The Obligatory Bron-Bron Post

It's time for an award!

Potholer54 has the Golden Crocoduck (look it up on YouTube). Top Gear has the Golden Cock (as in rooster, filthbrains). We here at B3 have . . . the Platinum Douchebag!

Yes! This charming reproduction of That Thing In Your Grandma's Closet is for the winner of the Basketball for Beginners Lifetime Achievement Award. This prestigious award is given to the person who's done the most to ruin the lives of the NBA's millions of fans all over the world.

And the nominees are . . .


Yes, I'm laughing at you.
LeBron James -- for rewarding the Cleveland Cavalier fanbase for their years of wholehearted support and love by going on live television, disembowling their hopes and dreams, and dumping rocksalt into the protruding-viscera wounds.



My heart won't fit on my sleeve. Go figure.
LeBron James -- for extending the trail paved by Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dewayne Wade; taking the marketing of basketball farther away from its identity as a team sport and proving once again it's all about The Guy and not those fourteen other idiots wearing the same colors.



These are my Grownup clothes.
And finally, LeBron James -- for not parking his enormous ego in Dallas, which could've offered him a bigger payday and a chance to work with the least drama-queen-esque superstar in professional sports.



Beej--
Okay, that last bit was the homer talking.


And the winner is . . .



LeBron James!!!



All these reasons are valid, but above everything else . . . what he's done is show the world -- the casual fan, the dedicated fan, the players, the league -- that the NBAs top tier of talent, the ones that make the business go, are a pack of immature idiots and are to be dealt with on that basis. The Miami Heat might or might not win a title during the Moron Triplets' tenure, but there will be a lockout next year. I don't trust this man, his representatives, the other business guys, or the players who look up to him as a model of self-promotion, to arrive at an equitable salary arrangement.

In that same hand . . . comparisons have been made between the 2010 Heat and the Jordan-era Bulls. With one crucial difference; as much as Phil Jackson comes off as slime, he's one of the best ego-wranglers in the league. Does Erik Spoelstra have the mad skills necessary to keep three huge talents with egos to match pulling in harness together? Survey says Fuck No.

So James has got to hope he can win the championship this year. He'll need that bit of shine as comfort and consolation as we all suffer through the lockout we know is coming.

Congratulations, LeBron James. You . . . are the Platinum Douchebag.


Damn it feels good to be a douchebag.

-BJ

PS: This post was lovingly ripped off from the 2007 Top Gear Awards. Give it a watch.

Presenting the Dallas Mavericks' Game Schedule, 2010-2011

It's here! It's here! The roadmap of my evenings and weekends until sometime in April!

Raw schedule here, Our Man Mark Followill's takes here.

My thoughts?

- Well at least they're getting it over with early; The Dope Show that is the Miami Heat is in town on Saturday, November 27th, tipoff at 7:30 Central. Given that it'll be early in the season (I'm giving Miami until Valentine's Day until the techtonic egos destabilize the team to the point of causing earthquakes) and given that the Mavs will be playing the last game of a four-outta-five, I think we're gonna get shellacked. But hell, I thought that about the Cleveland home game when Dirk had to sit out with a bite on his shooting arm.

- For us deranged folk, December's a busy month. There's a six game homestand starting on the seventh. I'm gonna have blue stuck in my pores all through Christmas.

- Cut a break over the holidays though -- there's an Away at Orlando on the 21st, then off until another roadie at Oklahoma City on the 27th. The family guys should appreciate that.

- According to Followill, we get the Eastern Conference token matchups over with in the middle of March. The schedule also gets rather road-heavy and features teams with whom we're going to be fighting for playoff seeding. Should be fun.

- We get the Thunder three times this season. Two roadies. There is a matchup I fear. They're not babies anymore, and they're hungry. And right now I like Kevin Durant more than just about anybody in terms of a league star. I think this year the postseason threshold in the West is going to stay high, and the Thunder will be the reason why. Portland -- who the hell knows? the Jazz are a constant; LA's a bitch; the Suns have to find a way to cope with life after Stoudemire; San Antonio's a year older; the Mavs are a year older; and in Houston much depends on whether or not Yao Ming plays next year.

Dust off the VCR, locate the paints, get new brushes, and get to work on those incidentals -- basketball is on the way.
-BJ

Prioritizing, or It Helps To Know When To Hide The Remote

Schedule Day! Schedule Day! Since the Mavs have been downchecked back to Expansion Team -- no above the marquee games for us this year, screw you Chancellor Stern -- we've had to wait for official release-of-schedule to find out what the hell we're all gonna be doing the next eight or nine months.

It's now about twenty to two Dallas time and we've got our first glance from -- who else? -- Dallasbasketball.com:

*Mavs vs. Charlotte Bobcats 10/27/2010 7:30 PM is the opener, at home
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Memphis 10/29/2010 7:30 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Denver 11/6/2010 8:00 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Boston Celtics 11/8/2010 7:30 PM in Dallas
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Philadelphia 76ers 11/12/2010 7:30 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. New Orleans Hornets 11/15/2010 7:30 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Chicago Bulls 11/19/2010 8:30 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Detroit Pistons 11/23/2010 7:30 PM
*Dallas Mavericks vs. Miami Heat 11/27/2010 7:30 PM in Dallas
*The Lakers play at Dallas January 19, 2011

More stuff later, once our guys have had a chance to chew the data.
-BJ

Looooong Hiatus

Hello fellow interdweebs.

Hey, who put all this ragweed in my lawn? Dandilions I can live with -- they're cheery. But this requires some heavy duty plant murder.

What I'm trying to say using clumsy metaphor is I've been away. The job I was busting my ass over wound up not panning out (the very nice raise never materialized, the promise of more work was an empty one, and the staffing guys lied when they said they had other clients interested). Shortly, I'm unemployed again. There've been other issues going on, but nothing that needs to be detailed here.

When we last left our heros they were getting bounced out of the first round by the (insert swear words of choice) Spurs. The usual fingers got pointed, the usual excuses were made, the fellows ate -- or in some cases got force-fed -- their usual ration of crow. Lakers versus Celtics in the Finals and the forces of evil triumphed yet again. Vomit.

And that's pretty much where we come in. More posts later; I haven't forgotten about my loyal readers (all three of them). Time to re-embrace my obsession.
-BJ