Starting Five

1. We should all be watching, when we get the chance, Creighton’s Doug McDermott. The six-foot-eight junior from Ames, Iowa (“Ames High Aims High”….seriously, that’s the school’s motto) is averaging 23.9 points for the No. 21 Bluejays. Last night McDermott, whose father, Greg, is Creighton’s coach, had 29 points and 10 boards in a 91-77 win against No Longer Directional Missouri State. ESPN’s Jay Williams calls McDermott “the best player in the country.” Surely he is the best college basketball player to play for his pop since Pete Maravich, no?

Yes, this native Iowan-turned-Bluejay is Korveresque

2. Loss Angeles blows a 13-point, fourth quarter lead at Phoenix in Steve Nash’s return to the Valley of the Sun. Nash had just two assists as the Lakers now defer to Kobe as the point/points guard in their halfcourt offense –and, seriously, L.A. has no transition game, so that’s about it. In LA’s last four games, Kobe has 48 assists while Nash, who is No. 5 all time on the career assists list, has 14.

LA is not Nash-ville

For us, there was a telling moment late in the first quarter as the camera panned LA’s bench. There was Nash, doing what he always does when he is not in the game, sitting on the floor and staring intently at the court. Behind him, seated on a chair, center Dwight Howard was looking off to his left, away from the court, and talking to someone who was seated in the stands. Told us all we needed to know about L.A.’s dysfunction.

3. Final episode of 30 Rock, the best network sitcom of this millennium, airs tonight. This will always be our favorite scene.

4. On The Daily Show, correspondent Al Madrigal reports from Hispanic Room/His Panic Room. The moment of beauty is when Madrigal shows data that show the length of grudges (using a unit measurement of generations) by ethnicity. No. 1? Italian, followed by Irish, followed by Hispanic. “A Hispanic grudge lasts four generations,” says Madrigal. “The good news is, a Hispanic generation lasts only seven years.”

5. The New York Post reports that Dan Marino fathered a love child (why do they use that term? Isn’t “lust child” more accurate?) with a CBS staffer back in 2005. Marino will only appear on air during Super Bowl pre-game festivities for four hours on Sunday, so he probably will not have time to address this topic. By the way, the story broke on the date of Marino’s 28th wedding anniversary. Nice touch, NY Post. And, Dan? Ray Lewis thanks you.

Starting Five

1. A-Rod, A-Roid, A-Void

The New York Yankees are looking into voiding the remainder of Alex Rodriguez’s contract after a Miami New Times story implicates him in PED use. The Yanks could save $114 million over the next five years if that were to happen, although they would need to begin searching for a hitter with the unique talent for sending infield pop-ups to the ionosphere with bases loaded in the ninth inning.

It’s unlikely that the Balmers Bombers will be able to void much, if any, of A-Rod’s deal, which is sad, because I’d love to see them use the money to bring back Wilhelm and Costanza.

As an aside, World’s Cleverest Man Steve Rushin, acknowledging that the story reports that deer antler is a source of testosterone, tweets, “Who has superhuman endurance and easy access to deer antler? Say it ain’t so, Santa.”

2. “Warriors, Come Out and Play-yay!”

Our favorite NBA team, in a post Steve Nash-with-the-Suns planet, is the Golden State Warriors. Last night in Cleveland the Oakland-based squad won their second road game in less than 36 hours, 108-95. The victory is more impressive than it sounds, as starters Stephen Curry, Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut all sat out. Feat of Klay Thompson scored a career-high 32 points. Good, young nucleus on this small-market squad. I cannot wait to see how the referees screw them when they face either L.A. team, OKC or San Antonio in the playoffs.

Shooting at the walls of heartache –bang bang!– I am the Warrior!

3. Great editor, great friend and even better human search engine Barry Werner informs us that the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League (AHL) have a defenseman named Michal Jordan. In Charlotte. We are more thrilled with the fact that Jordan hails from the Czech Republic, making him a Czech Checker. In case you wondered, he stands six-foot-one, 195 pounds, so Jordan is no chubby Checker.

