{"id":500,"date":"2005-03-19T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-19T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=500"},"modified":"2005-12-09T10:11:52","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T15:11:52","slug":"guest-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/guest-column","title":{"rendered":"Guest column"},"content":{"rendered":"

New VM reader Sam enjoys my basketball writing, so I offered him a chance to post here, following the latest Shaq-Kobe match. Because he’s in Canada, this means I now have a foreign correspondent!<\/span><\/p>\n

A buddy invited me over to his place last night to jam a little and watch the Heat\/Lakers game on his new 52″ HDTV. Last night was the first time I have had a chance to watch HDTV and I must say, outstanding! I couldn’t get over the clarity. It was awesome!<\/p>\n

[Ed. note: I know, I know. I saw the Superbowl on HD this year, and sports is pretty obviously going to drive that consumer market. Especially in my house. Grr.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I’m going to go into an NBA rant. Okay, deservedly so, everyone is on Toronto GM Rob Babcock’s case for screwing up the Vince Carter trade and then doing nothing at the deadline, but what about the Lakers and the cluster f*ck screw job they have done to their<\/span> team?! They go from an elite championship team to nothing — that’s worse<\/span> than the Raptors in my opinion because the Raps were NEVER going to win a playoff round, let alone championship with VC (I hope you are paying attention, Nets fans, ’cause its also going to happen to you).<\/p>\n

So what did the Lakers get in return for Shaq? A bag of basketballs from Miami, which is no different than the Raps, and they are going to miss the playoffs (are you seeing the similarities here?).<\/p>\n

Who’s talking about this travesty? Who won that trade? Heat 51 – 16. The Lakers and their fans should be embarrassed. Another example of a team catering to the wishes of one superstar player at the expense of the team (are the similarities spooky, or what?).<\/p>\n

Lamar Odom was a non-factor last night and it looked like Kobe is on the decline (like VC – scary, oooh). They got spanked.<\/p>\n

(Take a deep breath, Sam.)<\/p>\n

Peace, out.<\/p>\n

–Sam R.<\/p>\n

PS: I saw the post-game interview with the Godfather, er, Shaq. He compared Penny Hardaway to Fredo, Kobe to Sonny and Wade to Michael — the heir apparent. This guy’s hysterical. Really funny stuff. Shaq truly is the most electrifying man in sports entertainment today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New VM reader Sam enjoys my basketball writing, so I offered him a chance to post here, following the latest Shaq-Kobe match. Because he’s in Canada, this means I now have a foreign correspondent! A buddy invited me over to his place last night to jam a little and watch the Heat\/Lakers game on his … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Guest column”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-84","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":268,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/did-pythagoras-invent-the-triangle-offense","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":0},"title":"Did Pythagoras invent the triangle offense?","author":"Gil","date":"June 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave D'Alessandro on the Lakers: Two millennia and four centuries ago, Pericles observed that an empire, once acquired, is a very dangerous thing to let go. Of course, he was more preoccupied with establishing a democracy while fighting off the plague, so his problems were different from Phil Jackson's.Unfortunately, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1880,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/la-me-down","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":1},"title":"LA me down","author":"Gil","date":"February 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm glad The Best Los Angeles Sports Arguments exists. Now we can find out whether the best way to avoid traffic and still be seen at Lakers games is showing up at the beginning of the 2nd quarter leaving at the beginning of the 4th quarter both!","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1402211066","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2011,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/papal-bull","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":2},"title":"Papal Bull","author":"Gil","date":"April 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I am so pissed off right now. Yesterday's kickoff of the NBA Playoffs featured a great game in the Suns-Spurs double-OT tilt. Nuggets-Lakers looked like the best game on tap for today, with the possibility that Kobe would go for 70 against the no-defense Nugs. So 3:00pm rolls around, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/popebs.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":234,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wow","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":3},"title":"Wow","author":"Gil","date":"May 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Some of my friends (the non-sporting kind) don't get why I \"waste my time\" watching pro sports. The Spurs-Lakers playoff game last night had one of the most exciting finishes I've ever seen. Three lead changes in the last 12 seconds, after one team blows a 16-point lead. Two impossible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":417,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":4},"title":"NBA Preview: Western Overviewby Tom\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"November 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"NBA Preview: Western Overviewby Tom SpurgeonHere 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.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1303,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/another-convert","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":5},"title":"Another convert","author":"Gil","date":"January 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrew Sullivan has discovered the joys of HD, including \"it won't make sense till you see it on an HDTV\" Sunrise Earth. Welcome to the club! (Here's my paean to HDTV from October 2005.) Update: Looks like Sullivan's taking \"HDeification\" seriously!","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}