I like Adrian Wojnarowski?

The Lakers are up 2-0. I’m probably gonna cry if they win (I want to say “when they win” but I don’t want to jinx it.) Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports is becoming one of favorite sports writers in an interesting twist of fate because I used to really hate him. This is probably because he’s not writing too many anti-Kobe articles anymore. Yeah I’m biased as shit, but in my defense, even when he wote blistering diatribes crucifying the Artist Formerly Known as The Ocho, I always respected his writing ability which has always been top notch. This probably why I still read every article he wrote even though they were blasphemous. He recently wrote some great articles about Shaq’s pettiness and Pau’s not-softness that you should check out.

John Hollinger has a good article?

I normally hate John Hollinger but this article is great. After reading it I understand more where he’s coming from. I’d hate Kobe too if everytime I said X basketball player had a good game I got The Laker Nation flooding my inbox calling me an X player dick rider. I also thought it was hilarious that after the Magic beat the Cavs he got more mail from Laker fans dogging on Lebronze.

Lebronze!

On a funny note, I call Lebron Lebronze because of he always seems to come in third in world competition. Seeing as how the Nuggets were eliminated before the Craboliers, Lebronze came in third again.

The Mighty Fed!

Roger Federer finally won the French and I couldn’t be happier. In my opinion this victory should easily make him the greatest of all time and it kind of bugs me that it’s still up for debate. Think about it: 14 titles, career grand slam, 20 straight semi-finals (17 of which were finals appearances), 237 (i think) weeks at number 1. That’s easily better than Sampras. Don’t even bring up Rod Laver. Rod Laver was definately more dominant for his time, but that was a long time ago. If they played today at their primes, it would be over in straights. Bringing up his shaky record against Nadal is valid, but during his prime The Mighty Fed only played Nadal on clay. Nadal couldn’t even meet him on the hard courts. Hell, he couldn’t even meet him at this year’s French.

I think now that he has the monkey off his back he’ll start playing more like The Mighty Fed of old, instead of The Mighty Old Fed.

Axl being Axl. Can’t fuck with the rock star. Ask The Fabulous Rondo.

I hate college basketball. The only reason I keep aware of it is because it feeds into the NBA. Why do I hate college ball? Because it’s dirty baby. It’s a dirty game. Agents, schools and other misc. shdy characters hang around and bribe these imprssionable youths and when the shit comes down, who gets the blame? The players that’s who. Look what they did to my man OJ Mayonaise. Now they are trying to do Derrick Axl Rose the same way. It’s total BS.

DON’T BE FOOLED PEOPLE! AXL’S INNOCENT! THE SYSTEM IS GUILTY! FREE AXL!

James Harrison: part time football player, full time weirdo

I just read this story on yahoo. Apparently James Harrison of the Steelers doesn’t want to meet the president because…… well I’ll just post the quote.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl. As far as I’m concerned, he [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

I feel like I should make a joke here, but I can’t. It’s just so ridiculous. This story does make me happy I don’t like the NFL though.

(Maria Sharapova Does Not Approve)

I hate life.

Pau Gasol says: “I’m tall.”

I know this is pretty late, but since nobody really reads these, I’m not too worried about it Anywho, this game, as anybody who would be concerned already knows, was what was known as a laugher. There wasn’t much to analyze. Basically The Lakers realized that the Rockets’ center was 6′6″ Chuck Hayes 6′10″ Brian Cook (who, although he’s 6′10,” plays like he’s 4′2″) and that their centers were seven foot Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. And they played accordingly. They played hard, but not all that hard. It was interesting to note that I think this was the first time all year they didn’t blow a big lead.

After the game, the buzz making the rounds was whether or not the Lakers had finally woken up, or if they are still just playing inconsistently and game 5 happened to be on their good day. By and large, most of the pundits have consigned to the fact that the Lakers are just a real up and down arrogant team and that this game wasn’t really a return to form or anything like that. I tend to agree. This team has maybe the worst case of Piston-itis I’ve seen since……… well, the Pistons. And we all know have that turned out.

Am I worried? Yeah. However, this Laker team is far better than any of the Piston-itis teams. Also, even though their collective arrogance played a huge part in their failure, I felt that their biggest deficiency was a lack of a real center after Ben Wallace left. That and they had no respect for their coach. Neither are problems this Laker team possesses.

The Bill Russell MVP of the Game Award: Kobe. Why? Because he’s Kobe. And he has an adam’s apple the size of my fist. Granted I have a small fist, but still.

The Jerry West MVP of the Losing Team Award: Normally I would just automatically give this award to the Fabulous Battier, but he played really, really not fabulous so I can’t in good conscience give it to him. I’ll give it to Aaron Brooks because he looks lik Chris Rock.

The Dominique Wilkins Highlight of the Game: Sasha’s Block Followed by a Breakaway Dunk. That sequence was what I like to call a Pinnochio moment. A Pinnochio moment is when somebody suddenly grows into a real boy (or in Sasha’s case, a real basketball player.) Sadly, it didn’t last very long as Sasha managed to brick everything else. Still though, it quite a change of pace for Sasha to go 1-7 and his one made basket was a dunk

I’m gonna be real with you, I didn’t really watch much of this game. I was up until six in the morning making waffles (I swear that sounds more weird than it actually was) and woke up during the middle of the second quarter. I watched until around the middle of third quarter when I became completely convinced that the Lakers were not making a comeback. Sadly I was right.

I’ve watched nearly every Laker game over the last three seasons so I know this current squad pretty well and if there is one thing that just blows their minds more than anything else it is undersized centers. I don’t know if it’s a failing on Phil jackson and the coaching staff, Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol, or just the team as a whole, but they just cannot take advantage of size advantages down low. The fact that the Rockets sans Yao Ming was able to be beat the Lakers may have come as a surprise to some, but I expected the Rockets to play better without him. However, I didn’t expect the Lakers to just roll over and die.

