Starting Five

1. Allow me to don my Felix Unger cap and wail, “Oscar. Oscar. Oscar.” (Felix, by the way, was television’s first metrosexual). Oscar Pistorious appears in court in Pretoria, where he has been charged with premeditated murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. You have Africa’s most famous athlete (more so even than Didier Drogba), the world’s first double-amputee to compete in track and field at an Olympic Games, and a victim who was once an FHM South Africa cover girl. This story has, um, legs.

2. So, a meteorite lands in Russia, and this video is astounding because… apparently the sun DOES shine in Russia (every time The Big Lead runs one of those “Incredible Traffic Accident” videos from Russia, it’s always gray and miserable and Duluth).

3. The Clippers jumped out to a 15-0 lead and cruised to a 125-101 victory. A few notes: The Clippers are 3-0 against their Staples Center co-tenants this season and have led all but 63 seconds of those 144 minutes of play. The Lakers’ largest lead versus the Clippers? One point…Near game’s end Mike Fratello and Kevin Harlan, reacting to a shot of a laconic Kobe on the bench, wondered aloud what was going through the Mamba’s mind. We all know what he’s thinking: this roster blows. Steve Nash is over the hill and Dwight Howard is either too hurt or too busy making friends (TNT cameras showed Howard smiling and talking with Clipper players after the game while Kobe had presumably already retreated to the locker room and bitten the head off a beat writer from Riverside). I wonder if it’s too late for me to get traded to the Knicks.

4. In other Golden State hoops news, St. Mary’s took a one-point lead into halftime versus Gonzaga on the strength of Matthew Dellavedova’s 19 first-half points. The Zags owned the second half, though, outscoring the Gaels by 18 in a 77-60 win. Kelly Olynyk earns all the ink (I’m guilty, too), but Kevin Pangos and Mike Hart are ultimate glue guys. Oh, and Memphis transfer Drew Barham is, I think, the dad in Modern Family. Or the best sixth man in the nation. And, yes, a white dude once played for Memphis.

Barham, who was the same coif as the dad in Modern Family

And our favorite 7-5 ‘baller, Mamadou Ndiaye, is nursing a bone foot bruise so he did not play in Brethren Christian’s first-round 5AA playoff game versus Public Safety Academy (seriously, that’s their name). BC won 80-28 without him.

5. “On the good ship, Lollipoop…” Carnival Cruise liner Triumph finally docks in Mobile (that’s ironic, seek, cuz it was immobile) and passengers are then ferried directly to New Orleans by bus because the only thing worse than being stranded aboard a floating fecal barge is being stranded in Mobile (I’ve been there; I know). And of course one of the buses breaks down…

I really enjoyed this essay by Paul Whitfield of the Los Angeles Times, who points out that as horrific as this cruise seemed to be (passengers were forced to eat lobster and chocolate cake!), it was still a five-star indulgence compared to what the pilgrims endured back in 1620.

And speaking of Triumph and Carnival Cruises, the company’s CEO is Micky Arison, who also happens to own the Miami Heat, which recorded its seventh straight triumph, at Oklahoma City, as LeBron James went for 39 points (even if he failed to shoot 60% from the field)

Reserves

Carl Icahn versus Bill Ackman is perhaps the best feud outside of sports. Two billionaires wrestling over a company, Herb-A-Life, that otherwise no one would care about. Ackman is shorting it. Icahn just revealed earlier today that he owns an 18% share of it. What is this really about? The CNBC talking heads say it’s about nothing more than money, but having spent enough time around Wall Street types, here’s my opinion:

Icahn and Ackman represent the two polar opposite Wall Street alpha-male stereotypes. The former is a brilliant guy who only got where he got on his sheer finance acumen. The latter represents the type all too prevalent on Wall Street: the handsome banker who gets by on some intelligence but equally on his ability to look spiffy in an Armani suit while tossing back Hendrick’s & tonic at the Bull and Bear. That banker played by Christian Bale in “American Psycho”? Michael Douglas in “Wall Street”? That’s closer to reality than you might imagine.

