Greetings faithful reader,
I apologize for the long expanse of time between blog posts to this site, but I took vacation last week, was pretty much dead to the world of sports and am just now getting back into things. Sadly, I missed the first two games the NBA Finals, but after reading about them it doesn’t sound like I really missed that much. Tonight, though, I will get to watch probably the most important game of the series, at least for Miami, and get to see if Avery Johnson and his staff continues to completely out coach his opponent. Then, after the game either tonight or tomorrow, I will post my thoughts about that game and whatever else might happen tonight.
Until then, here is what’s rattling around my brain at the moment related to sports. Your thoughts and comments in response are always welcome so long as they agree with mine and take some amount of time telling me how brilliant I am. I'm sure you understand.
1. Big Ben – First, if you listen to sports radio or have otherwise followed the coverage of Ben Rothlisberger’s little stunt on the motorbike yesterday, you have to love that most talking heads spent all of about 2 seconds voicing concern for Ben and his family before hammering him for riding without a helmet. He was still in surgery for crying out loud. It is never a good idea to ride a bicycle without a helmet, never mind one that has a motor strapped to it and Ben made a bad decision and paid a very harsh price, though not as harsh as it could have been. But to spend an hour cracking on some guy for "letting his entire city down" while he is still in surgery seems just a touch myopic and unjustifiably insensitive.
Sports is great and all, but mostly I hope the guy is ok. I wonder how Cowherd or the others would have felt if he had died on the table? All I’m saying is, let’s just take a few seconds to remember sports are played by people before we kill them for doing something no more dumb than lots of the stuff we do ourselves. That said, it was dumb. What did you think just because you weren’t doing Winslows…errr…I mean wheelies, that you couldn’t crash?
2. Jason Grimsley – Enough. Please can we stop spending so much time on roids and HGH? If someone gets concrete proof that a player that matters has cheated or broken the law, let us know. Until then, try telling us about something else, anything. I’m begging here. Also, to all the congressmen, senators, district attorneys, US attorneys, FBI, and all other law enforcement personnel and public officials: STOP SPENDING OUR TAX DOLLARS TRYING TO OUT ATHLETES FOR STEROID USE!!! This may become it’s own blog topic, but it is hard to fathom a bigger waste of tax money than congressional hearings or multiple grand-juries aimed at finding out if a few muscle bound millionaires once took drugs which at worst, at very worst, may have slightly inflated some of their career statistics.
How about next we have congressional hearings to determine if there is ever any manipulation or scripting of “reality” tv shows. Forget education, defense, public infrastructure, border protection, etc., let’s spend the money I earned trying to figure out if someone used the “clear” or the “cream.” Yuck.
3. NBA Draft – It sure looks more and more like this was a bad year to have the top pick. I think Toronto wants to trade it to avoid infighting over whether to take Barg…the next Nowitzki, but who wants to move up that high? That pick can’t have that much value considering that it appears to be just as good a position to be picking 6th.
Speaking of Dirk, can we get some consensus on how to pronounce his name? An increasing number of people are pronouncing Nowitzki with the “w” making the sound it makes in English, while many others, myself included, pronounce it with a “v” sound like they say in German…you know,…because he’s German. But maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. I just know they can’t both be right and if your whole job is to talk about sports, you should get this stuff right, which means a bunch of people (not just Bill Walton) are doing their job badly, but you already knew that didn't you?
Back to the draft, I think Reddick’s DUII hurts him more than it would other potential draftees. With JJ, the argument for drafting him is that he’s a money shooter with better quickness than you think and plus he’s from Duke so you know he’s smart and a “good kid.” All of that is to make up for the fact that he looks like a ball boy. But he needs all the pluses he can get because his minuses (can’t play D or get his own shot, or jump, stay healthy in a more physical league) are pretty compelling. Take away that “ smart, good kid” factor which this DUII (fairly or not) will do to a degree, and I think it could cost him in the draft.
