Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Back from Spring Break

Just back from Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Springs and Maui. What goes on in college outside the baselines, goalposts and keg parties, is just as compelling as some of the athletics. I never left the Yard, but we dream big dreams. In fact a good portion of most days is spent dreaming.

March was maddening and as the madness receded, the toxins were purged and the Yard has hacked through that funk that sets in while underclassmen declare for the NBA, the Marlins and Cubs give their fans hope and the NBA playoffs scream for relevance. It was time of reflection, introspection and Dancing with the Stars. I was smelling the roses, paying attention to my children and dreaming about the American Pursuit.

The NBA Play offs have to grind through another week until we pay attention. Maverick fan, it is nice to have basketball end in April each year. Mark Cuban can go back to telling all of us how brilliant and relevant he is. Dirk Nowitski can get to Germany to ready for the Olympics and Dallas can get back to Cowboy football. None of that obnoxious pressure to win a second round series and keep playing. The Maverick’s season ended when they traded for Jason Kidd instead of Shaq Fu in February.

I am saddled firmly on the Laker bandwagon, again. Seat belt fastened, Purple and Gold Pennant in the window, Jack Nicholson Ray Bans…Go Pau! I took a few years off, kept my mouth shut and praised the other franchises for their functionality when we discussed the dysfunctional Buss family tree. No group therapy there but everyone looks a whole lot smarter when you get a 7 foot Spaniard for seven blue beads and a Kwame. In other news, Chris Paul against Tony Parker in the next round is going to be epic. How do you think Mark Cuban felt while he watched his 35 year old, $20 million a year point guard, Jason Kidd, get completely run off the court by Chris Paul who makes $2.6 million and is 12 years younger.

With the end of the regular season, I do not miss the Clipper Nation radio spots. You know the ones about “Your name is on the back of the jersey but the name on the front says it all, CLIPPERS.” Yes, that does pretty much say it all that is for sure. Clips, you are right there with the New York Knicks, the Arizona Cardinals, and the Tampa Ray Devil Rays where the name on the front says it all and the name on the back is seen leaving. Clipper PR department, “BTW: There is no freaking Clipper Nation!”

I can understand that Kevin Love wants to go to the NBA. If he is in the top half of the first round, he will make more money next year than his father earned in his entire NBA career. Rookies drafted in the first round have two years guaranteed. Top 15 picks last year signed for between $3-7 million for that two years. Kevin Love should be in that group. Hard to argue with that dough at age 19! I have never seen that many Benjamins at age 50 and Kevin does not have kids in private schools.

But K-Love, stop the references to your UCLA legacy! UCLA has a legacy like no other and your tenure will be a footnote not a milestone. You did a nice job as a freshman as did LEW ALCINDOR and BILL WALTON, who graduated, are in the UCLA Hall of Fame, the NBA Hall of Fame and the NBA top 50 Basketball players of all time. I am not sure you will be listed on any of those LEGACIES. But in your one season, you did average 17 points and 10 rebounds, made a Final Four and made your father proud. Good luck and invest wisely. Remember, Saturday April 5, 2008 when you got dunked over and shut down all night long by future 2nd round picks in the NBA. That will be your next 5 years before you play in Greece and dominate adults who have hair like Teen Wolf and have too many consonants in their names. You will get your 30 silver pieces but the price was your legacy.

Rocket Roger Clemens should have kept his yap shut. His buddy Andy Pettite did it right. First you lie, then you admit a small half truth, then you admit you were wrong and ask for forgiveness of everyone that you let down without really admitting anything and then two weeks later, you ask the media what the big deal is? Andy is being deified for basically lying but then coming clean that “he tried steroids once but he did not inhale”. Roger could not do that. Pride is not a close friend of judgment. And Rog, you lie to those boys with the short hair, Lincolns, and long memories, you are begging them to troll your trash and your life. You have to be careful because the next thing you know, they find something like you had a ten year affair with a teenage country singer. That is ridiculous for a family man and patriotic American like you but just be careful. Too late to follow Andy’s lead!

Finally, summer is for baseball and if you do not get baseball, then you are a communist. It is really that simple. Baseball is the oldest team sport in the nation. Baseball is analogous to America because you grind it out virtually every day, no one goes home until someone wins no matter how long it takes, and an immigrant can pursue the American dream with the right paperwork. There are some inconveniences and they stop serving beer after the 7th inning! WTF, what if you get there in the 4th inning, can I still get beer for seven innings? So to you freaking non-baseball commies, we have you in our cross hairs and we are sending the runner from third.

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry

Saturday, April 12, 2008

San Antonio Sunset

The greatness that is March Madness culminated with the Final Four this past weekend. I have been fortunate enough to attend the last three cheering with my Bruin comrades. It has not been easy grinding through this bitter trifecta of defeat. Ben Howland’s Westside Boys have played hard but have gotten steamrolled each year with a double digit loss. Florida and Memphis were just more athletic than the Bruins on those April nights. The Bruin's season long brilliance was overshadowed by a previously undiagnosed shortcoming played out on national television. The surprise of that revelation does not mitigate the heartburn of its presence.

Saturday night, I hope some of you were able to catch the McGyver marathon on TBS. I was observing the methodical disintegration of the UCLA Bruins highlighted by the deafening explosion of offense by the Memphis back court. Tiger point guard Derrick Rose is a D. Wade starter kit with a bit more parallel universe stuff going on. Off guard Chris Douglass Roberts is a Magic Johnson like player who will be the one to watch in the NBA and hopefully soon. He is 6’7”, goes to the hole with every playground move that has made him a legend in Detroit. He hits the three with enough consistency to be a threat. He also missed two free throws when either one would have won Memphis their first National Championship. He will get over it with the guaranteed $3 million a year for three years he will be making starting next year. But I am sure Tuesday morning in San Antonio was not pleasant for CDR, the rest of the Tigers and Coach John Calipari.

