Wake-Up Call: Clemens trumps free agency

By Spencer Hall, filling in for Dan Shanoff. Don’t worry: We both wear Tim Tebow masks while writing.
This is a bear trap. You are ordered to step in it. Is Roger Clemens in trouble? Yes, but for all the wrong reasons. The FBI, presumably flush out of bad guys, is following up on Congress’ request to peek into whether the star lied under oath.
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Clemens now risks the very nasty charge of perjury. How big a risk? Inconsistencies are there in the Clemens testimony; whether investigators will see enough to prosecute is another question entirely. And this usually is where someone with a law degree and a tie to takes a seat behind a camera and says “I don’t know, either,†but in longer, more elaborate fashion.
Clemens’ arrogant testimony aside, remember the cheap trick Congress (and particularly California rep Henry Waxman) is playing here: You talk about things that happened eight or nine years ago, we find an inconsistency, and you go to jail. Steroids are a vulgar and cheap use of chemicals to improve athletic performance, but playing gotcha with congressional power is in its own way just as vulgar and cheap as anything Clemens might (remember: might) have done here.
Let free agency begin. Cowboys re-sign Flozell Adams. They had no choice: Adams protects the Romo franchise, and it’s a law of the natural world that you may refuse nothing to a man named “Flozell.â€
Derek Anderson refuses the Browns’ offer of $20 million over three years, ensuring Brady Quinn will get a very good shot at starting this fall for the Browns. Anderson, on the other hand, may be banking his retirement money with a very large contract in the next month or so. He turned down $10 million guaranteed. I once turned down a bet to eat a burrito out of a garbage can for twenty bucks. It’s the same thing in theory, really.
Want your own Jet? They’re flying off the lot, people. While supplies last!
NBA: The Lakers destroy the Heat. And until they change league rules, beating the Heat still counts in the standings, with Kobe going for 21, Jordan Farmar for 24 and Pat Riley likely reaching for a cool adult beverage or three after the game. The Heat have lost 27 of their last 29 games. The Lakers have won ten in a row. See? Stats mean stuff.
Phil Jackson, as usual, will get no credit for the Lakers’ success. It’s Kobe’s comeback, his emergence as a real leader, blah blah pablum etc. Not Phil’s skillful management of a maturing team and the teaching of the indomitable triangle offense. Nope. Nothing to see here.
Outhouse to Penthouse, please. Sam Cassell, cut by the last-place Clippers, may be headed to the Celtics to rejoin former teammate Kevin Garnett. This continues an NBA tradition of pushing to the playoffs by finding champion veterans well past their prime and keeping them on the bench like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
Spurs, cruise; Nets, deleting J. Kidd’s cell phone number: The Spurs keep stride like the pros they are, dusting the Mavs 97-94; the Nets show exactly how despondent they are without Jason Kidd by racking up 120 points in a win over the Bucks.
Luke Harangody takes requests. The Brawny Notre Dame forward -- in the midst of a 40 point detonation in a 90-85 loss to Louisville -- decided to keep the game tight by hitting the first three 3-pointers of his career last night in the final 1:32 of the game. Louisville coach Rick Pitino looked like he’d been mugged by a toddler after the game when asked about Harangody’s wildly successful 3-for-4 cameo as a long-range shooter.
David Padgett had 26 for Louisville, a team growing stronger at precisely the right time. Book intense couch time for March 8th, when the Cardinals’ play fellow Big East co-leader Georgetown.
More college basketball: Wisconsin goes bonkers and almost has to score sixty (sixty!) in a 57-42 win over Michigan State; UCLA a lot, Arizona State not a lot; Stanford survives against Washington, 82-79; Butler is on the Horizon in nabbing the No. 1 seed in their conference tournament; Washington State, WHAT!, Cal “um, nothing.â€
8:1 Those are the odds we give of Bobby Knight dropping a live, flaming profanity on air as an analyst for ESPN. For entertainment purposes only, of course.
Yes, that Will Ferrell movie comes out today. And the Wake-Up Call is one of two media outlets not getting an interview with Ferrell for the movie. The other is the North Korea People’s News, or something, so we’re in very exclusive company there. (Emphasis on exclusive.)↵