Mets S.O.S. - More of the Same Old Sh!t

Does Steve Cohen Know What to Do Or Not?

 The Doubts Are Getting Louder

Looking back, it didn't take long for the bright and shiny optimism of the new Steve Cohen regime to start fading. He hired several general managers only to have to scrap them due to personal issues. One of them, Zach Scott, immediately put the franchise's long term goals in question by acquiring Javier Baez and pitcher Trevor Williams from the Cubs in exchange for prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong.

 [Bookended with David Stearns stupid idea of letting Pete Alonso go for nothing means that the 2026 American League home run champion (Alonso, 43) and the National League champ (Crow-Armstrong,45) could very well have lifted the Mets to pennant-winning stature this year. Bad management.]

This year provided fans with another typical Mets season of losing baseball featuring dozens of no-name journeymen players, another replacement manager culled from a front office job and his subsequent decent record under no pressure allowed Cohen and Stearns to absolve themselves of the work involved with finding a legitimate winning manager by slide-stepping a three-year contract to Andy Green instead. Bad management.

The Stearns situation is somewhat reminiscent of the times Knicks owner James Dolan kept Isiah Thomas around despite his horrifying incompetence as an executive. Now, I'm not comparing Cohen to Dolan. Cohen is a very decent man while Dolan is a major league schmuck inside out and in every direction. But this particular situation is puzzling, at the least and infuriating at the most.

Bad management. Those words have clung to this team for generations like the awful stench of rotten eggs. The only way left to scrub that acrid smell from the Mets reputation is to take action right now. 1. Remove David Stearns from any and all baseball personnel decisions. 2. Hire an experienced general manager with a successful track record. They're out there, just wave some of that money around. 3. Start acting big market and get some big name players to compliment the young talent the organization's developing. 

                                                           Carson Benge

Cohen has said he wants to be the Dodgers East. Well, it's now or never. Bad management and "S.O.S." on the New York Mets must be eradicated once and for all.

the Knicks' Huge Advantage Over Every NBA Team

And the Man Most Responsible For It

There's a major league intangible embedded in the New York Knicks' drive to the 2025-26 NBA championship. One that gives them an unparralleled advantage for their upcoming defense of their title. One that only one man can take credit for, even though said person is no longer with the team. 

That intangible is superior conditioning, endurance and stamina, something they have in abundance over every team, particularly everybody's new favorite darlings, the Philadephia 76ers of LeBron James, Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey. Everyone knows that Embiid is very injury-prone but LeBron hasn't played a full season in 10 years, which would make the possibility of their Big 4 playing together for all 82 games highly unlkely and stunting the development of team chemistry - another New York strength.

Last season the Sixers starters missed 135 games while the Knicks missed only 46. That was no coincidence because the year before the Knick starters missed 40 games while the 76ers' missed 136. That could be the biggest reason why the 76ers will fail again this season. They don't have the physicsal endurance the Knicks possess.

The mystery man responsible? None other than former Knicks honcho Tom Thibodeau. When he was being criticized for playing his starters too much little did anyone figure that the madness in his method was building a very durable roster that would not tire out so easily. By playoff time, when even the best teams are naturally worn out after the grueling regular season, the Knicks were in midsesason form and were never out of a game no matter how far behind they were. They were relentless. They kept coming. they never quit.

A repeat in 2026-27? It's a lot more plausible than people realize

An Open Letter to Mets owner Steve Cohen

 

This Wasn't Supposed to Happen Again

Dear Mr. Cohen,

  In October 2020, when you purchased a 95% controlling stake of the New York Mets from the Wilpon/Katz Group, I, like most fans, was thrilled because, as a fellow Met fan from early 1970s Great Neck coming off the Wilpon regime with dark memories of M. Donald Grant and the Tom Seaver trade always lurking, my wishes for legitimate, competent financially solvent ownership had finally been granted (and, as I told my life-long Great Neck friend, "Hey! He's one of us!"). I had - and still have - faith that you'll suceed but after nearly 6 years, something has gone awry.

