Coming Sunday: Sports phrases we hope to bail out on

Crab dribble -- what LeBron James calls his hip-hop-step that really isn't traveling but gets him to the basket quicker than if he took the time to actually dribble the ball -- could be the sports word for 2009 that you can't wait to see go away. As Bob Costas wouldn't say, we control our own destiny in whether that James phrase goes to the top of the list or becomes as trendy as a Bob Cousy setshot.

Sunday we'll winnow down the list of the sports words of phrase we'd just as soon see get some bailout relief. Bailout, by the way, was one of the early favorites for 2008 Word of the Year as voted on by the American Dialect Society (linked here), which should be announced sometime after their 5:30 p.m. final vote today.

Dialect on these while we await Sunday's final sports list:

Multiple, mutually exclusive, inherently untrustworthy and sometimes false statements: The phrase that Philadelphia district attorney Lynne Abraham used this past week to describe the fact that her office was unable to proceed with charges against Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison in an incident that involved a gun registered to him, because those who claimed to be witnesses were, well, bad apples. It's why ESPN employs people like Roger Cossack are needed to tell us what's really going on. But the more Joe the Plummers who are handed down phrases like this to banter about sports-related topics, we're fostering too many bad incidents happening in Judge Judy's courtroom during a fake trial about a stolen hair dryer at a beauty salon.

Game management: Used to be someone was just good at strategy. This must be gooder.

Winning the turnover battle: One of Phil Simms' stuck-in-the-craw phrases he brought up in his 2004 book. This here is looking at one number versus another, without taking into consideration when the turnovers happened and at what critical point in the game it changed. This past season, the Miami Dolphins, winners of the AFC East, had the same number of turnovers as it gave up. The 2-13 Kansas City Chiefs caused six more turnovers than it committed. Against the Dolphins, the Chiefs might win the turnover battle, but ... it still gets used as if it's some cutting-edge cybermetric that really tells the story of a game. Yeah, like time of possession.