H o o p s C o r n e r . c o m
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December 20, 2003
These are a few of some thoughts we've had about basketball and other stuff and...It's had to find a really good intro for this so we'll just have to jump right into things.
- - The Ford Motor Company's new pickup truck, The Next F-150 has won the Motor Trend award for pickup of the year. Mind you this truck is brand new for 2004 and the award is for the coming year. The year isn't even here yet, much less over with. Could you imagine such thing happening in sports? In the NBA? LeBron James would be the NBA MVP by virtue of popularity and the Lakers would be awarded a 98 game winning streak, (includes playoffs), with no regard to what actually happens.
- - While watching ESPN Classic yesterday, we caught game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference finals between the Celtics and Pistons. Just before halftime of the game held in Boston, Boston's Robert Parish while battling for rebounding position with Detroit's Bill Laimbeer, made things interesting by deliberately knocking him down with elbow and fist punches to the head. Laimbeer bled, and had to be taken out of the game. The refs call? What call? Nothing, zero, zip, nada.
Parish got away with manslaughter, a victory, and the series. But the Lakers avenged the Pistons in the finals. We think either the refs were scared of the Boston fans, or they were taking matters into their own hands to teach Lamb a lesson. Or both. During the season he had landed Larry Bird a good one. Boston fans probably wanted to see someone get him back.
- - On a Jay Leno show about 2 days ago Charles Barkley was asked by the host if he thinks Dennis Rodman has any chance of making it back to the league. Sir Charles' answer: "you have a better chance of making it in the league now than Dennis Rodman". Wow it's that bad for the Worm? But it doesn't help that he's in a alcohol rehab center. Here's a suggestion to get all that attention back dennis:
Write another book.
But loose the dress this time. It won't win any popularity votes today. At your age.
- - Now a forray into one of the NBA's cavernous, controversy lands. Portland, Oregon. We were looking for a way to react to forward Rasheed Wallace's comments about the NBA exploiting youngsters. "That's why they're drafting all these high school cats, because they come into the league and they don't know no better. They don't know no better". "I know that the commissioner of this league makes more than three-quarters of the players in this league." Strong comments from a strong player.
But wow. it seems like Rasheed is in a desperate situation, stuck in the NBA seeing all the dealing that goes on behind the scenes. Now he has opened up to warn others of the predicament.
Come to think of it something just isn't quite right.
He says he knows better, which means he doesn't think he's being exploited. But even if he thought he was, it takes a feather-light effort to feel bad for someone who pulls down a wad of $17 MILLION DOLLARS every year, when 80 grand in any part of the world can outfit a whole family in a blanket of good comfort. About David Stern's salary? Oops, we meant The DON. We don't know about that one, but what's money when you can control a whole sport, and almost impact the whole world with clever decisions?
- - Ahhh, the jolly voice of singing children. We must admit we do dig the NBA's new ad campaigns. You've seen them. They portray a player's story or situation and kids sing in unisson telling us about him. The first one we saw was the LeBron James ad. It was one of the best NBA ads we had seen in a while, no contest.
Our impression on that first ad? LeBron really relishes the spotlight. He thrives under it. But the true kodak moment was when The Daddy frowned at the kids to make them praise him.
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