baltimore Ravens, drive into field goal range in the game's final minute. With the 32 yards that led to the game-winning kick, the Ravens totaled a meager 297 yards, but it was enough to knock off the less-than-devastated Texans. And they still had more in their bag of creativity. Down 13-10 to 3-8 Tennessee the following week, the Texans drove 40 yards in the closing minutes to set up a possible game-tying 31-yard field goal. Kicker Kris Brown then channeled his inner-Mike Vanderjagt and sprayed a hideous kick short and way left (a misfire only a Texas quail hunter could love) to preserve the loss.

That stretch helped propel Houston to a 2-14 record, the worst in the league and tied for the second-worst since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule.

Unfortunately, our local teams have not all been immune to standings hopelessness either. Pity the Northeastern University men's hockey team and first-year coach Greg Cronin. The Huskies entered last month's 54th Beanpot with a record of 1-18-6. Compounding the misery, they lost their two Beanpot games by a combined score of 10-2.

To their credit, Northeastern has continued to hang in almost every game and has picked up two more wins, one against nationally-ranked Providence. The Huskies now own a droopy 3-22-7 record and 3-15-7 in Hockey East. The good news? Amazingly, they are not in last place in the conference. That distinction goes to Merrimack at 2-18-5.

The Celtics and Bruins appear to have righted their ships to some extent, but on a smaller scale they have both suffered through some serious struggles as well this season. The Bruins closed November losing nine of ten games, a disaster that could ultimately cost them a playoff spot. The Celtics lost 20 of their first 24 road games, and after 57 games have yet to win three straight games anywhere, a claim no other NBA team can make.

As a World War II pilot, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry knew a little something about flying high, but he clearly also knew how to define crashing and burning. He wrote, "Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility." We have seen all of those in the last several months. And soon we will see the Kansas City Royals.

Rob Gill is a sports producer for CBS4.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CBS4 or CBS4Boston.com
Email Rob at rpgill@boston.cbs.com.

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