General

Better Than Game 6 of the NBA Finals: Tom Izzo News Conference

Jun 16, 2010, 2:45 PM UTC

While the prospect of a Game 7 in the NBA Finals is tantalizing, the game was relatively dull and continued a trend of what has been a pretty underwhelming playoff experience. So while the Lakers were busy building a 20-point lead before the break, I’d flipped over to ESPNEWS (and later the Big Ten Network) to watch Tom Izzo address his decision to stay at Michigan State.â†µâ†µBoth Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis and president Lou Ann K. Simon took the media to task about how the story was covered. (Most notably, when blogs were referenced they were likely referring to the post from Cleveland-centric blog Waiting For Next Year, which obviously turned out to be incorrect.)â†µ

â†µâ†µIt’s poor form for administrators to handle the media this way, because not everyone can be lumped into the same pile, so I had to sort of roll my eyes at such a scolding. But even worse was the response that followed from Detroit News columnist Lynn Henning. When Henning had an opportunity to ask Izzo a question, the columnist talked about how he didn’t appreciate the “blanket indictment” of media. That would be fine, coming from certain individuals in the audience, but certainly not from someone who wrote this nonsense titled “It’s Too Late For Tom Izzo To Return To Michigan State.”â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥More important than anything LeBron James decides to do, there’s a more fundamental reason for why Tom Izzo should probably take the Cleveland Cavaliers job. â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥His heart no longer is at Michigan State. Not sufficiently, anyway. â†µâ‡¥
â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥It can’t be after a week as prolonged, as tortured, and, sadly, as demeaning to all parties as the Izzo deliberations have turned.â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µâ†µHenning would seem to have a tenuous grasp on anything Izzo is thinking at this point, given that -- by his own admission -- he has not been in East Lansing, regularly covering the team for a few years now. With that context, watch the exchange between Izzo and Henning:â†µ

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â†µJust as the administration of Michigan State shouldn’t indict the media at large over one blog post, I hope readers don’t lump everyone with Henning’s grandstanding. (At one point, he says he didn’t want a debate, but seeing as how this thing lasted 10 minutes, it’s exactly what he got.) This kind of stuff needs to get handled behind closed doors, because no one comes off looking good.â†µâ†µAs for Izzo, it’s great for college basketball that he’s returning. Stripping a national championship contender of its coach this late in the offseason would’ve compromised one of the nation’s top teams for next season. Here’s to hoping that these next few months are significantly more drama-free than the nine days of deliberation. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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