Year: 2004

NBA Preview: Northwest Division

by Tom Spurgeon

Denver Nuggets
The Nuggets will be coached by Jeff Bzdelik a) until Superman tricks him into saying his last name backwards and returning him to the 5th Dimension or b) mid-season, when an under-performing Andre Miller, a slumping Carmelo Anthony and a brooding Kenyon Martin forces a 13-game losing streak.

Minnesota Timberwolves
Minnesota needed to win last year as Kevin Garnett sidemen Latrell Sprewell and Sam “Magic Jeep” Cassell inch closer and closer to being Curly Neal old. I also keep imagining that Wally Szczerbiak is going to wake up and finally realize he was destined to become a pro tennis player. He just looks like one, doesn’t he?

Portland Trail Blazers
Qyntel Woods was recently cited for participating in illegal dogfight activities, for the firs time opening up a professional sports team to Warren Oates jokes. Authorities were tipped to Woods when he abandoned a dog that wouldn’t fight for him on the side of the road. You know the NBA is going downhill when a player’s posse members are half-assing it, and I sincerely hope no one in Woods’ inner circle is ever given the job of disposing of an old mattress. In other Rose City entourage malfunctions, Zack Randolph lied to police about a shooting in a bar in Anderson, Indiana, a town that has the social scene equivalent to one of those floating oil platforms. Things should go a little better for the Blazers on the court, but only a little. Randolph is a throwback to production machines Mark Aguirre and Adrian Dantley, and sort of fun to watch, though.

Seattle Super Sonics
Kobe Bryant calling out the mild-mannered Sonic guard Ray Allen during pre-season surprised many NBA observers, 80% of whom had forgotten Allen exists. Nonetheless Allen remains one of two good players in a Sonics rebuilding effort that suffers from horrendous choices in the mid-to-late 1990s. Think of this year’s squad, with perpetually dewy Rashard Lewis and at least three guys who annually vie for the league’s Greg Kite Acne-Filled Shoulders award, as the Jean Doumanian cast of Saturday Night Live, the year with Charles Rocket. I’m all for the Sonics doing well, though, because head coach Nate McMillan looks great with his arms crossed while wearing a suit, which is the hardest to master of all great coaching skills.

Utah Jazz
The Utah Jazz played really well last year despite a starting line-up that included Andrei Kirilenko, the guy who kicked America’s ass at the Olympics, and three founding members of the Steppenwolf Theater Company. Kirilenko recently signed a humongous contract, which according to the rules of the NBA means he might begin to suck now. This would be too bad, because he’s fun to watch, like a bad guy in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that also plays defense and runs the floor like it’s 1984 all over again and he’s Michael Cooper. In the off-season the Jazz signed Carlos Boozer, who has the game’s most annoying calm face-–he’s the guy who always outside the party house being talked out of some misunderstanding. The Jazz are coached by Jerry Sloan, who at 60+ years old is still the last guy you want to see coming towards your car with a golf club.

NBA Preview: Western Overview

by Tom Spurgeon

Here are my general predictions for the western portion of the National Basketball Association, now split into three divisions so that Gil could catch me not knowing anything about the league’s change three days after I lied and said I was done with this report. [Ha-ha! I knew I could trip you up by asking who you liked out of the South Central Eastern Plains Division, y’big jerk! –ed.]

1. The Los Angeles Lakers will win a lot of basketball games this year, despite losing Shaquille O’Neal to the Miami Heat, because their doing so will irritate me. Also, because Kobe Bryant brings the manic energy of the never-been-hugged to basketball games that not even the parents of the other players bother watching.

2. Kobe Bryant’s dad will score 22 points one night in a basketball league that will refuse to employ Dennis Rodman.

3. Qyntel Woods will at some point in the season be tempted to leave Portland Trailblazer teammate Damon Stoudamire on the side of the road somewhere.

4. Kevin Garnett will make another slightly humiliating commercial that hints at his inability to win.

5. Carmelo Anthony will eat something Kenyon Martin leaves out in the locker room, causing Martin to repeatedly say, “It’s cool,” until three hours later when he drives over Anthony in his Escalade.

It’s finally here!

No, you ninnies, not the election! I’ve already cast my vote, and it’s for Apple Pie and a Tanqueray & Vicodin cocktail tonight! It’s the new NBA season that has ME so juiced up!

Other blogs can keep regurgitating their political rantings (that goes double for you, Sullivan); for the next two days, Virtual Memories is devoted to professional basketball!

