A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
I think this whole blackmail plot about Gary Sheffield’s wife’s sex-tape with R. Kelly is made up. I mean, there’s no way the tape is real. Think about it: the tape was supposedly made 10 years ago, but Gary’s wife would’ve been older than 15 back then. QED.
I’m not fat, I’m just big skeletoned!
How could you not read an article that includes the line: “Davis still believes in innovation. As one example, the company recently started making a folding coffin bed”?
Coffins for fat people. From a company called Goliath Casket. I can’t make this stuff up.
Tom’s Rhinoplasty
I have a new favorite site.
Cheech and Chong were pikers
Nice try, but I hear that you can’t get the squid smell outta your nose for weeks . . .
Try my Wu-Tang style
Ol’ Dirty Bastard died last night. His “taking a limo and an MTV News crew to the welfare office” shtick was pretty funny. I never listened to his solo stuff or the Wu-Tang Clan till a few months ago.
He was only 35. For some reason, I thought ODB was, well, a bunch older than I am, but he was only two years up on me.
Heaven knows how many kids he left behind.
Jewish holiday
From Judith Miller’s obit for Yasser Arafat:
In the 1960’s, he pioneered what became known as “television terrorism” – air piracy and innovative forms of mayhem staged for maximum propaganda value. Among the more spectacular deeds he ordered was the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1986, a group linked to Mr. Arafat but apparently acting independently seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship and threw overboard an elderly American Jew in a wheelchair.
Yeah: “spectacular”. I know it’s got a range of meanings, but that might not’ve been the best word-choice. But “massacre” was pretty appropriate.
Here’s another.
The Block
Just finishing up a pharmaceutical conference down in Baltimore today, before heading home to the palatial VM estates.
I went to a hospitality event at the Maryland Art Place last night, which was fun. Problem was, the directions to the event just consisted of a map, not a “stick to Pratt St. and then turn left” set of directions. So I made an early left, so as to get to Baltimore Ave. and reach the site pretty quickly.
Unfortunately, I had no idea that this would put me on The Block, which is populated entirely of porno joints and strip clubs, and is situated one block over from the police station. The locals were pretty friendly, inviting me into all of their establishments, but I declined their hospitality, even at the offer of “6 to 8 pretty girls”. And then I passed a police officer handcuffing a gentleman on the street corner, shouting, “I have it on tape! Don’t LIE to me AGAIN!”
And I thought, “Maybe there’s a reason they set those crime shows in Baltimore . . .”
Wrap-up
Dear reader,
Thanks for putting up with my NBA ranting. Next year, I’m going to try and get it written up far enough in advance that we can post a division a day, leaven those posts with my usual ramblings, and keep VM on a more even keel.
As it is, I don’t think any newsworthy events happened in the past week. Let me know if you can think of anything I missed.
–The management
PS: Oh, yeah. I forgot: you think maybe Pim Fortuyn had a point?
NBA Preview: Atlantic Division
by Gil Roth
Boston Celtics
Danny Ainge is a goddamn idiot. For years now, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks has played a high-stakes game with his players’ contracts: he tends to overpay, but at least he keeps enough desirable assets on hand that teams would take on one of his bad contracts just get the rights to one of his useful players.
A few years ago, I thought that practice would crash and burn, because Cuban gave Raef LaFrentz a 6-year/$60 million deal. No one would take that contract off his hands, I figured, reducing the Mavs’ flexibility for years.
What happens? Boston GM Ainge trades for him, sending back Antoine Walker’s contract, which Cuban just parlayed into an affordable scoring point guard in Jason Terry, and another expiring contract in Alan Henderson. The rich get richer, and the poor get a Mormon.
Ainge, not content to saddle Boston with a gigantic contract for a player who can barely play, went on to make several more deals, driving his coach to quit in mid-season. The upshot? His team now features one legit star (Paul Pierce(d), who is the most sullen top-12 talent in the league), one knuckledheaded but unstoppable talent (Ricky Davis), and one over-the-hill-but-too-prideful-to-admit-it malcontent (Gary Payton, who seems to have entered the weight room exactly once in his career, and that was only to grab a dumbbell to throw at teammate Vernon Maxwell). To recap: that’s three pouting egomaniacs who need the ball to be effective now taking up the 1, 2 and 3 positions on the “once-proud” Boston franchise. Recipe for disaster, coming right up!
They’ve also got a bunch of young draft picks, including some 18-year-old who was putting up Chamberlain-like numbers in high school (like 42 ppg and 19 rpg). This team could feature a reprise of Gary Vs. Vernon, with Ricky filling in for Mad Max. I’d pay $34.95 to see that one on Pay-Per-View, but I’m not right in the head.
New York Knicks
The Knicks floundered for a few years, and then brought in Isiah Thomas last year as GM, and he shook things up. Unfortunately, he ended up with lots of offense, but no coherent defensive philosophy. That’s death in the NBA. This offseason, he traded all of his expiring contracts (the most important asset for trades) for Jamal Crawford, a wanna-be point guard (see Rose, Jalen) who can score in bunches but doesn’t shoot a high percentage.
