Starting Five

1. Hey, I know that Danica Patrick taking the pole at the Daytona 500 is the biggest thing ever (according to SportsCenter), but let’s lead with a college basketball coach shoving his player right in front of the entire arena. Cal coach Mike Montgomery shoves Golden Bear Allen Crabbe during a timeout, and if this happens in the Big Ten, ACC or Big East, it leads SportsCenter. It’s, you know, kind of a big deal.

A few items: Cal trailed by 12 at that point, and went on to win by eight. Crabbe would finish with a game-high 23 points. Montgomery called the timeout at 16:31 of the second half, or 31 seconds before the mandated TV timeout, so you know he was pissed. The Golden Bears (16-9) are actually in the midst of a terrific month, having won five of six and taking down a pair of top ten-ranked conference foes, Arizona and Oregon.

Mike Montgomery. Passion and pushin’…

Still, what will be the repercussions of the shove? Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour released a statement saying that the shove was “unacceptable” but that she is confident that it will not happen again. In other words, she’s the Lanny Breuer (read on, it’ll become clear later) of athletic directors. Which is to say, why punish someone if it will upset the system’s chances of success?

2. The captain, Derek Jeter, meets the media, describes his offseason as “absolutely terrible”. Even though he spent it in his 30,000-square foot Florida mansion with Hannah Davis. When Jeter complains that cable is more annoying than _____ , he actually can do so with the DirecTV genie seated right beside him.

“You’re right, dear. Cable is more annoying than a Yankeeography.”

3. No one writes more important stories, more consistently, than Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. In the latest issue he combs through both the HSBC and LIBOR scandals (“Too Big To Jail”), the former of which represents the formal end of justice in the United States. This is excellent writing and reporting (more than just a screed, Taibbi finds a whistleblower, Everett Stern, whose tale is part Office Space, part Michael Clayton). Taibbi himself concedes in the opening paragraph that “People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street”, but later writes “There is nobody anywhere growing weed strong enough to help the human mind grasp the enormity of this crime.” More on this in Reserves.

Matt Taibbi: Fierce, fearless and phenomenally pissed off. And aren’t we lucky that he is.

4. Harold and Kumar Win the Lottery? A pair of brothers in Wichita, Kans., win $75,000 in the lottery and, while celebrating with marijuana and meth, accidentally blow up their home. Something about refueling their bongs with butane. As lifelong Sunshine State resident Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated wondered on Twitter, “How did this not happen in Florida?”

5. ESPN hoops dude Andy Katz appears (via the Subway Fresh Take hotline!) on Mike & Mike this morning and guest host Mike Hill asks him if he wouldn’t mind sticking around until after the break. Then, after the commercial, Hill thanks Katz for sticking around. Andy Katz works for ESPN. Mike Hill works for ESPN. Where was Andy going to go, Mike? Don’t insult your audience.

Katz on safari

Also, during the second segment –which was little more than an excuse to promote “Katz Corner”, Andy’s new college hoops program– Hill asked Jim Boeheim’s favorite reporter if teams that lose their star player should be evaluated differently by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Obviously, a reference to Kentucky. Katz replied with a 90-second filibuster about what the Wildcats must do to make the tournament without ever ANSWERING THE QUESTION.  Answer the question!  “ANSWER THE QUESTION, CLAIRE!”

Reserves

There was an NBA All-Star Game. It looked a lot like Slamball. We always enjoyed Slam Ball.

Get ready for “Djesus Uncrossed.” “When you get to heaven, say ‘Hi’ to my Dad.”

The latest on the Oscar Pistorius murder case.

President’s Day Quiz: How many times does the same surname appear twice on the list of U.S. presidents? Answer at bottom.

Our favorite 89-inch tall high school basketball player, Mamadou Ndiaye, goes for 24 points, 12 boards and eight blocked shots as Brethren Christian (Huntington Beach, Calif.), defeats Pasadena Polytechnic, 65-50, in the 5AA state playoffs.

