Hello and welcome back. Today, we've got affirmation in the NBA, pain and triumph on the soccer field, and my thoughts on Mike Vick's pet cemetery.
- In a quick editor's note, I've started breaking my posts up with seperate links. If you're looking for something in particular, click on the link at the top of the post and you'll be taken directly to that section. Those links-within-the page are called anchors, which is also the term you use for fat-headed stiffs who weigh down sports networks. Eventually I'll get it so that the entire archives are organized in this way.
- Of course, we begin with robots.
Two AP stories recently appeared on MSNC.com -- one on June 22, the other on June 28 -- that are mistakently reported as seperate news. Oddly enough, they both came out of Boston, and yet they were not combined into one super-story, that should really should be getting play everywhere.
June 22 - Robots to look for life in Arctic
And June 28 - What happens when you hand a 'bot a Taser?
This is it, folks. Live it up, because we've all got a few months left.
The first story explains that we're sending robots to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to look for life in some hotprings. We plan to someday use robots to look for life on the moons of distant planets. In other terms, we'll be sending these robots about 500 million miles into space, where they'll go through piles of frozen dirt looking for minnow fossils.
That's a bad gig. Apparently, limited benefits on this job. Although if the robots do form a union, it's expected they would endorse Mitt Romney.
So, to the second story. I think this is self-explanatory. The question is, "What happens when you hand a 'bot a Taser?", and the answer is "Probably nothing all that great."
The lead source in that story is John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. Mr. Pike says that in the near future, "you're going to start seeing Robocops, or a Terminator. We may see autonomous robots capable of inflicting lethal force."
First of all, when we're in the development phase of these Robocops, I think I have a volunteer to play the test criminal. "That's right, Mr. Pike. Just pretend to take the old lady's purse, and hopefully your heavily-armed robot is a reasonable fellow."
By the way, how hard would it be for a robot with a taser to wait for the right moment, stick it to some guard's neck and say, "Hey, how about you give me the rest of the tasers?"
And here's how the two stories are actually one story, and it's also how the world ends: one of the robots in the first story meets one of the robots from the second story.
Robot: Check it out. I got a taser.
Robot 2: A taser? I have to go to the bottom of the Arctic, and you get a weapon? Do you think you could get me one?
Robot 3: Well they're sending me to Jupiter to go play in the dirt. Does it have a "KILL" setting?
Don't say I didn't warn you.
- Okay, now some quick notes on the NBA. First, an update on my Grant Hill idea from last month.
June 23 - Notes or Trying to make sense of a bullet hole
"If Hill comes back, can we just make it so that it's not with the Orlando Magic? Phoenix, Dallas...somebody offer him a jersey."
Well that didn't take long. Phoenix signed Hill to a two-year contract. I think it's a good fit for everyone. Hill makes the Suns go one guy deeper, and he can still find the open guy.
Phoenix, meanwhile, gets Hill's leadership. Hopefully Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire tip an ear toward Hill. Both of them have expressed at least some willingness to leave Phoenix, and I think Hill can point out the reality here. You can get paid later. You can be the man later. But when you're in a situation where you're trying to build talent, and you finally start to see over the horizon. . . you're only one or five ankle injuries away from never getting your chance. It would be stupid for either of them to split Phoenix until they actually see Steve Nash's back carried away in a garbage bag.
By the way, for all the people taking shots at them on this, this absolutely makes them better. They can now rotate lineups of Nash, Barbosa, Marion, Diaw, Hill, Raja Bell and Stoudemire, where they'll have four passers on the floor with the league's best catcher-and-dunker.
Barring injury or suspension, that's my pick in the Western Conference.
- Now to the ever-worsening case of Mike Vick. And when I say ever-worsening, I mean that it's looking pretty good for him. It's highly unlikely that he'll be indicted for anything, particularly because that would call for someone to snitch on him.
But investigators just found double-digit dog carcasses on the property that was in Vick's name. And I don't care if he gets indicted or not. There's something very, very wrong going on at that place.
Here's who should have more than 10 dead dogs in his yard: a 120 year old dog lover. Everyone else? You'll need to explain that.
And I don't care that this will probably never reach him. One thing that you don't do when your rich and famous buddy puts you up with a property is set up an illegal business without, you know, asking him. My message here goes to all the people who rushed to defend him: make sure you know who you're fighting for. I know you didn't want to believe that Mike Vick was in the wrong. But you'd never met him, and it seems like the critical details in how we should view Mr. Vick are just coming out now, and they have very little to do with his left arm.
After all, there was a time in my life when my first instinct would've been to speak up on behalf of Jason Kidd.
- Now, soccer. I'd heaped about 5,000 tons of praise on the national team. I even went so far as to say, " I am now of the delusional opinion that our second team shouldn't get blown-out by anybody."
I'm not sure if I should get any credit for correctly labelling my own opinion "delusional," but it seems that I was a bit wrong on the Copa America. We lost 4-1 to Argentina, 3-1 to Paraguay, and 1-0 to Columbia, and a number of our players got a "NOT READY" stamp jammed onto their forehead.
The high point in our tournament came on Benny Feilhaber's 40-yard pass that Eddie Johnson ran onto to draw the penalty kick. Then Johnson calmly scored the kick. And that was it. There were a few moments of steely defense, and even fewer offensive-minded moves. But by the time the second half of the Argentina game started, the U.S. looked so travel-weary that they may have travelled to Venezuala by boat.
At about the 60 minute mark, it appeared that they may have rowed the boat.
But when I look at this roster, I see only a handful of players who I think should represent us at the 2010 World Cup: Feilhaber, Johnathan Bornstein, Ricardo Clark, Justin Mapp, Twellman or Johnson (but not both), Demerit or Conrad.
And why am I ready to get rid of the majority of this squad -- which I have since decided is our third team -- just based on this hideous week?
Because after each Copa game, the national team got bumped-off the top story on ussoccer.com by a plucky group of youngsters who were playing about 2,500 miles north of them.
Our under-20 national team played a 1-1 stalemate against Korea in its first group game.
Then Freddy Adu made like Tommy Johnson and agreed to a deal at the crossroads. Freddy left the meeting with boundless skill and no soul, and who are we to judge?
First he terrorized Poland in a 6-1 blowout. He scored three, and that included his
first one. (Seen there slightly underplayed by the French-speaking highlights guy.)
And that goal. . . I tried to sum up Benny Feilhaber's goal in the least modest terms. And Freddy's goal was as good as Benny's Gold Cup winner. And we Americans just don't really score 'em like that.
We could expect an American player to take a swing at a falling ball like Feilhaber, or to turn on a defender and fire like Freddy. But when Feilhaber's shot hung-up in the back of the net, and when Freddy's curler smacked off the inside of the post, my head snapped a little bit and I flinched.
I was not surprised by the trajectory of either shot. But I was stunned when both balls stopped mid-flight because they flew into the goal. Again, we're the Americans, and we're not supposed to score those goals.
As good as Freddy was against Poland, he was equally brilliant against Brazil. He simply could not be stopped with the ball, and all of his teammates were always open, and he himself was always wide open. Appropriately he set up both Josmer Altidore goals, the second one with a perposterous bit of juggling to escape a corner trap.
We won 2-1 against Brazil, and we'll know who we've got in the round of 16 after today. At the moment, Freddy looks like the best player in the tournament, and we look like the best team.
The future is not now. It never is. But it looks closer and closer these days, and by the time it gets here, who cares whether you've got your soul?
- That's all for today. Be careful out there. This is the time of year when renegade weather balloons are known to fall out of the sky.
Back soon with other things. Goodbye.
Showing posts with label Can you believe this?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Can you believe this?. Show all posts
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Notes, or "Period. New paragraph. Capital B..."
Hello. Today's schedule includes a reptile, the Gold Cup Final, and my upcoming trip.
- In a quick Editor's note, later in this post, the U.S. soccer team provides the second entry in my new series "Now that's a real sports picture." I had only previously used this once, and since this is the second time, that makes it a series.
We begin, as you might expect, with crocodile news.
