Fire Tubby?

Lately, there have been several folks that are confusing me with the Real Gimel Martinez, the guy who actually played basketball for Kentucky. As I’ve stated before, I am just a fan of the Real Gimel, and I took this pseudonym as a tribute to my favorite Wildcat of all time.*

In order to prevent any further confusion, I have changed my pen name to something slightly more direct: The Fake Gimel Martinez. All posts made by “Gimel Martinez” previously here, on Deadspin, AOL Sports FanHouse, and at Kentucky Sports Radio have been made by The Fake Gimel (me), not the real, live, actual Gimel.

I hope this post will clear things up and not clog the lane, like Real Gimel taking a charge back in the day.

While we are getting things out in the open, I wanted to remind our readers that, unless the team’s play “goes from suck to blow“, that “Nahhh” remains our answer to the Fire Tubby question. Some people have been so down on the coach that they can’t see his strengths: He’s an excellent in-game coach, plays the kind of defense that NBA teams wish they could teach and in the past shown us he has the ability and drive to bring Kentucky out of this hole. (The hole that, honestly, he helped dig.)

Whatever happens, we here at Fire Tubby will always try to find the funny in the middle of the Big Blue Moan. Just remember, I’m not Real.

(more…)

So I have arrived. And no, I am not the true Gimel. I only pretend to be him, and use his likeness as my avatar (until he sues me proper).

Honestly, who can forget Gimel from back during those up-and-coming Wildcat years. When the Pitino ran his boys into the ground so that they could run everybody else off the floor. Back when Wildcat players could party at Banana’s Tavern and not have to worry about ESPN.com linking to some drunken pictures of them groping co-eds posted on some blog. Back when drop-outs don’t seduce a basketball player in order to claim rape and lawsuit money. Man, those were the days.

But these are great days as well. You’ve got Dukies doing everything they can to smudge the sparking image that their Athletics PR took years to create. You’ve got the Hoosiers firing a decent coach and then hiring… another decent coach, while a vocal minority rumbles about how “Knight wouldn’t put up with that.” You’ve got Pitino in Louisville, since JoAnne decided that she didn’t like Boston since they were about to ride Rick out on a rail. “Those Kentucky people treated us like royality, and I guess I can get over the lack of Prada…”

You’ve got Tennessee fans actually paying attention to basketball game, now that they have a coach that convinced the talent he has to actually try. You’ve got the National Champs in Florida, who’s fans are now going to start setting the bar to Spurrier-like levels — that’s all they know to do, after all. (Just wait; Donovan is going to have a “dissapointing” 7-loss season.)

And you’ve got a state full of basketball fans, most that root for our Big Blue, most of which are quite the educated fans. And, more wonderfully, you’ve got a bunch of good-for-nothing Laz-E-Boy coaches who, thanks to the power of call-in radio talk shows and the Internet, get to voice their overly-passionate opinion about the team and the coach. After all, anything that happens to the team is the coach’s fault.

And me and my boy da ‘master get to make fun of them. Wonderful times indeed.

I would like to welcome a new contributor to firetubby.com. He has been sending in article ideas and commentary for a while now so it was time to give him his very own account to post as he see’s fit. He shares a lot of the same ideas about this site that I do, which to some people means “Fair and Balanced” so that should be cool. All kidding aside I’m sure he will be writing some funny stuff. You should see him around in the next day or two. Enjoy.

And now for the obligatory press release info

firetubby.com is primarily a University of Kentucky Basketball news and entertainment site. Founded in February 2006 (holy crap, four months; that’s like the equivalent of three people years as far as up kept blogs go) to give a different “spin” on the wacky world of UK basketball.

Faithfull firetubby.com followers, don’t stray to far, we haven’t forgotten about the site. I’ll be posting about the latest news from our team in the next day or so. Thanks for stopping by!!!

I’m always entertained every couple of days when I check out the statistics for the site. One of the cool features is that I can see the things people searched for to get here. Some of them are what you would expect, some of them not so much. Enjoy.

The most searched for phrase used to reach this site currently is:

1. Adam Morrison crying video- Around 25% of all searches to reach this site since the tournament have been for Adam Morrison or JJ Redick crying.
2. Fire Tubby - Obviously one of the top search phrases doesn’t really need explanation with around 15%.
3. Tim Woodburn WVLK- Up next with 10% are searches for now former WVLK sports talk host and his run-in (away?) with the police.

None of the other search phrases are really more than 5% each so here is a list of some others used.

• dawhares[sic] - I’m sure found it’s way here because of my Tubby’s Jacket post.
• rondo point shaving - Yeah, you read that right. It’s been showing up little by little for a while, but lately it’s been getting more prevalent. I’m sure it’s been on The Cat’s Pause or HL message boards but the only real link I’ve found to it is here.

It’s a blog post that says Tubby is leaving town for the Bobcats and that the FBI and NCAA is on campus investigating the “point shaving” situation. They clearly state that it’s just rumor. The articles author says that he is “just a regular guy who heard this RUMOR from someone who said”, yeeaaahhh so who knows what if anything will come of this.

Others on the list include:

• rekalin sims
• rashaad carruth
• bernadette locke-maddox
• we love tubby - (Some people do)
• paul miller radio guy
• joakim noah annoying - (Got that friggin right)
• will tubby smith leave uk
• joe crawford thinking transfer
• tubby smith kentucky derby
• tubby smith sucks
• buzz peterson uk
• angelica st. john - (heh heh)

and last but definitely least

• horford smartest player - (woah)

If anyone besides me enjoys reading this stuff let me know, leave a comment. If not, I won’t …, who am I kidding I’ll probably do it again anyway but it would be nice to know if anyone else gets a kick out of it.