Of course, I might have been holding the Bible upside down at the time.
Washington Monuments
Michigan defeated Iowa last night in a battle of Top Ten Big Ten squads, and by a large margin, 79-57. The Wolverines are now 17-1 (loss at Wisconsin last month) and could land the No. 1 overall seed ahead of Gonzaga, which remained unbeaten last night.
But that’s only part of the story. The Wolverines’ 7’1″ freshman center, Hunter Dickinson, outplayed his 6’11” senior counterpart on the Hawkeyes, Luke Garza. Dickinson finished with 14 and eight while Garza, who entered as the nation’s leading scorer, ended with 16 and four. What’s noteworthy is that both players hail from within miles of each other and were part of the same AAU squad, Team Takeover.
They’re old friends. Dickinson is from Alexandria, just across the Potomac from D.C., while Garza literally grew up inside D.C.
Michigan has two top ten victories (at Ohio State, versus Iowa) in the past five days. First-year coach Juwan Howard is everyone’s Coach of the Year.
This Family Has Already Sewn Up ‘Christmas Card Of The Year’ Award
There’s a better photo than this, but we are unable to upload it at present. You can try here.
Anyway, the back story: because North Korea had closed its borders due to the pandemic, Russian diplomats there found themselves somewhat trapped (North Koreans can relate). Eight of them found a creative means to depart the country, using a hand-pushed rail car, something I thought only existed in old episodes of F-Troop or The Beverly Hillbillies.
The Russian ministry said that the journey by railcar was the only possible way to cross the border. Also, it makes for a wonderful photo op. And now you know that Russia borders North Korea, too.
Note: I had to look this up. Russia actually borders North Korea to the EAST of China, even though most of Russia is to the WEST of China. Related: Russia is massive.
Basketball, I Don’t Even Know You Any More
Nuggets have a 3 on 1 fast break down 2 in the final seconds and **FART NOISE** pic.twitter.com/sq7RUZU458
This is the new NBA. Denver trails by two in the closing seconds and has a 3-on-1 fast break. In the world I grew up in the ball handler would dribble to the free throw line, the two wings would flare to either side and he’d most likely hit the open wing with a pass for an easy layup (or dunk). Now the score is tied and we head to overtime.
But that’s not how things are done in the NBA any more. Here the point man picks up his dribble outside the arc (note: LeBron can do this and still dunk without being called for traveling) and the two wing men flare out beyond the arc on the right. No one wants the easy two. They’re coached NOT to take it.
Yes, my man gets a wide open three to win the game, but he misses the 23-footer. Nuggets lose, at home, instead of forcing overtime. Is this smart basketball? You be the judge.
Daveheart
Came across this old SNL clip that’s pretty funny. Do you realize that all at the same time SNL had among its male cast Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Fred Armisen and Bobby Moynihan. Not a weak link among them. Also Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig. And I’m sure plenty of people were writing/saying that SNL sucked and wasn’t funny any more. That’s an outstanding cast (related: Moynihan’s “Drunk Uncle” basically was the forerunner of MAGA and a hilarious character0.
In golf parlance, woods and drivers are synonymous: clubs used to strike tee shots. One of the many ironies (irons, another category of golf club, which is not the same as a golf club, which is why golf lingo is so confusing to the unbaptized) of Tiger Woods’ near-catastrophic Tuesday morning auto crash is that he is a Woods whose most potent weapon in golf was his driving ability (long off the tee) but whose most infamous episodes off the course have all involved poor driving.
But this is all kabuki. The takeaway from Woods’ horrific no-other-vehicles-involved roll-over auto accident is that he’ll likely never golf competitively again. Hopefully, for he and his family, he’ll be able to walk without a limp. Woods suffered comminuted (multiple) and open (bone breaks skin) involving his tibia and fibula, the two major bones between the knee and ankle, in his right leg.
This just two days after speaking on TV to CBS’ Jim Nantz about his potential return for the Masters following yet another back surgery.
He’s alive. And that’s good (who needed a Kobe comparison 13 months later, in the same general area?). And if it’s disrespectful to speculate about his golf future, it’s not irrelevant. Woods won 14 majors by the time he was 32 (Jack Nicklaus, with 18, holds the record). He was lapping the field in terms of Who’s the greatest golfer of all time?