4. Do you remember Mamadou Ndiaye? We wrote about the seven-foot-five high school center last January for The Daily. Now a senior at Brethren Christian Academy in Huntington Beach, Calif., Ndiaye is still nonchalantly scoring around 24 points and grabbing 10 boards per game against small-school prep competition. Last night, though, the Senegalese native scored 45 points (on 22 of 26 shooting) and grabbed 15 rebounds in a 76-55 defeat of Oxford Academy.

Get used to seeing a little more of UC-Irvine on television next season

Anyway, last November Ndiaye signed a letter of intent with UC-Irvine, which will allow him to remain close to his adoptive parents (who to this point have shielded him from the media). Oddly enough, Ndiaye signed with the Anteaters on the day after they lost by one point in overtime at UCLA, a game that could have been secured as a huge upset for the program if a starter hadn’t missed two free throws in the final 22 seconds of regulation. Of course, signing Ndiaye (Georgetown was a strong contender for his services) may ultimately be the greater upset.

5. We caught a little of the embarrassing banter between Stuart Scott, Merrill Hoge and Trent Dilfer on last night’s ESPN SportsCenter in the wake of the Ray Lewis controversy/nontroversy at media day. In a post-Lance Armstrong-confesses world, the fact that neither Lewis or Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome would go any further than “Ray NEVER tested positive for PEDs” is not a good enough answer to the Sports Illustrated story that alleges he used them after his biceps tear earlier this season.

“Why would Sports Illustrated come out with that story on Tuesday of Super Bowl week?” asked Hoge, a question that should’ve immediately led to NFL doctors administering a CTE scan on him (and, yes, we know that they’re only normally done post-mortem…that’s kind of our point).

If Ray Lewis wants to be insulted by such a question, that’s his prerogative. He’s either telling the truth or he isn’t and professional athletes long ago lost the benefit of the doubt when it comes to PEDs. That Scott, Hoge and Dilfer gave absolutely zero credence to the allegations, that they all failed to address whether there is the potential for truth in the story or even acknowledge that, you know, Lewis isn’t actually a pillar of integrity when it comes to providing substantive answers to accusations, probably gave Bob Ley a migraine.

Scott, who happens to be president of the Stuart Scott Fan Club, in fact turned from the issue and instead informed us that someone had the temerity to ask Lewis a question about passing gas in the Ravens’ locker room. As if that query were as silly and extraneous as the PED question.

Awful, awful journalism, ESPN. Embarrassing, really.

Starting Five

1. Houston Rockets 125, Utah Jazz 80

–The worst moment for Jazz since Dave Brubeck died.

–Worst home loss in Utah Jazz history. The Jazz actually trailed by 50 points, 125-75, before a five-point outburst in the game’s final 20 seconds.

–The Rockets were delayed by a blizzard in western Colorado and were unable to take off from the airport in Denver. So much for that being a detriment.

–Utah was undefeated at the Delta Center in January (6-0) prior to the contest.

–Jeremy Lin had time the night before to attend the Sundance Film Festival and attend the screening of “Linsanity.” Then he shot five for five in the game.

—Gordon Hayward did not play for the Jazz.

— Former Utah Ute great Wataru Misaka, who is 89, attended the game. Misaka, a 5-7 point guard, was the first Asian player in NBA history (1947-48 New York Knicks) and before that led the Utes to the NCAA championship in 1944. Misaka is of Japanese descent. Think about that for a moment. A Japanese-American basketball player leading a school to the NCAA championship at the height of World War II in the Pacific theater. I smell a movie…

2. Beginning Tuesday, Apple will sell a new  iPad4 that has 128 gigabytes of memory as opposed to the current model, which has 64. So the iPad4 is doubing in memory size from 64 to 128 gigs, or as I call it, Boeheiming.

