Tag: sports

Watching sports is worse than gambling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Roulette is considered to be the game with the worst odds in the casino.  Contrarily, it also has the highest payout, for a direct hit.  Ignoring side bets, half, quarter, row and column bets, it’s basically a game where you have a 1-in-38 (37 on European tables with no double zero) chance of hitting a single number.  However, if you ever do manage to hit that number, you get paid 36 times for every chip you have on that sole number.

A few times, I have grinded out enough table time to have been privileged to have hit 17 on the wheel while I’ve had a chip(s) sitting on it on the board.  It’s truly a phenomenal feeling when you hit your number, multiplied by how many chips you have touching it, because it’s a massive payout, especially when your chip denominations are higher than just a dollar.

Among my degenerate gambling friends, I still recall the story of one particular magical night where my brother and I literally spent eight hours in front of the same roulette table, where we hit our magic number 17 at least five times.  I had risked a grand total of $200 of my own money, and walked away with numerous times more than that.  I paid off the remaining balance on my car, and had comped Vegas rooms for nearly two years.

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The opt-out clause kills the love of the game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I honestly believe that we will never see professional athletes like Chipper Jones or Derek Jeter ever again – players who spend their entire, legendary careers with one team.

Outside of all things World Cup, one of the more notable stories in the world of sports is that both LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony have opted out of their existing contracts and will become free agents.  This basically means that both players chose to leave a whole lot of money over a short span on the table, so that they can pursue new contracts worth even more money over a longer span.

From the financial, personal standpoint, this completely makes sense.  When the day is over, both LeBron and Carmelo know that professional sport have a very finite amount of time, and they’re trying to amass as much money as they possibly can, to ensure the financial security for themselves and their families.

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Scoring a goal in the World Cup has to be one of the greatest feelings ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering the fact that South Korea had been considered one of the worst teams to enter the 2014 World Cup, I’ll take a draw against the much more favored Russian squad.  One point is better than zero points, although I really had my hopes soaring for three points, when the Koreans drew first blood and scored on Russia first.  Unfortunately, the defense couldn’t solder on for the remaining 15 minutes, and they allowed the equalizer just minutes later.

Regardless, a tie is not a loss, and the last thing I want to see is South Korea get bounced unceremoniously out of the group stage.  In spite of monumental bias and criticism from global media outside of South Korea about how weak of a squad they should be, how they didn’t score so much as it was Russia’s goalkeeper fucking up, and how they probably won’t make it out of the group stage; Korea’s already put their stamp on the World Cup that they’ve come to play, and if at least anything at all, had at least one moment of glory to bask in.

Seriously though, are there many better feelings in the world, than what it looks like to score a goal in the World Cup?  Goals in general are excruciatingly rare as it is in the game of soccer to begin with, but to score one for your home country, against the best squads in the world, on the grandest stage of them all, while somewhere around a billion people are watching in the stands and on television sets all across the entire planet?

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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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Atlanta and the pursuit of professional soccer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Atlanta was awarded a Major League Soccer team.  They will become the 22nd team in Major League Soccer.

This is cool and all, and I’m all for Atlanta having more professional sports teams.  But I can’t help but feel mixed feelings about the whole end game as a whole, and question whether or not they’ll actually succeed.  If the end result is an embarrassing sell and relocate, like the old NHL Atlanta Thrashers, then honestly I’d rather this not come to fruition at all, because although many believe it’s better to try and fail than to not try at all, in this case I think it’s questionable to try, if there’s too much uphill struggle.

Simply put, I do believe there’s a massive uphill challenge of starting a Major League Soccer team in Atlanta.  Sure, Atlanta is a major market in the country and major markets should be represented in as many ways as possible, but this all goes back to the unfortunate circumstance that, Atlanta is a football town, first and foremost, full stop.

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Happy trails, Rashard Mendenhall

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Long story short: NFL running back, Rashard Mendenhall retires.  He’s 26-years old, which is still considered young enough in NFL age, but has a lot of methodical reasons for walking away regardless.

It doesn’t really matter what sport it is, I always have this sense of admiration for guys who walk away when they really didn’t have to, and walk away on their own terms.  Maybe it’s the fact that in present time, professional sports are put on such an insurmountable pedestal, and there’s something about a professional athlete looking at their respective league and saying “nah, I don’t need you anymore,” that brings it down a peg or two.  Or maybe it’s the fact that they simply don’t see professional sport and the riches it can provide as a true means to an end, and that they can live their lives without it that seems somewhat admirable.  Either way, when guys retire on their own terms, most of the time I’m in agreement and respect their decisions.

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Sports befuddle the educational pecking order

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t watch a whole lot of ESPN, despite the fact that I fancy myself someone interested in sports, because I think ESPN is basically for the most part utter garbage. But when I’m at the gym, and I’m running on the treadmill, I like to have distractions; I have music playing through my iPhone, but occasionally it helps to have some visual distraction as well. And since all the treadmills come equipped with personal televisions, it’s fairly convenient to seek something to watch to help pass the minutes.

Unfortunately, the gym’s television programming is limited to like nine channels, and at any given time, four of them are Wendy Williams, two are the Kardashian show, the others are chintzy intolerable mid-morning talk programming, and then there’s ESPN. If I’m really lucky, it’ll be a day in which the E! network decides to air old episodes of Saved by the Bell, but for the most part, I end up having ESPN on, because Hannah Storm or Jade McCarthy are easy on the eyes, but then I turn the television off when Stephen A. Smith shows up.

Long story short, I admit that I watch a little bit of ESPN. And in that little bit of ESPN, I’ve noticed something that a lot of other people have probably already noticed long before I did, but whatever, I’m writing about it now.

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