Guys like Icahn loathe guys like Ackman because in their opinion, they just haven’t earned it. Guys like Ackman just smile and board the seaplane or helicopter just after lunch on Friday for the Hamptons. This will get uglier.

Smart vs Handsome (Aren’t some of us lucky to be both?) 🙂

ESPN’s Wright Thompson obtained Jack McCallum-like access to Michael Jordan and he certainly did not squander the opportunity. Great piece here. Me, I’m thinking that Quinn Buckner basically has all-VIP access to Michael Jordan AND Larry Bird. How come we don’t all find Buckner, who played on a national championship team at Indiana and whom his coach, Bob Knight, has often referred to as his favorite player, more intriguing?

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On Late Show Jerry Seinfeld not only appears but does a six-minute set focusing on his annoyance with people reminding him to stay hydrated, movie theaters asking us to pick up our own trash, and the obsession with cold beer (“Beer is never cold enough for Americans. Every commercial: Frost-brewed, cold-filtered, ice-bottled. We pack it in a glacier put it in the back of a frozen truck driven by a polar bear. By the time it gets to you it’s one degree below room temperature. Sorry, that’s the best we can do.”). Years ago Seinfeld told Bob Costas, “My entire act is about paying attention.” He still does that better than anyone else.

Former San Diego mayor Maureen O’Connor, 66, wagered more than a billion dollars at Las Vegas casinos over the past decade and ended up with net losses of $13 million. And it’s not as if she has the assets of, say, Kelly Lundy, to just recoup that money via the world’s oldest profession. She’s actually a dead ringer for Susan Boyle. O’Connor came by her initial windfall by being married to the founder of Jack In The Box.

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Highlights from last night’s set list on the Papal Farewell Tour: Benedict opens with the Our Father (who does that!?!) and then takes a gospel reading from the Book of Luke. Baptizes AND marries a Ukrainian couple just after the homily. Burns incense and announces after communion that a second collection will be taken up for the U.S. debt, which draws huge laughs from the Euro congregation. Dave Grohl sits in with the band. It was a tight set.

Starting Five

1. To paraphrase Duran Duran, “No! No! Pistorius!” South African Olympic 400-meter runner/double amputee Oscar Pistorius fatally shoots his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, in the early morning hours of Valentine’s Day.

Did Pistorius, who was at his home in a gated community in Pretoria, mistake her for a burglar? Or was this a domestic dispute? Police have initially charged the “Blade Runner” with murder.

Steenkamp

2. The late genius wordsmith David Foster Wallace once penned a brutally funny piece for Harper’s titled “Shipping Out”  (later titled, more fittingly, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”) in which he spent a week on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, a week that led to –because it was DFW– extreme internal despair. DFW noted, for instance, that being a passenger on a cruise ship flloating on the sea was not unlike being a fetus floating inside amniotic fluid, as all of your nourishment needs are taken care of for you and you become a passive agent of indulgence (it should be noted that DFW ultimately committed suicide). Anyway, I kept thinking of DFW’s piece as I read about the passengers on the Carnival Cruise line Triumph that lost power this week and became a floating hell, as 3,000 passengers found themselves without working toilets and chilled shrimp. At least the Titanic went down in an hour or two.

Triumph: “This is a good ship…FOR ME TO POOP ON!”

You can’t help but read about this without summoning some sardonic chuckles (at least I can’t). Imagine not just the misery, but the exponentially greater amount of whining and complaining that has taken place the past three days. Imagine what it must be like to be a crew member on this ship. How did the occupants pass the time while adrift on this derelict barge of fecal matter? I imagine it went down just like this.

