Starting Five
1. The Loss Angeles Lakers lose their seventh consecutive road game, this time at Memphis. LA is now 2-10 since New Year’s Eve and would have to win eight straight simply to find themselves in the final playoff qualifying spot in the Western Conference, all other things being equal. You watch the Lakers and you wonder if Dwight Howard is the NBA’s version of Alex Rodriguez.
“No pick! But, please, Dwight, set a pick.”
Yesterday the Lakers had an air-the-grievances meeting before the team shootarouand and by post-game the media knew that it had happened. That seemed to irk Pau Gasol, and rightly so. Portions of his comments: “I don’t know how that got out…our family should be tight. If it’s not tight, then there are cracks and the situation just keeps getting worse until at some point it will explode.”
The Lakers do look old. Perhaps they should tape a cheetah to their backs.
Laker coach Mike D’Antoni put it best, considering his lineup has at least three future Hall of Famers and two NBA MVPs: “We’ve got an All-Star team out there. Have you ever watched an All-Star game? It’s God awful, because everybody gets the ball, they go one-on-one and then they play no defense. That’s our team. That’s us. We’re an All-Star team and we haven’t learned there’s a pecking order.”
Meanwhile, the “other” team in California you should be watching is the Golden State Warriors. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, David Lee: now that’s a BASE upon which you can build. Players who know their roles and perform them (for example, they like passing the ball). In the past three days the Warriors (26-15) have taken down both the Clippers and Thunder, who just happen to have the two of the three best records in the NBA. Damn, it’s good to be a sports fan in the Bay Area right about now, is it not?
Curry still has time during games to entertain children by making duck silhouettes.
2. The nation’s top-ranked basktball team, Duke, travels south to Miami and loses by 27 points to the Hurricanes. That’s one less point than the nation’s top-ranked football team lost by in Miami Gardens earlier this month. Meanwhile, LaSalle upsets No. 9 Butler in Philadelphia, 54-53, thanks to a coast-to-coast bucket by Ramon Galloway with 2.7 seconds remaining. It marked the first time the Explorers (good name) had beaten a top-ten opponent since 1980.
Yes, it’s STILL possible to watch a top-10 college hoops squad play in a gym that’s, well, a gym. Crazy.
3. Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gets the Nathan Jesup treatment on Capitol Hill from a group of men who, let’s face it, don’t have have the balls she has. Senator Rand Paul informed Clinton that had he been president, he would have fired her over Benghazi. Clearly, Mrs. Clinton should have shot back, “Well, I guess we’ll never have to worry about that hypothetical becoming reality.” Lots of blame to go around here, but there seems also to be a wee little bit of partisan piling on taking place as well.
4. The U.S. military will announce today that females in the military will be permitted to have combat roles. (Plug in your own sexist remark here). If this means Kathyrn Bigelow’s next film will have Kate Upton in a starring role, would that be so bad?
5. How ’bout them Apples? The world’s wealthiest company sees its stock price plummet about 6% in after-hours trading after its quarterly earnings report. Apple (AAPL) actually beat the Street estimate on earnings-per-share but the computer giant lowered its guidance and that made investors nervous. Our take: remember those people who would tell you that the Beatles (a band who, by the way, recorded on a label known as Apple Records back when Steve Jobs was still cleaning out his garage) were overrated just to be contrarian? That’s kind of where we are with Apple now. The Beatles were not overrated and Samsung is still nowhere near Apple as a brand. But everyone was beginning to tire of hearing how great Apple is and all it took was a small chink in the armor (Apple Maps!) to set off this narrative.
Meanwhile, Netflix (NFLX) soared more than 35% in after-hours trading simply by providing a quarterly report in which it did not lose money. The Street expected the movie/TV rental company to lose 13 cents per share but instead it earned 13 cents per share (golf clap). A brief look back: In July of 2011 NFLX was nearing a $300 per share stock price when it announced a change in how it would bill customers. Bad idea. The stock went all Felix Baumgartner, falling all the way to $52 per share last August. This morning it’ll probably open at $144 per share or better.
This is where you need to apply the Blood, Sweat & Tears aphorism to investing: “What goes up, must come down…ride a painted pony let the spinning wheel turn.”
By the way, you could do a lot worse than purchasing Blood, Sweat & Tears Greatest Hits. Tim Cook suggests you buy it on iTunes.
Reserves
Manti Te’o Fauxmance Update: The New York Daily News reports that the “woman” whom Manti was speaking with all those hours was actually Ronaiah Tuiasosopo in falsetto. And it gets funnier/more embarrassing, if this is true…. Te’o’s interview with Katie Couric will air today. January Thursdays are all about taped confessionals with female talk show hosts. I’ll be appearing on Ellen next Thursday (anything to escape this NYC winter0.