Even John Wall's great performance wasn't enough to save the Wizards. Photograph by Flickr user Keith Allison.

I recently adopted a young puppy named Lana.

I trust that she’s going to be a really good dog sometime soon. But for now, she’s very much a work in progress. One minute she’s delighting people with her precociousness, and the next she’s peeing all over the carpet. She’s smart, she’s fun, and oh, my God, why is she biting my toe?

Watching the Washington Wizards play basketball makes me think of my new puppy.

Last night, the Wizards blew a perfectly good chance to secure their first back-to-back wins of the season when they hosted a depleted Knicks squad at Verizon Center. With Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony out of action, the Wizards fell victim to the NBA’s latest sensation: Linsanity.

Eli Manning. Photograph courtest of Flickr user angiesix.

How did we not see it coming? How did we not anticipate that Eli Manning would do it again? How could we ignore the reams of evidence at our disposal illustrating Manning’s reliability in big moments? Apparently our national infatuation with Tom Brady and his dreamy hair and his supermodel wife has clouded the fact that nowadays, when the bright lights are on, Manning—not Brady—is the guy you want center stage.

Sure, I know many of you predicted the Giants would win the Super Bowl (at least, many of you are saying that now), but according to the website Gambling911, as late as Saturday night, the Giants were still three-point underdogs at more than 80 percent of the legal sports books in America. In retrospect, that seems so naive.

Let’s start with the most obvious evidence—like the game the two teams played against each other three months ago. The Giants won that meeting by four points, even though it took place in Foxboro and despite the fact that Manning had to orchestrate his air attack without the benefit of starting receiver Hakeem Nicks, who missed the game due to a hamstring injury. (Nicks wound up with ten catches for 109 yards in the Super Bowl.) Even with that shorthanded roster back in November, with a team on the verge of what would turn out to be a mind-numbing four-game losing streak, Manning and the Giants had enough firepower to beat the Patriots.

Everyone has a theory as to why the Skins can’t make the Super Bowl. Photograph by Brian Murphy.

The New York Giants are Super Bowl champions once more, and all we can do is lash out at the gleeful New Yorkers in our lives.

Why are you so happy? You lost to the Redskins twice. That should automatically preclude you from competing for the Super Bowl, let alone winning one. Stop smiling at me!

But they don’t care. They are the victors, and we are wallowing in a pool of misery that’s become all too familiar. Marion Barry knows what I’m talking about.

Can Brady’s lead feet conquer the Giants’ pass rush? Photograph by Flickr user Jeffrey Beall.

It’s supposed to be all about the quarterbacks. Tom Brady bested Dan Marino’s record-setting 1984 season, and he didn’t even lead the league in passing. Eli Manning declared himself one of the league’s elite, and he backed it up by coming within a few of his no-look bombs of breaking Marino’s record himself.

The defenses, which ranked 27th and 31st in the league during the regular season, were just along for the ride. Yet in the playoffs, the teams who have gone up against the Giants and Patriots have averaged under 14 points per game.

That brings us to the most pivotal story lines heading in to Super Bowl Sunday.

Photograph courtesy of Brett Haber.

It wasn’t by design that I spent two extra days in Australia by myself. Let’s call it a travel SNAFU. My wife had intended to join me down under for some leisure time during and after my work at the Australian Open. But when a work commitment scuttled her trip, I found myself staring at a $5,000 fare difference in order to move up my return flight from Wednesday to Monday. As much as I love my kids and wanted to get home early to see them, I would need to have several dozen children to sufficiently amortize the cost of their affection against the $5,000 fee. (It’s right there on the standard actuarial tables—check for yourself.) And that’s how I wound up in Oz for two extra days.

But it afforded me the chance to do something I’ve always wanted to try, in a place that’s famous for it: surfing.

I rented a car (I could write a separate column about the perils of driving on the left) and ventured to a town called Torquay (pronounced “tor-KEE”). The tiny seaside village sits about 60 miles southwest of Melbourne at the gateway to Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. Torquay is to surfing what Cooperstown is to baseball—it may not be the precise birthplace of the sport, but it is the source and guardian of much of its culture.

Lucas Oil Stadium. Photograph by Flickr user Carl Van Rooy Photography.

Super Bowl week can be loads of fun, provided that you’re an executive with an NFL corporate sponsor or a C-list celebrity getting paid to show up at a party. For those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to be spending the week in exotic Indianapolis, it’s an interminable stretch. To make things easier, I’ve broken the week down with a daily planner.

Monday

Take it easy; you were probably up late last night watching the Pro Bowl. We’re just kidding, of course. No one actually watches more than five minutes of the Pro Bowl. You’d get more out of watching John Beck running an unofficial offseason practice during a lockout. Today will be relatively quiet. The Patriots are getting settled, while the Giants are just arriving. Both head coaches and select players will be made available to lob platitudes at disinterested members of the media.

Photograph by Flickr user Keith Allison.

Usually when you’re told you’ve been relieved of your duties, it’s just a nicer way of being told you’re fired. In this case, Flip Saunders should be truly relieved.

Relieved that he won’t have to listen to Andray Blatche complain about shooting the 17-foot jumpers for which he so readily settles. Relieved that he no longer has a front-row seat to the latest episode of the Nick and JaVale Show. Relieved that a “little league” mom won’t be able to question his abilities while anointing her son the future of the NBA. He’s free from this mess (although his son remains on the coaching staff), and he’s getting paid, to boot.

Saunders was never the right man for this job. That’s because this is not the team he was hired to coach. When he signed a four-year coaching contract in 2009, the Wizards were a veteran-laden team looking to get themselves back to the playoffs following a down year. Since then, Abe Pollin passed away, Ted Leonsis took over, and general manager Ernie Grunfeld was tasked with dismantling the roster. All of a sudden the Wizards were one of the youngest teams in the NBA, headed down a long road of rebuilding.

It’s hard to blame Saunders for what’s become of the Wizards, now the losingest team in the NBA, but it’s easy to see why he was let go. His message was lost on these players—a fact that one player openly admitted. Whether interim coach Randy Wittman fares any better is anyone’s guess. My money is on “not much.”

Wittman’s job is to stop the bleeding. If he can keep the team from doing anything too embarrassing from this point forward, it will be considered a job well done. Then he, too, will be sent on his way to make room for a new coach, who will be tasked with turning this franchise into a winner.

Idealistic (read: crazy) Wizards fans are already kicking around the idea of John Wall’s college coach, John Calipari, making his return to the NBA. I’d expect a far less splashy hire. Not a retread, but instead some experienced assistant who is ready to take the helm of a team and make it his own. Whoever he is, I wish him nothing but luck.