3. Jim Boeheim, making friends. The Syracuse coach, between sniffs, called ESPN’s Andy Katz “an idiot” and “a really disloyal person.” I don’t know about the former, but I’m curious what Mr. Boeheim’s first wife thought about that “really disloyal person” comment. Memo to all aspiring sports writers: Loyalty is a far more valued trait among college coaches than truth. In that way they are just like jihadists. On a related note, after UConn’s 66-58 win over No. 6 Syracuse last night in Hartford, New London Day columnist Mike DiMauro broke out the pom-poms.

4. The last hours of Christopher Dorner. How incredible is it that he was holed up for days just 100 yards or so from the police command post that was set up to hold press briefings? Look around, people. Be alert (the world needs lerts).

5. So as I understand it, Derrick Rose is going all Peter Gibbons on the Bulls (“I wouldn’t say I was missing it”)?

Reserves

It’s’ White Dude/International Student hoops heaven tonight as No. 5 Gonzaga (23-2) and seven-foot Canadian Kelly Olynyk visits unranked St. Mary’s (21-4) and scruffy Australian Matthew Dellavedova (who hit this game-winning shot at BYU last month in what was the best last five seconds of a game this season; kudos to Randy Bennett for not calling timeout) on ESPN2 at 11 p.m.

Dellavedova, the mangy mutt of college hoops

Of course, earlier in the evening, the world’s two best basketball players will square off in Oklahoma City as the Thunder host the Heat. When did it become a good idea to name sports teams after weather?

Notes from Pope Benedict XVI’s farewell tour: First of all, if you can get a pew, do it! The Pope is breaking out a lot of his old material — he does a Nicene Creed without using “consubstantial” — and there’s a few surprise guests who pop in to concelebrate the host (I won’t spoil it for you). Lastly, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but he turns up the house lights during the Agnus Dei. As the congregation sings along.

The dry ice was Benedict’s homage to ’80s hair metal

Starting Five

1. Black Dog. No, not this Black Dog. This black dog, Banana Joe, a five year-old Affenpinscher (and if you’ve ever had your Affen pinsched, you know how painful it can be), won Best In Show at the Westminter Dog Show last night.

Banana Joe was doggin’ it in Madison Square Garden.

2. “Good, good, good, Good Hydrations/He’s takin’ some good hydration/Wants the GOP nomination/Good, bop-bop…” Florida senator Marco Rubio provides the Republican response to the POTUS SOTU (which, admittedly, sounds like a trendy new sushi kitchen) and all anyone can blather about is that he reached for an off-camera bottle of Poland Spring (which, as Elaine Benes will attest,  is a far better brand name than Moland Spring). As someone on Twitter correctly quipped, “The hysteria over this underscores our ravenous appetite for any moment that is unscripted.”

Agua fria! Muy bueno!

3. Speaking of which, CNN held viewers spellbound yesterday with the last throes of the Christopher Dorner manhunt around Big Bear Lake yesterday afternoon. It was a tragic saga that left four people dead, excluding Dorner, and also leaves us wondering. At one point Dorner car-jacked a vehicle and as the victim, Rick Heltebrake, later described it, told him, “I don’t want to hurt you. Just get out and start walking up the road and take your dog with you.”

Less than an hour or so later, Dorner was in a shootout with two sheriff’s deputies that left one of the officers dead. So he wasn’t a madman bent on killing anyone who got on his path. He had an agenda, and he had a very focused idea of who his enemies were.

Details and facts will later emerge, and there is no good excuse for killing innocent people, which is where Dorner’s spree began. Still, when you see the photos of him in police and military gear, with that cherubic smile, you get a sense that somewhere along the way someone robbed him of something. Robbed him of more than just a job and a career.

In happier days

It’s easy for the media –not all media, mind you — to portray him as a madman, and for some on the far opposite end of the spectrum to portray him as a hero. The truth, I think, lies in between. Somewhere along the way, I bet, he was the victim. Somewhere along the way the system screwed him and his sense of what is fair and what is just was, well, raped. If you have ever been there professionally (raises hand), you understand the rage that wells up inside.