No, actually I kind of half expected it. Sigh. These Lakers…….

Fortunately though, the odds of the Lakers rolling over two games in a row is actually pretty rare and the odds of Shane Battier and Aaron Brooks being hotter than July for two games straight is even rarer so I don’t expect a repeat performance for game 4.

The Dominique Wilkins Highlight of the Game: About halfway through the third quarter I turned the TV off and went to Coffee Bean for a latte. That was the highlight of the game for me.

I used to do postgame reports for the very wonderful Lakers’ website The Lakers Nation, but this season I wasn’t asked back to do them which made me very sad (either that or I was supposed to volunteer to do them again and I didn’t. Either way, I’m sure it’s my fault.) I really enjoyed doing them. So today I was like, I’m gonna do post games again.

Unfortunately for me though, I’m retarded and decided to do my hour of running at 6:00 at night, completely forgetting that this game is in Houston. Long story short I missed the first quarter and a half. Epic Fail.

After watching game 2, I basically knew the series was over. A lot of pundits were talking about how it’s going to be a long tough series and a real test for the Lakers and yada, yada, yada…… but what they failed to realize is that the Lakers are just plain beter than the Rockets. Like by a lot. And on top of that, they match up extremely well with them, turning that difference in quality into a yawning chasm. Sure Pau Gasol is really just a giant marshmellow in a man suit, but if there’s one thing Pau can do on defense is stand in front of a giant chinese guy. For all his height and gifts as a basketball player, for some reason if you put a really big marshmellow in front of Yao Ming you stop him cold. Think I’m crazy? Just look at the numbers. Watch the game. Yao + Marshmellow = DEATH! Basic algebra.

And on the much debated subject of toughness, after watching that game I’ve come to the conclusion that the Rockets’ much vaunted toughness is highly overrated. Do they play hard? Absolutely. Do they play physical? Again yes. But tough? I’ve always felt that toughness had less to do with the physical and more with the mental and watching the Rockets bitch and complain over the Lakers’ aggressiveness really exposed them as being very, very not tough. For a comparison, look back at Kobe and the Lakers’ reaction to Raja Bell’s clothesline a few years back. Or to make a more contemporary point, The Celtics’ reaction to Eddie House getting slapped. Pushing someone or hitting someone doesn’t define you as being tough. It’s about what you do AFTER you get pushed or hit that shows how tough you are.

Anways, since this is a postgame for game 3 I should probably, like talk about the game. The Rockets more or less played their game pretty well. I was surprised with Von Wafer’s inneffectiveness though since he has kind of been a Laker killer this season, but ultimately he sucks and has a pretty ridiculous haircut so I probably shouldn’t be too surprised. The Lakers played some crazy intense defense at times, but their old ghost of thinking the game was over before it was actually over did creep up at the end. A lot of people hold a lot concern about that, and to a certain extent that worries me too, but instead of letting that fester in my mind and give me ulcers I’ve just come to accept that as being apart of this team’s identity. Every team has its faults.

The Bill Russell MVP of the Game Award: Kobe He shot 11-28 and took a lot of really bad contested jumpers while wearing a Shane Battier suit. And missed most of them. For any other player he had pretty bad game, but that’s what makes Kobe the greatest player on the planet. Most players have to play well to take over a game and lead his team to victory, but Kobe can play pretty inneffectively and still dominate, and don’t let that 11-28 performance fool you. He DID dominate this game. Kobe Bryant is so bad, but still sooooo good.

The Jerry West MVP of the Losing Team Award: Shane Battier I like to call Shane Battier “The Fabulous Battier” and tonight he earned that nickname. On top of playing some fabulously ferocious defense on Kobe, he also snared eight ravishing rebounds, 7 sexy assists and one scintilating steal.

The Dominique Wilkins Highlight of the Game: Kobe’s 33 Foot Buzzer Beating Three Pointer of Artest I’m not putting this on here because it had some great impact on the game or anything like that (even though it did.) No I’m putting in on here because that had to be just about the flattest shot I had ever seen in my life. Earlier this season Kobe went on record saying that he unashamably steals other players’ moves. Who knew he would steal Brian Cook’s jump shot?

I loved Manny. I believed in Manny. I used to say that amidst all this pharmacuetically enhanced baseball that has been going on in the last decade or so, that Manny, for all his Manny being Manny, was the one guy you could trust that was all legit.

Why did I trust Manny? Sure he was kind of crazy, but he had this real savant quality to him. Like, A-Rod is all calculation. So was Bonds. But Manny, he seemed like such a natural. That, and he was never really in all that great of shape. I felt that maybe you couldn’t trust the buff guys, but at least the flabby guys you could.

That’s all out the window now. If even the flabby guys are juicing, then you really trust anybody. Sure technically Manny didn’t do steroids of HGH, but I did a little research on what he did take and apparently the medication he did take, which is used to increase testosterone prodcution in men with abnormally low testosterone levels, is really only taken by men who either have erectile dysfuction or have abused steroids in the past and have destroyed their testoterone. Never have I wished and prayed so hard for a man to have ED, but, like the pre Manny Dodgers winning a pennant, I definately feel like I’m hoping against hope.

You broke my heart Manny, and unlike Celine Dion, I don’t think my heart will go on.

Shane Battier looking all Mick Foley courtesy of this guy:

Back when I first made my site I had this clip up because I thought it was a hype way to enter my site. I’ll have some real posts up soon, but until then enjoy the hypeness.

Here’s an additional clip of Mamba. I feel you Kobe. I too want to touch the sky.