3. On The Daily Show, Samantha Bee absolutely kills it in this report (“Women’s War Daily”) on females in combat.  Our favorite moments are when Sam snaps her fingers to create a black-and-white Mayberry universe and when she’s chowing down on the Ben & Jerry’s. Author Kingsley Browne’s quote will live in infamy and guarantee that he never gets laid by anyone under the age of senile: “Girls become women by getting older; boys become men by accomplishing something.” Then again, with a name like Kingsley Browne, how could the author being interviewed NOT be a troglodyte?

Bee, not afraid

Remember the scene in “Broadcast News” when Jack Nicholson, as the network anchor, smiles at the end of Holly Hunter’s piece as a sign of his approval? Watch Jon Stewart’s reaction when the camera returns to him after Bee’s piece. He is obviously pleased. 4. David Letterman on Dr. Phil interviewing Ronaiah Tuiasosopo: “You have a guy pretending to be a girlfriend talking to a guy pretending to be a doctor.” That’s gold, Jerry! 5. So, if we have our facts straight, both the Boy Scouts of America and the Toronto Raptors are open to accepting Gays?  

Unfortunately, Rudy is too old to be a Boy Scout. Age discrimination!

Reserves

Skylar Diggins scores 33 points as Notre Dame defeats Tennessee in Knoxville. Not only was it the Irish’s first win at Tennessee, but in the past three weeks Notre Dame has beaten both UConn and the Lady Vols on the road. No team had done that in the same season since 1980, pre-Geno. The times, they are a changin’…

Media moves: Chris Cuomo is headed from ABC to CNN (by the transitive property, I’ve dated Chris Cuomo). Joe Posnanski is headed from Sports on Earth to NBC Sports (by no property and on no property have I ever dated Joe Posnanski).

By the way, we forgot to mention that unranked Villanova defeated a pair of schools ranked in the top five last week (No. 5 Louisville and No. 3 Syracuse) while unranked LaSalle defeated a tandem of top 20 opponents (No. 9 Butler and No. 19 VCU). Solid week for Philadelphia college hoops.

Today’s impertinent thought: Speaking of college basketball rankings, how quaint. Why does anyone bother ranking teams when 68 teams are invited to compete in March Madness? Here’s an idea that might add some actual drama to the months of December, January and February college hoops as opposed to it being the longest preseason in sports: Reduce the tournament size to 32 teams.

I know, I know, we all love the frenzy of the first two days of the tourney. However, nobody is able to view all the games with as many as four taking place simultaneously. In a 32-team field, the first round would run from Thursday to Sunday, with four games taking place each day. Each site would have a doubleheader.

For those of you who bark about the 250 0r schools who’d no longer have a chance to compete in the NCAA tournament, well, I’m sorry. You can split Division I into two divisions (as occurs in football) while leaving open the possibility of relegation for schools or entire divisions that are on the border.

The point is, rankings woud suddenly matter. The regular season would suddenly matter. And since a No. 16 seed has still never beaten a No. 1 seed in about three decades of play, I’m not all that concerned about the final teams no longer getting their “shot.” They’ve had shot after shot after shot. Just because you include them on the bracket doesn’t mean they are actually competing in the tournament.

Tiger Woods the year’s inaugural PGA Tour event while (we belatedly report) Novak Djokovic wins the Australian Open. It’s somewhat reassuring when the premier players in their sport win. Novak Djokovic, by the way: very handsome man. We can say that.

Granted, this is not Novak’s best look

Terrific interview this morning between Matt Lauer and Al Gore on Today. The former veep was positively poetic in describing the inarguable realities of climate change: “Every day is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation on the news.” A serendipitous quip there, since Today had just done a report on epic flooding that is waterlogging Queensland, Australia.

Gore did fumble in his defense of the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera. Lauer noted that Gore made $100 million on the deal and that Al Jazeera is funded by the government of Qatar, which gets almost all of its money via oil. “Isn’t that hypocritical?” Lauer asked. “I see your point,” said Gore, who is always unfailingly polite (and that may have cost him the 2000 election), “but I don’t agree with it. Al Jazeera has done solid reporting on climate change.”

