Another week, another dollar. College hoops is back, the Warriors are vaporizing fools in the NBA, people are screaming about the College Football Playoff selection committee, and the motherfunking Carolina Panthers are a glorious 9-0. Soak it in, guys and gals, these are the times. We’re living in them.
For this week’s best of North Carolina sportswriting, we turn to none other than Nashville, Tennessee, where concerned mother Rosemary Plorin was taken aback by the groove of quarterback Cam Newton.
And I think we’re done here; yeah, we literally can’t do better than this. See you next week, have a good one.
/gets yelled at by Hayes and Swain
Okay, well, I guess there’s a little more work to be done here. The rest of this week’s best of:
There’s been a seemingly endless amount of responses to Plorin’s letter, which came only a week after #BannerGate, and that whole useless feedback loop. My favorite rebuttal to all of the anti-Cam vitriol comes by way of Deadspin and Greg Howard, who really laid the whole thing out there.
Scott Fowler will make two appearances in this space today. One, for his own listicle on the 13 reasons Cam’s dance should be celebrated. The second, though, for a far more serious column: Fowler spent time with Chancellor Lee Adams, the 16-year-old son of Rae Carruth, who is ‘surviving and thriving.’ (This one was tough to read.)
This post may seem Panthers-heavy, but um, did I mention that they’re undefeated? Like, they’ve played nine games, and haven’t lost one yet; it’s pretty cool and fun. A large reason why the Pcats have jumped out to a 9-0, according to Joe Person at the Charlotte Observer: the chemistry between Cam and tight end Greg Olsen.
Revisionist history can be problematic — but Andrew Carter at the N&O writes what everyone else has been thinking: What if UNC had managed to defeated South Carolina way back in early September?
The Charlotte Hornets are 6-6, and playing some pretty basketball on offense — something that would likely surprise a more casual viewer. Jeremy Lamb — as a super-sub off the bench — is a big reason why Steve Clifford’s squad is finding success, writes Jon Shames at Hoops Habit.
Ethan Skolnick is one of the best NBA writers we currently have. This week he wrote on Miami Heat big man Hassan Whiteside — a native of Gastonia, NC, who’d slipped through the NBA cracks — only to be rediscovered at the YMCA, and transformed into one of the best centers in the NBA (not hyperbole).
