Tag: basketball

When winning is all that matters

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lest I look like I’m turning my brog into something of a sports brog, running two straight posts with Kobe Bryant, it’s all part of my loose rules of brogging that anything goes as long as the thoughts and words are my own.  But bear with me, this’ll probably be the last post about basketball for a while, since the thoughts aren’t necessarily about basketball, but more about personalities, and rare ones at that.

But anyway, supposedly within the next 1-2 games that Kobe Bryant plays in, he’s going to pass Michael Jordan for 3rdplace of all-time points scored.  It’s debatable on whether or not he’s going to be able to catch and pass Karl Malone for #2, but I think it’s a safe bet that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points is going to be safe for yet another challenger.

When I was younger, my then, also-basketball loving friends and I would often talk about who “the Next Jordan” was going to be.  And believe you me, it was a debate that occurred everywhere, where there was basketball to be discussed.  Michael Jordan was nearing the end of his (official, pre-Wizards) career, and it was a rhetorical question that popped up every few years when the reality sunk in that MJ wasn’t going to play forever.

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Things Dwyane Wade won’t be able to buy anymore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not long ago, I wrote about how opt-out clauses are kind of killing professional sport, and a whole bunch or rambling about how at the root of all opt-out clauses, is more greed. In every instance I mentioned, the people who opted out of millions of dollars ultimately signed contracts worth even more money, displaying what I feel are truly disgusting rich-getting-richer scenarios.

Ultimately, what I failed to say when I wrote that, was that I would love to see an instance where a guy opts out of his contract, only for it to backfire and blow up in his face, and they’re unable to better the numbers in which they opted out of. Because that would be just dessert for someone getting greedy, and being rudely awakened when the number crunchers and bean counters of sports franchises realize the favor they’ve been granted, and the money they don’t have to spend to acquire their talents.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait that long after making my post for it to actually come to fruition.

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Order has been restored in the NBA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I’m not really a fan of the NBA. I often cite things like the emergence of thug-like behavior of many of today’s players, the fact that so many players are greedy and no longer care about winning as long as they’re getting paid top dollar, and the presence of primadonna pretenders that completely derail what a team sport like basketball is really supposed to be.

And then we have incidents like the Donald Sterling racism scandal and subsequently the completely misguided fake support of the Los Angeles Clippers to put way too bright of a spotlight onto the NBA, but the NBA naturally doesn’t care; and they didn’t mind, because exposure equals dollars, and fake or not, people poured an influx of cash into the Clippers, regardless of reasoning.

However, in spite of my indifference towards the NBA, there’s always been one thing that I’ve remained a fan of throughout the years: the San Antonio Spurs. As clichéd as it sounds, it’s because the Spurs play the game in a manner in which I respect and admire, and win in spite of the ever-changing (for the worst) environment of the league around them by doing such. They’re often cited as being a boring team, but frankly I don’t care; I love the way Tim Duncan has banked in ugly jumpers for the better part of the last two decades, and the way Manu Ginobili regularly deceives the opposition almost for no other reason than the fact that he looks white (he’s Argentinian).

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Donald Sterling, Twelve Angry Men, and playing a little devil’s advocate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two weeks, the name “Donald Sterling” has been in the news very predominantly.  Donald Sterling is a very, very rich man, easily falling into the category of a billionaire.  Donald Sterling is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, a basketball team in the NBA.

However, the reason Donald Sterling has been in the news over the last two weeks is that Donald Sterling has pretty much been publicly outed as a racist and a bigot, based on a recording between Sterling and his mistress about how Sterling did not like the fact that she had a photograph with her and Magic Johnson, because Magic Johnson is black.  And then basically saying he doesn’t want people to bring black people to Clippers games.

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No way LeBron would challenge Jordan if he weren’t 51

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Backstory: television cameras notice LeBron James intently looking at something other than the hoop during a fast break before throwing down a big dunk.  Michael Jordan was sitting front row, in the direction of where LeBron James was looking, as he is president of the Heat’s opponents the Charlotte Bobcats.  LeBron vehemently denies staring at MJ.

Bottom line is that LeBron James is full of shit and everyone knows it.  There is absolutely nobody in the world more relevant for LeBron James to attempt to stare down than the man everyone compares him to, measures him up against, and mostly agrees that he is not better than, in Michael Jordan.

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LeBrowned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t even know that Mason Plumlee made it to the NBA. I figured he would be like most of the white basketball players that went to Duke, and ride out their college careers because they probably wouldn’t be good enough to make it in the NBA. I figured he’d be like Greg Paulus, Steve Wojciechowski or Brian Zoubek or something, and simply not be good enough to make it in the pros.

While running on the treadmill and watching Hannah Storm on ESPN, during a commercial break my eyes wandered down onto the ticker where I saw mention of the Brooklyn Nets beating the Miami Heat, thus sweeping the entire regular season series of head-to-head games against the sissies from South Beach. But then a quick blurb followed that stated that the game ended when “Plumlee blocked James from making go-ahead dunk with 1.2 seconds left,” and then my brow furrowed and I was quickly puzzled to the notion that any Plumlee was actually in the NBA.

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A proposal to combat tanking in the NBA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I used to really like basketball when I was younger, but now I really dislike it.  At first, it was the NBA, because after they went on strike in 1999, it was a downhill spiral from there, and it’s stuck in this unappealing mire of bullshit to this day, and still managing to sink further with each passing season (except the Spurs, I ♥ the Spurs still).  College basketball is still superior, but I’m also growing tired of how corporate it, and college football are becoming because of all the monetary potential in them, and how greedy people are leading children down a slippery slope of pursuing quick greed, fame and fortune instead of the educations that they’re often times getting for free just to play sports.

But today, we’re here to talk about the NBA, and namely the tanking that has become notoriously blatant.  If you weren’t aware, tanking is basically when a team loses on purpose, so that they can position themselves in an optimal position in the following year’s draft, with hopes that they can get the first, or at least a top-5 pick, which are usually highly talented, difference-making players.

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