JackCentral - Your online northern Arizona (and Flagstaff) news source

This 5 Minute Misconduct originally ran on January 31, 2007. Times were simpler for the Suns then — no Shaq, no Porter, no home losses to the Bulls. But I digress.

The complaints are always the same.

Their running style is too helter-skelter to succeed. Other teams will dictate the pace in the playoffs. Their point guard will wear down from the minutes he plays.

All this for a team that’s won 73 percent of its games the past three years.

While everybody seems to be jumping on the Suns…

This 5 Minute Misconduct originally ran on Jan. 17, 2008. In light of Mark McGwire’s recent steroid confession (and in an attempt to update 5MM’s patchy backlog), it reappears here as it ran in its entirety in print.

Back when baseball cards were popular, there was one player’s rookie card that everyone coveted.

It had exploded in value over the course of his career as he continued to put up Hall of Fame numbers, and all the kids in little league wanted to be like him. His charity work was…

Greetings, 5MM fans. I know, you’ve been waiting for another post for a while now. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. You never leave any comments, so I’m forced to make them up in my head.

Unlike last year, when 5MM was all-Suns-all-the-time during this part of the year, the basketball season has coincided with a bit of a hiatus while I’ve switched jobs and such. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton to talk about with Phoenix basketball, though. For example:

• Channing Frye is the frontrunner

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I know, it’s been a while since we’ve talked about the NFL in these parts. 5MM has been somewhat quiet as we sit in between baseball season and basketball season — let’s face it, a Dodgers/Yankees World Series would be abysmal television.

So instead, it’s time to talk football. After keeping tabs on most of the games from this weekend, a trend is starting to reach the surface: like the teams in the league this season, quarterbacks are extremely hit or miss.

In a league where parity is king, it’s…

Record: 68-90. Pace. 69-93. Change on last season: -12.

For my final recap of the season, I had high hopes that the Diamondbacks would do something interesting that also qualified as “good.” You know, scoring more than three runs, not having any baserunning gaffes, getting a dominating performance from the starting pitcher…that kind of stuff. Instead, I got another abysmal offensive performance, the pitcher caught in a rundown, and Kevin Mulvey on the mound. Thank you, baseball gods. Thanks a lot.

Meanwhile, a…

Record: 64-83. Pace: 71-91. Change on last season: -9

As a baseball fan, aren’t these the kind of September games you root for? Afternoon baseball between two teams fighting for superiority in their division, with the road team going for a series sweep against the team with a one-game lead on them.

All right, all right. By superiority I mean “worst superiority,” as the Diamondbacks and Padres battled each other in their race for the cellar. Today’s matchup featured Doug Davis against…

Record: 62-79. Pace: 70-92. Change on last season: -10.

The Diamondbacks headed into tonight’s matchup with the Dodgers looking for something, anything to take as a positive. Six straight losses (including a particularly bad one last night, with a three-run lead in the eighth) had the D-backs in sole possession of last place. Just to add to the confusion, their old buddy Jon Garland toed the rubber against Dan Haren in tonight’s series finale. Neither starter ended up being a factor in…

Finally, the Friday Faceoffs…HAVE COME BACK to JackCentral.

• The NAU Sports Hour made its grand return this morning in an old, familiar time slot, but it probably won’t be staying there for long or keeping the same name. It doesn’t look like today’s episode was picked up by the iTunes podcasts either, so it’s lost to the annals of history. Still, Eric, Wade and I will be doing this on a weekly basis from now on, talking about sports, girl scouts and Sham-wows. I’ll update the new time and

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Record: 54-67. Pace: 72-90. Change on last season: -8.

This was a dreadful performance. Sure, it was against the reigning AL Cy Young winner, who has been almost untouchable since switching to the NL last month (4-0, 0.82 ERA, 0.73 WHIP). And yes, it was after three other awful games this week — getting shelled by the Dodgers, getting destroyed by six unearned runs against the Braves (although some of them certainly should have been earned), and then being rocked to sleep by a…

No Friday Faceoffs this week, because I volunteered to pick up an extra recap. In fact, it’s been like three or four weeks since Friday Faceoffs made an appearance, and that’s a damn shame. It’ll be fixed in seven days.

Record: 53-63. Pace: 74-88. Change on last season: -6.

Before the season started, it would have been hard to believe that the Diamondbacks would be 17 games behind the Dodgers in the middle of August, but that’s exactly where Arizona…

We’ve talked before about Mark Reynolds‘ outside chance at becoming the first member of the 50 HR-30 SB club (Larry Walker was closest in 1997), which would be a hugely impressive accomplishment. But he’s already joining some exclusive company in baseball history as we speak, uncharted territory for a pretty successful franchise in its first decade-plus of existence.

40-20 Club
First achieved by Willie Mays in 1955 (51-24), 26 players have hit this plateau in a single season, most of them coming in the 1990s. Prior to 1988,…

I don’t know. I like the aliteration and it ties in with the old Minor Penalties from the days when 5MM was in column form, but it sounds kinda creepy. We’ll just have to stick with Fridays in the future and avoid the whole mess.

• At this point, it looks like the Suns will stand pat with what they have, now that they’ve locked in Nash to a two-year extension (worth about $8 million a year, with $3 million deferred to each of the two years after the contract

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