Some Heroic Randomness

So between job, wife, baby and life I haven’t been able to read much online lately. When I do it’s usually financial news, given all that is going on. But I have been watching the NBA playoffs, and I had a few snippets I figured I’d throw up on the ‘ol blog.

This is from a recent column where Jemele Hill and Scoop Jackson answered some questions about the upcoming NBA playoffs.

Question: Which player is most likely to jump into the national spotlight and make fans think, "Damn, I didn't realize he was that good"?

Scoop Jackson: John Salmons of the Chicago Bulls. Being in Chi-town, I've been lucky enough to watch this dude light up teams ever since the trade that brought him here in February. While some players are straight slept on, this cat was hibernated on by everyone except his family members and probably some ex-girlfriends. He can flat-out ball! Now I know he's barely played in the playoffs before, and it's a whole other level of comp and intensity. But from what I've seen over the past 30 games or so, Salmons (along with Ben Gordon, because he's playing for a new contract) is going to make a lot of fantasy hoop dudes pissed because they've been hibernatin' on him.

This paragraph made my head spin.

Why?

1. He calls John Salmons “cat” and “dude”. He does this because it’s part of his ultra-cool “Ladies Man” like writing style. Ya dig? Sorry I’m hatin, yo.
2. He is clearly very pleased with his discovery that he could use the word “hibernating” to mean “really slept on” (he had the italics in there). Sorry, “hibernatin’”. Next he’ll just start dropping “natin” into columns or something.
3. It’s now acceptable to just take words that are never abbreviated and just abbreviate them without a period or anything. Example being competition just becomes comp. Scoop Jackson is a whole ‘nother breed of ter writers.
4. No fantasy hoop dudes were “hibernatin’” on John Salmons and Ben Gordon.
5. Fantasy leagues generally end with the end of the regular season, so even if people were sleeping on your boy, it wouldn’t matter.
6. Remember last year Scoop said that the Suns were pretty much guaranteed a finals spot because they traded for Big and he’s made the finals in his 3 previous stops in the NBA? I do. Okay that has nothing to do with this post.

Scoop also said that Tony Parker was the best point guard in the NBA and pointed to the fact that he’s won a finals MVP and Chris Paul hasn’t made a finals yet. Yup. It’s that simple folks.

Bill Simmons recently wrote a column about how the Bulls – Celtics playoff series is awesome and stuff, which included this sentence.

They [the Celtics and Bulls] have veteran crowds that know how to affect games and make them a little more fun to watch.

Yeah, take that San Antonio. You too, Los Angeles. In Boston and Chicago, we actually affect the games that we watch. We’re blue collar. We’re a part of the action. We have veteran crowds. Fact: The crowds in Los Angeles skipped college and are only in their second year of following the NBA. The crowd in New Orleans had an average age of 7. No surprise they aren’t in the playoffs any more. We direct the outcome in Chicago and Boston. It is our will, passion, and intensity as basketball fans that make our teams win. You douchebags can come late (LA) and stare at the jumbotron (which they probably do in like, Miami, because those people are stupid and are probably day dreaming about Gloria Estefan and Dan Marino fucking the whole time anyway). In Boston and Chicago, we’ll just keeping living basketball history, thank you.

You have to love any series in which Ben Gordon finally realizes his destiny as a playoff killer. As a Celtics fan, I'm terrified. As a basketball fan, I'm titillated. But it was always meant to be. Even if comparisons to Vinnie "Microwave" Johnson make more sense on paper, I'd liken him more to a shorter Andrew Toney.

Saying that Ben Gordon is a shorter Andrew Toney is like saying that Shaquille O’Neal is a shorter Wilt Chamberlain. They are, like, the same fucking height. Maybe ½ to 1 inch difference, which doesn’t matter unless you have freakish Sam Perkins-like arms. I know I know…Toney may actually be slightly taller…but it’s not like a 4 inch difference or something that would impact the way they play.

Last night I watched the Sportscenter recap of the great Bulls-Celtics game 6 matchup. Jalen Rose described Ray Allen’s game (51 points) as being “heroic”. Um, okay. A little strong, but it was an awesome game and he played great. I’ll go with that. Then about 20 seconds later the anchor had the following back and forth with Rose:

Anchor (I forget): How bad does Kevin Garnett want to be out there?

Jalen Rose: Oh…Heroically!

Yeahhhhh.. Sure. I like it, that’s my new word for “really”. I want Jemele Hill to write a real column that I can puke on heroically bad.

On WEEI this morning (Boston radio), they were talking about the play of Glen Davis in this series and specifically about the matchups with Chicago. Dennis and or Callahan pegged his height at 6’6” or even 6’5”. After the 6'5" comment, John Meter-Perel chimed in with “at most”. He’s listed at 6’9”. Why is this so hard? Some analysts talk about height like they are trying to quantify the players “heart” or something.

One day I’ll read a bad column and maybe comment on it.