Inside-Outside

And Shaq's no gimmick you can mimic
But you front and your finished
I like playin' on the west side
Even though I miss playin' on the east side
--Straight Playin', Shaquille O'Neal

A lyrical wizard, that man. Some other gems from this hit single: "Type of brother who can stay up all night and hit 40 / After the game get naughty / And pull your shorty." Truer words were never spoken.
I'm glad he's been pretty much focusing on basketball lately--no "Steel" or "Kazaam," no bad albums, just dunks, rebounds and blocked shots.
So yeah, our game tonight didn't necessarily reflect a Shaq-like dominance. If he was on our team, we would have been all right, but minus an inside presence, we definitely struggled. Bombing threes on pretty much every possession, we hung with a very good team and definitely could have beaten them, but we couldn't execute down the stretch (that's the favorite word of NBA players and coaches: execution) and they made free throws to win by 10.
We had fun though, and I think that's gotta be the key to playing sports at this point in life. It's obviously not going to lead to any higher level--Jerry West probably doesn't spend too much of his time at the Westwood Recreation Center, looking for his next project big man--and there's no real recognition for success, so it's gotta be about having fun playing ball with your boys.
If we lose every game the rest of the way, fun probably goes out the window, but I think we're good enough to contend in this league (Jason Kapono was in the house tonight, but thankfully he was competing in the division above ours--not sure how well I would have matched up with an NBA guy, even if he did play for LAVIN).
One bummer about playing was that we missed the hockey game, a Tampa Bay victory that earned them the Stanley Cup. I'm bummed for Jarome Iginla--he was the best player in the whole playoffs and he deserved to win--but the Lightning are a great team and their depth really carried them to this win. Brad Richards and Vincent Lecavalier both played tremendously throughout the post-season and the 'Bulin wall was solid as usual (a member of my fantasy hockey team last year, I'll have you know).
Another guy I'm actually happy for is Daryl Sydor, who won his second cup (his first came with Dallas a few years back) after making it to the finals as a young stud in '93 with the Kings. That core of young defensemen was so good, I really wish we could have kept them together somehow. Obviously Rob Blake is the best defenseman in the game, Sydor is outstanding and Alexei Zhitnik continues to perform at a high level (with a big fat contract) in Buffalo.
I'm reminded of that team often--watching CBC broadcasts of many of the playoff games this year (for the rollout I've been working on--airs tomorrow, by the way) has allowed me to see studio analyst Kelly Hrudey at his finest. The hair is modeled after Barry Melrose, I think, though I don't think anyone in hockey (or all of sport, for that matter) has approached B-Mel's hairsprayed Tennesee tophat. The best hair in this year's playoffs belonged to Calgary d-man Mike Commodore, but since they're always wearing helmets, the giant red afro was rarely on display.
An addendum to the hot or not quandary from last night: in hindsight, I think she's not hot. Nice and tall and blonde, but not hot. Whether or not that's a final decision remains to be seen, and recent history would allow me to believe there's more fluctuation on the horizon. So yeah.
Now that Sopranos is done I honestly think I won't be watching a single second of television that isn't sports for a long time. West Wing finished up a couple weeks ago and those two are the only non-sports shows I ever watch. Seeing as how I have an average of two hours at home a day that isn't sleep time, a lack of TV is definitely a good thing.
We got an offer in the mail for TiVo at a pretty good rate, but I actually think that would be an atrocity. I would seriously TiVo everything aired on Classic Sports, the NFL Network and NBA TV, meaning that I'd have like three weeks of programming to watch every week, which I don't think is mathematically possible. Math. Ha.
I just wore myself out thinking about long division. Outlook editing is enough for tonight. Here's my gem from this week's coach summaries, unedited to preserve the natural beauty:
"the blue m and m's rallied form a 7-2 deficit to hold off the kid klubbers 12-9. kelly truebloods bases clearing double ignited the rally.janna johnson,ali priess,amber martinez and catherine horner also delivered key hits. julia starr and julia jagelsscored runs and sarah hull had an rbi. madison white caught two pop ups and becca stoker and alexandra brown handled the catching duties, with ashley fejtek contributing a well placed bunt."
I'm not sure you can actually rally "form" a deficit, but it's a nice effort. Most paragraphs in the English language require a space after a period and sentences necessitate a space after commas. Words should also be separated by those spaces, or yoursentenceswilllooklikethis. Proper nouns are generally capitalized, as I'm sure you've seen on your business card or stationery (or maybe your husband's business card?). I do like that the last girl's name is Fejtek though. That's kind of like So-Tek, right?
Ahh, the joys of small-town editing. That's enough. Peace out.