- I think a lot of people have heard of Gustave. Apparently, not nearly enough of them. Please, go to about the 3:00 mark of this video.
One person on youtube had this reaction:
np67 (1 month ago)
Hopefully Gustave is alive and well. I hope he copntinues to eat the people there. Its the foodchain afterall.
According to National Geographic, Gustave was last seen in April of this year. That's a couple months ago. Let's assume he's still alive. And let's be clear: when Gustave was seen in April, it was while he was, you know, attacking fisherman. He's not exactly packing it in and joining the senior tour. He's not doing the lecture tour. He will not be doing a couple nights at the Palms.
Let me say, I'm all for diplomacy whenever it's feasible. I think we should be able to sit down with almost anyone except for the most radical and unreasonable people. But not even Bill Richardson could get Gustave to back down. Hell, I'm not sure if Bill Russell could stop this thing.
Here's how you make the decision of whether Gustave can be allowed to roam free. He's about 20 feet in length. Look around the room you're in right now. Imagine something 20 feet long, and fat, being in that room. Now imagine that you're in the room too.
Can you imagine if this was happening, if this thing was killing hundreds of people in, oh, I don't know, FLORIDA? Would we let this go on? The U.S. does some -- not quite enough -- to support the research of AIDs in Africa, and some to help with poverty, and not nearly enough to help politically. But isn't this something we could solve pretty quickly?
You shoot this thing with a giant dart, loaded with tranquilizer. Maybe two darts. (Maybe throw in a couple shots of Jim Beam, just to be sure.) If the dart holds, Gustave gets put out to pasture and eats chicken cutlets -- and hopefully brings in much-needed money for the people of Burundi -- for the rest of his days.
If the dart doesn't hold? Let's try bullets.
I really like nature, and I prefer to let animals do what they do. But not here. Not at our expense. This is going too far. The fact that the people who share drinking water with this monster are surrounded by the wreckage of their own horrific civil war only makes this decision more obvious to me. Gustave cannot stay there.
I remember reading at one point that Patrice Faye, the naturalist who's followed Gustave closely for some time, was against killing this dinosaur. And originally, I was with him. But something Faye said has been rattling around in my skull for a while, and it seems to have stuck somewhere.
Faye thought that Gustave might be so virile, and have lived so long and been with so many female crocs that he could single-handedly re-populate the area with a new generation of big crocs. Now, I get his motivation here, as a naturalist.
But do you know who's not all that crazy about a new generation of super crocs? A kid who's lost a leg, or a brother, or a father to a reptile.
And hey, np67 (from youtube) -- why don't you go tell that kid where he is on your foodchain?
Okay, I went long on that. But it still felt right. And if you want another reason why I'm not okay with Gustave hangin' out, check the last dash-point in this entry.
- Now, let's get to soccer.
Gold Cup Final - United States 2, Mexico 1 (extended highlights here)
If you were writing the story of the United States men's soccer team, our play in the first 971 minutes (10 games, 71 minutes) of 2007 gets a paragraph. Nine wins, one draw, no losses, 24 goals from 13 players -- nine, count 'em NINE for Landon Donovan -- and a genuinely dominant peformance in our corner of the world. At the end of that paragraph, you'd talk about Mexico scoring first in the Gold Cup final, and then you'd mention Donovan's penalty-kick equalizer.
Then, if you were dictating the story, you'd say, "Period. New paragraph. 'Benny Feilhaber...' "
That's how big Feilhaber's goal was. Unless I turn out to be way, way wrong on this, we can now begin to look at this team's timeline in terms of before and after this goal.
Whew. Okay. I'm gonna' try not to go too far on this, but this is a big deal.
Of all the stories coming out of this tournament -- Demarcus Beasley's audition for big-time European soccer, Landon Donovan's 4-for-4 penalties, Bring Ching getting more and more cleverer -- Benny Feilhaber is the most interesting to me.
Feilhaber's game-winner -- excuse me, tournament-winner -- is now getting the label of the greatest goal in U.S. history. And you'll get no argument on that here.
Benny grew up in Brazil and moved up here when he was six. He bounced around, and eventually finished high school in California. Here's the single most incredible part of Feilhaber's story. He got his attention after appearing with our under-20 national team, but he was only called-up to the team after playing well at UCLA... as a walk-on.
Yeah, that's right. The guy who just scored the greatest goal in our country's soccer history got his big-time start when he walked onto a field in Southern California -- probably rubbing elbows with a dozen stoners and foreign exchange students -- and said, "Excuse me, coach, my name is Benny Feilhaber. I'd like to play some soccer for you."
Everything's been happening pretty fast since then for Feilhaber, now 22. His paychecks come from Hamburg SV right now, but I'm going to guess someone else will want him after what he's done this year. In 543 minutes, Feilhaber has one assist and two goals. The first goal -- shown very coolly just after the 3:00 mark here -- was good. The second goal was good enough to start a new paragraph.
While Feilhaber's been on the field, the U.S. has scored 15 goals and given up only three. That's in only eight games, and -- whoop, here comes the big point -- those eight games are Benny Feilhaber's FIRST EIGHT GAMES on the national team.
Wake up the kids. It's time to start watching the national team.
We're marching out a second-tier squad of youngster for the Copa America. There, we'll meet Argentina, which is bringing in an almost full squad. That game happens on Thursday.
We are not marching these kids out to a slaughter. We're not bringing our best group, but I am now of the delusional opinion that our second team shouldn't get blown-out by anybody. By the way, there is one player of note who will be available for Copa America.
Demarcus Beasley burns his fingers touching teammate Benny Feilhaber, mere moments before Feilhaber burst into flames.
Now that, folks, is a real sports picture.
- Okay, now to my last news of the day. This one files under "Self serving crap," but if you're a reader here, you might care too.
I'm leaving the country this summer. I'll be heading to South Africa for a 3-month trip, where I'm accompanying the girlfriend. She's doing a semester abroad, and I'm going to volunteer coaching youngsters.
I don't think I need to explain that this means the blog will take a severe turn away from it's current form. Instead of constant yammering about the NBA -- my God, enough! -- I'll be writing more about my personal experience in that country. I'm trying to think of a good way to market those kind of stories. I'm thinking of filing them under "Clash of cultures," but I think I'd get a lot more interest if I called it "Clash of vultures." That sounds like something people would want to know about. (And as Junior from Reno 911 would note, Clash of Vultures is a wicked-awesome band name.)
And now I'm going to announce something that hopefully puts a lot of pressure on me and makes me actually do what I'm about to say. Given the amount of free time I expect to find around my volunteering schedule, I would like to use the opportunity to start writing a book about the 2010 World Cup.
Becuase I'm not exactly, uh, being published right now, I plan to market the book in this way: report as much as possible during this trip, and post the first chapter on the blog once I feel ready. So, that's something to look forward to.
And now, to come full circle: being in Port Elizabeth puts me roughly 7,000 miles away from a certain murderous reptile. And 7,000 miles is far too close for me. If somebody doesn't get that thing out of the water before I get there, I might -- after a good amount of really good whiskey -- think about killing the son of a bitch myself.
That'll do for now. Back later this week with my big, fat ugly NBA draft coverage.
Thanks for coming out. You've been great.
- In a quick Editor's note, later in this post, the U.S. soccer team provides the second entry in my new series "Now that's a real sports picture." I had only previously used this once, and since this is the second time, that makes it a series.
We begin, as you might expect, with crocodile news.
- I think a lot of people have heard of Gustave. Apparently, not nearly enough of them. Please, go to about the 3:00 mark of this video.
One person on youtube had this reaction:
np67 (1 month ago)
Hopefully Gustave is alive and well. I hope he copntinues to eat the people there. Its the foodchain afterall.
According to National Geographic, Gustave was last seen in April of this year. That's a couple months ago. Let's assume he's still alive. And let's be clear: when Gustave was seen in April, it was while he was, you know, attacking fisherman. He's not exactly packing it in and joining the senior tour. He's not doing the lecture tour. He will not be doing a couple nights at the Palms.