Your approach of building a sustained winning frachice through a strong farm system and responsible spending (at least) is the way the Yankees, Dodgers and Cardinals have been doing it for many decades now. It's the right way and I know it'll work eventually but, in my opinion, there's currently a fly in the ointment by the name of David Stearns who, as president of baseball operations, has set the process back a few years. He's adopted the small-market style that marked his time in Milwaukee (with respectable results but no world championships). Stearns had some success in Cleveland and Houston too, but he appears to have left his edge back there. Meanwhile his current policies of echewing top players in favor of loading up the roster with unknowns, career minor leaguers, reclamation projects and over-the-hillers has the 2026 Mets looking and feeling eerily like the low-budget Mets of M. Donald Grant and the Wilpons. This wasn't supposed to happen again.

Over $1 billion was invested on 2 players, but Stearns has decided to start his minor league rebuild without a vital ingredient: quality veteran players to hold the fort and act as mentors until the kids are ready to take over. That should've been the roles of Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo instead of just shipping them out without thinking it through beforehand. Granted, had they returned it's isn't likely they would've improved at this stage of their careers but that shouldn't have been the sole deciding factor. Then, there's the case for Pete Alonso. 

There was absolutely no excuse for letting Pete get away and depriving the fans of watching one of the top sluggers and run-producers in the game. He may not be Keith Hernandez at first base (who is?), but he's worked hard to become reliable around the bag. He's a leader, a class act, a good guy and a promotional goldmine. He's not 35; he's 31 and still in his prime years. .Alonso earned a long-term deal. What more did he have to do? Why did Stearns refuse to sign him despite the virtually limitless budget at his disposal? I know he's trying to pare the payroll but this was an colossal, unwise blunder which Stearns only magnified by trying to convince the fans that Jorge Polanco was a viable replacement instead of swiping Cody Bellinger from the Yankees. Pete Alonso didn't want to leave; he wanted to be and should've been a career Met.

An often overlooked intangible is how the mere presence of a big bat like Alonso's positively affects the rest of the lineup (The same held true for Darryl Strawberry). Even if he's slumping, just the possibilty of a home run from him lent confidence to the hitters and kept opposing pitchers honest. Losing that perk damaged the offense and losing Alonso for nothing was just as destructive to the franchice as the Tom Seaver trade for a variety of reasons. The parallels are impossible to deny.

Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Alonso formed an outstanding 1-2-3 punch but now with Alonso gone and nobody able to step into his role, the considerable talents of Lindor and Soto are going to waste on this team intead of helping the Mets win meaningful games, particularly with both dealing with substantial injury issues this season. [Mark Vientos was supposed to be Alonso's heir apparent but after a slow start following a solid 2023 season, he never got a fair shot at returning to form. Player development has never been a strength of this franchise.]

                                                          Promising rookies Benge and Ewing

On the flip-side, Noah McLean, Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have provided a solid ray of hope for the future (McLean and Benge will garner some Rookie of the Year votes) but it would seem that much brighter if Stearns hadn't traded two oher vaunted prospects (Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams) to his former team for veteran pitcher Freddy Peralta only to trade the predictably disappointing Peralta away six monhs later for three lesser propects, sending the future further in reverse. And what about trading Auisangel Acuna for the perrenially underachieving Luis Robert Jr. who Stearns has had an inexplicaple crush on for two years? Has Stearns ever made a trade for a big-name player? Because that's another similarity he has to the Grant era - questionable trade acumen. And the fact that the Mets have exactly one prospect in MLB's Top 100 makes the future feel that much farther away.                         

                                                                                                  Noah McLean - The Makings of an Ace

This can't go on. As I said, it looks too painfully familiar. I admire your choice to honor Stearns' contract but that shouldn't preclude you from bringing In a legitimate general manager to take over that aspect of the job at hand which includes signing a qualified field manager, of which there are no shortage of candidates.

Enough time has gone by. Now's the time to take serious action. Your public is waiting.

                                                                

                                                            Sincerely,

                                                                      Josh Silverstein

Do Four Superstars Make a Superteam?