He oughtta get along great with Stephon Marbury. And Tim Thomas. And Penny Hardaway. And Allan Houston, if he ever comes back from knee surgery. Speaking of too much offense, this squad actually includes three players who’ve put up 50 in a night (Crawford, Marbury and Houston). Given how bad their defense is, they might need all three of them to do that if they want to win.
Supposedly, they have a rookie who’s a great leaper and electrifying player, but seriousy, those are a dime a dozen. Tamar Slay and Lavorr Postell were two recent ones who played for NJ and NY, and they didn’t catch on really because they don’t have an awful lot of talent.
The team’s top pick last year, Michael Sweetney, looks too doughy to be a good power forward, but he looks better than the team’s centers, Nazr Mohammad and Vin Baker, who’s recovering from heart surgery, alcoholism, and the fact that his drinking cost him at least $35 million.
If they can somehow learn to play D (not likely under Lenny Wilkens), maybe they’ll win this weak-ass division and get swept in the first round by a more organized, better-disciplined team (almost any of the other 14 squads in the east).
New Jersey Nets
Don’t get me started. I wrote a lengthy diatribe against this team and its horrible offseason, and then they got worse. Two of last year’s starters are gone, Jason Kidd is recovering from a knee injury, and their center—whom they signed for $22 million despite a deteriorating kidney condition—has announced that he wants the team to pay him most of the money and let him leave so he can sign somewhere else to try to win a championship.
The only positive on the squad is Richard Jefferson, who got a pretty lucrative extension in the offseason. He’s an amazing talent, but he’s going to be burned out by carrying too heavy a load in the first months of the year (provided Kidd comes back and contributes a bit before he gets traded to Dallas (Jason Terry and spare parts) or Denver (Andre Miller and Marcus Camby).
Otherwise, it’s a pretty terrible roster, filled with role players and no big talents, including one guy who has played on seven teams in his first eight seasons.
Philadelphia 76ers
Allen Iverson is the biggest enigma I’ve ever seen in the NBA. He flat-out cannot play with any teammate who deserves more than role-player status. Oh, he’s fine when you surround him with defensive guards, shot-blockers, rebounders, and perimeter defenders, but just try to send in a single player with a scoring dimension, and it all melts down. Want a list? Try Jerry Stackhouse, Tim Thomas, Larry Hughes, Toni Kukoc, Keith Van Horn, and most recently, Glenn “Antoine Carr” Robinson. Now, the big tip-off should’ve been when he couldn’t get along with Kukoc. Unfortunately, they traded the Croatian Creation for the Mongo from the Congo (Dikembe Mutombo) and reached the NBA finals that year, so people seemed to think that it made sense to keep surrounding Iverson with role players who wouldn’t get in his way.
Of course, he started breaking down—a natural result of relying on natural speed and quickness and never bothering to work out—and the team began deteriorating. Now, they’ve got a defensive-minded coach who’s already worked in one of the most bizarre scenarios in hoops: the Boston Celtics of Pierce-Walker vintage, which featured two uncontrollable outside scorers and little else. Coach O’Brien somehow brought this strange group to the eastern finals a few seasons ago; no one is sure how.
The belief is that he’ll get the Sixers playing tough defense, and let the scoring work itself out. If Iverson stays healthy enough to play 75-80 games, they might be alright. The coach has already benched (prelude to a dumping) Glenn Robinson in favor of some defensive-minded rookie. Weirdly, he also benched defensive-minded center Samuel Dalembert, the Haitian Croatian, for Marc “Don’t Call Me Mark” Jackson, who doesn’t play D but loves to shoot 12-footers.
I have no idea how all this is going to turn out, especially since Robinson seems pissed off and might end up getting waived, but I think they’ll win the weak division, and get home court in the first round.
Toronto Raptors
Long-term, this team is doomed. A few years ago, ownership overpaid a bunch of players just to induce star swingman Vince Carter to stay. Carter then turned out to be moody, brittle, and too eager to settle for a jump-shot, moody. Worse, the guys they overpaid (Jerome Williams, Antonio Davis, Alvin Williams) weren’t very good. They made a nice pick in the draft last year with Chris Bosh, who reminds me a little of Jermaine O’Neal, but they managed to trade one headache (Antonio Davis and his bloated contract) for another in the person of Jalen Rose, a me-first scorer who spent nearly a decade trying to convince coaches that he was really a point guard, but who’s yet to make another player better in his career.
So now the Raptors are built around Carter and Rose, who have gigantic contracts, and Bosh and Donyell Marshall, who’s developed into a solid contributor in his last few seasons (since he spent time in Utah with Jerry Sloan, about whom Tom was correct). They’d love to get rid of Rose, but there’s no one who’d take him, and Carter wants to be traded, but ownership knows that the fans would leave along with Carter, since he still dunks really hard, when he’s not being a sissy and firing up 20-footers.
Toronto does get bonus points for signing Rafer “Skip to my Lou” Alston, but that won’t be enough for them to reach the playoffs. For that, Carter’s gotta return to the monster threat he was a few seasons ago.