NBA Hall of Fame trainwreck ... Peter Vecsey

This must have been a honey of a speech, er rant ...
http://thebiglead.com/?p=20682#more-20682

From Jeff's blog on the trainwreck...

http://jeffpearlman.com/?p=2998

 

Maybe he thought it was a roast.

 

I'm still trying to come to grips with Vecsey being in the HOF. Just don't get it given his body of work.

 

As the NBA became less interesting to watch Vecsey became less interesting to read. Bob Ryan he is not.

I still get a chuckle though over the nickname that he came up with for Bill Cartwright -- "Medical Bill"

 

He made a joke about Vivian Stringer?

Mark Whicker wants to know why we're not making a bigger deal out of that.

 

I still often get a kick out of Vecsey's columns. But this sounds like a complete disaster. Here's S.L. Price's story on the Vecsey brothers from a decade ago.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1013062/index.htm

Doug Collins inducted because of his work as an announcer? Yikes. How many times can you start a sentence, "Marv, back when I coached Michael..."

 

Vecsey is very good at what he does. That goes without saying.

I don't think I've ever met someone who likes him as a person.

 

I don't even think he's very good at what he does. He's always been an awful writer, and even in his prime he was overrated as an information guy, because he missed about as often as he hit on his "scoops." For at least the last 5 or 6 years, he seems to have pretty much given up on providing much inside information at all, in favor of writing columns full of painfully bad jokes and puns. Vecsey couldn't hold the jock of real HOF-caliber NBA journalists like McCallum or Bob Ryan.

 

What the hell are the standards for induction into the BBHOF? Doug Collins as a broadcaster? The universally hated Peter Vescey? Who voted him in if he's so clearly despised?

All I know is that I sporadically covered the Pacers from 1993-2002, and given how easy it is to get in the HOF, I'm going to wait by the phone. Failing that, I'm going to go on some Harry Carson-like crusade to get my props.

 

He's a good reporter. I agree, not on the level of McCallum or even some of the best beat writers. The problem is, most of the best NBA beat writers are now columnists.

 

He's really not that good a reporter. He threw rumors up against the wall that often proved untrue, and he whiffed on big stories. I think it was Reilly who first broke the story that Jordan was considering coming out of retirement, and instead of checking it out, Vecsey absolutely mocked it in print as a ridiculous rumor. Wrong.

The best that can be said for him, and this is probably what got him in the Hall, is that he was one of the pioneers of the three-dot, inside info NBA column. Even if he was often wrong, he was one of the first to let readers in on the grapevine, much like Gammons in baseball. But once other guys started doing it and doing it better as more accurate, principled reporters, he was done.