West Coast Bias
Come back, to this very day
Cause losing's one thing we don't play
If you're ever in a fight and you're beating one of us
Break out, before you get bumrushed
At the wild, wild west
--Wild Wild West, Kool Moe Dee
Other than Jimmy Eat World, I don't know that I've quoted too many artists more than once, and http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifyet somehow, Kool Moe Dee has now made his second appearance on the blog. It's the holidays, which means I've had very little to do, and still haven't made enough time to blog, so here's the December entry, boys and girls...
First thing is to share the excitement (?) of getting blasted by the Sports Guy in . Granted, he doesn't know it's me that he's blasting, but he evidently watched my Top 50 Dunks show (officially titled "Best Damn's Top 50 Spectacular Dunks") on the 26th (its first re-air; three or four more showings to come) and while he thoroughly enjoyed it, he had quite a few problems with the "unconscionable" decision-making of the producer (yours truly):
(And by the way, is there a better solution for a failing, irrelevant sports show than to just start counting down the top-50 of every conceivable subject? Wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from the "Top 50 Greatest Dunks" episode, even if some of the choices were absolutely unconscionable. How do you have five Vince Carter dunks, five Kobe dunks and one Dominique dunk? How does Darryl Dawkins not crack the top-10 for the Robinzine dunk? How was Pippen's dunk over Ewing "honorable mention"? Where was Doc's tomahawk dunk over Bill Walton in the '77 Finals? And why isn't ESPN doing shows like this? I'd watch a "Top-50 Gatorade Baths" show, for God's sake. Why are we conceding this franchise to Chris Rose? Arrrrrrrrrrgh.)
I'm conaidering the contents of an email to him, to explain some of the difficulties of the process (the NBA's stubbornness high among them), and to ask for some feedback on my next show, the greatest shots in basketball history.
A few quick thoughts on the shots show, which will hopefully be airing sometime in February: Christian Laettner, number one? Tyus Edney, top 10? Probably not, but I'm biased, so we'll see. MJ's switching hands against the Lakers (lots of people call that one overrated)? Tough one to decide, since it's a combo of the dramatic (Laettner, Gar Heard, Jerry West from half court), the spectacular (MJ, Doc's baseline wraparound against the Lakers, J.R. Rider's behind-the-back flip falling out of bounds), and the inspirational (Bo Kimble's lefty free throw, that J-Mac kid in the high school game last year). Looking forward to the process, for sure...
Okay, so the reason I used this particular title and song lyric combination was that I'm beyond excited about Pac-10 basketball this year. No less a regionalist than Billy Packer called it "the best league in the country" during the Ohio State-Florida (basketball) game last Saturday (yes, I know they're also playing in football in a week or so--I'm going to be there, so I'm well aware). I've been to four UCLA games so far this year (only paid for one--Christmas present for Dad), and by far their toughest test was the other night against Wazzu, which was picked to finish last in the conference. Wow, talk about depth, huh? My guess is that ASU (sorry, Herb Sendek) will be the cellar-dweller, so without further ado, here's my extremely biased, one-game-in, top-half-of-the-Pac-10 preview (everybody except the Oregons have played once).
1) UCLA, if only because I'm a homer and they're the number one team in the country, so how can I pick against them, right? Howland has them playing even better defense than last year (if you want to know how, just watch Jordan Farmar try to guard somebody--anybody--during a Laker game), and as long as Josh Shipp is healthy (bad wheel limited his offense Thursday night), they've got two or three guys (Afflalo and sometimes Collison) who can create their own shot. Minus Hollins, they're a little smaller down low (whoever imagined, before last March, that we'd be missing Hollins?), but Mata has been pretty strong, and Luuuuuuuuuuc is a crazy defensive presence (three steals and three blocks Thursday). Side note, something I've shared before: every team needs a Luuuuuuuuuuuc-sounding name--nothing like a whole arena joining in the cheer after a block or a dunk ("No sir, they're not booing. They're saying, 'Boo-urns.'")