That said, that’s no excuse to take innocent lives. I’ll be curious to see where the LAPD’s internal investigation of Dorner’s dismissal leads.

4. The Olympics plans to cancel wrestling, while the X Games have definitely canceled Snowmobile Freestyle. The former event has been around since the dawn of the Olympics in Greece and the inaugural modern Games in 1896; the latter resulted in the death of Caleb Moore last month. The 2020 Olympics will be the first without wrestling. X Games Tignes, the second of six global X Games events planned this year, will be the first without Snowmobile Freestyle.

5. Dallas Grizzly? James Harden still has the NBA’s most famous beard in the state of Texas, but keep an eye on the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs, who are currently 22-29 and host Sacramento tonight, have vowed to don beards until they reach .500. That may take awhile. To be accurate, Mav stars such as Dirk Nowitzki, Vince Carter and O.J. Mayo do plan on shaving,  but they will simply trim their beards. Why not just refrain from shaving altogether? Wouldn’t that create a greater sense of urgency?

The Mavs hope to save face by sporting beards

Reserves

Yes, there is a high school baseball player in Florida named Fenway Parks.

Remember two days ago when The Big Lead suggested that Jadeveon Clowney sit out next years before making himself eligible for the NFL Draft (because a rule that should be eradicated compels football players to be three years removed from high school before being eligible for the draft)? Well, last night Kentucky frosh Nerlens Noel, sort of the Clowney of college hoops, suffered a gruesome season-ending knee injury in the Wildcats’ loss at Florida.

LeBron scores 30 and shoots above 60% for the sixth consecutive game last night in the Heat’s 117-104 defeat of Portland. Incredible. For what it’s worth, the game’s high scorer with 33 points was Trail Blazer rookie Damien Lillard.

By the way, Kobe Bryant scored four points in the Lakers’ 91-85 defeat of Phoenix last night. Kobe shot one for eight from the floor and committed eight turnovers.

The Golden State Warriors, who were 30-17 when their cross-bay brethren, the San Francisco 49ers, played Super Bowl XLVII, have lost five straight since. The San Jose Sharks are also 0-5 since Super Bowl Sunday.

You know what profession is in trouble somewhat? Banking. Barclays, whose gleaming post-9/11 headquarters are located on the corner of 50th Street and 7th Ave. in Manhattan, announced yesterday that it will lay off 3,700 staffers. Meanwhile,  Dutch bank ING Groep announced that it will lay off 2,400 employees. That’s a lot of people who are used to earning six-figure salaries, and more. Reality bites.

 Starting Five

1. “These bitches is getting truculent.” Highly recommended reading. Phil Bronstein’s account of the raid on Osama bin Laden through the eyes of the Shooter himself. We learn that the aforementioned sentence were the last words exchanged between the point man on the raid and the Shooter prior to his killing the leader of Al Qaida. The “bitches” in question were bin Laden’s wives. We also learn that Metallica did not appreciate the U.S. military using their music during interrogations because it did not want to be associated with promoting violence. As the Shooter pointed out, “Dude, you guys have an album titled ‘Kill ’em All.‘”

2. And that’s how he earned the nickname Woody. Did former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes really have a turtle clamp down on his B1G  to demonstrated toughness to Earle Bruce’s coaching staff, or is this tale literally an Urban (Meyer) legend? More than once while relating this anecdote, Meyer reiterates that it is a “true story.” Apocryphal or not, the unnamed assistant coach’s retort — “Coach, I’d do this. Just promise to not poke me in the eye” — is classic.

Woody: “Fear the turtle? Never!”

3. Is it just a coincidence that on the same wintry February day in New York City that the Westminster Kennel Club names its Best in Show Sports Illustrated trots out is annual swimsuit issue models? Top-notch breeding is top-notch breeding, after all, no matter the species.

