Quick Hits, Some Rants, Little Silliness

Believe it or not, this is intended as a scholarly work. So after some quick hits, back to business:

- Yes I'm watching the Finals. Yes it sucks that my guys aren't there. It . . . really sucks, actually. But I'm enjoying the game. It's reassuring to know the game's enjoyable to watch without having someone to root for. Not nearly as much fun though.

- How come I want to hate Kobe Bryant? Is it because of the rape charges from a few years ago? I'm going to have to look into that a little; I don't remember if it ever went to trial. I mean yeah, the family portrait's overposed unless his wife usually wears stage makeup and a little black dress, and his daughters white lace, while Mr. Bryant's working the treadmill. I want to hate this man. I want to loathe him with every cell in my body. But why? Other than being better than Dirk -- big fat hairy fucking deal, Kobe's better than everybody these days.

- Coach Carlisle's on his way to Germany. Is it wrong that I want to be a fly on the wall for this? Or better, a Babel fish in the goldfish bowl. We're all taking it as an encouraging sign that Coach wants to spend extra time with Dirk, but there's a potentially ugly side. I mean, is Coach the kind of control freak that can't let the players out of his sight for more than a week? God I hope not.

- Some encouraging notes concerning new blood. The guys over at the Morning News and D-Basketball-dot-com have said that team recruiting efforts will be focused in Europe this year as the organization works around the salary cap and lack of draft picks. Since the Basketball Gods did not arrange for that bout of ptomine poisoning I asked for, nor the alien abductions, I'm hoping they show us some love there.

- Dallas b-ball fans are spoiled rotten in many ways (most of them wear #41). One of them is the quality of the in-game commentary when it comes to televised games. TXA-21's guys are always informative and interesting. Their talk augments the game without intruding upon it. The same cannot be said for the nationally televised games on ABC. I could give a shit what you pay for a haircut, just please tell me why that wasn't a fucking foul!

- Speaking of fouls, I've said it before and it bears repeating; my yardstick for official sports corruption is a pretty long one. I don't think the International Skating Union even pretends any more. The current brouhaha over ex-referee Tim Donaghy's statements regarding delibrately bad refereeing just makes me tired. Without corraberation, there's no way to verify what he's saying. Corraberation is not something we're likely to get. And nobody's going to propose seriously overhauling a system where everybody pretty much gets screwed over equally in the final wash. So here we are. The gentlemen over at Hardwood Paroxysm say it all better than I can.

- And further on the subject, I find it funny that a few weeks ago there was a bad call on a foul because the fouled party "didn't sell it." At the same time the NBAs taking steps to prevent flopping, it's telling the players to "sell" fouls? Wait . . .

- Halloween costumes, Dirk as Harpo Marx. I'm just sayin'!

-BJ