2) Arizona, who scored 94 points against Cal and looks like they can top the century mark every time out. What a contrast in styles between the Wildcats and the Bruins, right? (By the way, my 5th-grade basketball league championship game was between the orange-and-blue Wildcats (featuring my two best friends, Jeff Petit and Jeremy Rabe) and the baby blue-and-gold Bruins (featuring me). We lost.) They've got several guys who can fill it up, including Marcus Williams (please leave early, please leave early), Jawann McClellan (they really missed him last year) and Billy Hoyle, er, Chase Budinger, who's just as happy scoring 10 with eight assists as he is dropping 30. Shakur has actually been pretty solid at the point (seniors do get better, I suppose), and Radenovic pretty solid down low. They scare me because so many guys can score, and even though we really defend well, they have a lot of answers. I think we split the two games, but they drop at least one more of the at Oregon, at You-Dub, at SC, at Cal combo than we do.
3) Washington, because Spencer Hawes is the best post-up player I've seen since George Zidek (respect the Czech), and Ivan Drago is not a bad complementary player (I'm now being told his name is actually Jon Brockman. My bad.) I had the pleasure of working a high school basketball tournament in Vegas in August of '05 with Best Damn--we broadcast the two semifinal games and then the championship, and while one of the teams (coached by Kyle Lowry's older brother, Lonnie) was more of an overachieving, no-stars squad, the three others provided several big-time players. We got to see Hawes (I immediately told my UCLA buddies that if we signed him, we'd win multiple national championships--hopefully Kevin Love brings that sort of success along next year), Kevin Durant (evidently the best freshman--and maybe the best player--in the country right now), who did not impress at all--shot way too many threes, and never took it inside against much smaller opponents), Tywon Lawson (carolina's point guard), Brook and Robin Lopez (Collins twins, part II at Stanford), Derrick Jasper (caused us a little bit of trouble in Maui when he came in at point for Kentucky) and Quincy Pondexter, who's UW's leading scorer. Pretty awesome experience, and now getting to see these guys dominate where they are is pretty cool too. All that to say I like Washington, especially Hawes and Pondexter, Dentmon gives them backcourt experience, Opie Appelby can bomb from anywhere (six threes against the Trojans), and then they have a guy named Hans Gasser, who I think was a bad guy in one of the Die Hard movies. Oh yeah, and Lorenzo Romar is my favorite coach in the country not named Howland.
4) Oregon, I guess. They did beat Georgetown, but do we really know how good they are? They'll beat Oregon State today, but we'll see in the long run. They do have some talent, for sure, with Brice Taylor and Malik Hairston the big names, and Aaron Brooks running a solid point (when he's not throwing picks and throwing his teammates and coaches under the bus in Oakland--busy year for this guy, wow). The wildcard is Tajuan Porter, who nobody had heard of until he went 27, 28, 38 (10 of 12 threes?!?) in the Ducks' first three games. He's 5-6, he's from Michigan (did Hairston help bring this guy in?), and he's kinda sweet (though he didn't score against Portland the other night). Leunen is their main inside guy (I swear he's been there seven years), and he's been in double figures so far as well, which seems to give them as many offensive options as anybody in the conference. Senior point guard, numerous scorers, a huge homecourt advantage--they could surprise and move up a few slots here, for sure.
5) either USC or Wazzu, because they both impressed in their respective conference openers. SC is only going to get better, with Pruitt now back (and playing well after two terrible games) and a lot more depth than last year. This Wilkinson kid is great, ball-handler, rebounder and garbage scorer--good teams need guys like that. Nick Young's bad haircut is gone, and he's capable of 20 a night, and Taj Gibson has been a truck down low. Wazzu will win some games because they play great defense, much like UCLA. I don't think we're great offensively, but they made us look terrible, holding us to less than 33% from the floor. Steve Nash play-alike Derrick Low really surprised me, making a ton of difficult shots (though he settled for a bad trey on his team's penultimate possession) and keeping Collison (the best defensive point guard in the country?) on his heels the whole way. Besides Low, they've got a bunch of interchangeable guys (which allows them to switch everything on defense) and a few shooters, and Bennett the younger is a solid coach.
The rest of the conference goes like this: 7) Cal, 8) Stanford, 9) Oregon State, 10) Arizona State.