Woods is now 45 and that total is 15.
Nicklaus won his 18th and last major at Augusta, in 1986, at age 46. Tiger may never approach the tee in a major again. At least not as a competitor.
Thank You, Coronavirus?
As we ease into the Bidency, to fewer presidential tweets and to a Commander-In-Chief who expresses empathy (even for people who are not political allies), it is important to remember something: the coronavirus, while already taking more than 500,000 American lives in less than a year, may have saved democracy.
Over-dramatic? Hyperbole? I don’t think so.
I was listening to Kara Swisher’s podcast, “Sway,” in which she interviewed Sacha Baron Cohen. He was discussing the reason behind his now well-known speech to the Anti-Defamation League in 2019:
Baron Cohen told Swisher that he decided to accept the award from the ADL and to give the speech (as himself and not in character) because it was one year away from the presidential election “and I saw that Trump was going to win.”
And he probably was. What changed, and what SBC could not have foreseen, was the coronavirus (an act of God, as the Christian Right might refer to it, except for the fact that they wanted Trump to win). If you think of the coronavirus as the nuclear bomb in the war against American Fascism, then maybe we can think of all those souls who perished as the foot soldiers who gave their lives for the cause.
And if you want to extend the metaphor, you may remember that the men who gave America the atomic bomb were German emigres horrified by Hitler and Nazism. Well, in the same way that the Axis powers were ultimately undone by their own practices (read how Hitler had given strict orders not to be awakened on the morning of the D-Day invasion, and who was going to upset Der Fuhrer?), Donald Trump could have made the fight against the virus his most heroic moment. Instead, he handled it as immaturely and irresponsibly (in other words, completely in character) as possible, and we see what happened.
Does Joe Biden or any Democrat win the election without the virus? I don’t think so.
There’s an entire other item that could be written about how sad it is that it took a pandemic to unseat Trump—what is WRONG with Americans?—but we’ll save that for another day. The good news is that he’s gone. While so many Americans died needlessly, none of them died in vain.
Here’s Clay Travis one year and one day ago going near-Trish Regan on the coronavirus. Listen, you don’t get to be a multi-millionaire sports blogger/gambling “expert”/social media bully/T-shirt salesman by telling your audience, “I don’t know.”
What will make you millions is to take the words of Winston Churchill and put it into practice toward your own mercenary ends: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” After all, that strategy continues to work for Donald Trump.
So it’s left to poor folks like myself to hold onto the receipts and remind people how hubristic and irresponsible someone like Travis is. And he don’t care because it’s time for him to give you his “bet the mortgage” March Madness picks.
Two things on Reddit/Wall Street Bets/Robinhood/”stonks!” and crypto:
First, on Tuesday afternoon I checked the GameStop (GME) stock price because I realized I hadn’t given it a thought in about a week. It was around $41. Then yesterday GameStop announced that CFO Jim Bell would resign effective March 28 (taking a $2.8 million severance). And what happened? Shares of GME went from $41 yesterday to $160 as of the open this morning. That’s not bad.
Yesterday I was finishing up at my minimum-wage gig and was all alone in my department when a regular customer approached. Now, picture a dude about my age but 6’6″ who looks eerily similar to Lon Chaney, Jr. He always seems like a nice dude but a little socially awkward (not unlike your scribe). Anyway, his first words to me are, “Do you know anything about Bitcoin?” Before long he’s talking to me about crypto and XRP and the lawsuit with the SEC and Wyoming being the leading state for crypto transactions and I realize he doesn’t even have a shopping cart. The only item in his hand is a Starbucks cup. And I think to myself, If this gentleman is that well-versed in crypto, is the future already here? Or, is he a nut case and am I a nut case and should we both just be planting tulips?
