Category Archives: General Basketball
Nike unveiled a new line of gray uniforms for a bunch of college hoops teams yesterday. Look at these wannabes:
Me, I’m a sucker for this look:
That’s right, I’m arguing for Georgetown’s dominion over an entire color.
You’ll have to indulge me for a second:
OHHHHHHHHHH!
Not sure if any of y’all saw the ninth-ranked Georgetown Hoyas come back from a 17-point deficit midway through the second half against No. 20 Marquette last night at the Verizon Center, but it ranks among the most awesome things that have ever awesomed.
The Hoyas, my alma mater’s basketball squad, are the only team I follow for which I currently maintain any legitimate short-term hope, what with the Jets embroiled in some Beltranian postseason locker-room turmoil and the Mets banking their offseason on Andres Torres, Corey Wimberley and a bunch of relievers that’ll probably be dealt in July if they meet with any success.
And being a Georgetown fan these past couple of years has been not unlike cheering the Mets in 2008, full of promise despite a clearly flawed team — but unencumbered the off-field fuss that has plagued the Mets since — and ultimately ending in heartbreak and disappointment. So when the Hoyas are winning as they have been winning since an early-season loss to Kansas in Hawaii — inspiring all sorts of fawning post-hoc analysis from around the Internet — I watch with some trepidation, knowing as I do that there are dozens of other college hoops teams off to awesome starts and hundreds of others vying for the ultimate prize, that fans of all but one will end up disappointed, that the Big East conference schedule is a bloodthirsty 1,500-pound grizzly of a bear and that all this dizzying post-holiday Hoya-fan exuberance can and likely will be destroyed at some point by a single injury to a key player or a prolonged shooting slump or one of those games where Seton Hall randomly refuses to miss three-pointers.
So though a loss to the nation’s 20-ranked team would hardly spell doom for my Hoyas in January, at some point in the second half I could hear the delusion train leaving the station last night with me still fumbling with my credit card at the ticket machine. I even took to my iPad for some NBA Jam, turning my attention briefly away from the chatter on ESPNU about the undersized Marquette team’s spirited play that somehow neglected to mention the obnoxious way those players seemed more dedicated to drawing fouls than making baskets.
Then, when all seemed bleak — and with Chris Paul heating up, no less — something… something just happened. After about 20 minutes of the Hoya freshmen playing like overwhelmed underclassmen, they yielded to the team’s few veterans.
And all of a sudden Jason Clark, a 6-2 senior guard with Inspector Gadget arms like a 7-footer, is grabbing loose balls and driving to the basket and the Hoyas are trimming the lead. Then Henry Sims, a 6-10 senior center and former top recruit who played laughable basketball until a stern talking-to from his mother refocused him this offseason, is blocking shots at one end of the court and hitting a beautiful fadeaway at the other, and the refs seem on to Marquette’s flop jig and now the difference is down to five. And now Hollis Thompson, a 6-8 junior forward who has never missed a big shot in his life, is nailing them down from all over the floor and the Eagles can’t get out of their own way, and the once-lost game is tied, and I’m punching the arms of my La-Z-Boy and making such a racket in my living room that my wife gets a little freaked out and leaves for a walk because it’s been a long time since she has seen me act this way.
By the time she comes back with cookies — cookies! — the Hoyas have won, 73-70.
Which is to say: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
That type of night. Let me enjoy this while it lasts, huh?
The Knicks signed Baron Davis today. Tommy Dee likes the deal, which is cool. I haven’t followed the NBA all that closely in years so I can’t tell you anything about it other than that Baron Davis is clearly that league’s foremost beard pioneer, so for that he should be celebrated. I saw him hailing a cab in Chelsea once and his beard was spectacular. It looked like this:
Shaq has a Shaq puppet.
David Stern referred to the recent breakdown in NBA labor negotiations as “the nuclear winter of the NBA.” Let’s see how it stacks up to the real thing:
| NBA Nuclear Winter | Actual Nuclear Winter | |
|---|---|---|
| Refers to | A season without NBA basketball | The atmospheric consequences of nuclear war |
| Causes | Impasse in negotiations between players’ union and owners | Dense smoke from nuclear explosions and burning urban areas rising into the stratosphere, blocking out the sun and prompting drastic drops in surface temperatures for years |
| Most noticeable effect | #LockoutLife | All agriculture becomes impossible for over a decade |
| Understated repercussion | Thousands of arena workers lose jobs in poor economy | Viggo Mortensen, blinded by desperation, steals Omar’s clothes |
| Most unfortunate consequence | Possible North American Tour for J.D. and the Straight Shot | Everyone on the planet starves to death and dies |
Kevin Durant tweeted that he was looking to play flag football in the Oklahoma City area. An Oklahoma State fraternity obliged.
It turns out Kevin Durant playing flag football with a bunch of college kids looks about exactly the way you’d expect. My question is: Why would the opposing quarterback ever throw to the receiver being covered by the 6’9″ NBA star? Was he trying to prove something, or just trying to keep Durant in the action?
Via Seth Greenberg.
Fearing embarrassment in forthcoming conference matchups with the mighty Georgetown Hoyas, the pathetic Syracuse Orange will flee the Big East like petrified children.
“We’ve been mulling this move for a long time, and we think it’s best for our program,” Athletic Director Daryl Gross probably said. “The truth is, the rigors of Big East play and Georgetown’s ever-looming presence made this decision easy for us.”
Syracuse’s departure clears the way for the remaining basketball-only teams in the Big East to form a new, way better conference unsullied by the ever-filthy, perpetually overrated, and utterly detestable Orange.
“I suppose this renders our conference’s future uncertain,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III could have said. “But at least I never have to set foot in that godforsaken hellhole again in my life.”
“I’m a big stupid jerk,” added Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim, presumably. “Look at my jerk face! Waaaah! Waaaah!”
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