Don't Bank On It

Take a  Clue From the 1968-69 Lakers

Oy! Dept - Here we go again, folks. Another NBA franchice - noteably the Philadelphia 76ers - has faithfully (or in thIs case, desperately) decded that they can slap together a bunch of veteran superstars with various career tradjectories and zero experience playing together as a cohesive unit and expect them to become an immediate superteam and simply waltz to a championship. This s a faulty strategy that can be seen as a copout, as opposed to bulding a title contender through the draft, shrewed trades and free agents (as needed). It's an option but not a safe one.

So, as the low-watt media and their dedicated followers devour this latest publicity scheme, the fact that NBA history is littered wth spectacularly disappointing superteam flameouts - including the 76ers' own Julius Erving - George McGinnis - Doug Collins experiment in 1977 - will never dawn on them. This isn't to say that they always fail - they don't - but depite all the hype, it's hardly a fool-proof solution and often ends up costing the club a bundle in talent, draft picks, money and fan disillusionment.

In light of the superteam failures in recent years in Phoenix, Brooklyn, Houston and Phladelphia (again?!) among others, the one most often rcollected is one of the first and potenially most powerful combo ever sssembled. After the 1967-68 season ended the Los Angeles Lakers were despondent after losing the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics for the fifth time in seven seasons despite having Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, the greatest scoring combination in NBA history. So, they decided to go for broke by acquiring none other than the most dominant player ever, Wilt Chamberlain, who once scored 100 points in one game.

Elgin Baylor (l), Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West

Up to that point, Baylor had career regular season averages of 27.7 points, 13.9 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while West put up 27.4/6.2/6.7 as Baylor's teammate. Now the Lakers were planning to add Camberlain's 36.0/24.6/4.5 to the mix, thereby creating a frightening combination that looked invincible even for the Celtics, winners of 10 of the previous 11 championships (their only loss was to Chamberlain's1966-67 record shattering Philadelphia 76ers, one of the first successful superteams).

                                                     1968 - Boston vs L.A., Game 7

The Lakers started sluggishly as it took a while for them to mesh. They finished 55-27 but they were hardly dominant. For  one thing, Baylor and Chamberlain didn't get along and that created a lot of tension. Nevertheless, the Lakers entered the Finals against (who else?) the Boston Celtics, only  this time, LA  was the heavy favorite. But the Celtics still won the championship anyway! Ain't that a kick in  the head? Teamwork, folks, teamwork.                                  

Match cut to 2026 and nothing's changed much in the minds of some NBA executives because now, by the same token, LeBron James (26.8/7.5/7.4) and Jaylen Brown (20.0/6.5/2.9) are set to join forces with Joel Embiid (27.6/10.8/3.7) and the up-and-coming Tyrese Maxey (21.1/3.2/4.8). Can they pull this off on the same team? People are drooling over the prospects but there are too many very real risks involved here to guarantee a championship incuding those mentioned above. Here are a few more:

Is it, "Man, he's 41!" or "Man, he's 41?!" LeBron is amazing but he is 41 and after a record 23 seasons appears to be starting to slow down. His numbers have trended down for three consecutive years, he averaged only 20.9 ppg last season, his lowest since his rookie season and he's hasn't played all 82 games since 2017-18. And (all together now) he is 41. 

[Interesting tidbit: Including postseason play, LeBron James has logged a staggering total of 73,476 minutes played. That's equal to 51 days and 36 minutes or 1,224.6 hours or more than 7 weeks. That's a hell of a lot of mileage. And (all together now) he's 41. It's only a decreasing matter of time before the Big Uh-Oh occurs.]

Can They Learn to be a Team? Of couse they could but they need to put aside their

egos. Easier said than done, of course. Because when Lebron goes into player/coach/general manager/owner mode (and he will) will his teamates get jealous and start pouting? Will Joel Embiid grow angry that he's no longer the best player on his own team? Will Tyrese Maxie be upset that his average is down from last year? Will Jaylen Brown complain about not getting enough touches? And just how will 76ers coach Nick Nurse handle things if tensions rise?

