Well, Crap!

I tried not to care.  That lasted 11 games.  I’m totally wrapped up.  I love this team.

I love Roddy Buckets.  I love the 85 year old PG we have who just does every thing right.  I love Dirk’s new drives to the basket and his weird combination of FU attitude and WowdidIreallyjustmakethatclutchbasket face, I LOVE Carlisle’s hair-I mean it’s never out of place and yet it doesn’t look all Jimmy Johnsonish, I love that we win without half our team playing, I love that Drew Gooden upheld his reputation as a goofball by falling down on the game-winning play last night despite NEVER GETTING TOUCHED.  I love it all.  JJ, the Jet, even Damp (so far).  I especially love the other half of STN’s favorite player-Bowflex.

I know.  I know they’ll let me down.  Rationally, I can look at this team and understand that they’re NOT going to win the championship.  That our realistic ceiling for this year is the second round of the playoffs.  But I tell you what, I’d rather root for this team, that I love but won’t win, than I would for the whiney arrogant bitchy Celtics or the ego driven Los Angeles Kobe’s and God knows I’m not going to root for any team with Shaq on it or the shit-don’t-stink Spurs.

I know one of those teams will win.

I don’t care.

MFFL!

It’s Not the Venue

For a variety of reasons, this might be the one media I remember most from the past year.  If there’s a funnier thing on the internet, I haven’t found it yet:

Mavs Outlook 2009-10: Bucks

Yes, we know the Bucks are in the Eastern Conference, but we’ll have to play them twice this year (spoiler alert: they’re not making the Finals).

You may or may not be aware (you are probably not, we understand) that their top draft pick Brandon Jennings has been playing relatively well.  There was some concern that Jennings might fall out of the lottery as his pre-draft workouts were poor and he ran his mouth a lot.  Here’s why the Bucks decided to go ahead and draft Jennings, from an article by Chad Ford:

“Jennings has so much upside,” a Bucks source told me hours before the draft. “Sometimes you have to gamble a little. The great teams take calculated risks. I think we need to take a calculated risk.”

Right.  So let’s take a look at the “great” teams of the past couple of decades: Pistons, Spurs, Celtics, Lakers, Mavs (in no particular order).  These team didn’t become great because Shaq might blossom in the right situation or because, given the right coaching, Tim Duncan might just turn out okay.  Even the personnel moves that didn’t immediately seem like slam dunks to the majority of people (Parker, Bryant, Dirk, Ginobili), were only underrated because people had never heard of them.  They weren’t long shots.  Teams didn’t draft them because they hoped they would do well.  They were not “gambling” on “upside.”  No, they were outworking, outsmarting and outscouting everyone to find these players and make the right decisions.

Great teams don’t luck into it, they get help from the refs (see: Lakers/Kings Game 6 2002).  I kid, I kid.  But hey, if you’re a gambling person like the Bucks front office, then by all means, place some money on them when they play the Mavs later this month.  We’ll be glad to take your money.

Put them in JAIL

This begins a new series in the life of STN. Given that there are clearly way too many people in our jails for really very minor (usually substance abuse related) offenses, and given that there is too much money wrapped up in the incarceration of these people to really think that we will let them go and decrease the number of people incarcerated anytime soon, we will be periodically proposing some people who we would be happy to see take their place. In other words, take our advice and throw these people in jail, let someone else out, and everyone will be happier. Also, it’s shout out to our favorite “sports” personality TK, who is always trying to throw people in jail.

Today I advised a student who had been to three different colleges in three years just to play basketball.  He keeps transferring to chase the dream.  Fine.  We looked at what he should register for.  80+ hours in college and not one single science or foreign language class.  Why?  Because those classes require labs.  Labs meet in the afternoon.  But practice is in the afternoon.  And basketball is played across both semesters, so it’s not like football where the players all take their lab classes in the spring semester.  So these coaches, who have exploited this kid for their own personal gain, have consistently advised him to NEVER take a lab science or foreign language.  These people need to be IN JAIL.

So we are proposing that all of his coaches and advisers go to jail.  Let’s estimate roughly 9 people.  So we can now safely release 9 other non-violent offenders.

All the fun, without the smell

I was just going through the pictures from this summer and realized I forgot to post this one of a pub in Dublin. It’s really just for my buddy. Not many others will appreciate it, but we’re okay with that. Sorry for the poor quality, but I was on a bus.

Mavs Outlook 2009-10: Warriors

As you may have heard, the Warriors had an “eventful” media day.  Here’s what their team captain, who just last November signed a $28 million dollar extension had to say as he issuing a demand that he be traded:

I’m made for the playoffs and championships. That’s what I play for. I’m Big Shot Jack.