Let me say, I'm all for diplomacy whenever it's feasible. I think we should be able to sit down with almost anyone except for the most radical and unreasonable people. But not even Bill Richardson could get Gustave to back down. Hell, I'm not sure if Bill Russell could stop this thing.
Here's how you make the decision of whether Gustave can be allowed to roam free. He's about 20 feet in length. Look around the room you're in right now. Imagine something 20 feet long, and fat, being in that room. Now imagine that you're in the room too.
Can you imagine if this was happening, if this thing was killing hundreds of people in, oh, I don't know, FLORIDA? Would we let this go on? The U.S. does some -- not quite enough -- to support the research of AIDs in Africa, and some to help with poverty, and not nearly enough to help politically. But isn't this something we could solve pretty quickly?
You shoot this thing with a giant dart, loaded with tranquilizer. Maybe two darts. (Maybe throw in a couple shots of Jim Beam, just to be sure.) If the dart holds, Gustave gets put out to pasture and eats chicken cutlets -- and hopefully brings in much-needed money for the people of Burundi -- for the rest of his days.
If the dart doesn't hold? Let's try bullets.
I really like nature, and I prefer to let animals do what they do. But not here. Not at our expense. This is going too far. The fact that the people who share drinking water with this monster are surrounded by the wreckage of their own horrific civil war only makes this decision more obvious to me. Gustave cannot stay there.
I remember reading at one point that Patrice Faye, the naturalist who's followed Gustave closely for some time, was against killing this dinosaur. And originally, I was with him. But something Faye said has been rattling around in my skull for a while, and it seems to have stuck somewhere.
Faye thought that Gustave might be so virile, and have lived so long and been with so many female crocs that he could single-handedly re-populate the area with a new generation of big crocs. Now, I get his motivation here, as a naturalist.
But do you know who's not all that crazy about a new generation of super crocs? A kid who's lost a leg, or a brother, or a father to a reptile.
And hey, np67 (from youtube) -- why don't you go tell that kid where he is on your foodchain?
Okay, I went long on that. But it still felt right. And if you want another reason why I'm not okay with Gustave hangin' out, check the last dash-point in this entry.
- Now, let's get to soccer.
Gold Cup Final - United States 2, Mexico 1 (extended highlights here)
If you were writing the story of the United States men's soccer team, our play in the first 971 minutes (10 games, 71 minutes) of 2007 gets a paragraph. Nine wins, one draw, no losses, 24 goals from 13 players -- nine, count 'em NINE for Landon Donovan -- and a genuinely dominant peformance in our corner of the world. At the end of that paragraph, you'd talk about Mexico scoring first in the Gold Cup final, and then you'd mention Donovan's penalty-kick equalizer.
Then, if you were dictating the story, you'd say, "Period. New paragraph. 'Benny Feilhaber...' "
That's how big Feilhaber's goal was. Unless I turn out to be way, way wrong on this, we can now begin to look at this team's timeline in terms of before and after this goal.
Whew. Okay. I'm gonna' try not to go too far on this, but this is a big deal.
Of all the stories coming out of this tournament -- Demarcus Beasley's audition for big-time European soccer, Landon Donovan's 4-for-4 penalties, Bring Ching getting more and more cleverer -- Benny Feilhaber is the most interesting to me.
Feilhaber's game-winner -- excuse me, tournament-winner -- is now getting the label of the greatest goal in U.S. history. And you'll get no argument on that here.
Benny grew up in Brazil and moved up here when he was six. He bounced around, and eventually finished high school in California. Here's the single most incredible part of Feilhaber's story. He got his attention after appearing with our under-20 national team, but he was only called-up to the team after playing well at UCLA... as a walk-on.
Yeah, that's right. The guy who just scored the greatest goal in our country's soccer history got his big-time start when he walked onto a field in Southern California -- probably rubbing elbows with a dozen stoners and foreign exchange students -- and said, "Excuse me, coach, my name is Benny Feilhaber. I'd like to play some soccer for you."
Everything's been happening pretty fast since then for Feilhaber, now 22. His paychecks come from Hamburg SV right now, but I'm going to guess someone else will want him after what he's done this year. In 543 minutes, Feilhaber has one assist and two goals. The first goal -- shown very coolly just after the 3:00 mark here -- was good. The second goal was good enough to start a new paragraph.
While Feilhaber's been on the field, the U.S. has scored 15 goals and given up only three. That's in only eight games, and -- whoop, here comes the big point -- those eight games are Benny Feilhaber's FIRST EIGHT GAMES on the national team.
Wake up the kids. It's time to start watching the national team.
We're marching out a second-tier squad of youngster for the Copa America. There, we'll meet Argentina, which is bringing in an almost full squad. That game happens on Thursday.
We are not marching these kids out to a slaughter. We're not bringing our best group, but I am now of the delusional opinion that our second team shouldn't get blown-out by anybody. By the way, there is one player of note who will be available for Copa America.
Demarcus Beasley burns his fingers touching teammate Benny Feilhaber, mere moments before Feilhaber burst into flames.Now that, folks, is a real sports picture.
- Okay, now to my last news of the day. This one files under "Self serving crap," but if you're a reader here, you might care too.
I'm leaving the country this summer. I'll be heading to South Africa for a 3-month trip, where I'm accompanying the girlfriend. She's doing a semester abroad, and I'm going to volunteer coaching youngsters.
I don't think I need to explain that this means the blog will take a severe turn away from it's current form. Instead of constant yammering about the NBA -- my God, enough! -- I'll be writing more about my personal experience in that country. I'm trying to think of a good way to market those kind of stories. I'm thinking of filing them under "Clash of cultures," but I think I'd get a lot more interest if I called it "Clash of vultures." That sounds like something people would want to know about. (And as Junior from Reno 911 would note, Clash of Vultures is a wicked-awesome band name.)
And now I'm going to announce something that hopefully puts a lot of pressure on me and makes me actually do what I'm about to say. Given the amount of free time I expect to find around my volunteering schedule, I would like to use the opportunity to start writing a book about the 2010 World Cup.
Becuase I'm not exactly, uh, being published right now, I plan to market the book in this way: report as much as possible during this trip, and post the first chapter on the blog once I feel ready. So, that's something to look forward to.
And now, to come full circle: being in Port Elizabeth puts me roughly 7,000 miles away from a certain murderous reptile. And 7,000 miles is far too close for me. If somebody doesn't get that thing out of the water before I get there, I might -- after a good amount of really good whiskey -- think about killing the son of a bitch myself.
That'll do for now. Back later this week with my big, fat ugly NBA draft coverage.
Thanks for coming out. You've been great.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Notes, or Just gun
Hello.
Coming up, the NBA playoffs, a couple leftover thoughts, and one of the strangest things I've ever heard.
First, a couple corrections.
- In the second graph of the last "Notes," I wrote "lately-roped-off," which was a case of over-hyphenation, which I've been guilty of once-or-twice before.
- My baseball paragraph should have included the sentence, "Jason Giambi used them, too, and is not a dick."
- I wrote last time about how one of the potential youtube home movie entrepeneurs is named "smosh." Unfortunately, that was correct.
Okay, now to the crazy thing, which I'm not going to make you wait for.
I learned from the Animal Planet the other day that there is a tiny parasite that invades the brain of ants and takes over. The ant acts erratically for some time, and eventually finds a blade of grass, which it bites and holds onto. It may do this for as many as eight days, until it is eaten by a passing rabbit. At this point the ant ceases to be, but the parasite takes root inside the rabbit. Its eggs pass through the rabbit, whereupon they are picked-up by snails. Stay with me. The snails coat the eggs in slime, cough them up, and another ant comes along and eats that.
Do you actually believe any of that? It was Animal Planet, so I wanted to believe it, but how could there be something like that out there and I never learned it? I think something like that should come up-front with a high school education. We should all be aware if that kind of thing is happening on our planet.
Okay, now to the NBA, where I've got a lot to say.
First, Chicago and Golden State went out. Let's take the easy one first.