Nina Agdal does not grace this year’s cover, but the feeling here is that some day the Danish valkyrie shall.

4. Four Alabama football players are arrested on charges of second-degree robbery and fraudulent use of a credit card. The big winner in this mess? Stormie Henderson, a former Miss Alabama contestant (are there any women in Alabama who do not compete in beauty pageants?) who just happened to have the great forturne of being arrested in Tuscaloosa on the same night for leaving the scene of an accident. Her photo appeared on the same jail database page and she can expect a phone call to appear in next year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue soon.

5. Will Leitch decides to annihilate Darren Rovell’s professional reputation –without actually calling him a bad guy because, you know, Will Leitch is too nice a guy to say something mean about someone. That this column ran not long after Rovell pointed out –via a tweet from Leitch — that apparently Leitch is both a slow and feckless runner (Will explains the source of the misunderstanding in this story) is certainly just a coincidence.

Our thoughts: Rovell is kind of a tool (kind of?) and everyone knows this. Nice guy, maybe, but kind of a tool. My illuminating Rovell moment took place before last year’s Super Bowl. During a media session Rovell, then with CNBC, went around to different players on the New York Giants and New England Patriots and asked them elementary stock questions, questions such as, “Do you know what a P-to-E is?”

The laugh was supposed to be on the gridders. Nudge, nudge, they may be big, strong, wealthy athletes, but we all know more about the stock market than they do. The rub here, of course, is that Rovell understood/understands less about finance than any of the other CNBC anchors. And so it was “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen who turned the tables on Darren by asking him, on-air and definitely unscripted, more sophisticated equities questions. Kernen may have come right out and said to Rovell (I seem to recall him doing this), “How does it feel?”

Tool Time

There was no amity in Kernen’s comments and you could tell that Kernen, and the rest of the CNBC on-air people, thought of Rovell as, at best, immature. At worst, dumb and insipid. I rather enjoyed the entire exchange.

All of which does not excuse Leitch for his anti-Rovell polemic yesterday. First, because as we can see from reading the two pieces, Leitch’s passion was motivated by vengeance. And, in truth, Rovell was only pointing out to his followers something that Leitch, who is at least as well-known as Rovell is, had foisted upon himself.

Second, because Leitch –and this is his longtime M.O., along with relying on unnamed sources to bolster his argument — does this “I’m a nice guy and I’m not about to say something mean or hurtful about anyone” schtick shortly before writing mean and hurtful things. He’s the Venomous Equivocator (“I can’t find a single person that likes Darren Rovell… that sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it personally”) I’d respect Leitch more if he just went 100% after Rovell without doing the whole, “but you seem like a decent enough guy in person.”

Like you, I enjoy much of Will Leitch’s writing. But I don’t respect him. I do respect Buzz Bissinger. I respect Buzz because he looked Will Leitch dead in the eye and said, “I gotta be honest: I think you’re full of shit.” Buzz said what he meant and meant what he said, directly to his subject. Is Will Leitch capable of that? Or is he guilty of the same thing of which he accused Rovell: “intellectual dishonesty?”

Starting Five

1. Taking care of business (and workin’ overtime). No. 11 Louisville and No. 25 Notre Dame went into overtime for the sixth time in their last eight meetings. As you know, the Fighting Irish prevailed in the fifth OT, 104-101. Notes:

— It marked the second time this academic year that the ranked Irish beat a ranked Cardinal(s) in overtime on campus. See: Stanford, October 13.

— Notre Dame reserve big man Garrick Sherman (who bears an uncanny likeness to the subject of the mosaic on the side of the Hesburgh Library) played 21 minutes and scored 17 points, with all of the latter coming after regulation. Sherman had played a total of 18 minutes in the previous six games.

Sherman resurrected Notre Dame’s hopes in overtime.