Today’s big-ass entry is a preview of the Western Conference, written by Tom Spurgeon. Tom’s not just a hoops geek (it’s in the genes; he’s from Indiana), he’s also an unparalleled chronicler of the comics industry, and now he has the Comics Reporter website to prove it (as if his great book on Stan Lee wasn’t enough)! Without further ado . . .

I Hump This Game

by Tom Spurgeon

The best thing about professional basketball in America used to be that everybody hated it. It was an urban game played by men in bad suits in largely undisciplined but fascinating fashion, with success dependent largely on how well your college game had been imprinted into your memory. Then Larry Bird and Magic Johnson came along. Bird and Johnson were gym rats with enough in the way of physical gifts to make the game bend to their will. For seven or so years the National Basketball Association combined individual expression with a beautiful notion of flow and pressure that emphasized getting the best shot at the goal possible, usually as quickly as possible. There were great teams, like the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics, and the Philadelphia 76ers; there were great rivalries like Dr. J versus Larry Bird and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar against an America That Did Not Understand Him.

Then Michael Jordan showed up and dunked on everybody and scored 75 points on the Celtics because his teammates included Lee Atwater and a guy from the Gap Band and things went right to shit.

Okay, it took a long time. But things did go to shit. Players started to be paid for their “entertainment value” as much as their ability to actually play the game, sort of like a company giving the person who has the most pencils in the roof above their desk the biggest salary. Players began to realized you could take three-pointers and no one would yell at you for missing them the way they did shots you should actually make. New teams showed up and employed more bad players and made a star of Muggsy Bogues, who would have been another generation’s favorite Globetrotter. The structure of salaries and ticket-demands for new stars, or at least one that sort of were like the good ones, made owners pay some really dubious talent a lot of money. Shaquille O’Neal terrified the land by making rap albums and movies with Judd Nelson.

Gil Roth’s beloved New York Knicks tend to be blamed for this state affairs, and the only way in which I disagree with conventional wisdom is that I believe it should come with sizeable electrical shocks for everyone involved when I think that way. Michael Jordan settled into a very set offensive system with the Chicago Bulls that basically allowed him to stay the same player he was by surrounding him with players who only did a few things very well – sort of like building a soapbox derby car where you skimp on every other item because you own killer wheels. Instead of making a superior team out of generally superior parts, the Knicks decided to afford a wonderful college player turned selfish pro named Patick Ewing “local Jordan” status, surrounded him with players as flawed as the Bulls, and sold the referees on the fact they should be allowed to play like the Hanson Brothers because, well, they were the logical rivals.

Fast forward seven years later and there’s America losing the Olympic Gold and Americans being happy about it. If there’s any hope for the NBA at all, it may be found in one curious and undeniable fact.

Everybody seems to hate basketball again.

I believe I can cry

How come this stuff doesn’t happen when Billy Joel & Elton John are touring together?

AND a lunar eclipse?

Old Man
Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.

ROSS
Ah, good father,
Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?

Old Man
‘Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

ROSS
And Duncan’s horses–a thing most strange and certain–
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending ‘gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.

Old Man
‘Tis said they eat each other.

ROSS
They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes
That look’d upon’t.

—Macbeth, Act. 2, Scene 4

Which is my roundabout way of saying, “Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox for winning the 2004 World Series.”

“Be prepared for sudden cardiac arrest. . .”

I’d really like to know if everyone’s getting a link to this $1,500 home heart defibrillator on their Amazon front page, or if there’s something about my buying history that makes them think I’m a prime candiate for a heart attack. Maybe it’s something in my wish list . . .

Boulevard to Hell?

Presumably, this is a two-way street.

[There’s some problem with Blogger this morning, and it zapped my previous post, which congratulated the Boston Red Sox for their victory over the Yankees. I swear I didn’t delete it myself.]

You stupid, yellow-toothed pansies

The Guardian, a left-leaning paper in London, started a project where its readers could request the addresses of registered, undecided U.S. voters in Clark County, OH, so they could write the voters about their election opinions.

The Guardian operation has, um, received some reactions from Americans.

Update

Many apologies for not keeping up with Virtual Memories, but this Yankees-Red Sox series has just been draining the heck out of me.

It’s kinda silly for a sporting event to take on that sorta ongoing significance in a person’s life. I mean, I was up till 1:30 am last night with game 4, and blew off much of a friend’s party on Saturday night to watch the blowout of game 3. But it’s a game that I love.

I promise to get my blog on more often after this series ends.

It’d be funnier if the site was slightly crooked

Ikea’s launched Elite Designers, a guerrilla site, goofing on itself. Doesn’t get around to mentioning that the furniture’s not very comfortable, or that there’s typically a part missing from assembly, but hey.