- Chicago and Detroit are the same team. They've got dynamic guards who can score, experienced muscle down low, and a swing man that can spark, and even take over a game for short bursts. But in every matchup - Hamilton-Billups v. Hinrich-Gordon, McDyess-Wallace-Webber v. Wallace-Brown, Prince-Deng - in all of them, Detroit is better. Chicago winning Game five was so incredible because it was so odd. I don't have Detroit losing another home game until the Finals.
- Now, to Golden State. And I should mention Utah here, and I will, but somehow Golden State seems like the story here. When the Warriors went up 3-1 on Dallas, a large portion of the sports media adopted Golden State as their own. I was not a part of this movement. The Warriors home page today looks like this:
"Another Magical Oakland Night"
-ESPN The Magazine
"Simple and Fearless"
-Sports Illustrated
"Warriors Fever Spreading Fast"
- San Jose Mercury News
"This is the game I wanted to invent"
- Dr. James Naismith
"I don't recall any of their games"
- Alberto Gonzales
Okay, the last two I made up, but, that's my evidence. The picture on the intro page shows two huge fireballs shooting up off the court in Oakland, which we can assume were started by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, who are totally insane as soon as the game tips off, and sometimes before or after.
By the way, SI, it's easier to be "Fearless" when Stephen Jackson is packin' heat.
Others praised Don Nelson as a basketball genius. I was not one of them. But David Dupree and Bob Ryan were.
First, to Nelson, I don't know whether or not he's a genius. I know I loved watching his Dallas teams, and rooted for them. But - and he was general manager at the time - I can see now that the all-offense teams he put together were just ridiculous. Fun to watch, but, come on. Nash, Finley, Nowitzki, Antawn Jamison, Antoine Walker, Nick Van Exel... how many points does Nellie think you need to win? 160?
I still like some of those players, but when Nelson moved to the Bay Area, I didn't follow him. I found the Warriors that closed the season so well and stunned Dallas to be more of a nuisance to watch than they were a thrill.
Baron Davis ranked himself in the top 20 players in the league with his play, and everyone else had their moments. But for every second of every game I saw them in the playoffs, they looked like they were playing pick-up ball at the gym. Guys moved, and dribbled, and shot - oh, man they shot - but no two players ever seemed to have a real idea, or even an interest about what any other player was doing. They dribbled, tried to get free for a shot, if it didn't work they passed and the next guy immediately shot.
This wasn't run and gun. Phoenix is run and gun. Golden State was just gun. And the number of times I saw this pay off over the course of the Dallas series seemed, off the charts, I guess, given the level of talent on this team. And the number of times one of them shot and missed, only for a long rebound to bounce to a Golden State player who had been standing still also seemed unreasonably high. In the Utah series it balanced out, thanks a little to Kirilenko and Deron Williams chasing, but mostly because that's just what happens.
19, 24, 25, and 27. Those are how many 3-pointers Golden State missed in each of its four losses here. That's hard to watch. It's not "Live by the three, die by the three." It's just die by the three.
Golden State also had meltdowns and temper issues throughout the playoffs. Like, as a group, they had hideous shot choices and moments of thuggery that brought on numerous flagrant fouls and technicals. Just like Dallas, I don't know if you can point the finger at any one player, but there's one guy who's in charge of all the players.
How does any of this make Nellie a genius? I'd believe he went the whole playoffs without a clipboard. What discussions could he be having with his assistants on the bench?
Assistant coach: "They're not shooting enough."
Nelson: "No, they're shooting enough. They're just not far enough away. Did we bring a clipboard?"
Assistant coach: "Clipboard, yeah. But no markers."
Those words I made up. These ones, and I'm paraphrasing, were real. They came from the post-game press conference.
(reporter): "What does this team need to do to get over the hump?"
Nelson: "Over the hump? (laughing) I think we got over the hump--"
(same reporter): -- "to get deeper into the playoffs, then?"
Nelson: (talking over him) "Next question."
This is it, Don? The second round of the playoffs? They knocked off Dallas, which was great for them, but what was this magical run that everyone saw? This team won five games in the playoffs. It lost six of them. They'll go down as the first 8-seed to win best-of-seven games against a No. 1, but in five years, will we be harking back to that golden time when the Bay Area got basketball fever for a week and a half?
It now looks like Don, 67, might be on his way out, by choice. From what I saw, he probably okay'd the trade for Jackson and Al Harrington, handed the ball to Baron Davis, and checked-out in late March.
- Now another note. Wouldn't you have liked to see Mehmet Okur and Andris Biedrins just trade teams? Biedrins maintains Utah's quota of "Eastern European White Guy With Spiky Hair," and Okur joins the shootaround on the Golden State end. I think Jerry Sloan is playing a long game of "Red Light, Green Light" with Okur. Once a night, he says, "Green light," Okur shoots four threes in 90 seconds, and Sloan says "Red light." It either works or it doesn't, and he won a couple of games for them.
Speaking of those two, I want to make a point about foreign players.
I'm not going to shock anyone, except Isaiah Thomas and Danny Ainge, but foreign players are here to stay and they seem really important.
San Antonio - 5, Phoenix - 4, Utah - 4, Cleveland - 3. That's the number of players on those teams that either start or play significant minutes who were born outside of the lower 48 states.
Five of the last 6 NBA MVPs fit the same description. The other MVP was Kevin Garnett, who was created in an American lab, but using mostly international parts.
This trend will not end any time soon, and while teams can't continue to add foreign players at the same rate, we can assume those teams that haven't drafted outsiders soon will. Anyone who fights this, or fails to see its importance, is like the 1960's music fan who heard the Beatles and thought, "Well, that'll be the last time rock and roll comes out of the UK."
It's already over.
Now, to Ginobli and Barbosa, who are the best South American players. Ginobli's from Argentina, and, as a soccer fan, I can tell you that for all he is, he's not in their Top 10 athletes. Barbosa, from Brazil, who is as fast and slick as anyone anywhere in the league? He's not in Brazil's Top FORTY. If this game really takes root in these countries - and in Italy and Germany - believe me, these countries have got brilliant young athletes with free time. If you set up camps, if you send coaches, if you build hoops, if you make sure it's on the TV...
Very soon, my friends, this game will no longer belong to us. We will see the NBA's first all-foreign starting five. That team will make the playoffs. Either get in on it, or get out.
- And now, since I've gone long, as always, I'll try to make this quick. Phoenix 2, San Antonio 3. Tonight's game in SA. Horry's bump on Nash, Stoudemire and Diaw leave the bench, get suspended, Phoenix loses game five. My thoughts:
- David Stern is getting nailed on this. Everybody says he needed to do something to keep Phoenix from losing this game for this reason. Let's think of what we're asking for here.
You want David Stern, who has for years been criticized for doing whatever he wants as comissioner, to make a personal judgment call on a rule. How could he possibly put himself in that position? There are already a hundred conspiracies about how Stern wants this team to make the finals, this team to do that, etc. And now he's supposed to rise up and say, "You know what, fellas? Forget the rule. I'll handle this one."
This rule is what's on the books. The people hammering Stern now are the same ones that have for years said he had too much control. Now we want to open it up for him to revoke, on a case-by-case basis, any rules on the books? It's just stupid.
We're ready to give one guy that much power? I think Alberto Gonzales is about to be unemployed. Maybe Stern could take him on as a secretary.
If the players union wanted this changed, if the owners wanted it changed, they should have been on the phone with Stern and Michael Wilbon every day since it happened 10 years ago.
But those were the rough-and-tough Knicks and Heat in a series no one watched, because Michael Jordan wasn't in it. But now, in the marquee series, we say this rule has to go, TONIGHT. Stupid.
Just to float an idea, what if Horry was a more volatile person, felt someone coming, fast, on his blindside, and Kermit Washington'd Stoudemire's goddamn eye? Given the on-court fights we've seen in the last couple years, I don't think this is something you can just write off. "Oh, but this time..." If players thought they could leave the bench, thinking they were acting in self-defense...