Oh and if we’re keeping score, driving while intoxicated is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more dumb than riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
4. Basketball Camp – For Father’s Day my lovely wife sent me to basketball camp for grownups. It was put on by an outfit called Never Too Late Basketball and was fantastic. It was run by a guy who is a former D-1 coach and NBA scout with the help of some other current coaches and college players. We learned and ran a motion offense, worked on proper defensive spacing and techniques, did ball-handling, passing and shooting drills, learned the basic ways to attack a zone defense and most importantly spent about 15 hours in 3 days doing nothing but hoops. I strongly recommend it. These guys hold camps all over the country and I’m hoping to go back when they come back here next year, so if you are interested in joining me, let me know.
5. World Cup – Here’s my take. Nike and Coca-Cola ran adds trying to convince Americans we didn’t suck at soccer any more so we would buy into soccer and watch the World Cup and buy all that trendy soccer stuff with those strange patches and odd color combinations. Then we found out Monday, that, nope, we still suck. What I have learned from all of this is most likely what you discovered about yourself too. I still don’t care. It’s a boring, out of date game with inferior athletes to our basketball and football players and only retains its world wide popularity because of tradition, and most importantly it’s ease and low cost to play for beginners (i.e., children). After all, all you need is something that passes for a ball that can be kicked and two rocks to make a goal. Not so with superior games like basketball and football. No matter how poor or backwards a country is, they can play soccer. That matters.
6. Giants Game – While I was on vacation, I took in a Giants game at what is now AT&T Park in SF. It is the most beautiful sports stadium in the country. You think another one is better? Tell me about it. You’re wrong of course, but I would like to hear about it anyway. My real point in bringing this up however was to point out how great sports is for bonding with your kids. You can teach them so much about fairness, competition, cooperation and fun all while enjoying a $20 hotdog and watching your favorite team. The Giants lost and I still didn’t care because Gibson was with me and we had a great time learning about the game, walking around the park and looking forward to the day when his younger brother would join us as well. If you are a mom or dad, take your kids to a ball game and take the time to tell them what’s going on. It is great, great fun.
I apologize for the long expanse of time between blog posts to this site, but I took vacation last week, was pretty much dead to the world of sports and am just now getting back into things. Sadly, I missed the first two games the NBA Finals, but after reading about them it doesn’t sound like I really missed that much. Tonight, though, I will get to watch probably the most important game of the series, at least for Miami, and get to see if Avery Johnson and his staff continues to completely out coach his opponent. Then, after the game either tonight or tomorrow, I will post my thoughts about that game and whatever else might happen tonight.
Until then, here is what’s rattling around my brain at the moment related to sports. Your thoughts and comments in response are always welcome so long as they agree with mine and take some amount of time telling me how brilliant I am. I'm sure you understand.
1. Big Ben – First, if you listen to sports radio or have otherwise followed the coverage of Ben Rothlisberger’s little stunt on the motorbike yesterday, you have to love that most talking heads spent all of about 2 seconds voicing concern for Ben and his family before hammering him for riding without a helmet. He was still in surgery for crying out loud. It is never a good idea to ride a bicycle without a helmet, never mind one that has a motor strapped to it and Ben made a bad decision and paid a very harsh price, though not as harsh as it could have been. But to spend an hour cracking on some guy for "letting his entire city down" while he is still in surgery seems just a touch myopic and unjustifiably insensitive.
Sports is great and all, but mostly I hope the guy is ok. I wonder how Cowherd or the others would have felt if he had died on the table? All I’m saying is, let’s just take a few seconds to remember sports are played by people before we kill them for doing something no more dumb than lots of the stuff we do ourselves. That said, it was dumb. What did you think just because you weren’t doing Winslows…errr…I mean wheelies, that you couldn’t crash?
2. Jason Grimsley – Enough. Please can we stop spending so much time on roids and HGH? If someone gets concrete proof that a player that matters has cheated or broken the law, let us know. Until then, try telling us about something else, anything. I’m begging here. Also, to all the congressmen, senators, district attorneys, US attorneys, FBI, and all other law enforcement personnel and public officials: STOP SPENDING OUR TAX DOLLARS TRYING TO OUT ATHLETES FOR STEROID USE!!! This may become it’s own blog topic, but it is hard to fathom a bigger waste of tax money than congressional hearings or multiple grand-juries aimed at finding out if a few muscle bound millionaires once took drugs which at worst, at very worst, may have slightly inflated some of their career statistics.
