Skip to main content

Some quick thoughts

A few quick sports thoughts for you today:

I don’t understand why people don’t talk about how much Tyler Hansborough looks like a really tall Frodo Baggins. Also, why does he have such a bad haircut?

I think the teams in the Western Conference should be afraid of Denver. They are playing as well as anyone outside of LA and Melo hasn’t even started playing well yet. What if this is the year that Nene and Kmart actually stay healthy and Karl becomes a big game coach? Oh yeah, forget everything I just said. Oh well, at least the trade helped Billups on my fantasy team.

I can’t figure out why the Blazers don’t throw lobs to Oden. There is no play where this is even attempted. Yeah, he is still getting his legs back and doesn’t jump out of the gym, but he jumps well and is 7 freakin feat tall. Do the Blazers (other than Sergio) not know how? Does coach Nate hate lobs? It seems like Oden could get 8 points a game just by either running to the hoop on pick and rolls like Tyson Chandler or just jumping up when the defenders turn their back like Howard does. I don’t get this, and like most things I don’t get, it pisses me off.

Is the Plaxico shooting himself story the least interesting sports story of the month or the whole year? I thought a long time to see if I could care less about this “saga” and decided I could not. I almost long for the days of daily Barbaro updates.

I’m sad that Rudy doesn’t just go with “Rudy” on his jersey like he does on the Spanish team.
Is it possible that Kevin Durant is the next Shareef Abdur-Rahim? Great talent, great stats, no Ws. I know his team sucks, but isn’t that partly the point? If he is all that, should they suck that bad? It is early, but I have seen him play a couple times and yet to be wowed.

Speaking of hyped phenoms, I think everyone who favored Rose over Beas is looking pretty smart. I have to say that B Easy is looking more and more like Glen Robinson every day and that’s not a good thing.

Is there something about the Arizona sun that makes basketball players stupid? First Marion was upset that he played in the most fun system with the game’s best PG that made him look 5 times better than he was and now Amare is in the same boat. Why? Because Shaq is playing well again and gets more attention? Because you want your name to be mentioned with Wade and LBJ and Kobe? Get over yourself. Amare will never be “the man” on a contender so long as he needs to be so badly. Also, no player that plays such bad D should be that mouthy. He’s like a middle class man’s Zach Randolph right now. You heard me.

Blazer fans seem to be stuck in a state of deep emotional dissonance. No one is real sure whether to be disappointed in Oden or patient but everyone seems determined to talk about the debate until we all reach consensus. The local sports radio idiots have been fueling the fire lately on their morning show as they alternate dissing Oden and then swearing they’ve been Oden fans from day 1 when he has a decent game the next night. I blame the Blazers for this. They half-heartedly told us we would have to be patient and then started “leaking” news out of practice that made Oden sound like he would immediately be Shaq and Hakeem rolled into one. The Blazer broadcast guys, KP, Nate, the assistant coaches and the players all did nothing but talk about how unstoppable he was. Then when he finally got on the court for the public to see he looked confused, slow, disinterested and generally the opposite of dominant. If we hadn’t had to suffer so many winks and wry smiles and promises of “just wait and see” we the fans would have been willing to give him time. But since we were told to expect Wilt, we expected Wilt. Instead we got a young Erick Dampier and were justifiably disappointed and irritated. Personally, I think Oden will be just fine and may still end up being great, maybe by the end of this year but more likely in the 2010-11 season. But that’s fine because this team doesn’t need “great” from Oden. So, I don’t blame Oden. I blame the Blazers. Either he is a different player in practice than he is in the games or everyone just got a little overly excited. Whatever the reason it has led to constant annoying chatter on local radio which is only now slowly being replaced by the equally hysterical fans calling for Roy to be named MVP right now. Come on. Can’t we just sit back and enjoy this ride?

I know that I can…at least now that I’ve gotten this off my chest.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

10 things that will happen, not "might", "will."

With the season kicking off tonight, every where you look in the paper, on TV or on line people are making their predictions. Well, I’ve read enough, so now I need to share with you what’s really going to happen. These aren’t predictions, this just simple fact. Here are some of the things that will happen in football before Tuesday morning: 1. Deuce McAllister will post better numbers than Reggie Bush this week, but Bush will do something that will remind us all of Sanders and Vick. I see one of those 6 yard runs that takes 2 minutes where about 8 guys miss tackles. 2. The Niners will not be as bad as everyone predicts and the game against the Cardinals will be close 3. TO will have a big game and everyone will act like nothing ever happened and the Cowboys (especially the Tuna) are geniuses for signing him. In 3 weeks when he really melts down, the media will forget everything they said and act like Dallas is the stupidest franch...
August Blues August is a tough month in the world of sports. You basically have Baseball, the PGA Championship and the unfulfilled promise of football. The PGA championship is fine, but it has the downside of being golf. For me, watching golf can actually be fairly entertaining but it really requires Tiger to be in the hunt. I’m an unapologetic bandwagon Tiger fan. I don’t so much like Tiger as I enjoy his dominance. I just like watching Tiger set records and dominate the sport, so if he’s in contention golf is pretty fun, but if not…it’s just golf. So the PGA has a chance to be interesting, but you can’t really count on it. I’m a baseball fan, but mostly I’m a Giant’s fan, so like Tiger and golf, I’m mostly only interested in baseball if the Giants are good. If you follow baseball at all you know the Giants are..ummm…how should I put this….awful. That’s it, they are awful. And that would be bad enough, but to make matters worse they have this Bonds guy, maybe you’ve heard of ...
The Blazers should have gotten the number one pick. They did their best to lose every single game down the stretch and had more ping-pong balls than anyone. Thankfully, they were robbed. Giving the number one pick to the Blazers would be like putting a super-juiced up driver in the hands of a bad golfer. A longer driver in the hands of a bad golfer just means he hits the shot even further out of bounds. The Blazers are so inept when it comes to the draft, giving them the first pick would just be setting them up for another catastrophic failure. Without question they would have taken Center Patrick O’Bryant from Bradley. O’Bryant is a completely unproven bigman with plenty of “upside.” You know, like Olowakandi was when the Clippers made him the number one pick a few years back. Speaking of the Clippers, are the Blazers the new Clippers? Now that the Clips have advanced in the playoffs and the Hawks’ questionable spending on Joe Johnson now looks like a good move, haven’t the Blazers of...