Earlier this season, Stephen Jackson's self-defense involved firing several gunshots outside of a nightclub. That's not even run and gun, that's just gun.
I'm just making the point that what's reasonable to Amare Stoudemire might be different than what's reasonable to someone else.
By the way, I admire the instinct in Stoudemire, who went much farther than Diaw and seemed like he actually had something in mind. I'm not sure if he wanted to get to his teammate Nash or the offender Horry, but seeing that happen to Steve Nash made Amare Stoudemire think, "I gotta' get there," and there's a big part of me that likes that.
And, according to the rule, he had to sit. If you want to change the rule, you do that in the offseason, not in a 36-hour window between playoff games. Stern had no play here.
Now, to the basketball itself. Game five was a really draining loss on Phoenix. Without Stoudemire to pick up a handful of dunks and layups down the stretch, they didn't have it. Nash got decent looks in the last minute and he missed them.
By the way, I just saw that Nash has played the most NBA games without playing in the Finals. It's getting to the point now where, for all the great things he does for his teams, you need to see those kind of results. Dude's got a bad back: how many years does he have left?
Earlier in these playoffs, I picked San Antonio to take the whole thing. I liked their depth, I liked that their best player always shows up and is incredibly low-maintenance. Everyone on the team seems just icy and professional down the stretch, except Ginobli, who runs way hot and way cold, and doesn't hurt them enough to lose many games.
Now, Phoenix has lost home court, has pretty much burned itself out in Game five, and Nash missed his big shots.
I will now, in the interest of some kind of blogging integrity (copyright Mike Mullen), change my pick. While my head has been so far in the San Antonio tent to this point, my heart was in Phoenix. I love everything they do. They seem to be enjoying the way they play, and the only other person having fun on the court, in the entire league, is Gilbert Arenas.
And don't tell me they don't play defense. Raja Bell, Marion, and Stoudemire all contest shots and board up. And Nash and Barbosa fly around and dive at everything on the ground. And they all take charges and flop, except Stoudemire, who is so strong it would just look silly for him to ever hit the deck.
So I'm switching. With Phoenix down and beaten up and needing to win in the Alamodome, I'm going to pick them to do it. My head fought it, but I want them to win so badly, and I like so much what they do, I've won it over.
I've got Stoudemire scoring a furious 35 tonight and Nash making a play in the final minute. I've got Ginolbli going cold one night. I've got two close ones. Classics. Maybe even an overtime.
I'm taking Phoenix in seven.
Good day. Back soon.
Coming up, the NBA playoffs, a couple leftover thoughts, and one of the strangest things I've ever heard.
First, a couple corrections.
- In the second graph of the last "Notes," I wrote "lately-roped-off," which was a case of over-hyphenation, which I've been guilty of once-or-twice before.
- My baseball paragraph should have included the sentence, "Jason Giambi used them, too, and is not a dick."
- I wrote last time about how one of the potential youtube home movie entrepeneurs is named "smosh." Unfortunately, that was correct.
Okay, now to the crazy thing, which I'm not going to make you wait for.
I learned from the Animal Planet the other day that there is a tiny parasite that invades the brain of ants and takes over. The ant acts erratically for some time, and eventually finds a blade of grass, which it bites and holds onto. It may do this for as many as eight days, until it is eaten by a passing rabbit. At this point the ant ceases to be, but the parasite takes root inside the rabbit. Its eggs pass through the rabbit, whereupon they are picked-up by snails. Stay with me. The snails coat the eggs in slime, cough them up, and another ant comes along and eats that.
Do you actually believe any of that? It was Animal Planet, so I wanted to believe it, but how could there be something like that out there and I never learned it? I think something like that should come up-front with a high school education. We should all be aware if that kind of thing is happening on our planet.
Okay, now to the NBA, where I've got a lot to say.
First, Chicago and Golden State went out. Let's take the easy one first.
- Chicago and Detroit are the same team. They've got dynamic guards who can score, experienced muscle down low, and a swing man that can spark, and even take over a game for short bursts. But in every matchup - Hamilton-Billups v. Hinrich-Gordon, McDyess-Wallace-Webber v. Wallace-Brown, Prince-Deng - in all of them, Detroit is better. Chicago winning Game five was so incredible because it was so odd. I don't have Detroit losing another home game until the Finals.
- Now, to Golden State. And I should mention Utah here, and I will, but somehow Golden State seems like the story here. When the Warriors went up 3-1 on Dallas, a large portion of the sports media adopted Golden State as their own. I was not a part of this movement. The Warriors home page today looks like this:
"Another Magical Oakland Night"
-ESPN The Magazine
"Simple and Fearless"
-Sports Illustrated
"Warriors Fever Spreading Fast"
- San Jose Mercury News
"This is the game I wanted to invent"
- Dr. James Naismith
"I don't recall any of their games"
- Alberto Gonzales
Okay, the last two I made up, but, that's my evidence. The picture on the intro page shows two huge fireballs shooting up off the court in Oakland, which we can assume were started by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, who are totally insane as soon as the game tips off, and sometimes before or after.
By the way, SI, it's easier to be "Fearless" when Stephen Jackson is packin' heat.
Others praised Don Nelson as a basketball genius. I was not one of them. But David Dupree and Bob Ryan were.
First, to Nelson, I don't know whether or not he's a genius. I know I loved watching his Dallas teams, and rooted for them. But - and he was general manager at the time - I can see now that the all-offense teams he put together were just ridiculous. Fun to watch, but, come on. Nash, Finley, Nowitzki, Antawn Jamison, Antoine Walker, Nick Van Exel... how many points does Nellie think you need to win? 160?
I still like some of those players, but when Nelson moved to the Bay Area, I didn't follow him. I found the Warriors that closed the season so well and stunned Dallas to be more of a nuisance to watch than they were a thrill.
Baron Davis ranked himself in the top 20 players in the league with his play, and everyone else had their moments. But for every second of every game I saw them in the playoffs, they looked like they were playing pick-up ball at the gym. Guys moved, and dribbled, and shot - oh, man they shot - but no two players ever seemed to have a real idea, or even an interest about what any other player was doing. They dribbled, tried to get free for a shot, if it didn't work they passed and the next guy immediately shot.
This wasn't run and gun. Phoenix is run and gun. Golden State was just gun. And the number of times I saw this pay off over the course of the Dallas series seemed, off the charts, I guess, given the level of talent on this team. And the number of times one of them shot and missed, only for a long rebound to bounce to a Golden State player who had been standing still also seemed unreasonably high. In the Utah series it balanced out, thanks a little to Kirilenko and Deron Williams chasing, but mostly because that's just what happens.
19, 24, 25, and 27. Those are how many 3-pointers Golden State missed in each of its four losses here. That's hard to watch. It's not "Live by the three, die by the three." It's just die by the three.
Golden State also had meltdowns and temper issues throughout the playoffs. Like, as a group, they had hideous shot choices and moments of thuggery that brought on numerous flagrant fouls and technicals. Just like Dallas, I don't know if you can point the finger at any one player, but there's one guy who's in charge of all the players.
How does any of this make Nellie a genius? I'd believe he went the whole playoffs without a clipboard. What discussions could he be having with his assistants on the bench?
Assistant coach: "They're not shooting enough."
Nelson: "No, they're shooting enough. They're just not far enough away. Did we bring a clipboard?"
Assistant coach: "Clipboard, yeah. But no markers."
Those words I made up. These ones, and I'm paraphrasing, were real. They came from the post-game press conference.
(reporter): "What does this team need to do to get over the hump?"
Nelson: "Over the hump? (laughing) I think we got over the hump--"
(same reporter): -- "to get deeper into the playoffs, then?"
Nelson: (talking over him) "Next question."
This is it, Don? The second round of the playoffs? They knocked off Dallas, which was great for them, but what was this magical run that everyone saw? This team won five games in the playoffs. It lost six of them. They'll go down as the first 8-seed to win best-of-seven games against a No. 1, but in five years, will we be harking back to that golden time when the Bay Area got basketball fever for a week and a half?