A lot of issues like these can and likely could happen. But for all we currently know, the 76ers may very well blast their way to the top. With all this said however, nobody should even be thinking of making any guarantees; ony a big, fat question mark because we've been down this road before.

Wilt

[Updated 12//2026]

The Man They Called...

Most basketball fans only know the name Wilt Chamberlain because he scored 100 points in a game. They often qualify Wilt's herculean accomplishments by saying he's overrated because he was bigger and taller than anyone else in his era. Oh, sure. Judging athletes by their size has always been the stale refrain of the sporting uneducated. The fact is, there's a hell of a lot more about how spectacular an athlete he was than people know about.

Statistics and video footage of Wilt Chamberlain very strongly suggest that his combination of size (7'1", 275 lbs - he weighed in at 258 as a rookie), strength, athleticism, a vertical leap between 39 and 50 inches (depending on his age and who you talk to), unmatched durability and excellent fundamentals on both ends of the floor would still make him a better and more intimidating player than any big man in today's slower-paced NBA game.

Your Honor, I present the evidence:

Wilt Chamberlain's dominance started gaining nationwide attention when he was a teenager at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia. At Kansas University Chamberlain not only played basketball, he was also a star member of the Track and Field team. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds; the 440 in 48.9 seconds; shot-putted 56 feet; posted a 22' 8' inch broad jump and won the high jump in the Big Eight track and field championships three straight years. By the time he was 21 he had already been featured in Life, Look, Newsweek and Time magazines before he even turned pro.

Wilt left college early and spent a year playing for the Harlem Globetrotters  in 1958 before joining the NBA and once he got to the Philadelphia Warriors as a territorial draft choice the records began falling like dominoes. On October 29,1959, Wilt Chamberlain made his long-awaited NBA debut at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks and immediately set rookie debut records for points (43) and rebounds (28) that still stand. It was a powerful omen. 

You know a player is dominant when the powers that be change rules only because of his extraordinary potential. That's how the NCAA and NBA responded to Chamberlain. In college, Kansas devised an inbound play from under the basket where the inbounding player would throw the ball over the backboard to a leaping Chamberlain who would jam it home. The NCAA banned that move as well as some others before he even played one game. The NBA not only did the same, they also widened the free throw lane. Curiously, Wilt was a very poor foul shooter. He had a good shot away from the basket (he had a deadly baseline jumper) but at the line he was one of the worst. He tried every method: two-handed, one handed, even underhanded, to no avail. Late in his career he began shooting from a foot behind the foul line. About the only thing he didn't try was bouncing the ball in. It's widely speculated that he was working on a way to leap from the foul line and release the ball less than a few feet from the rim before touching the ground. The league, well aware of Wilt's track and field background, nixed that idea, too.

Opponents exploited Wilt's foul line woes by employing the original version of "Hack-a-Shaq"; intentionally fouling him (hard) away from the ball. As a career 51.1% free-throw shooter, sending Chamberlain to the line was statistically better for defenses than letting him score an easy basket in the pain9i Wilt was scrarched,bruised and battered and nearly retired in protest before the league stepped in and enacted new rules to restrict the stragety.

With Chamberlain overwhelming opponents game after game he immediately became a sensation and the NBA's biggest drawing card since the legendary George Mikan. He went on to shatter virtually every scoring and rebounding record (as a rookie, remember) and wrapped up his first year in the NBA with averages of 37.6 points and 27 rebounds a game. Fans and media alike were dumbfounded. Nobody had ever seen this kind of dominance before. Some people feared he would wreck the game. He was criticized and called selfish and a loser, leading him to bitterly lament, "Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath."

Wilt raised the ante in his second year (38.4-27.2) and in 1961-62, Wilt prceeded to make almost every scoring recorcjd unreachable. HS scoring average climbed to a surreal 50.4 points a game, highlighted by his unbeatable 100-point effort as well as a 3-overtime game where he poured in 78 points and grabbed 43 rebounds and another game of 73 points and 36 rebounds 

Here's Chamberlain's game log from that iconic season. Any one of these games would be a career achievement for any player. Wilt Chamberlain was achieving it virtually every game. 