Meanwhile, across the continent in Orlando, Fla., at another Christian school, four-foot-five (53-inch tall) Julian Newman had 16 points, 12 assists and four rebounds in Downey Christian’s 94-31 defeat of Heritage Prep. Newman is only 11 years old but plays varsity. According to this story in yesterday’s New York Times, he sinks “100 free throws, 200 floaters and 200 jump shots every day.”

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So, more on Matt Taibbi’s piece, “Too Big To Jail”. My thoughts, enumerated, so as not to lose your attention.

1. THE DEAL: What basically occurred here is that the U.S. Attorney General found British banking monolith HSBC (which operates in the U.S., as well, and thus was subject to a federal investigation) guilty of, consistently and unreservedly, over the course of nearly a decade, banking with the world’s most evil people and institutions. Helping drug cartels launder money and assisting in the funding of jihadists, as well as clandestinely banking with Iran. All of this after the Justice Dept. had warned HSBC — more than once– that it was skating on think ice.
So who goes to jail? Nobody. Instead, HSBC is fined $1.9 billion, or about five weeks’ income. Breur argues for the fiscal penalty over jail time by saying, “In the world today of large institutions, where much of the financial world is based on confidence, a right resolution is to ensure that counter-parties don’t flee an institution, that jobs are not lost, that there’s not some world economic event that’s disproportionate to the resolution we want.”

2. As Taibbi writes in response to Breur’s statement, “This is bullshit.” Put it this way. The mob kills a member of your family. In fact, the mob shakes down your family’s business and when your dad refuses to pay, they murder him. They do this to a number of people. But you know what? The garbage is being picked up on time — and the mob is in charge of waste management– so, you know, why screw up a good thing? That’s the mentality here. And it stinks, from Breur directly up to Barack Obama. There’s no excuse for this.

3. Taibbi talks about “outrage fatigue” regarding Wall Street. Another factor is that often the concepts are a little too esoteric for Joe the Plumber to properly understand or appreciate. Face it, half of us thought that the LIBOR scandal was about a pharmaceutical drug. However, what is transpiring here is as heinous as anything Pablo Escobar ever did.  LIBOR was about the world’s biggest banks fixing interest rates on a daily basis to jimmy the market; it would be like all 32 NBA coaches getting on a daily conference call, with the league’s referees, to discuss who would win that night’s games and by how much…and I know that there are a few of you out there who believe that already occurs.

4. The penalty is proof that the only real commodity is time. You cannot extend it, cannot inflate it. HSBC was only too happy to part with $1.9 billion (what do the bankers care? It’s not THEIR money) as opposed to anyone actually going to jail.

5. It may be too soon to acknowledge now, but the Obama Administration’s lasting legacy may be that it accelerated the end of civil obedience in our nation. Time and again, first in 2009 with the bailout and the decision not to prosecute anyone involved with the sub-prime loan mortgage crisis, and now with HSBC, the lesson to all Americans is that keeping the system intact — no matter how corrupt it may be — is more important than justice.

In nature devastating shocks to the system take place all the time. Hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis. Nature recovers. Likewise, it might have been a shock to the system to allow other banks besides just Lehman Brothers to fail; it might lead to a short-term fiscal apocalypse if HSBC went under, but guess what? Where there’s a void, the market fills it. That’s capitalism.

We’ve saved the banks. We’ve lost the trust of the people. Fair trade? I don’t think so.

6. Why am I, and why is Taibbi, so upset? Because this story proves, beyond any doubt, that justice is not blind. “An arrestable class and an unarrestable class,” Taibbi writes. “We always suspected it, now it’s admitted. So what do we do?”

We sit and wait for the next, larger and even more pernicious scandal. And we watch as politicians wring their hands and wonder what we all could have done to prevent it.

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POTUS quiz answer: Six. Adams (John and John Quincy); Harrison (Benjamin and William Henry); Cleveland (Grover and Grover; same man, non-consecutive terms); Johnson (Andrew and Lyndon) ; Roosevelt (Theodore and Franklin Delano) and Bush (George and George).

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