Tag: basketball

NBA Champions I would’ve never imagined

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Golden State Warriors are NBA champions.

Repeat: the Golden State Warriors are world champions.

These are words that I probably never thought I’d ever see in my lifetime; frankly, words that I never considered possibly being a reality in my entire lifetime.  Granted, I don’t really care much about the NBA in the first place anymore, but still, with a lifetime of remembering that the Warriors were perennial jobbers, it’s pretty fascinating to see how much things have changed, and not only have they ascended to the top of the (paltry) NBA food chain, they’ve clearly reached the pinnacle of it.

This ranks with casual surprise as would be sports teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves or Milwaukee Bucks winning the NBA championship.  The Jacksonville Jaguars or the the Oakland Raiders winning the Super Bowl.  The San Diego Padres or the Houston Astros winning the World Series.

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Oh, that’s what they meant

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: after the Atlanta Hawks were unceremoniously swept out of the NBA Playoffs, the Hawks organization published this statement that tried to accentuate the good of the season, right after the biggest of bads just occurred.  The tagline of the entire statement was that the Hawks finished the year “True to Atlanta.”

Honestly, I don’t blame any Hawks fans for wanting to read this gigantic wall of text, but basically it’s a written list of all the good things that happened to the Hawks throughout the course of the 14-15 NBA season.  Including things like their franchise best 60-win season, the first time ever to the Eastern Conference Finals, and being one step away from contending for the NBA championship.

Ultimately, it’s no different than any other team-mandated post-season letter thanking the fans and investors (but mostly investors) for their support, but what I think that makes this worse than any other letter sent by any other organization is their choice of tagline, and the unintentional irony behind it.

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My, how times change in the sporting world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m contemplating making a day trip up to Cleveland, Ohio, so I can knock off one more ballpark on my ongoing quest for all 30 Major League Baseball parks, but it dawned on me that there was some room for concern.  Currently, the NBA is in the midst of their playoffs, and as it stands the Atlanta Hawks are playing against the Cleveland Cavaliers.  The jury is still out, but this could pose some complications for someone like me, hoping to be able to hop on flights to and from Cleveland from Atlanta.

But then I saw that the series currently sits at 3-0 in a best of seven, in favor of the Cavs, with game 4 tonight, so there’s a good chance that the Hawks will continue their outstanding tradition of choking, as well as the Atlanta tradition of falling short of a championship, regardless of sport.

However, that’s not what really prompted me to write today.  It’s what’s happening in the Western conference that caught my eye, and made me think, “hmm, really??”

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The Washington Wizards and team logos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: The Washington Wizards have changed their official logo, ditching the bearded wizard that has plagued the identity since 1997 and has been gradually phased out.

Halle-fuckin-lujah.

Back in the mid/late-90s, when I was a huge NBA basketball fan, I loved the Washington Bullets. They were my hometown team, and despite the fact that they more or less stunk record-wise, I still loved them. Because my parents didn’t allow me to have cable, aside from the NBA on NBC on weekends, Bullets games were the only regular exposure to watching basketball available.

I watched through the rough days of teams anchored by Tom Gugliotta and Rex Chapman, to the arrivals of Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, to hope to rekindle some of that Michigan Fab Five magic, which actually produced some halfway decent, and entertaining squads. And who could forget loveable 7’7 Gheorghe Muresan, and the perpetually stoned-looking Rod Strickland?

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Humans need oxygen to breathe, too

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: former Atlanta Hawk Josh Smith proclaims Atlanta Hawks fans to be bandwagoners.

The sky is also blue, water is also wet.  Tell us something nobody already knew, Josh!

Of course Atlanta Hawks fans are bandwagoners.  So are Atlanta Braves fans as well as Atlanta Falcons fans.  Damn near everyone in Atlanta who proclaims to like sports, only likes sports when their sports teams are doing well.

The Hawks are the best team in the Eastern conference right now, of course attendance is creeping upward, and there’s a sudden influx of Hawks fans.  Why shouldn’t there be, when there’s all this winning going on?

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When phrases change meanings with the times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I was up at my parents’ house, I was rummaging through some old personal effects, and came across an old binder of basketball cards.

It’s funny to admit this nowadays given the fact that they royally suck, and have been more or less the laughing stock of the NBA over the last decade or so, but back in the 90s, I was a huge New York Knicks fan.  John Starks, Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Derek Harper, and of course, the franchise himself, Patrick Ewing.  Loved them all.  Rooted for the Knicks against everyone, including Michael Jordan and the Bulls.  I felt sports-heartbreak in 1994, when the Knicks came so close, and lost to Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets in the Finals.  Was even too young to understand the magnitude of the OJ Simpson police chase, and was more irked that a championship game was being preempted.

The point is, I had a ton of Knicks basketball cards in this binder.  Primarily Patrick Ewing, because he was clearly the primary star of the team.  And while flipping through the sheets and sheets of Ewing cards, I came across this particular Ewing card from a ’95-96 Fleer set.

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FSU Fail

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I was running on the treadmill, and I saw some highlights of the recent Duke vs. Florida State game.  Usually, as much as I don’t like to admit it, I just assume Duke has won most games in which there are highlights for, because they are a good team, but I was actually uncertain about this one, because historically FSU seems to often have Duke’s number, especially when playing in Tallahassee.  So the highlights embark, and I’m left wondering who actually wins this game.

And then they show this highlight of an FSU player “dunking on” a Duke player.  Now I put that in quotations, because it was hardly the kind of facial that I associate with the phrase “dunking on” a player, but whatever, some FSU bro gets the ball on the wing, and throws down a dunk, while a Duke player happened to jump in the air to contest him.  Sure whatever, he got dunked on.

The best part however was after the dunk; as is often the case with young whippersnappers of today dunking the ball, it calls for the celebratory tensing of the entire upper body, fists down, while screaming to the heavens in aggressive celebration over converting a field goal.  The player who dunked the ball most certainly did that.

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