Randoms

NBA Finals, Game 2

We’ll start with the Lakers’ 102-108 loss to the Celtics. The worst part of it all has to be the two days of whining in LA. News flash: the Lakers weren’t that good to start with. They’re better than they’ve shown, but they aren’t phenomenal.

The role players sucked ass and the Lakers played pretty shitty defense. Colin and I couldn’t even watch the game (he got extremely angry and fussy, so I turned on Dirty Jobs instead). Coming back from 24 down with 8 minutes to go to get within two is crazy, but now they have to win 4 of 5 to win the whole thing. Hmm…

Props to Leon Powe for coming up big. 21 points for the kid was obviously huge for the Celts. He was so exciting in the first half that ABC ran a piece on Powe at halftime that detailed his difficult childhood in Oakland, becoming homeless, going into foster care, then losing his mother (with whom he had a close relationship) four days before his high school state championship game. Awwww… and he seemed like such an ass in college. Guess he’s just misunderstood. We should all have somebody to tell our side of the story.

The Lakers-Celtics rivalry is starting to mirror the stereotypes that people have of the two teams: Lakers are finesse and run-and-gun, while the Celts are blue-collar and grind-it-out. The Lakers look soft, while the Celts look like the favorites. We’ll see what happens when Game 3 takes place on Tuesday night.

BTW, it seems that the Lakers were -13 with Lamar Odom on the floor, while the Celts were +11 with Sam Cassell and +20(!) with P.J. Brown on the floor. Oy.

UC Irvine-LSU baseball, Game 2

The mood of the day was not good even before the Laker game. When you work at a mid-major conference like I do, you really watch to see what teams you can get to the postseason and how they do, because, obviously, that’s how you get publicity for the institutions and the conference. So we had four teams make the NCAA Baseball Tournament, with Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, UC Davis, and UC Irvine.

Long Beach and Davis went out in the first (regional) round, while Fullerton and Irvine advanced to the second (super regional) round. Both teams advanced to the College World Series last year, with Irvine knocking out Fullerton in a 5 hour, 45 minute 5-4, 14-inning marathon. So imagine how cool it would have been to have both teams return to Omaha again this year. Unfortunately, it was not to be…

Fullerton looked great in the first round on ESPNU, winning at home against Cal, San Diego, and UCLA. They then proceeded to suck it up on ESPN and ESPN2 Friday and Saturday, losing in two games (best two-out-of-three series) at home to Stanford. I was seriously planning on taking the family to Omaha if we had two teams there (of course, I’d be working and Kindra and the kids would be in Des Moines with Grandma and Grandpa).

With Fullerton out, Irvine was the hope since they played the first game of their series on Saturday, crushing LSU 11-5 at LSU. They went up 7-2 in the 4th inning on Sunday and looked good until the 8th when they gave up two runs. They proceeded to give up 5 more in the 9th, losing 9-7. They shoulda pulled their pitcher after he gave up the leadoff walk, or at least after he gave up the single, but… *sigh* The ‘Eaters play Game 3 of their series today, Monday, June 9 at 4:00 p.m. PDT on ESPN2.

Soooooo… instead of having two teams at the CWS, we’re gonna have none. =P

FYI, the Baseball America headline for the game was "Zot Through the Heart, LSU to Blame."

The Belmont Stakes

Is Big Brown the Barry Bonds of horse racing? After the whole “racing is horrible” mess that started after Eight Belles went down at the Kentucky Derby, Big Brown’s trainer had admitted that he’d given Big Brown (like probably every other horse in racing) the steroid winstrol. Reports were that Big Brown may not have been given the steroid since April. After getting annihilated at the Belmont, Big Brown was checked (twice) and nothing was found wrong with him physically. Anybody think it had to do with him not getting his drugs?

It’s funny also that everybody was talking about the “pressure” on Big Brown to win the Triple Crown after destroying everybody else in the Derby and Preakness. My answer was that you probably didn’t need sports psychology for a horse. The consenus after the Belmont was that Big Brown just “didn’t show up.” So, maybe you do need a horse whisperer…

On a Lighter Note…

Since the culture of television and movies seems to have shifted to rehashing old ideas, somebody needs to revive MTV’s old Celebrity Deathmatch, only this time, they need to make it live-action. For the first fight, I nominate Clint Eastwood vs. Spike Lee.

If you haven’t heard, Spike Lee recently complained that there were no black soldiers depicted in Clint Eastwood’s companion movies Flags of Our Fathers and Iwo Jima. Eastwood said that it was historically accurate, because black soldiers were in ammunitions divisions at Iwo Jima and were not involved in the fighting or raising the U.S. flag there. I’m sure that would’ve sufficed, but Eastwood supposedly added that Spike needed to “shut his face.” Spike then responded that Eastwood “sounds like an angry old man” and that Eastwood “is not my father and we’re not on a plantation, either.”

LET'S GET IT ON!

(Side note: Holy shit! In looking stuff up for this blog, I found out that they still made the show through 2007. I guess it airs on MTV2 (sorry, I only get basic cable). Here’s the website.)

I’m looking forward to my Thomas Kinkade TV. Apparently, Samsung has entered into an agreement with the Thomas Kinkade Company to develop a 46-inch TV called the Digital Masterworks Art-TV. Users would have the ability to shift between live TV and displaying digital artwork. As much as Kindra loves Thomas Kinkade, I’m sure we’ll have on hanging on our walls as soon as it becomes a reality. More info here.