How about next we have congressional hearings to determine if there is ever any manipulation or scripting of “reality” tv shows. Forget education, defense, public infrastructure, border protection, etc., let’s spend the money I earned trying to figure out if someone used the “clear” or the “cream.” Yuck.
3. NBA Draft – It sure looks more and more like this was a bad year to have the top pick. I think Toronto wants to trade it to avoid infighting over whether to take Barg…the next Nowitzki, but who wants to move up that high? That pick can’t have that much value considering that it appears to be just as good a position to be picking 6th.
Speaking of Dirk, can we get some consensus on how to pronounce his name? An increasing number of people are pronouncing Nowitzki with the “w” making the sound it makes in English, while many others, myself included, pronounce it with a “v” sound like they say in German…you know,…because he’s German. But maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. I just know they can’t both be right and if your whole job is to talk about sports, you should get this stuff right, which means a bunch of people (not just Bill Walton) are doing their job badly, but you already knew that didn't you?
Back to the draft, I think Reddick’s DUII hurts him more than it would other potential draftees. With JJ, the argument for drafting him is that he’s a money shooter with better quickness than you think and plus he’s from Duke so you know he’s smart and a “good kid.” All of that is to make up for the fact that he looks like a ball boy. But he needs all the pluses he can get because his minuses (can’t play D or get his own shot, or jump, stay healthy in a more physical league) are pretty compelling. Take away that “ smart, good kid” factor which this DUII (fairly or not) will do to a degree, and I think it could cost him in the draft.
Oh and if we’re keeping score, driving while intoxicated is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more dumb than riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
4. Basketball Camp – For Father’s Day my lovely wife sent me to basketball camp for grownups. It was put on by an outfit called Never Too Late Basketball and was fantastic. It was run by a guy who is a former D-1 coach and NBA scout with the help of some other current coaches and college players. We learned and ran a motion offense, worked on proper defensive spacing and techniques, did ball-handling, passing and shooting drills, learned the basic ways to attack a zone defense and most importantly spent about 15 hours in 3 days doing nothing but hoops. I strongly recommend it. These guys hold camps all over the country and I’m hoping to go back when they come back here next year, so if you are interested in joining me, let me know.
5. World Cup – Here’s my take. Nike and Coca-Cola ran adds trying to convince Americans we didn’t suck at soccer any more so we would buy into soccer and watch the World Cup and buy all that trendy soccer stuff with those strange patches and odd color combinations. Then we found out Monday, that, nope, we still suck. What I have learned from all of this is most likely what you discovered about yourself too. I still don’t care. It’s a boring, out of date game with inferior athletes to our basketball and football players and only retains its world wide popularity because of tradition, and most importantly it’s ease and low cost to play for beginners (i.e., children). After all, all you need is something that passes for a ball that can be kicked and two rocks to make a goal. Not so with superior games like basketball and football. No matter how poor or backwards a country is, they can play soccer. That matters.
6. Giants Game – While I was on vacation, I took in a Giants game at what is now AT&T Park in SF. It is the most beautiful sports stadium in the country. You think another one is better? Tell me about it. You’re wrong of course, but I would like to hear about it anyway. My real point in bringing this up however was to point out how great sports is for bonding with your kids. You can teach them so much about fairness, competition, cooperation and fun all while enjoying a $20 hotdog and watching your favorite team. The Giants lost and I still didn’t care because Gibson was with me and we had a great time learning about the game, walking around the park and looking forward to the day when his younger brother would join us as well. If you are a mom or dad, take your kids to a ball game and take the time to tell them what’s going on. It is great, great fun.
Comments
1. Giants do suck...dang it.
2. The mariner game will be great, but if you get in a fight because of all your Yankee gear don't look for me to bail you out. Yankee fans deserve it.
3. I still play like I did when I was 21. I did nothing but shoot jumpers then either.
4. Duke LeCross is the only story that is less of a story than steroids right now.
5. Reality shows are all rigged and scripted at least to a degreee. You must not know what country you live in to believe otherwise.
6. Alwways a good idea to start by agreeing with me. It softens the blow of all the smack talk that comes later.