Tag: basketball

NBA: National Bitches Association

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Prior to reading this, I implore my six readers to press play and listen to the theme of when the NBA was truly golden, and basketball was a respectable sport rife with athletes playing against other athletes in the game of basketball, and news was limited to solely basketball-related stories.

This is a topic that’s been on my head for quite some time, but never really chose to run with it, because quite frankly the world is full of way more interesting stories, or things that I’d rather write about, like overturned tractor trailers, or conspiracy theories about MARTA.  But then I saw this article about Ray Allen being a bitch because all his former Celtics teammates had a championship team reunion and didn’t invite him, because they are all bitches as well.

This story follows a week that also saw DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors whining about how his team would have advanced in the playoffs if they had LeBron James; like a sore loser, or, like a bitch. 

And speaking of LeBron James, earlier in the season, he had an altercation with a teammate, but instead of going Old Testament on him and kicking his ass in the locker room or throwing him under the bus to the media, instead he, the guy who brought glory back to Cleveland, won numerous championships and has nothing left to prove, assumes blame, takes responsibility for the altercation and apologizes to the jobber teammate, the fans and the organization.

Like a bitch.

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An ugly, ugly classic

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If there’s ever any reason why college basketball is so often lauded as amongst the most exciting of sports is that it’s seldom that its annual national championship is ever decided in a decisive or completely unanimous manner.  It doesn’t matter if a team goes undefeated throughout the regular season, they will inevitably run into a serious contender be it a team from another conference, or the Cinderella story that’s making a miracle run, or a team that hatched the perfect plan to counter them, or sometimes all of the above.

The 2016-2017 National Championship game seemed kind of lackluster in the sense that it featured two #1 seeds, in Gonzaga University against the oft-present University of North Carolina, especially since the Zags took down Cinderella in the Final Four when they took out South Carolina and UNC dropped Oregon who was having their own surprisingly deep run in the tournament.  But few people ever want to see two #1s going at it for the National Championship, since that’s kind of the expectation, and sports fans typically want to see the unexpected, the Cinderellas, and the underdogs prevail.

But as is often the case with the National Championship, the game was definitely no snoozer, and despite the claims and the accusations that Gonzaga was a paper #1, meaning they didn’t really deserve their rank on account of playing in a weak conference, especially in contrast to their opponents who plays in the ACC against very strong basketball programs like Virginia, Louisville, Syracuse and Duke, they still showed up to play, and gave UNC tremendous resistance in a hard-fought, foul-plagued and ugly slugfest of a basketball game.

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Settling on second best

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I know baseball just started today, and naturally the Braves begin the season with a loss, in spite of a pretty impressive pitching duel being Julio Teheran and Noah Syndergaard, but if there was one sports headline that caught my attention more than anything else, it was the announcement made by Georgetown University, declaring that the next coach of the once-vaunted Hoyas, would be none other than Georgetown alum, and former NBA player, Patrick Ewing.

I know that Patrick Ewing basically carried the Hoyas to their only national championship back in like 1984, so I get why they think that he has the pedigree to lead the school’s basketball program into a renaissance, but I don’t really think that they really thought about what his career amounted to after he left Georgetown. 

I won’t deny that I was a gigantic Knicks fan back in the 90s, and at one point I even had a Patrick Ewing jersey.  But there’s also no denying the sheer amount of failure endured by Patrick Ewing throughout his professional career; losing the 1994 NBA Finals, the missed finger roll in 1995, watching the Knicks flourish in his injury absence in 1999 and making the NBA Finals, only to lose as soon as he was reactivated to play, and about the 766 times he was tormented and owned by Michael Jordan and/or the Chicago Bulls throughout his career.

Make no mistake, there’s pretty much nobody in the history of basketball that symbolizes failure, falling short, dashed expectations and broken dreams more than Patrick Ewing.  I wanted Patrick Ewing to get an NBA ring more than anyone back in those days, as a member of the Knicks.  But year after year, the ring never came, and the window of opportunity opened and shut in the span of my formative years.  I watched MJ crush his hopes, then Hakeem Olajuwon, then Reggie Miller.  And then Tim Duncan showed up and emerged to stamp nails into his Knicks career before he started bouncing around the NBA to teams like Seattle and Orlando.

