USA Oops?

"And I hope you'll find your way again
And it won't get any higher
But it all boils down to what you did there
Disappointment"
--Disappointment, The Cranberries

Are you kidding me with that effort yesterday? How bad did the USA look in that debacle against Italy. Italy! Not Serbia or Argentina or one of the top international squads, but second-tier Italy. This isn't soccer, folks, come on now. Roberto Baggio isn't dunking on anybody. Paolo Maldini can't run a pick-and-roll. This is our sport, our best (??) players and, supposedly, our gold medal. Not so fast.
The Americans bungled their way to a 95-78 defeat at the hands of these Italianos, giving up countless open three-pointers and failing to make any dent from the perimeter themselves. The loss of Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady from the squad and the failure to include someone like Milwaukee's Michael Redd has proved quite harmful to this team, and a whole lot needs to change in the next ten days or we'll be out of medal contention in no time.
Today's matchup with Dirk and Germany will hopefully provide some redemption, but another loss will make for some unsteady sailing from here on out.
We're airing a piece on the show today from Magic Johnson's charity all-star game on Sunday, an event I had the privelege of attending as a producer. It was awesome; I felt quite powerful with my All-Access Pass, talking to celebrities and athletes, schmoozing my way past security to get our camera crew where we needed to go and having a tremendous time. Maurice Clarett, Bill Bellamy, Lisa Leslie, some guy from G-Unit, lots of peeps. We got to talk to every basketball player out there--Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker, Gilbert Arenas and Drew Gooden to name a few (they call Drew Gooden "Doc," in honor of his unrelated namesake Dwight--pretty sweet). A bunch of the rookies were there too--high schoolers J.R. Smith and Robert Swift, and college boys Chris Duhon, Desmon Farmer, Kirk Snyder, Devin Harris and Bruin T.J. Cummings. I think Snyder and Smith are both going to be sweet this year. Swift has some talent, but man, even though he's seven feet tall, he looks like he should still be in high school. He might struggle.
We got to mic up Steve Harvey for the second half of the game (he was coaching the rookie team against Magic's veteran squad) and he was absolutely hilarious--dancing, talking trash to Magic and his team, getting on the officials. Our talent, a comedian named Alex Thomas, was a lot of fun to hang out with as well--he knew everybody in the building, which made our job a lot easier.
Won our basketball game Monday night, improving to 5-4 on the campaign and qualifying for the playoffs. We're 0-1 in the games I've missed (0-2 if you count the game in which I was hurt and had to sit out the majority), so the record might be a bit misleading. Not having shot a ball in two weeks--since the eye injury--I struggled mightily from the perimeter all game long (probably 0-for-9 from downtown), but I took the ball to the hole with authority, knocked down my free throws, and probably ended up with about 20. Next week is the last regular season game, against an all-brotha squad called Capital Select, and then the post-season begins. I'm gonna miss that league when we're done.
Just found out yesterday that I get an entire week of paid vacation at the end of August. The show is dark, so I already knew it would be a more relaxed environment, but evidently we're moving offices and there won't be "any available workspace," so we're all off. So solid. I hope to be spending the duration of the break on the sand at the Bautistas' newly-completed beach house down by Dana Point. Jason and I went down there last Sunday for lunch after B preached and it's amazing. Can't wait.
I'm realizing at this point that I still haven't completed that movie list--two more still to go. Oh well, I'll continue building suspense. Or something like that. Speaking of movies, I actually saw three in the last week or so, more than my total for the previous six months, I think. "The Village" was the most recent and it was actually pretty good. I'm a fan of M.Night (yes, even "Unbreakable") and he did a great job again with this one. He always makes you think.
I think I need to start my work day. Peace.