In the current era where nobody plays all 48 minutes of a game, Chamberlain averaged a seemingly impossible 48.5 minutes a game in 1961-62. He played every minute of a game (including overtimes) 79 times that season, including 47 in a row.

In his 7th season Wilt scored his 20,000th point in his 499th career game, which by far remains (and likely will always remain) the record for the fastest to achieve that milestone.

=======================================================

Wilt Chamberlain’s blocked shot totals were never officially recorded by the NBA, but after compiling 232 surviving regular season + playoff games from archival footage/play-by-play sources, the results are staggering.

Wilt Recorded:

— 7.4 blocks per game in the raw observed sample
— 53 games with 10+ blocks
— 22.8% of tracked games with double-digit blocks

Important Context:

The surviving sample is heavily biased toward Wilt’s OLDER Lakers years (ages 32–36), including post-knee-surgery seasons after noticeable mobility decline.

After Adjusting For:
— Age decline
— Late-career overrepresentation
— Sample imbalance
— Small-sample outliers

…...the statistically reasonable prime-equivalent estimate lands around:

---->10,000 career blocks, and 8.5–8.8 blocks per game.

Now, compare that to the NBA’s official all-time block leaders:

Hakeem Olajuwon — 3,830 career blocks — 3.1 BPG
Dikembe Mutombo — 3,289 — 2.8 BPG
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — 3,189 — 2.6 BPG
Mark Eaton — 3,064 — 3.5 BPG
Tim Duncan — 3,020 — 2.3 BPG
David Robinson — 2,954 — 3.0 BPG
Patrick Ewing — 2,894 — 2.4 BPG
Shaquille O'Neal — 2,732 — 2.3 BPG
Tree Rollins — 2,542 — 2.2 BPG
                            - Credit: Christopher Sean

=======================================================

Wilt never fouled out of a game, which spanned 1,205 games including 160 playoff contests.

He's the only player to record a 40/40 (at least 40 points and 40 rebounds in one game) and he did it five times.

Six players have scored 70 or more points in a game. Wilt did it six times.

Michael Jordan scored 50 or more points 31 times in his career. Wilt Chamberlain did it 45 times in one season and 118 times in his career.

The second best scoring average by a player not named Chamberlain was Elgin Baylor's 38.3 in 1961-62, the same year as Wilt's 50.4. That makes Wilt's number 31.6 percent higher than Baylor. Now let's put that into perspective:
• The highest batting average for a season in Major League Baseball  since 1934 is Tony Gwynn's .394 in 1994. A batter exceeding Gwynn by 31.6 percent would have to hit .518.
• The all-time single season rushing record in the NFL is 2,105 yards by Eric Dickerson in 1984. To exceed Dickerson by 31.6 percent a runner would have to gain 2,770 yards.

• The NHL single-season record for goals is 92 by Wayne Gretzky in 1981-82. To exceed Gretzky by Chamberlain's pace, a player would have to score 121 goals.

There are those who claim that all Chamberlain could do was score. However, much to their ignorance, Wilt had 78 career triple-doubles, more than Larry Bird (59), Michael Jordan (31) and Kobe Bryant (21). Wilt had 31 of them in one season.

In 1960 Wilt grabbed an astonishing 55 rebounds in one game - against Bill Russell, no less. He's said to have been more proud of this record than his 100-point game because it was harder to do.

Wilt Chamberlain doesn't just block this shot, he catches it and turns it into a rebound.

In 1966-67 Wilt won his first championship (dethroning the then 8-time defending champion Boston Celtics in the playoffs along the way) when he changed his playing style, averaged 24.1 points, 24.2 rebounds and 7.8 assists a game and led the Philadelphia 76ers to a 68-13 record and the NBA title. Here's Wilt's game log from that historic season.

