The flamboyant Glen Davis is filling in for the "injured" Kevin Garnett, and he is laying it on a little thick with the defeatist bad attitude in this story.

"The way I look at it, there is no pressure because the majority of the country out there are doubting me anyway," Davis said. "Why would you put pressure on yourself if people don't think you can help make it to the championship. I think with Kevin being out and the bigs that we have right now, we have a chip on our shoulder. We're not trying to prove anything but we are trying to let the world know that we're here and we're ready to play. With or without Kevin, we are going to play Celtics basketball."

But what do we know of Glen Davis? The selfsame story informs us he's the childhood friend of Tyrus Thomas, his opponent on the Bulls, and there appear to be posts on websites less credible than this one speculating as to whether the two are on the so-called "down low." Personally, I wonder if this all isn't a distracting sideshow meant to deflect attention from these two unavoidable facts: the two hail from the notoriously corrupt state of Louisiana, and Vinny Del Negro cannot possibly be the name of someone who isn't ethically bankrupt.

Here's what really happened. The Tribune Co. is a financial nightmare with about $13 billion in debt, but as a semi-independent subsidiary of the company, the Cubs actually make money. So Tribune owner Sam Zell has been trying to sell their lone valuable asset in order to make some much needed cash. In order to do that, they were going to need help from the state to finance the deal and maybe get some grant money to upgrade Wrigley Field.

There's just one problem: Blago controls that money, but doesn't get along well with the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune. Something about them wanting him impeached? So he suggested that maybe the Cubs would get what they need to make a deal, if a certain editor at the paper found himself unemployed. Actually what he said was [PDF]:

“our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get ‘em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support.” ....

During the call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s wife can be heard in the background telling ROD BLAGOJEVICH to tell Deputy Governor A “to hold up that fucking Cubs shit. . . fuck them.” ....

Deputy Governor A told ROD BLAGOJEVICH that Tribune Owner will say that he does not have anything to do with the editorials, “but I would tell him, look, if you want to get your Cubs thing done get rid of this Tribune.” ....

Deputy Governor A agreed and said that HARRIS needs to be “sensitive” about how he does it. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said there is nothing sensitive about how you do it and that it’s “straight forward” and you say “we’re doing this stuff for you, we believe this is right for Illinois [and] this is a big deal to [Tribune Owner] financially” but what ROD BLAGOJEVICH is doing to help Tribune Owner is the same type of action that the Tribune is saying should be the basis for ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s impeachment. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said Tribune Owner should be told “maybe we can’t do this now. Fire those fuckers.”

So when a newspaper complains that you're corrupt, it's not a good idea to bribe them in order to make them stop saying that you're corrupt? Congratulations, Mr. Blago. You've out cronyed the cronyist city in America.

What does this mean for the Cubs? Nothing really. The Tribune is in bankruptcy and the Cubs will (hopefully) get sold anyway. It's possible that management may be leery about making huge financial commitments *cough*peavy*cough* until the situation is more clear. But it's mostly just funny the the governor of the Cubs' own state is willing to sell out them for a little graft.

`Staggering' allegations, even by Illinois standards [Tribune]
FBI Complaint [PDF File]
Free From Tribune’s Bankruptcy Filing, Cubs Proceed as Usual [NY Times]
Blagojevich charged with crimes [ESPN]