The Maher The Merrier
I understand that a lot of people don’t like Bill Maher and I think I understand why, and it’s not just because he is so militantly atheistic: it’s because he’s intellectually smug (often I’m guilty of same flaw, minus any reason to back it up). Bill Maher is basically a non-affable version of John Oliver (maybe he should try a British accent). But above, well, I agree with EVERY LAST THING he says. Not just about “gig economy” and “side hustle” but how pols promote FAMILY above everything. As Maher says, If you wanna be part of a family or raise a family, that’s great. You do you. But there’s no law that says family is paramount to the individual. This tired trope of family (and military) above all is just one more way some pols try ti exercise control over us. And it works with those who don’t think too deeply. But it’s all authoritarian. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Last week’s big Republican mess was Texas; this week it’ll be taxes, as in the Supreme Court has blocked Donald Trump’s last stand to hide his tax returns from us (Didn’t the New York Times venture under this kimono a year or so ago, anyway?).
Dig: it don’t matter. Those of us who already knew Trump is a charlatan and a crook will simply see the receipts. Those who will never accept that he is will simply find a way to blame someone else for joining the witch hunt. The circle will never be squared, kids. He’ll just go from playing the invulnerable card to the victim card.
The act, it is tired.
What a great weekend for CPAC to be holding its convention, by the way. Fortunately, so many GOP members suffer from memory loss so the events of the past, well, forever, won’t haunt them.
500K
As the USA crossed the 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 threshold, the former guy took to a statement (that I won’t link to) whining about “headhunting” prosecutors and repeating the fallacy that just because he received the most votes of anyone ever to lose a presidential election that he should be the winner.
Never mind that, as many have noted, that’s more deaths in less than one year than the U.S. suffered in World Wars I and II and Vietnam combined. The point here is that Donald Trump and other Republicans who no longer are in power are the truly aggrieved.
As far as this site goes, I’ll try to ignore the histrionics and general douchebaggery of folks such as Trump and Cruz and Hawley and even Meghan McCain, etc., as much as possible. Why give them any more oxygen? Let Merrick Garland and history take care of them.
From Putin To Poochin’
If America had simply installed a Sock Monkey puppet as its 46th president, let’s face it, that would have been an upgrade from “the former guy.” But thus far, one month in, Joe Biden is pretty much pitching, at worst, a shutout.
He doesn’t tweet. He doesn’t ridicule. He doesn’t golf. He doesn’t leave Washington D.C. to stage pep rallies (so how do we even know if he’s doing a good job?!?).
And, we get dogs. Big, shepherd-y type WOOF! WOOF! dogs.
Check out this Belgian Malinois with springs in his legs. Jumping the river…https://t.co/JYOHYFXo1Z
Even though this isn’t a Biden pup, it’s still a big doggy. I’m here for this.
My Name Is Luka
There was a time when the leading scorer in Division I hoops was a veritable star. At the very least a lottery pick. And a future Hall of Famer.
Some of the men who’ve led D-I in scoring over the years:
Oscar Robertson (three consecutive years, 1958-60), Rick Barry (1965), Pete Maravich (also 3 years, 1968-70), Glenn Robinson (1994) and Stephen Curry (2009).
But just as often as not you get, particularly in the past 40 years, a Greg Guy or a Tyler Harvey.
This year’s scoring leader is a legit NBA player, playing on a legit FBS-school squad that’s ranked in the top ten: His name? Luka Garza, Iowa’s 6’11” SENIOR center who is averaging 24.7 points per game.
Garza is from the D.C. area and he even looks like a 1940s comic book super hero. A throwback. It remains to be seen what he’ll do during March Madness, or next season in the NBA.
Francis Ford Coppola knew a long time ago what Gary Bettman and the NHL discovered this weekend: Lake Tahoe is among the most scenic backdrops in all of the U.S.A. (it’s featured in much of The Godfather II).
For the second consecutive weekend a major American sporting event was delayed for hours due to a weather malfunction. Last week it was thunderstorms pushing the Daytona 500 to the 9-hour mark. On Saturday the NHL’s outdoor game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Las Vegas Knights was put into abeyance for more than eight hours due to sun… I’m melting! I’m melting!
Who won? Mother Nature, two weekends in a row.
Mama Said Knock You Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVo5u_cYhPQ
Seldom, if ever, will you see a more sudden and devastating knockout than what transpired on Saturday night in Las Vegas. That’s Oscar Valdez putting countryman Miguel Berchelt on the canvas to win the WBC Junior Lightweight title. Who knew 130-pounders could pack such a punch?