It now looks like Don, 67, might be on his way out, by choice. From what I saw, he probably okay'd the trade for Jackson and Al Harrington, handed the ball to Baron Davis, and checked-out in late March.
- Now another note. Wouldn't you have liked to see Mehmet Okur and Andris Biedrins just trade teams? Biedrins maintains Utah's quota of "Eastern European White Guy With Spiky Hair," and Okur joins the shootaround on the Golden State end. I think Jerry Sloan is playing a long game of "Red Light, Green Light" with Okur. Once a night, he says, "Green light," Okur shoots four threes in 90 seconds, and Sloan says "Red light." It either works or it doesn't, and he won a couple of games for them.
Speaking of those two, I want to make a point about foreign players.
I'm not going to shock anyone, except Isaiah Thomas and Danny Ainge, but foreign players are here to stay and they seem really important.
San Antonio - 5, Phoenix - 4, Utah - 4, Cleveland - 3. That's the number of players on those teams that either start or play significant minutes who were born outside of the lower 48 states.
Five of the last 6 NBA MVPs fit the same description. The other MVP was Kevin Garnett, who was created in an American lab, but using mostly international parts.
This trend will not end any time soon, and while teams can't continue to add foreign players at the same rate, we can assume those teams that haven't drafted outsiders soon will. Anyone who fights this, or fails to see its importance, is like the 1960's music fan who heard the Beatles and thought, "Well, that'll be the last time rock and roll comes out of the UK."
It's already over.
Now, to Ginobli and Barbosa, who are the best South American players. Ginobli's from Argentina, and, as a soccer fan, I can tell you that for all he is, he's not in their Top 10 athletes. Barbosa, from Brazil, who is as fast and slick as anyone anywhere in the league? He's not in Brazil's Top FORTY. If this game really takes root in these countries - and in Italy and Germany - believe me, these countries have got brilliant young athletes with free time. If you set up camps, if you send coaches, if you build hoops, if you make sure it's on the TV...
Very soon, my friends, this game will no longer belong to us. We will see the NBA's first all-foreign starting five. That team will make the playoffs. Either get in on it, or get out.
- And now, since I've gone long, as always, I'll try to make this quick. Phoenix 2, San Antonio 3. Tonight's game in SA. Horry's bump on Nash, Stoudemire and Diaw leave the bench, get suspended, Phoenix loses game five. My thoughts:
- David Stern is getting nailed on this. Everybody says he needed to do something to keep Phoenix from losing this game for this reason. Let's think of what we're asking for here.
You want David Stern, who has for years been criticized for doing whatever he wants as comissioner, to make a personal judgment call on a rule. How could he possibly put himself in that position? There are already a hundred conspiracies about how Stern wants this team to make the finals, this team to do that, etc. And now he's supposed to rise up and say, "You know what, fellas? Forget the rule. I'll handle this one."
This rule is what's on the books. The people hammering Stern now are the same ones that have for years said he had too much control. Now we want to open it up for him to revoke, on a case-by-case basis, any rules on the books? It's just stupid.
We're ready to give one guy that much power? I think Alberto Gonzales is about to be unemployed. Maybe Stern could take him on as a secretary.
If the players union wanted this changed, if the owners wanted it changed, they should have been on the phone with Stern and Michael Wilbon every day since it happened 10 years ago.
But those were the rough-and-tough Knicks and Heat in a series no one watched, because Michael Jordan wasn't in it. But now, in the marquee series, we say this rule has to go, TONIGHT. Stupid.
Just to float an idea, what if Horry was a more volatile person, felt someone coming, fast, on his blindside, and Kermit Washington'd Stoudemire's goddamn eye? Given the on-court fights we've seen in the last couple years, I don't think this is something you can just write off. "Oh, but this time..." If players thought they could leave the bench, thinking they were acting in self-defense...
Earlier this season, Stephen Jackson's self-defense involved firing several gunshots outside of a nightclub. That's not even run and gun, that's just gun.
I'm just making the point that what's reasonable to Amare Stoudemire might be different than what's reasonable to someone else.
By the way, I admire the instinct in Stoudemire, who went much farther than Diaw and seemed like he actually had something in mind. I'm not sure if he wanted to get to his teammate Nash or the offender Horry, but seeing that happen to Steve Nash made Amare Stoudemire think, "I gotta' get there," and there's a big part of me that likes that.
And, according to the rule, he had to sit. If you want to change the rule, you do that in the offseason, not in a 36-hour window between playoff games. Stern had no play here.
Now, to the basketball itself. Game five was a really draining loss on Phoenix. Without Stoudemire to pick up a handful of dunks and layups down the stretch, they didn't have it. Nash got decent looks in the last minute and he missed them.
By the way, I just saw that Nash has played the most NBA games without playing in the Finals. It's getting to the point now where, for all the great things he does for his teams, you need to see those kind of results. Dude's got a bad back: how many years does he have left?
Earlier in these playoffs, I picked San Antonio to take the whole thing. I liked their depth, I liked that their best player always shows up and is incredibly low-maintenance. Everyone on the team seems just icy and professional down the stretch, except Ginobli, who runs way hot and way cold, and doesn't hurt them enough to lose many games.
Now, Phoenix has lost home court, has pretty much burned itself out in Game five, and Nash missed his big shots.
I will now, in the interest of some kind of blogging integrity (copyright Mike Mullen), change my pick. While my head has been so far in the San Antonio tent to this point, my heart was in Phoenix. I love everything they do. They seem to be enjoying the way they play, and the only other person having fun on the court, in the entire league, is Gilbert Arenas.
And don't tell me they don't play defense. Raja Bell, Marion, and Stoudemire all contest shots and board up. And Nash and Barbosa fly around and dive at everything on the ground. And they all take charges and flop, except Stoudemire, who is so strong it would just look silly for him to ever hit the deck.
So I'm switching. With Phoenix down and beaten up and needing to win in the Alamodome, I'm going to pick them to do it. My head fought it, but I want them to win so badly, and I like so much what they do, I've won it over.
I've got Stoudemire scoring a furious 35 tonight and Nash making a play in the final minute. I've got Ginolbli going cold one night. I've got two close ones. Classics. Maybe even an overtime.
I'm taking Phoenix in seven.
Good day. Back soon.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Notes, or Death, taxes and rain
Hello.
Been a rough week.
Suddenly my big Imus blog or my big NBA preview didn't seem so big. I don't have a whole lot to say about what happened in Virginia, and I wouldn't expect you to want to hear it. I'm twenty, and this doesn't make much sense to me, and I don't think it will when I'm sixty. You can listen to FBI profilers or cops or whoever, and no one is going to explain what happened there.
I looked at this thing for a while, and it hurt me, and now I'm not looking. If you want information, it's out there, at every major news outlet in print, and some of it's very poignant. And now for my own good I'll turn back to Imus and the NBA and other stupid little things, if for no other reason than because they're not this.
So I'll go on with some notes, and then jump into the playoffs, maybe after everybody plays once. So, today, the incredible stories of Pacman Jones and Steve Kerr.
- I just paid my taxes online the other day, at which point I was charged $65 dollars for a $150 tax refund. I spent two or three hours doing it, and a handful of people at the IRS will have to do at least an hour or so of filing and paperwork, and you begin to see why we can't crunch the numbers on a national healthcare plan.
- I can't believe how smoothly this went over, but I can think back today, to the first time I heard about a gifted college defensive back named Chad Jones. The FIRST information I ever got about Chad Jones was that he would now be referred to full-time by his nickname, Pacman. And everyone seemed to be okay with this. Look, that kind of name-changing doesn't fly in Brazil.
Two years, four interceptions, four punt return touchdowns, and five, count 'em five arrests later, everyone knows Mr. Chad Jones. Once again, I'm working from paperwork that has not yet been ajudicated in the courts, so imagine that almost every sentence in the next few graphs starts with "Allegedly".
