Quick hits on basketball and other stuff:
-Posting and Toasting has their Know The Opponent up for the Dallas Mavs. It is, as always, genius. Check it out.
-Found this in the comments section over at dwil's blog: It is a post on breadcity about the PSAL high school championship game on Sunday. The game took place at Madison Square Garden, and, if you believe the sportcasters and reporters in NYC, a "riot" took place, with "hundreds of fights". Check the video clip from CBS I linked to in the comments section. Which I call BS on. I've been to the PSAL high school championship before... yeah, it ain't for the faint of heart. Its a crowd full of NYC public high school kids - it is what you expect to find: lots of cussing, sh*t-talking, crass behavior. And yeah, an occasional fist fight or two break out. It happens every year.
It's nothing serious, and though I didn't grow up in the suburbs, I bet this sh*t happens at the "big football game" every year, too. Or not. Either way, it isn't a "riot", or anything that newsworthy.
It surprises me how sensationalistic and borderline racist (racist because this was a mostly minority crowd; I know they wouldn't have treated the story the same way if it was a LaCrosse championship, you dig?) the media has been with this story. Not because it's being sensationalistic and exploitive and racist - I'm no longer surprised by that! No, what surprises me is that it doesn't sense to me; what's the motivation? Usually there is a background reason for stuff like this - for example the media hates Barry Bonds, hence they villify him; they hate Isiah for various reasons, so he gets villified. There's always a reason behind the reason. But why give the HS championship the treatment? Something more to this... maybe the Garden wants to drop it? Or maybe the media wants to put some more bad publicity on the Garden? Hmm....
-Dwil, in the same comment section, stated brilliantly what SML has not been able to: the reason for our dissatisfaction with the sportsmedia in general, both mainstream and internet. Check Dwil's money line:
What I largely see on the Internet is a direct reflection of the paucity of real reporting performed on the mainstream level. Most independent sports media outlets (yes, that includes “blogs” and “bloggers”) mimic the mainstream rather than use it as a starting place to research news. In the end, what is allegedly outside the box is actually just as much part of the mainstream as the mainstream itself. The “indies” then become enablers for the mainstream. And in turn the mainstream uses this knowledge to reaffirm their own brands of “truthiness’ by saying, ’see, even independent Internet sources feel as we do on “X” subject. If anyone would criticize us it’s them.’
Indeed. The problem we have here at SML - we are tired of opinionated, full of sh*t media types (often exactly the same as the next sportswriter) spitting out the same BS takes on the "issues". "Steroids bad. Barry Bonds bad. A-Rod choker. Isiah stupid. Basketball players thugs." And so on....
-Different note:The Hotness liked our nickname for Vince Carter ("Air Pussy"), so we're gonna roll with it. Also, along those lines remember postingandtoasting's (with a little help from SML) new nickname for Gilbert Arenas:The Smooth Operator. Because he's number zero. Operator. Get it? Yeah, the "smooth" part was my idea. He just seems like a Sade-type of brother, you know. Maybe it's the part Cuban thing - he seems suave.
-Yo, speaking of smooth: not basketball related (more in-line with my DeadOn pop culture, music stuff) but still worth mentioning. Check out Funky16Corners, a blog with some really good mp3's on it, for those of you into the old skool soul/funk type stuff. I mean hardcore soul stuff going on here... I was impressed. I'm taking Betty Wright's Clean Up Woman type of stuff (that song was, incidentally, used as a sample for Mary J. Blige's Real Love). Stuff that even if you don't know the music, youknowthe music, because it's been sampled in hip-hop songs. Worth checking out if you are into music like that.
-Final note: those of you that have traversed the internet for as long as I have (started working full time in '98) might remember the days when the "sportsbloggers" did not exist. Back then the only two sports blog-type sites I religiously visited were a) the Boston Sportsguy, before he signed to ESPN and became The Sportsguy (Bill Simmons) and b) The Monday Morning Noter. That sh*t was great. Every Monday, Robert Hunt penned a few funny ass notes on the main sports stories of the previous week. Great nicknames, solid fun. Those two influenced my writing back in the day (yeah, I've been around longer than you think - I use to write a weekly e-mail letter back in the day. Maybe someday I'll dig them out the archives and laugh at how bad they were) more than anyone else. Here are three notes from the 4/25/02 Noter (one of his last):
Beautiful, just beautiful ... A tied All-Star Game. By now the commentariat is all pooped out over the Big Meaning of it all. Yes, it happened in Bud's Big Backyard. No, it doesn't really mean the end of civilization as we know it. Yes, Joe Torre and Bob Brenly managed like it was a Little League game. No, it's not symbolic of baseball's nasty labor spats. Yes, pitchers are wimp-slaves to pitch counts which is really all Tony LaRussa's fault. No, the game doesn't really need drastic changes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Is the Tour de Lance over yet ??? Geez, it took the Wehrmacht less time than this to see all of France. C'mon, pedal, pedal, pedal.
Domestic assault and battery, strip club arrests, weed, coke, Jack Daniels, trashed hotel rooms, cranberry juice and vodka ... And all that behind the wheel of an Indy race car at 220 mph. That's Al Unser Jr's sad world and welcome to it. Little Al got some ink last week after he and his squeeze fought in his car on their way home late from the Classy Chassis, an Indianapolis bump-and-grind. Hmm, a race car driver out late at night drinking and driving home on the Interstate. I'll betcha he had the lanes all to himself.
Simply, good stuff. The basis of all sportsblogs nowadays, but back then this was new sh*t. Anyway, in May 2003 Robert Hunt's little blog stopped. Suddenly. I'm pretty sure Mr. Hunt passed away, tragically right before the internet sportsblogging thing started taking off. He would have been a star. I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure the dude was a brother. He was like the Mighty MJD version 1.0. Anyway, his posts always started with "Spurious Thoughts and Idle Musings", hence the title of this post (and similar ones to come).
Alright, Knick game notes later.
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I'm not dead yet. :-)