Thursday, May 18, 2006


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



Tuesday, May 16, 2006


Well in case you been in a hole or a cave or up in a tree or in a torrid Iranian love triangle, and don’t think I’m getting racial, but what if I was? But cuz an Iranian triangle, at least in my brain, is very rhombus like, which causes all types of problems at points of entry in not just their fine country but all over the world. Ah, yes, the thing you may not know unless you’ve been preoccupied by the aforementioned items, please excuse my alter ego for the interruption. Yes, the clippers split the last two games with the phoenix suns and head back to the valley of cacti all tied up at 2 games a piece. Game 5, today, 4:30 Hawaii standard time. If you know me and wish to call me please understand there will be no phone contact or innernet contact and I prolly wouldn’t even answer my door due to the fear, as I will be tivo’ing said event and be running about an hour behind schedule, catching up as the evening wears as I rapidly scroll thru advertizments.

There is a tense undercurrent here in the skunkworks today, the smell of fetid fingernails and lingering tensions brewing amid the pot stirring further into the marsh. As the refuse of an island gets processed and revitalized for future ventures, the dreams and wonderings of the walking dead seem almost blocked at the cloud line, prevented from drifting off into space where they can no longer do the harm of pontification, nay, they are earthbound and made almost unto a requiem of frustrated anticipation for that which is known in the innermost caverns of the corrupted to be the clear opposite of inevitable.

Scoop Jackson on the Cassell vs. Nash battle (the point guards for the Clippers and Suns, respectively):

It might never happen again. Not like this. Because once this series is over (unless Clippers owner Donald Sterling re-signs Sam after the season) Cassell and Nash might never see each other on this stage again. In a dead heat with this much on the line. This might be the completion of a twisted career circle of two players who are mirror-images of each other but look totally different when their reflections return.

Scoop mentions the Don resigning Sam like it’s akin to Thor showing up to Ragnarok with a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag and a half eaten biscotti. Myself, I think it’s a lock. Call me crazy, but Coach Dunleavy has Sterling’s ear, and the key to the kingdom, er, amusement park? ie, the wallet, or at least, rights to present a case for fund distribution, which I feel heavily confident in Dunleavy’s ability to do said action and give Elgin (Executive of the year! Booyakah) the green light. Giddyup indeed.