Pro wrestlers? On steroids and HGH? It can’t be!
Okay. Maybe it can. . .
Unrequired Reading: Mar. 16, 2007
Here are some links I came across but didn’t have time to write about.
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Mar. 16, 2007”
Drugs’re bad, mmmkay?
Scot Pollard hasn’t had a distinguished career in the NBA. He has shown off some tremendously bad haircuts, which I give him credit for, because not a lot of white guys go with crazy styles in the league.
Although he had a bright yellow mohawk going earlier this season, he has a more conservative look now. He also made one of the funniest in-game comments, um, EVER:
Nachbar takes it to the snackbar
Bostjan Nachbar, a Turkish Slovenian guy, throws it down on Samuel Dalembert, a Haitian guy.
When bad metrics happen to bad GMs
Anyone who’s read our VM basketball previews in the last few years knows that the Timberwolves are in terrible shape, and it’s due to the incompetent dealings of its general manager, Kevin McHale, who can also be faulted for being part of the Joe Smith debacle that ruined Kevin Garnett’s career.
So that’s why it’s really funny that when Forbes.com came up with a system of metrics to evaluate general managers across the major sports, they ended up with Kevin McHale as #1.
Given the failure of that system, I’m going to have to take any of their other rankings with a grain of salt. I think this is an instance where the metrics sounded good, but when they were applied and led to this Bizarro world where McHale’s #1 and Billy Beane is #26, someone should have said, “Maybe we need to re-weight or add some other factors.”
And ranking Billy King of the Sixers at #3 was also pretty mind-boggling.
China Syndrome
This massive article on China purports to have been written by only two reporters, but its portrayal of China’s economy and social condition is so fragmented and contradictory that I have to assume at least six different writers contributed pieces to it, and that their editor was on vacation.
This piece on China’s first-strike capacity is much more internally coherent. Unfortunately, it seems to propose we return to a cold war-style arms race.
Oh, and Yao Ming is the slowest guy in the league.
Unrequired Reading: Mar. 2, 2007
A week off has left me laden with uncommented-upon links, dear reader! Enjoy
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Mar. 2, 2007”
Kiss the Rim
Dwight Howard is the best dunking big-man since Shawn Kemp. He got robbed on that “sticker on the glass” dunk during All-Star Weekend, and we got robbed because he didn’t get to bust out this dunk in the next round:
Random Seattle Stuff
Last night I remembered that, on my first trip to Seattle (August 2001), I almost decided to stay based solely on two factors: the summer weather here is gorgeous, and the sell Cherry Coke in 1-liter bottles.
On that first trip, it took me three days before I saw any black people. I’ve seen a bunch already this trip, even though the first black guy I saw that time, Sonics coach Nate McMillan, has moved on to Portland. Not sure if there’s been any demographic shift, or if the downtown area I’m staying in is more “urban” than the neighborhoods I generally hung out in on my other trips.
There’s a lot of construction downtown.
Ambien will help you get 7-8 hours of sleep even if you took a 5-hour nap earlier in the day.
That is all. We’re heading out soon to meet up with my buddy, the Brooding Persian, for lunch. Later, it’s on to the Flying Fish to drink and dine with a bunch of Amy’s friends, along with a cameo by another of my buddies from Annapolis.
I took a couple of pictures yesterday, but haven’t had time to process them and post, so you’ll have to wait on that. Our hotel’s kinda near the Space Needle, so I promise to get a bunch of pix of that and the EMP before long. And, of course, we’ll visit the co-located Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, even though the balloting is totally driven by RBI totals. . .
Diversify toleration!
Neat editorial by Chris Broussard at ESPN, regarding gay players in the NBA. He believes the league is “ready” for them, while also contending that homoesexuality’s a sin.
I’m a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I’m not a member of the Religious Right). And I’m against homosexuality (I believe it’s a sin) and same-sex marriage.
But before you label me “homophobic,” know that I’m against any type of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. That includes heterosexual fornication (premarital sex).
Read the whole thing, because he brings up some interesting points about tolerance being a two-way street (as it were). And as long as you can ball (as it were), there’s room for you in Broussard’s rec-league.