— Louisville led by eight points with 47 seconds remaining. Notre Dame guard Jerian Grant then scored 12 points in the final 45 seconds: three threes plus an and-one layup. Until that final minute Grant had not scored a field goal.

–Former Notre Dame coach Digger Phelps, who led the Irish to an upset of No. 1 UCLA back in January of 1974 to end the all-time longest winning streak in major sports history (88 games), was at the Purcell Center for ESPN’s College GameDay. Earlier that day Casey Murdoch, a Notre Dame senior majoring in finance, had made a half-court shot (on his second attempt). Murdoch banked it in and will now bank $18K.

–Referee John Gaffney subbed in for another official who was stranded in Providence due to the storm. Gaffney worked the DePaul-Marquette game in Milwaukee that began at 3 p.m., then made the four-hour trek to South Bend (we’re hoping he stopped at the McDonald’s service island on I-94) for the 9 p.m. start. We are unable to report if Gaffney himself whistled any traveling violations, or if he was cited for any during his commute.

2. LeBron is a Hot Hot Heat (For you crossover NBA/Canadian Indie band fans)

In the past week LeBron James, who already was the best basketball player on the planet, has taken his game to historic levels. King James scored 32 points on 12 of 18 shooting in Miami’s 107-97 defeat of the Kobes yesterday afternoon. It was James’ fifth consecutive game of scoring at least 30 while shooting above 60%, a feat that only two other players (Moses Malone and Adrian Dantley) have ever accomplished. Late in the contest LeBron stole an entry pass into the lane and began dribbling upcourt. By the time he reached midcourt with a full head of steam it was already “Get Outta The Way!” time. Poor Steve Nash. Twice in the fourth quarter he was the lone Laker back to absorb one of James’ dunks.

These are the Heat’s best uniforms, by the way.

3. Australian musician Gotye wins “Record of the Year” at the Grammys for “Somebody I Used To Know“, a song that Rolling Stone’s editors, in their infinite wisdom, failed to include in their “50 Best Songs of 2012.” Our opinion? It definitely falls somewhere in between the two assessments, with its Grammy nod being closer to its true value (even if he may have stolen the signature riff and more from Tom Petty’s “A Woman in Love”). Gotye, with an assist from Kimbra, nailed his performance on Saturday Night Live last spring.

4. The Christopher Dorner manhunt in southern California. In the snowy haven of the San Bernadino mountains, less than a two-hour drive (if there’s no traffic, which means at 4 a.m.) east of Los Angeles, a former LAPD officer is hiding out. Or is he? Dorner, who has already killed three in his rampage to exact vengeance on those who he blames for ending his career, could be anywhere. He has both military and police training and is an expert in survival. Authorities are offering a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

Where will this end?

5. What is Pope Benedict XVI giving up for Lent? Apparently, his job. The last pope to resign, as opposed to dying on the job, was Gregory XII in the year 1415. As of this moment Jon Gruden is the favorite to succeed Benedict.

Reserves

Big Ten hoops: Three points and a cloud of Brust. Nearly as entertaining as Ben Brust’s 40-footer that sent the Michigan-Wisconsin game into overtime was the, ahem, badgering that Dan Dakich gave Bo Ryan about his failure to commit fouls-to-give in the play preceding that shot. Dakich ended his interrogation with a Champ Summers-like “I love you.”

Sunday morning SportsCenter. Bob Ley asks Screamin’ A. Smith, “Do the Knicks have enough to overtake the Heat?” Smith responds in his typical condescending tone, “That’s a simple answer: No.” Which would have been fine with Ley, except that Smith then proceeds to deliver a 90-second polemic on why the Knicks don’t have what it takes. When Screamin’ A finally pauses for air, Ley says with a smile on his face, “You said it was a simple answer, but thanks for the essay.”

Yesterday Michelle Beadle tweeted, “I love New York”, to which Doug Gottlieb replied, “I love lamp.” Brick Tamland and the rest of the Channel 4 Evening News salute you, Doug.