Freeman, Griffin & Hansbrough: Occam's Razor

Hey look, a magazine with Blake Griffin on the cover! CBS's Mike Freeman has again taken aim at Tyler Hansbrough (although this time, he's letting commenters do the work of playing the race card, but Freeman does highlight the comment). Freeman bemoans that Griffin doesn't get credit for being hardworking and gritty unlike Hansbrough.

"Why aren't we seeing constant replays on television of Griffin diving onto the floor or scrambling for loose balls..."

SportsCenter, the night of the Texas Tech game where Griffin flew over the scorer's table to save the ball, showed the dive no less than 11 times (not an exaggeration) and had analysis of Griffin's effort from at least six analysts (not an exaggeration), including some of their non-basketball analysts Steve Phillips and Mark Schlereth. Everyone was gushing about how hard he plays and rightfully so, but to acknowledge that would take away from the article, so pretend like it never happened, right Mike? When you're hurling accusations, you should probably watch.

As for the issue of the magazine covers, here's the simple explanation: Carolina basketball sells magazines, Oklahoma does not. It's the same reason Notre Dame always has high-rated recruiting classes in football, it's all about capitalism. Has there not been someone that played as hard as Griffin and Hansbrough at a lower level? Why did they not get the coverage? If Griffin was at Duke, he would be on the cover of every magazine Hansbrough was on, and when Hansbrough was on the cover of SI's basketball preview this season, Griffin was on the Big 12 regional coverage. Hansbrough has been on four SI covers and Blake Griffin has been on two. One of Tyler's was when he was selected POY, a cover Griffin will get this season and another was when Carolina went to the Final Four. If Griffin leads the Sooners to the Final Four, there's a good chance he'll get on a cover, thus tying Tyler. Mike, since you deemed this an adult conversation, can we please use facts?