Chamberlain followed up that season in 1967-68 by becoming the only center to lead the league in total assists in a season with 702. His numbers were 24.3/23.8/8.6. The peak of that season ocurred on February 2, 1968 when he became the first player in NBA history to get a double triple-double (at least 20 points, 20 rebounds and 20 assists in one game). It took 51 years before Russel Westbrook became the second one. Here's the box score of Wilt's game.

Occasionally, somebody would count hifferent stats during a given game. In 1968 Chamberlain produced an unofficial quintuple-double with 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks and 11 steals.

  

Wilt had 40 or more rebounds in a game 14 times. Bill Russell did it 11 times. The only others members of the 40-rebound club are NBA Hall Of Famers Nate Thurmond and Jerry Lucas who each did it once. 

When he left the NBA in 1973 he held 126 NBA records. Up to this date he still holds 72.

Off the court, Wilt could palm a bowling ball, bench press 465 lbs, clean-and-jerk 375 lbs and deadlift 625 lbs among other feats of strength and life after basketball also saw him become a Hall Of  Fame volleyball player. 

Quotes

NBA great Johnny Kerr -- "Once Wilt got upset with me and dunked the ball so hard it went through the rim with such force that it broke my toe as it hit the floor."

Hall Of Fame coach Alex Hannum -- "When I coached the San Francisco Warriors, I thought Al Attles was the fastest guy on our team--by far. We used to gamble a lot--which player could jump the highest and run the fastest.  So I set up a series of races, baseline to baseline. In the finals, it was Wilt and Al Attles and Wilt just blew past him. I'm convinced that Wilt Chamberlain is one of the greatest all-around athletes the world has ever seen." 

Al Attles -- "I'd see what the other players were doing to Wilt and what the officials were allowing, and I'd get more upset than if it were happening to me. It wasn't that Wilt couldn't defend himself...If he ever got really hot, he'd kill people, so he let things pass."

New York Knick Darrell Imhoff, the starting opposing center the night Wilt scored 100 points -- "I can't have a nightmare tonight. I've just lived through one."

Former teammate Tom Meschery -- "A lot of people are walking around today only because Wilt never lost his temper."

Hall Of Fame Boston Celtic K.C. Jones -- "He stopped me dead in my tracks with his arm, hugged me and lifted me off the floor with my feet dangling.  It scared the hell out of me. When I went to the free-throw line, my legs were still shaking. Wilt was the strongest guy and best athlete ever to play the game."

Rugged power forward Paul Silas -- "One time, when I was with Boston and he was with the Lakers, Happy Hairston and I were about to get in a scrape. All of a sudden, I felt an enormous vise around me. I was 6-7, 235 and Wilt had picked me up and turned me around. He said, 'We're not going to have that stuff.'

I said,'Yes sir.'"

Hall Of Fame center Bob Lanier who was 6'11", 260 lb. -- "When he picked me up here and put me down there, I thought he was the baddest!"

Hall Of Fame power forward/center Elvin Hayes -- "He was such an awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down there and look up at him when he's towering up over you waiting to dunk, was a terrifying picture. Everyone was scared when he got that "Don't try to stop this" look.

Hall Of Famer Walt "Clyde" Frazier -- "His legacy is comical. When you read about his records, it makes you laugh. He has records that are just remarkable. I don't care if he was 10 feet tall, the things that he did."

Chamberlain showed some interest in football which attracted the attention of legendary coach Hank Stram, who invited Wilt to a workout. Here's what happened:

It's a credit to Wilt Chamberlain's awesome athletic ability that he kept getting comeback offers for 18 years after his retirement. The Bulls, Cavaliers, Nets, Knicks twice, Sixers twice, Mavericks, Suns, Clippers - those are all the teams that tried to get me in the last decade," Chamberlain said in 1991. "It's great for the ego to think at age 50, 52, 53 that guys think I could still go out and play. And personally, I think I could do it. But I have no desire. The time I had was enough."

Wilt's career numbers 

A list of some of his records and achievements:

And some video highlights.