Hasta mañana, Miguel.
Crushing Cruz
SNL’s Aidy Bryant has long lived in the shadow of her female contemporaries, Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong, but last weekend she stole the show in the cold open. Her Ted Cruz was perfect, and a special shout-out to wardrobe and make-up. The braided ‘do was the chef’s kiss the cold open needed.
This is Caleb Pendleton, a freshman catcher for the Florida Atlantic Owls. On Saturday night Pendleton, 6’2″, of Jensen Beach, Fla., smote now one but TWO grand slams. In his collegiate debut. In the same inning. In his first two collegiate at-bats (versus UCF in a 20-15 win). Batting eighth.
Where do you go from here? Besides north in the batting order.
Gonzo
I had not previously made the connection between Anthony Gonzalez, the Republican congressman from Ohio who voted to impeach Trump and who also held the Robinhood CEO’s feet to the flames in a congressional hearing last week, and Anthony Gonzalez, former Ohio State standout wide receiver who later played with the Indianapolis Colts.
Same dude.
Gonzalez was part of a Buckeye squad that featured Heisman Trophy winning QB Troy Smith and fellow wideouts Santonio Holmes and Ted Ginn, Jr. He would be a first-round pick for the Colts, for whom he played five seasons. He’s still only 37 and was just reelected.
The MAGAs now loathe him. But he’s on his way up.
Also, had LeBron James chosen to play college football for the Buckeyes, they would have started together on the same unit (with LJ at tight end). Neither is sticking to sports.
If you’ve ever dunked on 7-foot rims, you know what more than half of America is doing to Texas senator Ted Cruz this morning. And rightfully so.
As someone tweeted, “So Ted Cruz wants to cross the border in order to have better living conditions for his children?”
Not that most of us ever thought he was worth a turd’s farthing, but this week Cruz abandoned any pretense of leadership in his state as it went through its worst crisis in decades, then kept changing his story—before cameras—as to why he traveled to Cancun, even as neighbors and airline travel sleuths came forward with receipts.
If you like piña coladas and getting caught on a plane
Yo! While almost no one was noticing, Gonzaga is now 21-0. The Zags beat quasi-rival St. Mary’s last night 87-65 in Spokane behind senior forward Corey Kispert’s 20 points, which is right around his average.
The Zags have four starters who average in double figures (Kispert’s 19.2 is best) and two from outside the U.S.: Canada and France. That’s been about standard for them during Mark Few’s incredible run at Bing Crosby’s alma mater.
In nearly 22 seasons as the Zags’ head coach, Few is 619-124 (.833). The worst record his Zags have compiled in the past 10 years is 28-8, and that team made the Sweet 16.
Gongaza was 31-2 when last season was canceled in March. They’d have likely been a No. 1 seed last March. This March they’ll be the No. 1 overall seed.
Ignite Fever
We were checking out an NBA mock draft (in researching the above item) and noticed that three players from one team were in one site’s projected first round. Notice I said “one team,” not “one school.” Why? Because that team is the Walnut Creek-based G League Ignite.*
Why the Ignite put G League in their name flummoxes us, as they’re the only G League team that does so. It would be like one team calling themselves the NBA Celtics.
Ignite’s top draft prospects: 6’8″ Jonathan Kuminga (of the Congo, above), 6’5″ Jalen Green and 6’5″ Daishin Nix (all 18). The first two are projected Top 10 picks. What’s curious is that Ignite, coached by former Laker Brian Shaw, are only 4-2.
The G League’s top team at the moment? The 5-0 Delaware Blue Coasts. Delaware’s having quite a 2021 thus far.
Orient Expressionism
Slovakian team Tatran Cierny Balog have an actual railway running alongside their pitch.
I’d watch out for slide tackle on the near sidelines.
Some managers throw their players under a bus. This one has a rail chance to be unique.
Dolly Lama
America’s greatest secular saint? It may well be Dolly Parton, who has given us all robust (!) lessons on a live well-lived for five decades now. That she also wrote country classic such as “Jolene” is almost besides the point.
So when the Tennessee state legislature proposed erecting a statue of its favorite daughter—if nothing else, it would be a tremendous source of shade—Dolly politely declined in signature fashion.
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