dr. doooom's answering machine

Well. Now that was quite a game Tuesday nite, now wasn’t it? I’m only ready to put finger to keyboard and opine on it now, but I won’t, as it has been done ad nauseam by scribes of higher technical ability in such arenas as SI, ESPN, the effervescent clipperblog, as well as across the parks and boardrooms of America. By now you’ve heard the tales, nay the legends, of what at one point was looking like something that might never leave my TIVO (despite it missing the last 5 minutes even though I programmed for an extra HOUR of recording, c/o double overtime extravaganzaville) to something that was discarded in a fit of pique that I’ll never regret once I learned the deplorable and legion of doomesque final score.

Anyway. Game 6 tonite at staples. The TIVO has been instructed to continue recording for an hour and a half after the scheduled end of the game to be safe. I will be playing basketball outside during live coverage of the first half, keeping myself sequestered from any information that might spoil the news in the interim and then rush home to watch the game in keithtime with the fabulous Mrs. P and the almost here baby M. There is a lucky totem at work in the dynamic of the game being telecast on LA’s channel 5, which I get via satellite, so I will be able to hear the play by play via the masterful Ralph Lawler, which is twice as good as TNT and 8,000 times as good as ESPN, which almost killed me metaphorically having to suffer thru the idiocy of Bill Walton for game 4. Bill used to be Ralph’s partner in the clips booth if memory serves, back before some brainless freak decided he’d sound good on the national stage, and I have to say that clipper nation’s gain in losing him was the worldwide leader’s ignominious loss of staggering proportions, via NBC, via whoever saw and sees fit to have him talking on their airways and causing disproportionate amounts of anxious fits of self induced deafness.

Bill was a great player, and he can make some interesting observations every once in a while, but until he cuts back, severely, on his penchant for unapologetically and repetitively talking from the deepest recesses of his own asshole, he’ll be nothing more than just an annoying mysteriously perpetuated gimmick. I, for one, can’t enjoy a basketball game while having to screen for unrepentant bullshit from some blathering idiot, tension in the booth building, no one saying more than the occasional humorous lackadaisical word because money, and, apparently bullshit, talk, walk, and bark like a duck. A duck with a phat contract to tell you that it was up in a tree with a flying squirrel eating kibbles and bits when you know damn well that all it was doing was swimming and watching the fuck out for the estimable Mr. Fudd.

Interesting (at least to me) sidenote: Walton’s championship team with the Blazers in 1977 was coached by Jack Ramsay, who the year before had been the coach of the Buffalo Braves, when they went to the 2nd round of the playoffs. The same Buffalo Braves who later became the LA Clippers. That 1976 squad was the last, before this year’s, Clipper team to reach the 2nd round of the playoffs. The year prior to that, 1975, Bob McAdoo won MVP, the only brave/clipper to ever have the distinction (that's him in the pic above). The year after the Blazer championship, 1978, Walton won MVP. (Kareem won it in 76 & 77, here’s a great page listing all the MVP’s, with pics) Dr. Jack was let go after the momentous buffalo playoff victory year because the owner was putting the team thru a firesale (McAdoo was dumped, as well), trying to get clearance to move, which was never granted, he sold it, the later owner switched teams with the Celtics, yadda yadda, san diego (sigh, Walton), thirty years of losing, Donald Sterling, Bo Kimble, sports arena, Dominique wilkins stops by for a beer and a game of darts, and suddenly here we are. Nutty Block.

The Basketball Jones

Golden State of Mind

The Association