Sorry, Al. Not good enough. The judges were looking for, “I see your point, but money trumps everything.”

*******

Bob Costas, talking the “gun culture” on The Daily Show: “Guns are glorified in hip-hop culture. Some 70% of the players in the NFL are African-American. Not all of them are influenced by that part of the culture, but guns are glorified.” Because you just can’t go out and say, “It’s black people’s fault.”

Earlier in the interview Costas noted, in relation to gun culture, that Sly Stallone has a movie out entitled “Bullet to the Head”, leading Stewart to swiftly quip, “Well, when you’ve already thrown momma from the train…”

Letterman on Manti Te’o: “It’s not like he’s at West Undershirt, Wyoming. It’s Notre Dame.” Don’t know where Dave pulled that term out from, but we like it. Dave did err by saying a few times that Manti “dated” this woman for four years. Not exactly. Rob Burnett, if you’re reading this, I’m available for fact-checking at The Late Show.

******

The New York Daily News has an “exclusive” report of Tim Tebow training in Paradise Valley, Arizona. A Jet becomes a snowbird. And kudos to the reporter who talked his editor into giving him a few days in Arizona away from NYC in late January. Well done, my friend.

Starting Five

1. Ron-D’oh!

     Boston Celtic point guard Rajon Rondo, who was leading the league in assists and was voted as a starter in next month’s All-Star Game, will miss the remainder of the season with a torn ACL. Items:

      A. That’s the second year in a row that the Eastern Conference All-Star starter at point guard suffers a season-ending ACL tear (2012, Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls).

Rondo suffered the injury in Friday’s double-OT loss at Atlanta

      B. Pretty crummy month to be a sports fan in Boston, eh?

     C. Rondo’s replacement will likely be Kyrie Irving. The second-year player for the Cleveland Cavs, who is still not old enough to legally imbibe spirits, has averaged 35.6 points per in his last three outings, all Cav wins.

      D. Where do the Celtics send Kevin Garnett and/or Paul Pierce? I like the latter to the Lakers (he’s an L.A. native) and the former to the Knicks, since he and ‘Melo have some conversing to do.

2. Okay, honestly, if someone was unfrozen after a 20-year spell and you asked him, “Which of these is a golf course and which is a golfer — Tiger Woods and Torrey Pines?”  wouldn’t the correct answer occur about 50% of the time? Woods is on the cusp of winning his 8th event at Torrey Pines later today, as Sunday’s final round was suspended by darkness, as opposed to being suspended by The Darkness which, let’s face it, would be rockin’… (“Touchin’ you-ooo-ooo, touchin’ meeee-eeee-eee!”).

Don’t you foresee a huge year ahead, a year of redemption and rebirth, for Woods? I  have him winning two majors (at least!), remarrying Elin and starting a family band (and none of us are invited!). But here’s the thing, and how delicious would this be…. Tiger and Elin remarry after Tiger puts his pawprint on that $350 million fidelity prenup Elin is reportedly waving in his face.

Then, as soon as they walk back down the aisle after the vows, someone hands Elin an Entenmann’s Marshmallow Iced Devil’s Food Cake –and a fork– and she commences chowing down. And chowing down. She takes it to new levels of gluttony, leaving that  obese diner in the restaurant in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” (“I couldn’t eat another bite…”) in her wake.

Elin could take the term “have your cake and eat it, too” to previously unseen limits

Elin becomes….wait for it…. The Biggest Gainer.  And Tiger will just have to sit there and take it because it’ll cost him $350 VERY LARGE should he go chasing companionship elsewhere. I already have the title for this film when it is eventually released: Silver Linings Payback. Admittedly, because one of the two main characters is a Tiger, I did strongly consider the title Life of Pie.

3. When Billionaires Attack

      Billionaire hedge fund managers Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman engaged in a world-class pissing match during CNBC’s “Halftime” show on Friday. It began one day earlier when Icahn appeared on Bloomberg and ripped Ackman for shorting Herbalife. On Friday Ackman appeared on Halftime (via phone) with Scott Wapner (Rainman’s favorite TV business reporter) and called Icahn a hypocrite, saying that he himself has shorted positions in the past.