A few more observations from the world, sporting and otherwise, this holiday season (and yes, these will also likely come from very biased perspective):
- The Kings (Los Angeles, nobody cares about Sacramento) really suck, but thank goodness they decided to play well when the bros and I went on Tuesday night. Hockey really is the best spectator sport there is--we had a fight, a 3-3 tie at the end of regulation (Kings pulled the goalie, tied it up in the last minute) and then a nice shootout win (rookie goaltender Barry Brust, already a crowd favorite, came up big). We're a far cry from the Gretzky-Kurri-Sandstrom-Granato (I could seriously name every player on that roster, thanks to a) watching every game in the '93 season, and b) playing NHL '94 religiously) Stanley Cup finalist squad, and even a far cry from the Allison-Palffy-Deadmarsh playoff squad, but there's certainly some young excitement out there (Brust, Frolov--sometimes--and Kopitar), and it's still fun to go watch (as long as they're not getting blown out 7-0)...
- I don't like where this season is headed if Kobe is scoring 58 and we're losing to the Charlotte Bobcats (in triple OT, but a loss nonetheless). Lamar needs to come back, real soon, or we'll be reverting to the bad parts of the '04-'05 season in no time. Best stat from last night's game was Adam Morrison's shooting: 1-of-15 from the floor. Seriously...
- First year in forever that I haven't watched a bowl game yet, except for fast-forwarding the TiVo to catch up on the UCLA score while our out-of-town cousins were over (I still haven't mastered the appropriateness of entertaining guests and watching sports--depending on the importance of the event, I'm probably about as bad a host as you'll find, but as soon as FSU blocked the punt and took it back, I was good to go). I'm not sure why that's been the case (I probably would have watched Cal, but they were on while I was at the UCLA game), but Michael and I are going to the Rose Bowl, so that's one I'll have to watch (and the rest of the BCS games, of course--they're all on Fox)...
- Did the Diamondbacks actually watch Randy Johnson pitch last year, or were they just watching the '01 World Series DVD and getting nostalgic? And they want to sign him to an extension?!? His ERA was 5.00 and he didn't allow less than five runs in a start after September 1. He's 43 (looks even older, obviously) and I really hope it's Arizona that makes this deal, not my Padres...
- My boy Shawne Merriman got blasted by Jason Taylor and Champ Bailey (likely his two top competitors for defensive player of the year honors) this week, saying that he shouldn't be eligible for the award because of his (alleged) steroid use. Merriman evidently responded this week:
Merriman, nicknamed "Lights Out" for his punishing hits, said he sent Taylor a T-shirt and hat with his "Lights Out" logo. He also sent a bag of popcorn, "So he can watch us in the playoffs."
I heart Shawne Merriman. Oh yeah, and I heart A.J. Smith too--here's why:
All nine of their Pro Bowl players are under contract through at least 2008. In all, 19 core players - defined as starters, kicker, punter and projected 2007 starters - are under contract through 2009.
Yeah. Show me your lightning bolt.
- Last thing: followed a link on this other dude's blog yesterday to vote for MSN's Artist of the Year (music, not art), and the David Crowder Band is up for the award, along with INXS, Prince, Christina Aguilera and Kenny Chesney. I really don't know who comes up with the nominations or how it works, but however they got there, I'm amazed at how far these guys have come. They used to be (maybe still are?) the worship leaders at University Baptist Church in Waco, TX (the guys went to Baylor) and have spent the last decade or so rising to the top of the Christian music scene. I used to attend the Youth Specialties Conference every year and they were one of the main attractions, usually playing a concert one night and leading worship sessions throughout the week(end). They'd always be jamming on something instrumental as people were filing into the daily sessions, and it was always awesome--the Top gun theme, Sweet Child O' Mine, always something cool. The best part about Crowder himself, and the band as well, was (and no doubt still is) their humility. Always deflecting praise upward, they set a great example to other Christian artists, and to Christians in general. I have certainly lost touch with their music and their level of success, but I'm stoked that they've arrived; they definitely deserve it...
posted by Scotty Dimes @ 10:12 AM
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