The Wheels Under the Bus Go Up and Down...

"Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybodys pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry" - Don Henley

While classic passive-aggressiveness is more of a personality disorder, it's common understanding here in Minnesota is the ability to be nice and/or complimentary to someone's face, then inherently criticize and rip them when they aren't around to defend themselves. In the Twin Cities professional sports community, we've seen a lot of that, especially when it comes to the Timberwolves. Early this off-season, we heard Jim Petersen take a swipe at Mike James--a player he advocated acquiring-- now the latest comes from Chad Hartman, who with the trade of Ricky Davis decided to talk about Ricky's trials with Dwayne Casey on his radio show this week. It seems a tad uncivil to me. If after his on court play, his actions in the both the Pistons and Boston games of last year didn't give us an indication Davis was a cancer, then someone wasn't paying attention.

By contrast, his mention of T.Rex Chapman's locker room blowout directed at Wally and KG seems appropriate, because it was reported at the time, kicked around in the media, and T. Rex was given an opportunity to explain his actions on KFAN within days of the incident.

What I'd like to see is more aggressive reporting when events actually occur, and not wait until someone leaves to dump all the garbage out. Given the state of MSM sports media in this town that may well be impossible, but I think we as a Midwestern community are above throwing someone under the bus simply to justify our athletic transactions. James, Davis, and Blount all demonstrated on the court why they weren't good for the Wolves. Somehow--at least in most cases--that should be enough.