After the EMT pulled the paddles from my chest following that game, it was cathartic to watch the vaunted Tar Heels get blitzed by the Kansas Jayhawks in the second game Saturday night. The Jayhawks gloriously blitzed UNC. It was an act that not only brought joy to the heartland but staved off an ugly stream of nonsensical calls from UNC yeawhos regarding UCLA’s loss. And at the Yard, we know when it is time to jump on a new band wagon!

Sunday was a dead day at the Final Four. The winners respectfully gloat and the losers wear street clothes and Ray Bans while attending daytime movies. And for the fans, I defy you to find something to do in San Antonio that does not require alcohol. The Alamo did not and it was the most amazing fifteen minutes of that weekend that I will never forget. Memphis hogged the ESPN air time and I did get sick of watching a smug John Calipari and the chuckling Memphis scholars on Sports Center. No one dissed my Jayhawks but they were not respecting them either.

It was relaxing on Monday night to attend the championship game without the pressure of winning. I gave my all on Saturday night and we came up short. Monday night, I did what I could for the Hawks but I was spent and dehydrated. I just did not have it in the pre-game and told Coach Self to only go to me if the game was on the line and calories counted for something important. I can Wave the Wheat and Rock Chalk..blah, blah..blah, KU love the spirit but I just can not buy that shirt.


Championship moments are mundanely practiced daily so they are performed blindly on the canvas of sudden adversity. Kansas coach Bill Self is scrappy and I gave him little Yard cred before the tournament. He is a stand up guy. He allowed his players to figure it out on Monday night when things got ugly. He was patient with timeouts when Memphis threatened to run the Jayhawks out of the building.

Kansas scrapped all year, lost games, got their nose bloodied and fought back. Down eight with 1:20 to go, down three with .102 to go, and then Mario Chalmers hits a three to tie the game with .02 left. Memphis did not see that coming and did not have Plan B and folded in the overtime. Kansas stayed the course with Plan A, Plan A 1.1 and Plan A 2.0. Jayhawks do not need no stinking plan B!

Coach Calipari proclaimed free throws did not matter and up until 26 seconds left in the CHAMPIONSHIP GAME, he was correct. The Tigers shot a woeful 60% for the season but stepped it up with nearly 80% proficiency for the tournament. Calipari blasted the media's inquiries declaring that, “If I ranked 24 skills that a player I recruit must have, free throw shooting is 25.” So much was said about the Tigers free throws and so, so much refuted by their head coach that with 26 seconds left, the title on the line and the whole world watching, that rim started to look like a coffee cup for that seasoned back court. Los Tigres were 80% for the first 39 minutes and 25% for the last sixty seconds from the line. Three free throws were missed when just one would have given Memphis a new King.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Where in the World is Ben Howland?

Well, if you do not know, Ben is in San Antonio with me both of us attending our third straight Final Four with UCLA. I think Ben has better seats and I am not sure he is having a Shiner Bock this morning but other than that, we have a lot in common.

If you are not rooting for UCLA, at least root for Ben Howland. Ben Howland is grinder like the rest of us. He does not come from some basketball pedigree nor was he assistant coach sitting side by side learning from the master like Kwai Chang Caine. He worked as an assistant coach for 12 years at the venerable basketball institution UCSB. The Gaucho’s had some nice seasons but I do not think Jerry Pimm is in the Hall of Fame but Ben hung in there.

He did try to leave every time a local job became available. University of California at freaking IRVINE, passed on Ben because he had not college head coaching experience. The AD at UCI was one Dan Guerrero, UCLA’s current AD. Dan, nice call on the guy you hired instead of Ben who was fired in his last season with a 1-25 Anteater ball club.

Ben finally got his big break to coach the Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks. No one wanted the job and Ben got a one year $60,000 contract to resurrect a program that had been alive to begin with. Ben got NAU into two NCAA tournaments in five years.

During his tenure, Jerry Pimm retired from UCSB and Ben eagerly tendered his resume to take the job he coveted in the city he grew up in. UCSB AD, former UCLA Head Basketball Coach, Gary Cunningham passed on Ben for undisclosed reasons. A year later, Ben was recruited to Pittsburgh to take over a woeful program playing in the Big East with the likes of Georgetown, UCONN and Syracuse. Pittsburgh was in the Sweet 16 in Ben’s last two years and still is a perennial power with Ben Asst. Coach Jamie Dixon. Jamie is from my high school Alma Mater, NDHS but that is another blog.

So Ben finally gets his plumb job and UCLA is in the Final Four for the third year. How can you not root for a guy who grinded away for 12 years making minimum wage chasing a dream? He gets his first shot at age 37 at an age when Billy Donovan had already won a title and now he has the UCLA storied program back among the nation’s elite at age 51.

He never gets a technical. He never bad mouths a player. He is candid with the media and never in the limelight. There has never been a shred of impropriety in any program he has coached and every program has been better because he was there.

Last night, I was on the River Walk with 40,000 other fans in our team’s tee shirts and caps drinking our sponsor’s beverages. I was wondering what Ben was doing. I know what Roy Williams was doing because I shook his hand when he passed by at 9:30 PM with his circle of friends. Ben was probably looking at tape in his room.

Go Bruins! Root for Ben.