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No ring, no shit

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Owned: owner of the Golden State Warriors Joe Lacob’s feelings are hurt when Michael Jordan is on record saying that the recent record-setting 73-win season by the Warriors doesn’t mean (shit) because they failed to win a championship

Classic MJ here.  Absolutely refuses to give credit to anyone that did something better than he did, and in this case, it’s the 2016 Warriors that trumped his 1996 Bulls, by winning 73 games.  But Jordan has a point here, because although the Warriors broke his Bulls’ 72-win record, they failed to finish the season like the Bulls did – with a championship.

It doesn’t matter if you make it to the NBA Finals with 73 wins or 48.  If you fail to win the Finals, all the wins prior to it are rendered completely meaningless.

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LeBrowned

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When I was a kid doing a lot of growing up in the 90s, Charles Barkley was one of my favorite players.  I loved that he was this kind of undersized, pudgy bald guy that still dominated the power forward position with an innate ability to both score and rebound.  But I also loved that he was an outspoken rebel of some sort, in an era where MJ, Magic and David Robinson were these saints of positive PR, regardless of how trite and scripted it might have sounded.

But now that I’m all old and shit now, Charles Barkley is still a guy that I’ve always enjoyed, and I have to give him credit for managing to be known and relevant to this day, despite the fact that he stopped playing nearly two decades ago by now.  Whether it’s ragging on referee Dick Bavetta to the point where they actually had a televised foot race during halftime at a game, to randomly showing up on a variety of internet videos celebrating his gluttony or paying him to try and shoot three-pointers while inebriated, to his endless criticisms of today’s players compared to the guys of his playing days, Sir Charles has inexplicably managed to stay relevant for years.

It’s the latter that has occurred at such a frequency that Barkley’s been crossing and leaving behind the line that divides him as a tough guy from an era long past, to sounding like a bitter old man, seemingly jealous of the evolved athleticism of today’s game compared to when he played.  To some degree, I agree that it’s a different game, a little softer than it used to be, with personalities rampaging way out of control in comparison, but it’s also a whole different world surrounding the game as well, and everything is related in the broader picture.

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Grayson Allen and the double-standards of athletics

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Impetus: Duke basketball player Grayson Allen suspended indefinitely by the team for intentionally tripping Elon player (and then proceeding to throw the biggest temper tantrum this side of Christian Bale)

What is the risk when a college basketball player deliberately trips another player on a hardwood court?  Broken bones, contusions, concussions, among other types of injury.

What is the risk when an ordinary citizen deliberately trips another ordinary citizen on the street, in a hallway, at the store, at school, or any other location?  Broken bones, contusions, concussions, among other types of injury.

The difference is that when a college basketball player does it, although it is seen on television and by thousands of spectators, they get a whole lot of scrutiny, criticism, disdain and blown up on social media, but when an ordinary person does it at any other ordinary location, they are classified as committing assault, and are subject to arrest, among other criminal punishment.

It goes without saying that this sort of double-standard is troubling as far as society is concerned.  Just because Grayson Allen is a talented basketball player for one of the most recognized sporting teams in its entire sport doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be punished like an ordinary citizen for his dangerous actions. 

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Oh, why not one more?

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Because that’s a great idea: The Atlanta Hawks’ new developmental team, to get, wait for it . . . wait for it . . . a new stadium!

Everything about this is a bad idea.  For starters, the NBA is a joke of an organization, bastardizing a pure game with hip-hop, flash and no substance, and the repeated degradation of a sport enjoyed all across the world.  But to swindle taxpayers into creating an arena nobody wants for a D-league team??  Now that’s just some bull shit, if I’ve ever heard it in my life.

The D-league isn’t like minor league baseball; contrary to what the NBA wants people to believe.  People end up in the D-league, because they’re simply not good enough to make it into the NBA, and the D-league is more or less a holding cell for mediocre players, with organizations hoping the cream of the crop will rise, into becoming a useful backup player for the big squads.

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