On February 22nd of this year, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published its report of the events that took place in a Vegas strip club during NBA All Star Weekend. The story says that Pacman Jones dropped hundreds of $1 bills on the stage at a club called Minxx. Then 40 strippers took to the stage and started picking up the money, which Jones had only wanted to be for "visual effect." Jones became very upset at what was going on, and somewhere in the confusion, a club promoter made off with a bag containing eighty one thousand dollars (81,000) dollars.
On a side note, I'm not sure what kind of calculators they have at the Review-Journal, but I believe in order to leave this amount of money on the stage, Jones would have dropped 81,000 $1 bills. So, perhaps someone is lying, and these were hundreds. Even if it was hundreds, that's 810 of them. Can you imagine? If you threw out the top and bottom five percent, that's probably three or four years of work for the average person.
Now, if you the reader have never "made it rain" at a strip club, let me tell you, the night usually gets pretty interesting.
For example on this night, a woman who came with Mr. Jones proceeded to fight a stripper, bite a bouncer, and then hit him in the head with a champagne bottle. Finally Jones and everyone he came with was cleared from the building. A few minutes later, a man pulled out a handgun and shot the same bouncer, another security guard, and a female bystander. The bystander and bouncer were injured, but they were incredibly lucky, and will be fine.
The security guard, Tom Urbanski, had one bullet damage his spine. He is, as of today, paralyzed from the waist down.
This case is going to go to trial, and Pacman does not look good here. If he's involved to the level that is alleged by the club owner, which of course I have no idea about, but if he is... Well, needless to say, it would be a shocking turn of events if something like this happened, and then an unrelated shooting took place with the same bouncer as a random target. Again, I'm not convicting anyone, but it's looking really, really bad for anyone sitting in that entire section of the club.
Mr. Jones has now been suspended one entire season for conduct detrimental to the National Football League. His case is up for review after 10 games, and he's already said he thinks his appeal will work and he'll be back as soon as possible. I've heard from someone - perhaps more well-informed than Mr. Pacman - that new NFL comissioner Roger Goodell hasn't even considered the Vegas thing in his current suspension.
But here's who I think should also look into suspending Jones: a jury of his peers.
He's been accused of three big-time bad things by this club owner. And again, I know nothing about what went on that night, but I fail to see what this man would stand to gain by lying, and I think the natural inclination of an owner is to side with the celebrity whenever possible, whenever they could stomach it, because it's good for business to be friends with celebs and have them coming to your club.
But the owner claims that 1) the shooter was sitting with Pacman, that 2)Pacman grabbed one of the strippers by the hair and slammed her head against the stage, and 3) that Mr. Jones, and this is the big one, that he allegedly threatened the bouncer's life.
If No. 1 is true, Jones should be called to give a deposition and testify under oath in a criminal trial, and I'm sure he will. If No. 2 is true, Pacman himself should stand trial for assault.
But No. 3? And if we find out that he said anything, at all, to the shooter? I would think, without looking it up, that those charges should look something like 10-to-life.
I'll wait and see how this is resolved before I pass really harsh judgment on this. But if Pacman, or anyone, likes to smoke a little dope on Sunday night, or hang out late, or run with his boys, or even get onstage and "make it rain" with a garbage-bag full of hundreds, I personally think that stuff is hardly my business.
But if he's out with honest-to-God gangster types, and inciting a large incident, and people are getting shot... well when do you stop caring about Mr. Jones' recovery speed?
- I think I remember maybe hearing something about this a while ago, but I would've been very young. But I came across it again recently while I was wasting time at wikipedia.
Steve Kerr can now be found as the funniest color commentator, oh, maybe ever, when he works NBA games on TNT. He's insightful, he knows the game, and he doesn't let Marv Albert get away with anything. Should Barkley ever join Kerr in a broadcast booth, any third person you put on the air with them would soon be laughing so hard that he would take off his microphone and walk away from the scorer's table.
Steve retired as the NBA's best 3-point shooter of all-time, and that record could stand for a pretty long time, so that's something in his pocket. He also won five (5!) NBA championships, three in Chicago, and two in San Antonio. For all five of them Steve was a bit player, but a vital one. He hustled, he kept his stars happy, and he hit almost ALL of his open shots. Players like Steve are usually the difference between winning and not winning. And that seems to be the case, because Steve also reached a Final Four with Arizona. Steve also played 20-plus minutes per game on the 95-96 Chicago team that won 72 out of 82 games in the regular season and then went sweep, 4-1, sweep, then 4-2 in the Finals to win a championsip. Now that's winning.
In 1997, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, Phil Jackson drew up a play for Michael Jordan with seconds remaining and Chicago down one in Salt Lake City, which was at the time the loudest building in the NBA. MJ, the greatest clutch shooter of all time, looked at Kerr, like he had John Paxson a few years earlier against Phoenix, and said something along the lines of, "Be ready."
Indeed, MJ passed to Kerr, who hit an NBA Finals-winning shot. Paxson did the same thing in '93, and MJ did it again in '98, but other than that, the group of people who can honestly say they hit the one shot that won an NBA championship is pretty exclusive.
A couple nights later, I was watching Leno (forgive me, I was 11 and I didn't know better) and Steve Kerr delivered the following line, unprompted: "We were in the huddle, and Mike turned to me and said, 'You know Steve, I'm not really comfortable taking these kind of shots. ' "
I'm sure there was a second half to this line, but it was killed when this immediately drew an outburst of surprised laughter from everyone, me included. This was an athlete delivering a line and getting a real laugh on Leno. Pretty cool.
Now, the information that I just rediscovered, and that I would like to share with you now, lies in the following stunner of a paragraph, which I have lifted and edited from wikipedia.
Steve is the son of Malcolm Kerr, an American academic who specialized in the Middle East. Kerr was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and spent much of his childhood in Lebanon and other Arab states, such as Egpy where he attended Cairo American College. He attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California. On January 18, 1984, Kerr saw his life drastically change when his father, who was then serving as president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by suspected militant nationalists in Lebanon.
Can you imagine the number of people, of all kinds, who have recognized Steve Kerr somewhere, approached him, and wanted to talk about something very different from basketball? I'm sure it's much smaller than the number who've said something about the shot in Utah, but to know that these two incredibly different lives belong to the same man is just incredible. To think that this is the same guy blogging - and pretty accurately - on Yahoo! Sports beneath a headshot that could be on the side of a bus in a real estate ad?
I'm pretty sure Steve's got a great book in him, and given the incredibly personal nature of the story, I'll be patient. And if he never decides to write it, that's okay, too. But if I ever meet Steve, we'll make fun of athletes for the first two drinks, and then I'll want to ask Steve about everything but basketball.
Been a rough week.
Suddenly my big Imus blog or my big NBA preview didn't seem so big. I don't have a whole lot to say about what happened in Virginia, and I wouldn't expect you to want to hear it. I'm twenty, and this doesn't make much sense to me, and I don't think it will when I'm sixty. You can listen to FBI profilers or cops or whoever, and no one is going to explain what happened there.
I looked at this thing for a while, and it hurt me, and now I'm not looking. If you want information, it's out there, at every major news outlet in print, and some of it's very poignant. And now for my own good I'll turn back to Imus and the NBA and other stupid little things, if for no other reason than because they're not this.
So I'll go on with some notes, and then jump into the playoffs, maybe after everybody plays once. So, today, the incredible stories of Pacman Jones and Steve Kerr.
- I just paid my taxes online the other day, at which point I was charged $65 dollars for a $150 tax refund. I spent two or three hours doing it, and a handful of people at the IRS will have to do at least an hour or so of filing and paperwork, and you begin to see why we can't crunch the numbers on a national healthcare plan.
- I can't believe how smoothly this went over, but I can think back today, to the first time I heard about a gifted college defensive back named Chad Jones. The FIRST information I ever got about Chad Jones was that he would now be referred to full-time by his nickname, Pacman. And everyone seemed to be okay with this. Look, that kind of name-changing doesn't fly in Brazil.
Two years, four interceptions, four punt return touchdowns, and five, count 'em five arrests later, everyone knows Mr. Chad Jones. Once again, I'm working from paperwork that has not yet been ajudicated in the courts, so imagine that almost every sentence in the next few graphs starts with "Allegedly".