Riiiiiight.  Big Shot Jack has won precisely one championship (not sure where the plural came from) as a member of the 2002-2003 San Antonio Spurs.  Now we haven’t checked the official NBA rulebook lately, but I’m pretty sure that I remember correctly that Duncan and Robinson can demand to have any of those rings back if they want to.

Oh, and the best part?  Jackson’s best friend on the team is none other than Monta Ellis who said on media day that he wouldn’t be willing to play alongside the Warriors first round draft pick.

So, um, yeah, we’re not worried about the Warriors (until the playoffs).

Mavs Outlook 2009-10: Lakers

We weren’t planning on making this a regular feature, but if they keep making it this freakin easy we might just be able to plow through the whole Western Conference and put the Mavs in the Finals.

Here’s why we’re not afraid of the Lakers:

Mr. Lamar Kardashian

Oh by the way, their “wedding” wasn’t an actual “marriage” since they are still hammering out the deets on a prenup.  Yeah, we’re not worried about this guy or the team he plays for.

2 teams down.  12 to go.

How big is the church you grew up in?

Doing some research today about megachurches and came across this money quote from Chaves (2006):

The bottom line is that the number of very large Protestant churches has increased in almost every denominalion on which we have data…[however]…Roughly speaking, if you look at the 20 biggest churches at time 1, only half of them are still on that list 20 years later, only one quarter are still on the list 40 years later, and only 2 are still on the list 60 years later. It is not that these very large churches peak and then shrink dramatically, although some do.  Rather, the biggest churches of the moment are overtaken by a new cobort of churches that have caught that decade’s cultural wave and ridden it to the top, and then those churches are overtaken by the next wave, and on and on.

So in essence, while the trend over time is toward a greater percentage of church goers in larger and larger congregations, it is not the case that large churches keep getting bigger.  Rather, new, even larger churches are springing up out of whole cloth.  Fascinating.

Mavs Outlook for 2009-10

And here’s why we’re not worried about the Phoenix Suns this year.  In a story about how Amare Stoudamire is making great progress coming back from a detached retina (he’s so explosive, aggressive, in superb shape, blah blah blah) this little nugget was embedded:

“Stoudemire’s team, which included [Earl] Clark, Jared Dudley and Robin Lopez, lost four of five half-court games to a team of Channing Frye, Lou Amundson, Taylor Griffin and Alando Tucker.”

We don’t know what kind of shape Amare is in or how good his shooting touch is, but we know one thing, if there are 8 players on the floor and one of them is an NBA All-Pro, the team with the All-Pro will win every time…unless that All-Pro is Amare Stoudamire.  You think Dirk would have let his team lose 4 out of 5?  Go down the line and choose the best player on every team.  They all would have died rather than lose 4 out of 5 to freakin’ Lou Amundson.

So that’s one team down, 13 to go.

HHH: My Cookies!

I’ve heard the HHH rest stops are great.  Lots of food, fun times, helpful people.  I assume all of this is true as I didn’t get to spend much time at any of them before Hell’s Gate and by the time I got to the ones after Hell’s Gate, they were in the process of shutting down.  All of us there knew we were in the last group of riders, and I know the volunteers had been there for a while, but it would have been nice if they had at least pretended like they thought we had a chance to finish.  Overall though, they were fine-with one notable exception.

At the 80 mile rest stop, there was a “carb station.”  I use the word “was” because it was completely gone by the time I got there.  The table was still up, along with the “carb station” sign and another sign for “cookies.”  Considering that I had only eaten a smoothie and pieces of oranges and bananas, I was seriously in need of something more substantial.  I asked one of the volunteers at the drink station if they were really out of cookies.  Just as she turned around to ask someone else, I noticed a volunteer who could politely be described as extraordinarily large in weight and slight in stature who was sitting on bench under the drink station tent shove an entire tub of enormous oatmeal cookies into the bag sitting next to her.  Normally, I would have just moved on, but I was not exactly thinking clearly and as far as I was concerned, those were my freakin’ cookies.  I earned them.  Hell, I paid for them.   Just as the person turned back around to me to say that they were all out of cookies I started to point and stammer something about the fat woman in the back, but before I could say anything he said “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got some extra stuff on my bike.  Come with me.”  He must have seen what I saw and sensed my desperation, so I stood there, half pointing in general direction of cookie thief, completely blindsided by this man’s generous offer and said “Really?”  I know, very eloquent.  He hooked me up with some hammer gel and a Clif Bar.  I have never been so grateful for the equivalent of $1.25 worth of food in my life.  Also, I think he might have saved me from getting banned from the HHH for life.  So really, I’m indebted to this man.

And that’s it.  Those are my stories of the HHH.  A week after the ride, I did a triathlon sprint with my dad and it was disastrous.  My body had clearly not even come close to a full recovery, and I posted my worst time ever.  Lesson learned.  Now, whenever things get hard in my life, I can just keep my race day slogan in my mind: Winning means never having to do this crap again.