That’s when the real fun began. Icahn phoned in to CNBC and called Ackman a “crybaby” and a “loser” and basically, as the kids say, “lost his #$*&.” Every monitor on every Wall Street trading desk — not to mention at every hedge fund — quickly turned up the volume. Listen in to Ackman Icahn Overdrive.

It’s like Phyllis Walters says: “All the money in the world cannot buy you class.” Okay, Phyllis Walters does not actually say that, but she does say, “They think WHO they are”, which is pretty much the same thing.

4. At the SAG Awards, Maggie Smith fails to win in two categories — but as a 78 year-old actress, she has her own SAG issues. Argo takes home “Best Cast in a Motion Picture”, which is wonderfully ironic since Argo is a film in which many of the characters are portraying cast members in a film that is a hoax. It’s kind of the Lennay Kekua of films.

Dick Van Dyke was given a Lifetime Achievement Award but, disappointingly, his speech was coherent and he failed to declare that he was single.

Jessica Chastain, who looks like movie starlets used to look, which is to say like Jessica Rabbit.

5. FLORI-DUH: It’s a story in which the headline itself contains the words “Naked” “Poop” and “Masturbate.” Just when you think you’ve read the most Flori-duh story ever, a new one comes along to top it. Thank you, Sunshine State!

Reserves

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times wants to save you$12, and his review of Movie 43 may just do that. Our favorite line: “…whenever a Gerard Butler or a Johnny Knoxville or a Jason Sudeikis or an Uma Thurman became available and/or were blackmailed, (producer Peter) Farrelly would bring in a director, and they’d shoot a scene. Unfortunately, the shooting was never fatal.”

This is easily the worst-looking half-court shot for dough we have ever seen that actually went in. The man who made the shot, Michael Drysch, won $75,000 (before taxes will knock that sum down to $50-something thousand). We love that LeBron James tackles him after he connects, but we wonder if LeBron tackles Kwame Brown after every shot he makes…. see, cuz

Today’s newphemism: Cemetery equals Eternity Ward.

A week or so ago we told you about Northern Illinois’ men’s hoops team, which scored just five points in the first half versus Dayton last month. Last Saturday? The Huskies bottomed that with a four-point first half versus Eastern Michigan. NIU shot just 1 of 33 from beyond the arc, which begs the question, at what point do they realize they might want to stop chucking up three-pointers?

Let history note that it was Daveon Balls who made NIU’s lone three, with 2:05 remaining. It was the Huskies’ 33rd and final three attempt on the day (quit when you’re behind). Let history also note that LeBron did not tackle him afterward.

Grapevine, Texas: “Teen’s Birthday Party Ends in Murder-Suicide” . True. This was also the working plot for “Sixteen Candles” until a last-minute rewrite (not true).

Baylor’s six-foot-eight Brittney Griner establishes a new NCAA record, men or women, for career blocked shots with 665. As impressive as that figure is, Darren Rovell has blocked far more people on Twitter.

What do these two have in common?

Our first crush, Olivia Newton-John, opens a Wellness Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. We’ll send $5 to the first person who walks in and tells the desk attendant, “I’ve got chills. They’re multiplying!”

“Tell me more, tell me more, about your mud baths and kale sundae”

You know who is a fantastic interviewer? Cat Greenleaf of Talk Stoop. She asks sharp, curious questions. You know what Cat does that so many attractive female interviewers do not? She L-I-S-T-E-N-S. Here she is with Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos.

On his wonderful blog Roger Ebert posted these candid and revealing outtakes from his Siskel & Ebert days. You get to see Roger at his most brilliant, arrogant and pedantic, while Gene reminds us so much of our good friend and former SI colleague Marty Burns (also a Chicago guy) that it’s uncomfortable. When Siskel calls Ebert an “asshole”, I hear “jag-off.”