On February 22nd of this year, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published its report of the events that took place in a Vegas strip club during NBA All Star Weekend. The story says that Pacman Jones dropped hundreds of $1 bills on the stage at a club called Minxx. Then 40 strippers took to the stage and started picking up the money, which Jones had only wanted to be for "visual effect." Jones became very upset at what was going on, and somewhere in the confusion, a club promoter made off with a bag containing eighty one thousand dollars (81,000) dollars.
On a side note, I'm not sure what kind of calculators they have at the Review-Journal, but I believe in order to leave this amount of money on the stage, Jones would have dropped 81,000 $1 bills. So, perhaps someone is lying, and these were hundreds. Even if it was hundreds, that's 810 of them. Can you imagine? If you threw out the top and bottom five percent, that's probably three or four years of work for the average person.
Now, if you the reader have never "made it rain" at a strip club, let me tell you, the night usually gets pretty interesting.
For example on this night, a woman who came with Mr. Jones proceeded to fight a stripper, bite a bouncer, and then hit him in the head with a champagne bottle. Finally Jones and everyone he came with was cleared from the building. A few minutes later, a man pulled out a handgun and shot the same bouncer, another security guard, and a female bystander. The bystander and bouncer were injured, but they were incredibly lucky, and will be fine.
The security guard, Tom Urbanski, had one bullet damage his spine. He is, as of today, paralyzed from the waist down.
This case is going to go to trial, and Pacman does not look good here. If he's involved to the level that is alleged by the club owner, which of course I have no idea about, but if he is... Well, needless to say, it would be a shocking turn of events if something like this happened, and then an unrelated shooting took place with the same bouncer as a random target. Again, I'm not convicting anyone, but it's looking really, really bad for anyone sitting in that entire section of the club.
Mr. Jones has now been suspended one entire season for conduct detrimental to the National Football League. His case is up for review after 10 games, and he's already said he thinks his appeal will work and he'll be back as soon as possible. I've heard from someone - perhaps more well-informed than Mr. Pacman - that new NFL comissioner Roger Goodell hasn't even considered the Vegas thing in his current suspension.
But here's who I think should also look into suspending Jones: a jury of his peers.
He's been accused of three big-time bad things by this club owner. And again, I know nothing about what went on that night, but I fail to see what this man would stand to gain by lying, and I think the natural inclination of an owner is to side with the celebrity whenever possible, whenever they could stomach it, because it's good for business to be friends with celebs and have them coming to your club.
But the owner claims that 1) the shooter was sitting with Pacman, that 2)Pacman grabbed one of the strippers by the hair and slammed her head against the stage, and 3) that Mr. Jones, and this is the big one, that he allegedly threatened the bouncer's life.
If No. 1 is true, Jones should be called to give a deposition and testify under oath in a criminal trial, and I'm sure he will. If No. 2 is true, Pacman himself should stand trial for assault.
But No. 3? And if we find out that he said anything, at all, to the shooter? I would think, without looking it up, that those charges should look something like 10-to-life.
I'll wait and see how this is resolved before I pass really harsh judgment on this. But if Pacman, or anyone, likes to smoke a little dope on Sunday night, or hang out late, or run with his boys, or even get onstage and "make it rain" with a garbage-bag full of hundreds, I personally think that stuff is hardly my business.
But if he's out with honest-to-God gangster types, and inciting a large incident, and people are getting shot... well when do you stop caring about Mr. Jones' recovery speed?
- I think I remember maybe hearing something about this a while ago, but I would've been very young. But I came across it again recently while I was wasting time at wikipedia.
Steve Kerr can now be found as the funniest color commentator, oh, maybe ever, when he works NBA games on TNT. He's insightful, he knows the game, and he doesn't let Marv Albert get away with anything. Should Barkley ever join Kerr in a broadcast booth, any third person you put on the air with them would soon be laughing so hard that he would take off his microphone and walk away from the scorer's table.
Steve retired as the NBA's best 3-point shooter of all-time, and that record could stand for a pretty long time, so that's something in his pocket. He also won five (5!) NBA championships, three in Chicago, and two in San Antonio. For all five of them Steve was a bit player, but a vital one. He hustled, he kept his stars happy, and he hit almost ALL of his open shots. Players like Steve are usually the difference between winning and not winning. And that seems to be the case, because Steve also reached a Final Four with Arizona. Steve also played 20-plus minutes per game on the 95-96 Chicago team that won 72 out of 82 games in the regular season and then went sweep, 4-1, sweep, then 4-2 in the Finals to win a championsip. Now that's winning.
In 1997, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, Phil Jackson drew up a play for Michael Jordan with seconds remaining and Chicago down one in Salt Lake City, which was at the time the loudest building in the NBA. MJ, the greatest clutch shooter of all time, looked at Kerr, like he had John Paxson a few years earlier against Phoenix, and said something along the lines of, "Be ready."
Indeed, MJ passed to Kerr, who hit an NBA Finals-winning shot. Paxson did the same thing in '93, and MJ did it again in '98, but other than that, the group of people who can honestly say they hit the one shot that won an NBA championship is pretty exclusive.
A couple nights later, I was watching Leno (forgive me, I was 11 and I didn't know better) and Steve Kerr delivered the following line, unprompted: "We were in the huddle, and Mike turned to me and said, 'You know Steve, I'm not really comfortable taking these kind of shots. ' "
I'm sure there was a second half to this line, but it was killed when this immediately drew an outburst of surprised laughter from everyone, me included. This was an athlete delivering a line and getting a real laugh on Leno. Pretty cool.
Now, the information that I just rediscovered, and that I would like to share with you now, lies in the following stunner of a paragraph, which I have lifted and edited from wikipedia.
Steve is the son of Malcolm Kerr, an American academic who specialized in the Middle East. Kerr was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and spent much of his childhood in Lebanon and other Arab states, such as Egpy where he attended Cairo American College. He attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California. On January 18, 1984, Kerr saw his life drastically change when his father, who was then serving as president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by suspected militant nationalists in Lebanon.
Can you imagine the number of people, of all kinds, who have recognized Steve Kerr somewhere, approached him, and wanted to talk about something very different from basketball? I'm sure it's much smaller than the number who've said something about the shot in Utah, but to know that these two incredibly different lives belong to the same man is just incredible. To think that this is the same guy blogging - and pretty accurately - on Yahoo! Sports beneath a headshot that could be on the side of a bus in a real estate ad?
I'm pretty sure Steve's got a great book in him, and given the incredibly personal nature of the story, I'll be patient. And if he never decides to write it, that's okay, too. But if I ever meet Steve, we'll make fun of athletes for the first two drinks, and then I'll want to ask Steve about everything but basketball.
- I realize now that I wanted to write something that might take my own, and maybe your mind, off a tragic event, and I then proceeded to write about assassination, attempted murder, and taxes. I could hardly have screwed this up worse. Let me try and make up for it.
If you go to itunes.com, you can download iTunes, where you can then enter the iTunes store, where you can download all kinds of things (TV and radio shows, songs, movies). Almost all of the TV and radio shows are totally free and available for download at all times. They typically air with a single commercial before the show, and no other commercials throughout the program.
And so I will endorse the Tony Kornheiser radio show, which airs on Washington Post radio. Tony seems to have mastered balancing his massive ego with his neuroses, which is the battle that most sportswriters, bloggers, and, I suppose, adults are waging. The difference is Tony is funny like hardly no one else is. But more importantly, when something big actually happens, like happened a few days ago just hours from Tony's home, I find him to be one of the most reasoned and thoughtful people across almost all forms of media. He's a blowhard when it doesn't matter, and when it really matters, he's at his absolute best. It even seems that, when he's talking or interviewing someone, he sometimes stops and thinks, sometimes to the extent that there's silence on the air.
When bad things happen, most people turn to someone for insight or logic or even just a cheap laugh. And for those of you dumb enough to have read me, I feel I owe it to you to refer you to Tony. Enjoy.
Be back soon, I promise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
